When Good Geeks Go Bad Read online

  For Phoebe and Ernie. C.W.

  “Well, then… I suppose you should try them on.” Dad looks blankly at the best shoes in the world.

  OK. This bit has gone surprisingly well, which makes me nervous. I did actually need new school shoes (and it has nothing to do with Olivia Jones saying my old ones came from the pound shop). She’s such an idiot – they don’t even sell shoes in our local pound shop, so the joke’s on her.

  But anyway, it’s still really unlike Dad to suddenly take me out to the shops on a Saturday afternoon. But here we are: I’ve got him into a shoe shop. The downside is he’s being his typical stickler self about it.

  “I think it’s definitely these ones, Dad.” I try to sound cheerful yet nonchalant. “They’re so practical,” I add, inspired. (Sometimes it helps to use the words they like, and my dad really likes things that are practical.)

  I am SO close to getting the shoes. I can taste it. Well, not taste it, that would be gross. But you know what I mean.

  Dad looks at my feet and a flicker of confusion crosses his face. “Are you sure these are regulation school uniform?”

  “Yes. Definitely,” I reply. Come on, Dad, I will silently. I’m THIRTEEN. It’s time for me to have cool shoes.

  OK, I don’t know what the shoe craze is at your school, but at mine it’s these shoes called Jay-Shees. They’re like a plain flat shoe but sort of with a twist. The way the sole is done makes them look ever so slightly like a platform (which is perfect for me because I can’t walk in heels). Then they have this tiny little red label sort of sticking out at the side near the back, so that everyone knows you’re wearing Jay-Shees.

  “I think I’d better just check this list again.” Dad whips out his new smartphone that I helped him set up. “No, it says here the shoes must be black and have no other colours on them at all.”

  What kind of MONSTER keeps an email of a “school uniform reminder” for six months filed neatly in a folder marked with his daughter’s name?! This is frankly no way to repay my kindness.

  “They’re fine,” I assert, trying not to sound cross.

  “I’m concerned about this red bit.” Dad points towards the cool label. “I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  “That’s the best bit. Look, everyone has these, Dad, even Jas has these. And they never get told off about it. I’m more likely to get in trouble for not having them.” (This is true, but not with the teachers.)

  “No, I don’t think so,” he says. “It’s too much of a risk. Let’s just get the plain Clarks shoes.” He nods at the hovering shoe assistant.

  So this is what I get for helping old people with modern technology.

  “I hate them, Jas,” I say again, as we walk to the swimming pool on Sunday morning.

  Quite often on Sunday mornings Jas and I go swimming. It takes half an hour to walk there, but we worked out that if we walk it, we can spend our bus fare on crisps. (Plus it suits my dad, because that’s when he does all the washing.)

  She gently mocks me. “So you’re wearing them because…?”

  “To break them in of course,” I assert. My dad has always been very clear on the perils of not breaking in shoes. This is why I always carry plasters, just in case.

  “Ha. Geek,” teases Jas, amused.

  “Oh, Jaaaaas,” I whimper-moan. “I really hate them.”

  “I know.” Jas is starting to sound like I might have reached the end of her patience now. “I can tell from how you keep saying it, and from all the texts you kept sending me yesterday.”

  I did send Jas quite a lot of emojis of fire and angry faces yesterday. And even though Jas thinks I overreacted to Olivia’s pound-shop comment, she did still send me back a lady’s shoe, loads of crying faces and some hearts. We’re such close best friends that sometimes we can communicate without words. (Though every now and then I get confused by emojis and do need the words again. Don’t tell anyone in my generation I said that.)

  “Like, I know it sucks,” says Jas carefully. “But also, it’s not the end of the world.”

  “I know,” I concede glumly.

  But also, part of me thinks unfairly and crossly, that’s easy for her to say – she already has cool shoes.

