Chapter one

I have a pen on my desk. On the end jiggles a heart on a spring, so
glossy and red I would like to lick it, replace the plastic tang with
sweet artificial stickiness like the strawberry chupa chups I drooled
over as a child. (In fact I have already done this several times, the
bightmarks my give away. does plastic have calories? oh god.)

These days I'll put anything in my mouth. Anything you can chew and
swallow without too much fuss, like flour pouring into an empty sack.
Sadly, no amount of flour is ever enough. I can sit surrounded by brown
apple cores or biscuit crumbs ("cookies" as Mary Anne calls them) and
still hear the loose change rattling around inside.

Perhaps I should give up on the whole eating malarkey. Packets of
crisps are hardly sold as anti depressants, so why do I still think
I'll find the solutions at the bottom of the bag? Or the yoghurt tub,
or pizza box or icing tube? The so-called "happy foods" that get the
old endorphins bubbling resemble elephant droppings. Dried apricots and
walnuts? Dates? They belong in magazine world or Hollywood or wherever
the beautiful people are with their Tae Bo classes. Ugh.

I found out about the "happy food" this morning. She had left
cosmopolitan folded by my breakfast plate, a post-it stuck over the
glossy text. "A little education for you, honey". The 'I' was dotted
with a flower.

God, everything about Mary Anne makes me want to rip cushions. Even the
petty little things, like the way she brushes her teeth by a 3 minute
timer, the way she insists on ONLY lemon-yellow curtains in every room,
how her shoes have their own cupboard. My father was out of his mind to
marry her, but then again my mother was already out of her mind so
perhaps it was catching. Even I can grudgingly admit that their divorce
was the best thing they did since marriage. Nobody really knows how bad
it was living in a council house with a mentallist (mummy dear) and a
serial adulterer (daddykins) though I'm sure you'd like to say you do.
I've never told anyone my mothers Place of Residence is the St. Julius'
Institute. It's a bit less complicated to explain her white villa by
the sea, slanted sunlight cutting through the orange trees and ice
cubes clinking in frosted glasses.

I don't want to talk about her anymore. I'll just block her from my
mind and carry on writing.

Only it's never that simple, especially if the only thing to distract
you is a silent classroom and a waiting-to-be-written essay on
geological fault lines. It would be way easier if the queen drove past
or Mr. Jackson stood up and announced his love for Garret Morris, the
headmaster.

But I make a start, letting the heart swing gently on its spring and
into my mouth, where I bite down thoughtfully. I write, my hand aching
and teeth clenched, feeling the veins running under my skin, the
solidness of my skull and the damp of my eyes. Its too hard to
concentrate nowadays, too hard to convince anyone my brain is no more
than a useless grey sponge. It's the same at home, where homework is
rarely done. All I can do is watch TV with my beloved Twix bars. When
the careers adviser came to school and asked me what I wanted to be, I
said "marathon runner". I don't know why, but it's a habit to say the
exact opposite of what I mean. I would find it a lot easier to tell
someone I liked I hated them, and even easier to say I like them when I
hate them. People who fall into the latter catogary seem to be most of
my friends, shopkeepers, all my teachers and mary anne. I suppose the
only person I truely like is James. More about him later.