The #1 Rule for Girls

‘Don’t be so touchy, I was only asking,’ she
said. ‘It’s so ridiculous you two aren’t talking.
You need to ring him and sort it out.’
Relationship advice from Queen of the
Waster Chasers? As if.
I said a very frosty ‘gotta go’ and lay back
on my bed. I just didn’t understand: if my
friends and family really wanted to help me
get over Matt, why did they keep talking
about him? No one seemed to get it: even if
his mum’s bar failed and he crawled home
from Magaluf on bleeding knees wearing
nothing but horsehair underpants and a hat
made of brambles . . . I’d still say bollocks to
him.
Swipe left school. Swipe left Matt. It was
time to move on.
Because as Shaney’s tattoo said: You only
live wonce.
‘I am soooo jealous,’ Ayesha said as she
peered in my wardrobe.
‘Jealous clothes or jealous there’s no
uniform at college?’ I asked, adding yet
another cardigan to the pile on my bed.
‘Both.’ She sighed.
As some ancient Greek guy probably never
said, no one gets a second chance to make a
first impression and so choosing the perfect
outfit for my induction at college required
careful consideration and help in the form of
Ayesha the Wise.
She was assessing the skirts now, taking
each one out of the wardrobe and holding it
up. ‘You’ve got so many lovely things, Daze.
You’re so lucky.’
Yep, I totally got the clothes envy. My
mum was a professional seamstress. Ayesha’s
mum was a chiropodist. My house: piles of
to-die-for clothes. Ayesha’s house: piles of
manky foot bits.
‘Beth rang me in tears about whatshisname,
Tattoo Tosser,’ I said, rattling coat hangers
down the rail. ‘You know her dad’s locked her
in the coal shed? Mouldy crusts for dinner,
hourly spankings with the family Bible.’
‘It’s not funny,’ said Ayesha. ‘She’s been
really upset all day.’
‘So what’s Shaney like then?’ I said. ‘Apart
from dyslexic.’
‘Into leather.’
‘Kinky?’
She shook her head. ‘Motorbikes.’
‘No wonder Beth’s dad’s gone mental,’ I
said.
‘I know. And we thought she’d scraped the
barrel when she met Stinky Pete.’
I nodded slowly. Ah yes, Stinky Pete.
Beth’s beardy, battle-re-enacting ex-boyf who
dressed like a Viking at the weekends . . . and
washed like a Viking at all other times. She
finally hung up her horns after an
unexpectedly warm spell in March, telling
him he needed to spend less time in costume
and more time with Mr Soap.
She was pulling dresses out of the
wardrobe now and arranging them on top of
my bed.
‘So what’s the deal?’ I asked.
‘Well, he does weightlifting so he’s got
these massive muscles. She says he makes
her feel girly.’
Girly. I flashed on a vision of Beth pinked
up, giggly and fluffified. Scattering IQ points
like confetti every time Shaney flexed a
bicep because she’d fallen for the myth that
fit guys never fancy clever girls.
‘Sounds like she scraped through the
bottom of the barrel this time,’ I said.
‘Er, what happened to Rule number 2?’ said
Ayesha. ‘You know – Always support your
friends.’
Ah, yes. The Rules were how me, Beth and
Ayesha first got to know each other. It was
during one of those get-to-know-the-group
things at the start of Year 7: come up with a
list of rules of acceptable behaviour. I
couldn’t remember anything else we did in
English that year, but the Rules stuck.