  My best friend Jasmine has the nicest family in the world. They’re basically like the Indian Waltons. I’m assuming. I’ve never actually watched The Waltons. But I gather they’re meant to be a really wholesome, kind family, who love each other.

  My parents are about to get divorced and my mum has totally abandoned me. I mean, OK, so she is just living in a flat on the other side of town (because Dad lives nearer my school, and stability and continuity blah blah blah, and Mum’s finding herself, or her feet, while she starts a new business or whatever). But the upshot is she’s disappeared and I just don’t seem to fit her new lifestyle. I haven’t seen her for months.

  Anyway. Look, I’m not getting into it now. I’m going swimming.

  So even though the Chandrasekhars are kind of strict in some ways and expect Jas and her brothers to get good grades, they’re also really generous and totally fine with them owning fun stuff. Which seems to me like a pretty good deal.

  My dad expects me to get good grades with no money, treats or cool stuff incentivising me whatsoever. (Unless you count the occasional chocolate milkshake at Betty-Anne’s Tea Shop.) And while I am very pro chocolate milkshakes, it’s just, I’m thirteen now and my dad really should up his game.

  The trouble is, my dad is running unopposed. He was always the stricter, slightly boring one, but now there’s no Mum to tell him to lighten up. Well, not in any meaningful way. She’s cancelled on meeting up with me after school three whole times now.

  I mean, sure – Mum’s technique of getting Dad to lighten up often did involve quite a lot of late-night screaming when they thought I was asleep, so I’m not saying the system was perfect.

  But still. I don’t get to ever bandy around dramatic phrases like, “Mum lets me!” or throw any kind of parental-competition protests in his face at all. It seems like a waste not to be able to play them off against each other.

  Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t want divorced parents. But if I’m going to have divorced parents, I at least want them to vie for my affection with material possessions in an unhealthy way that cheapens us all. Is that too much to ask?

  I mean, I don’t really want that. I want to be in Jas’s family, and think they should adopt me. Though they speak about four different languages, and honestly I’m not sure I’m bright enough. But if I can’t have that, material possessions would be the next best thing.

  OK, so, just to clarify. First choice: my parents together and happy and being nice to me. Second choice: to be adopted by Jas’s family, even if I have to learn Tamil and Hindi. Third choice: divorced parents desperately fighting for my attention in increasingly dehumanising and unsound ways. Simple.

  Look, I said I wasn’t going to get into it. Anyway, swimming. Everything is OK when you’re swimming.

  “Watch it!” Olivia snaps, as I nearly walk into her when the changing-room door swings shut.

  Rude. I mean, first of all, she wasn’t looking properly either, and, second of all, this is a design flaw of the door. It’s not my fault swing doors are a nightmare.

  “Sorry,” I say automatically. Then we both step sideways in the same direction and block each other from moving again.

  Olivia sighs loudly and makes a show of holding the door open for us. So now Jas and I have to squish gratefully into the bottlenecked entrance of the girls’ changing room, with all of Olivia’s friends sneering at us.

  “Um, thanks,” I venture humbly.

  It annoys me that Olivia Jones sometimes makes me flustered. She’
s just not that great. I mean, sure, she has beauty, poise and charisma, but… Well, so she’s pretty great in those ways I suppose. But she’s not got… Well, she’s not very nice. (Yeah, so I need to work on my burns.)

  Olivia and her friends all have their hair up in impressive post-swim topknots that I can never do properly. They look like elegant denim-clad ballerinas. (I’m not against skinny jeans or anything, but after swimming they’re not exactly easy to put damp legs into.)

  The trouble is now none of us can move. “I didn’t know you swam,” Olivia says in that weirdly patronising way of hers.

  “Well, now you do,” says Jas, deadpan.

  Jas is much cooler than me in a crisis. Not that this is a crisis. Yet.

  “Um… Sorry, can we squeeze past?” I start trying to edge past the denim ballerinas.

  “Good for you,” Olivia enthuses to us in a fake manner. “Are you two here for the kids’ bit?”

