Noah’s joke today—“What does a wee in the morning? A chicken.”
Kas after a jogger ran past us—“If I ever wear patterned leggings, just shoot me.”
One-liner idea:
Everything’s going wrong at the moment. Even our kettle isn’t working. Oh well, when it rains, it pours.
Just be nice if it worked in nice weather too, y’know?
Noah in playground talking to another mum of a small boy.
Noah: “How old is he?”
Mother: “Three.”
Noah (wistfully): “Ah. I used to be three.”
Surely you have to have lived through at least a decade before you’re allowed to be nostalgic?
I write down Mum’s “peed a lightsaber” story and Noah’s random “Have you ever seen a chimpanzee in the bath” question and then I stare at the page. Normally, what I write down comes pretty easily, but now, after seeing Leo’s act, my mind’s a blank. Nothing in this notebook is anywhere near funny enough to make Leo laugh, to make him notice me. I need to write some new stuff, legit stand-up stuff, something that he’d find funny. And that seems impossible.
Funny, think funny, think…
I need a snack. That’ll help me think.
I go to the kitchen, eat some toast, come back to my desk, sit, hold my pen…think funny, think funny, think…and before I know it I slip back into a Leo-daydream. Only this time we’re at school. I crack a killer joke to my friends in the hallway just as he walks past, and he doubles up with laughter, pushes past Kas and Chloe and takes my hands, tears of laughter still streaming down his face. “That was the funniest thing I’ve ever heard—you’re a comedy genius! We should totally hang out and maybe get married and stuff.” And on “stuff” he winks at me and…
What the hell am I doing? This is bat-crap crazy!
I mean, what’s the actual plan here? I just run up to him in the hallway, tell him a joke that makes him laugh so much he’ll immediately propose? And since when is that even a thing I want anyway? As we’ve already established, I’m not the misty-eyed, sappy girl who wraps a white pillowcase around her head, imagining bridal bliss—that is NOT me!
Plus, it’s unlikely I’ll ever have the courage to look him in the eye, let alone get a sentence out, let ALONE make it funny. At best, all he’s going to see is a random fat girl waddle up to him and mumble something before fainting and falling heavily to the floor.
This is just stupid. Numptiness on an epic scale. What was I thinking?
So I get my math book out of my bag and do my homework instead until my phone rings. It’s Chloe asking to copy my math homework.
“So, how about we do a swap,” she says, almost singing the word “swap.”
“What kind of swa-ap…?” I sing back.
“You give me the answers”—she puts on a strange, steamy voice like a bad drag act and says—“and I’ll give you some information you might like.”
Oh God, it’s going to be something about Leo. This is mortifying.
But I pretend to remain clueless and breezy.
“Sounds interesting—what information? ’Cause if it’s a new skincare routine forget it. I already have an amazing one—Noah comes in every morning and smears random gloop and snot over my face, I scream, and then wipe it off with a sock. Works wonders.”
“No, no, it’s good—it’s about Le-o.” She sings the word “Leo.”
Ugh, I knew it!
“What? Why would I be interested in him?” I bluster, my stomach swooping all over the place. “Leo who? Why would I—what are you talking about? What information? Not that I’m interested, but what? I don’t care—whatever—WHAT?”
She’s laughing now. “Well, obviously you’re not interested at all or anything, so I guess you wouldn’t want to know that his dad runs a music and comedy open-mic night once a month at his pub on East Street! AND that apparently Leo always performs there, so, if you wanted to watch him onstage and drool over him again, he’ll be there next Friday night!”
I try to get my jaw to ascend and rejoin the rest of my face.
“I thank you,” says Chloe. And I can almost hear her bowing. “Now pay me in math, woman.”
“OK, but wait. Firstly, how do you know that?”
Chloe sighs, but I can tell she’s enjoying every moment of this. She loves knowing stuff before everyone else. “You know my sister’s still going out with Jake?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, he plays guitar at this pub sometimes. He had a flier for next Friday night and it says at the bottom, ‘featuring the comedy stylings of London Young Comic of the Year runner-up, Leo Jackson.’”
“Young Comic of the Year? Wow,” I say, even more in awe of Leo.
“Well, runner-up, but yeah, pretty cool, right? Doesn’t it just make you luuurve him even more!” Chloe’s stupid, low husky voice now sounds more like a late-night, cheesy radio DJ.
I roll my eyes. “Shut up. And anyway it’s in a pub—those places where adults drink and schoolkids aren’t made to feel all that welcome?”
I really can’t see how this is going to work. But I SO want it to.
“Look, it’s a family-friendly pub—as long as we go in with an adult and don’t try to order beer or anything, it’s fine! Tell your mum you’re coming to mine for the night and my sister will take us.”
Like a puppy when his owner shouts “walkies” I can barely contain my excitement as we make our plans, though I manage to stop myself weeing on the carpet. We’re going to get Kas to come along too and, as long as Mum lets me out for the night, we’re totally going to a pub to see Leo perform!
Obviously I don’t let Chloe know I’m quite so obsessively enthusiastic.
“I mean, yeah, sure—it sounds like a laugh, right?” I say.
“Uh-huh, whatever, Pig,” she says, not buying my nonchalance. “It’s gonna be so much fun! Now pay up. C’mon, question number fifteen…”
I read her my math answers. She ribs me a little more about Leo and tells me she hopes Stevie will be at the pub that night. I don’t tell her that I’m still totally flummoxed by her obsession with a guy who shows little signs of life, let alone personality. Whatever floats your boat, I guess. And Stevie’s nothing if not a floater.
Kas and me have never had actual boyfriends, me because no one’s interested so I’ve never been interested back and Kas because, for all her talk of boys and liking them, she’s actually pretty shy around them and wouldn’t really know what to do if she got one. Like when I really wanted a Suzy’s Salon Hair Crimper for Christmas because all the other girls had one, but when I finally got it I realized it was actually just a stupid bit of tat I was scared to turn on. All it did was make me hungry for crinkle-cut chips.
But Chloe has always had boys from our year running up to her and saying, “My friend likes you!” before running off, and sometimes she’ll agree to “date” one of them, but that normally means holding hands with the guy at lunchtimes and an occasional makeout at a party. The fact is none of us really know what we’re doing with boys, although Kas and Chloe always seem to have their eye on some guy or another and they’re always gossiping about how utterly “dreamy” their unsuspecting prey is. But me, well, it’s probably just another clichéd consequence of having a selfish prick for a dad, but I’ve never really seen the point of boyfriends.