Tales of a BB Girl

Chapter 2: Calm before the Storm

A yellowish flake of paint finally gave up its fight and toppled off the school wall as I walked in. I wasn’t to say anything about the news, just pretend everything was normal – although it was never normal, not really. Not in my life.

I got my first novel published a year ago, when I was sixteen – just when I was beginning to give up hope. It did well enough, enough to make friends and family happy but – if I’m honest – not something I could say surpassed my wildest dreams. After the fuss died down, life just went back to normal – only instead of homework, my most pressing assignments were revisions for my editor, for my publisher. Maybe it was my expectations that damned me.

I couldn’t walk a couple of metres in school without someone clapping me on the back, without someone’s congratulations for the first week or two. After that there was radio silence. And then the rumours started.

Silly things, mostly. Saying I’d made them into a character in my book, that it didn’t reflect well on them. That I was only in it for the money. That I was a fake.

It shouldn’t bother me. My book was published and doing well: I was well settled into the career I wanted and at only sixteen. It did, though. A little.

I had English first this morning. The teacher hated me until the book got published and made no effort to disguise it. She was better afterwards, but it was hardly genuine. I sat in a seat by the window, alone. We were studying To Kill a Mockingbird, a book that has the interesting ability to make one experience a deep existential crisis when read aloud in class.

Whether it was a testament to her integrity or her pigheadedness, I didn’t know, but the teacher still wouldn’t let me read a different book under the desk. I’d finished it. I think most of the class had finished it. But still no. I appeased myself by thinking about the next day, Tuesday, and the excitement that was to follow. And the fact that tonight was my best friend’s birthday party, and that was going to be fun.

Keeping the secret proved difficult.

‘What are you hiding from me?’ Ava had said, the third time I cut off my speech mid-answer, afraid I’d give something away. ‘Did you hear from Theo?’

Theo was her recent ex-boyfriend. She was still pretty sore about him. ‘No, of course not. Sorry, I’m just distracted. I got a new book today, by the way. Several, actually.’

‘Ooh, Ms. Writer,’ she said, ‘What books?’

‘Skulduggery Pleasant, the eighth one – I can finally go on the internet without fear of spoilers. Days of Blood and Starlight, it’s the sequel to the one I was raving about, remember? I looked in the library and two bookshops for Ender’s Shadow, but I can’t find it, unfortunately.’

‘Nice. But don’t you just get books delivered to your house free of charge, like some exclusive writerly club?’

‘I wish, Ava!’ Sadly, that wasn’t how real life worked. ‘I’m a writer, not a celebrity.’

‘Wouldn’t think it, Ms. When-I-Google-my-name-the-first-twenty-results-are-actually-me.’

I decided to change the subject. ‘So anyway, I also got one other thing and I brought it over tonight in case you want to watch it during the sleepover at like 2 a.m. or something.’ I pulled it out of my bag with a flourish. ‘Here it is – the Ender’s Game movie!’

‘Sorry?’

I reached into the bag again and pulled out a book. I had come prepared for just this situation. ‘Read the book.’ I almost pulled it back upon realising something. ‘Wait, that means we can’t watch the movie tonight.’

‘Can’t we just watch the movie first?’

‘No! C’mon, Ava, that rule is sacred.’

She looked like she was trying to humour me and took the book. ‘Alright, I’ll read it. But the movie looks interesting.’

‘Rest assured, I’ll let you watch it once you’ve read the book. The guy who plays the main character is incredible.’

She looked at the DVD case again. ‘Oh, who is he?’

‘Asa Butterfield. English, lead role in Hugo and Boy in Striped Pyjamas and this. Want to hear the best part? He’s eighteen.’

‘Ooh,’ she said, grinning. ‘Sixteen, eighteen, nice. You’re all grown up! Do you have a better picture of him? I can’t really see his face on the cover.’

I pulled out my iPod and showed her some of the pictures. ‘Just look at the blue eyes,’ I said.

She gasped. ‘So that’s who you based that character, you know the one with the tickets, off. Sneaky.’

‘I didn’t base him on anyone!’

‘I believe you,’ she said, winking. ‘But don’t tell me you never visualised his face when describing Ronan.’

She had me there. We talked no more about it through a fun-filled night – how could I have known just how right she’d be?