FIRST BASE
Lucky Break
I am in a cupboard, and I’m snogging the coolest and most gorgeous boy in the whole school. And it’s a big school. And really, we’re kissing, not snogging. In a closet, not a cupboard. They don’t really have snogging or cupboards here – they would laugh and tell me those are dodgy British phrases. Except they wouldn’t say ‘dodgy’. That’s just as dodgily British. And – quick tip – don’t ever let them catch you saying ‘tomato and basil’ – that will have them laughing for like a year. I
learned that the hard way.
But none of that is the point at all. The point is – I am kissing Jake Matthews, the coolest boy in the school! If not the entire world.
And the really amazing thing? I am seriously UNcool. Or rather, I was.
Let me tell you how it happened. Remember – if it can happen to me, it can happen to you. Not with Jake Matthews, of course – hands off! He’s mine. But you’ll find someone like him. There’s one in every school. These facts about me are probably not important for the success of your kiss-the-fittest-boy-in-school plan, but here they are anyway. My name is Josephine Reilly, I live with my mum, my dad is married to an emptyheaded bimbo called Kelly, I have a sweetie-pie half-sister called Lolly-Lauren, who’s three, and a best friend called Hailey.
The following facts ARE important. Your mum has to qualify for the ‘brain drain’. Or your dad has to, I suppose, but that doesn’t apply in my case – my dad left my brilliant mum for Kelly, so he is certifiably brainless. Anyway, my mum went for the ‘brain drain’, which is a cool way of saying she got a job in the USA because of her super-clever egghead status. It has nothing to do with zombies. Although, you know, zombies would be cool too, but in a different way.
Then you need to have an accent that makes everyone stop and stare at you. Most of these people should say, ‘I just LOVE your accent.’ Any old accent will do, don’t worry. My accent is from Boringtown, Boring County, England, and it’s worked well for me. I suppose you could pretend to have an exotic accent, one that isn’t your real accent, but inventing things isn’t always the best way to go. You’ll see what I mean about that later.
And then – and this is what makes the accent thing work – you need to move to the United States of America.
That’s it. That’s what it took to transform me from Lady Saddo of Boringtown High to Cool Girl on the Block, complete with snogging Jake Matthews and everything. Brainy parent, accent, USA. You’re thinking it can’t be that simple. Anyway, dorky ducklings don’t turn into hip-’n’-happening swans, except in fairy tales. In fact, seeing me now with Jake Matthews, you’re seriously doubting I was ever remotely uncool.
I can see why you’d think that. So here are a few more details about the old me. Judge for yourself. At the drop of a hat – and sometimes entirely unprovoked by any falling headgear whatsoever – I, Jo the Nerd, would quote, word-for-word, vintage episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I owned every available Buffy DVD box set. I was a regular in Buffy forums and chatrooms.
And it didn’t stop there. I had a superior knowledge of straight-to-TV movies. You know the kind I mean – the ones where everyone sobs a lot and overcomes tragic problems, based on a true story. OK, I still have that knowledge and I still own those Buffy box sets. But now? I usually keep it to myself.
Here’s more. My wardrobe used to come entirely from charity shops. That was out of no-money type necessity, not out of misdirected reverse-coolness (you know, when you are so uncool it’s almost cool?). So I often looked a mess. I really did. I’m the first to admit it.
Also, I didn’t wear makeup. This wasn’t because of the money thing. I could have asked for Kelly’s offcasts. I could have popped into Superdrug and used theirs. But I didn’t think girls should wear makeup. I thought it was ‘demeaning’, trying to change my face to ‘mirror a state of perpetual arousal’. I read that in Mum’s feminist magazine. I used to recite it to the makeupy girls at Boringtown High, the ones Hailey and I call the Delicates. It wasn’t just a convenient excuse for the fact that every time I tried to wear makeup, it fell off my face into my lunch and didn’t taste very nice.
Do you believe me now? Thought so. That’s how uncool I was. Utterly, unashamedly uncool.
Don’t worry, I haven’t changed completely. Jo the Nerd’s still in there somewhere. But my Josie the Cool side has popped up for a party – a party for two in a cluttered closet. And I’m partying with – sorry, KISSING – Jake Matthews.
My partywear includes makeup now. And I think my party partner is wearing a lot of my lipstick too. The old me might have said Jake Matthews was as ‘demeaning’ to girls as makeup. He’s one of those boys who’s so drop-dead gorgeous that he’s never had to try – you know, he clicks his fingers and girls literally come running to him. Of course, the old me would not have experienced any finger-clicking action from any Jake Matthews types in the first place.
Here’s more about how exactly it happened. So Mum tells me she’s been offered a job in the USA. She sits awkwardly on the edge of my bed and fiddles with the wooden beads on her necklace, and first of all she says, ‘Boston,’ so I say, ‘In Lincolnshire?’ and I can’t believe it when she says, ‘No, in Massachusetts.’ And I wonder how I’ll ever be able to spell that. Is there a rhyme for spelling it? Or am I thinking of Mississippi? Mum tells me it’s a great opportunity for her. She does technical stuff with computers and not a lot of people know the stuff she knows. So she was headhunted. (There go those zombies again!) And she’s been offered a job. In the USA. I already said that, didn’t I? But it’s such a big deal.
It would probably be temporary, about a year, and I don’t have to go with her. Although she is allowed to get a visa for me. And I’ve just done my Big Bad GCSE exams, so it’s OK to go now. It could be like a year out before A levels. The A levels I’ve chosen are pretty dull anyway – history, English, geography – compared with the things I’ve heard I can study in the USA, where it’s all Psych 101 here and Advanced Trig there, and even plain old maths sounds more exciting without the ‘s’.
Or I can stay here and live with Dad and Kelly. Mum has discussed it with Dad, although she’d miss me so much. I can even have my own room at Dad’s instead of having to share with Lolly, like I do when I visit now. I can go to Boringtown Sixth Form College with Hailey.
Mum goes on about how sorry she is to do this to me. In fact, the visa application isn’t in yet, it might get denied, maybe she should turn the job down anyway? She would hate to ruin my life. She remembers what it was like to be fifteen and have your life turned upside down. She never quite forgave Grandpa for leaving Grandma in an exam year.
I have to contain myself. I can’t seem too keen. It might make Mum suspicious about why exactly I want to go. It might put her off taking me with her.
But really?! Swapping my life in Britain, where I couldn’t be much lower in the social pecking order, where I have no boyfriend and I hate school and there’s nothing to do in Boringtown where I live? Where I’ve been thought of as weird and geeky since I was five years old and told everyone on my first day at school that I was related to Batman? (They still sometimes call me ‘Batgirl’ now. And, no, they’re not laughing WITH me, either.)
I worry that they’re going to tease me in America though, for being British. It could even be worse than the bat thing.
‘Am I going to get called a Limey?’ I ask Mum, because I remember studying that in history last year – about British sailors in the nineteenth century sucking limes to stop scurvy, or something, and the Americans using ‘Limey’ as an insult to Brits. But Mum just laughs and tells me, ‘Nobody uses that term any more, Jo-Jo, don’t worry. Just be yourself. They’re going to love you.’

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