  “Kids’ bit?” I query, as no one is moving for us. “It’s free swim.”

  “Yeah,” agrees Olivia. “See, we were just in the adult swim session, swimming proper lengths and everything. I think they’re taking away the lanes and putting out all the mats and floats now, for all the children, if that’s the bit you like.”

  “Yes it is, actually,” I say defiantly. I sense Jas wishes I hadn’t said this.

  Olivia smiles triumphantly. There’s mild tittering from the others.

  “Lovely!” she enthuses. “Well, we’d better be going.” Then, spying my feet, she adds, “Oh, are those new shoes, Ella?”

  “Um, yes.”

  “Nice. They suit you. Very plain.” Her friends laugh. Olivia jokily hits one of them – as if insulting me was the very last thing she wanted to do, and she can’t believe she’s been misinterpreted that way. “No, I mean, it’s good to just stick with what you know, isn’t it?” She smiles again. “Not everyone wants or can afford fashionable shoes. It’s good that Ella knows who she is.” Her smile turns into a mean smirk. “Bye, then. Have fun with the kids!” They push past us and walk off giggling.

  Yet again, the joke’s on her because I actually have no idea who I am. So, ha! OK, that might not be that good a sign actually.

  Who am I? I could be anyone. I mean, sure, on the surface it looks like I’m probably a bad-shoe-wearing nerd with no confidence and an absent mum. But don’t fence me in. I could be anyone.*

  * OK, maybe not just anyone.

  “No running!” a lifeguard shouts at Mark Sanders and Liam Stone. They ignore him and leap into the pool, making Gemma Fitzgerald laugh.

  Ugh. I hate it when those guys are here. The three of them are in our year at school, and ages ago, in Year Seven, Jas and I nicknamed them the “Naughty Kids”. Then we realised we weren’t the best at making up nicknames, so we updated it to “BUTTS”, which stands for Bad Unruly Tedious Twitty Show-offs.

  We were quite pleased with that but thought we could still probably top it, until we realised that actually we really needed to finish our maths homework and then we never went back to it. And BUTTS grew on us. (Ahaha. Plus we liked the fun of calling them after bums.)

  “Ugh, BUTTS are here,” says Jas and we both smirk, pleased at our previous hilarity.

  Jas and I are funny, but we’re only secretly funny. And mostly just to each other. We don’t often say stuff out loud to other people and risk a reaction. Sometimes we’re funny with our friends Kaya and Debbie. And to be fair, Jas is quite good at being sarcastic, while I’m the one who tends to get more tongue-tied. But we’re both a bit shy generally.

  Mark and Liam proceed to have a splashing fight, which luckily doesn’t reach us. Calling them BUTTS really does help alleviate the annoyance caused by whatever stupid thing they’ve just done.

  But they are really infuriating in the pool. SO splashy. I always sigh inwardly whenever I see that they’re here. At school sometimes they’re funny, but mainly they’re kind of troublesome and loud. And they’re always messing about.

  A different, neater kind of splash further away catches my attention. Someone has done a graceful dive into the deep diving pool that sits next to the regular swimming pool. I shiver involuntarily.

  Jas notices. “Fancy jumping off the high board today?” she grins.

  “Hell no,” I reply.

  The whole idea terrifies me. More than spiders. Or that dream where I turn up for school naked and get chased by a wolf round the canteen. (We’ve all had it – don’t pretend you’ve never had the naked-wolf-school-canteen-chase dream. Just me? I mean, yeah, me neither.)

  Jas chuckles and we turn our attention back to practising our underwater handstands. We’re both really good at them now. And we can do forward rolls in the water too. I wonder if Olivia and her friends ever practise underwater handstands?

  “Do you think we are immature for our age?” I ask Jas.

  Just then, Mark suddenly does a running bomb into the pool near us, splashing water everywhere, and the lifeguard blows a whistle. Eurgh. Idiots.

  “Nah,” Jas smiles. “Well, we’re not that immature. You know, comparatively.”

  I grin back at her.

  We hear the lifeguard shouting at Mark. “There are little children around! Be sensible! Final warning!”

  “You’re not actually bothered by Olivia Snooty-pants, are you?” Jas asks me then.

  “Of course not,” I lie. “Well, maybe a bit.”

  Gemma and Liam jump off the side while attempting to fist-bump. They’re really close. A mini tsunami pummels us.

  “Oi!” I hear myself shout. The lifeguard’s whistle blows again.

  “Oh, sorry, Miss Goody Two Shoes!” Gemma smirks at me.

  I hate BUTTS at the pool.

  The lifeguard comes over and says something to her.

  “We did look!” Gemma shrieks. “You’re all right, aren’t you?” she yells at a nearby seven-year-old as proof. “Fine. SORRY!” she yells at the seven-year-old again.

  “Anyway.” Jas rolls her eyes. “Who cares what she thinks?”

  “Who?” I ask, confused. “Gemma? Or Olivia?”

  “Well, both. Either.” Jas hops from one foot to the other to keep warm. “Ella, this might not be ‘adult swimming’, but there’s still lanes open in the pool now and we do sometimes do boring, normal swimming too,” she elaborates. “Plus I like it when we practise somersaults and see if we can swim a width underwater.” (Spoiler: we can.)

  “Me too!” I agree emphatically.

  And I mean it. I mean, I mainly mean it. But. Why can’t I practise underwater handstands and have amazing shoes?

  Dad jumps as I enter the kitchen through the back door that evening. He’s sitting at the table staring into the middle distance. Alexa is playing Radio 4.

  “Oh hello. Just tidying up.” He puts a piece of newspaper on top of another bit of newspaper. “Your washing is on your bed. Why don’t you put it away and then I’ll put the crumpets on?”

  “Sure.”

  On Sundays we always have buttered crumpets with cheese, a cup of tea and an apple for dinner.

  I go upstairs, put all my clothes away and take off my new shoes. I sit on the bed and sigh.

  I hate how these stupid plain shoes look. They’re so boring. I’m thirteen now. Year Eight has already proven to be a serious business. We get to sit on chairs for our year assemblies now (as long as we get them out and put them away again sensibly – still counts).

  There was this one time when Mark and the rest of BUTTS got us all banned from chairs for two weeks by trying to turn them into a pyramid… Anyway. I should definitely be allowed to express myself through clothes more. I feel like everything I have is boring and I’m sick of it. My dad doesn’t want colour on my shoes? Well, tough luck.

  I get my Tippex out of my pencil case and draw a tiny little line roughly where a Jay-Shees label would be. Then, when it’s dry, I colour it in red with a felt-tip pen.

  This is the perfect crime. I’ll wear them to school and bac
k like this, then, when my dad doesn’t notice, I’ll say “Aha! Busted! The red doesn’t matter. You didn’t even notice. Let’s go back and get my proper shoes.”

  I’m a genius.*

  * May not be an actual genius.

  Hahahaha! (Imagine that as an evil cackle.) My dad hasn’t noticed! I knew it! I’m at school and he didn’t spot a thing. Nothing can stop me now! I can’t wait to rub it in his face tonight. I wonder if we’ll have time to go back to the shoe shop after school…? I’m weirdly excited. I love feeling like I have a secret up my sleeve. Everything suddenly seems less boring.

  Jas and I are in Mrs Allison’s form, 8A. We sit on a desk of four with our friends Debbie and Kaya. Mrs Allison is fine but kind of boring and seems uninterested in us. Not just us four, everyone in her form. Everyone is quite good for her, but no one is really scared of her or anything.

  Everyone is scared of Miss Gaskew, our terrifying head of year. We couldn’t believe it when we heard she’d be the new head of Year Eight. Her reputation as this really strict, mean monster preceded her. She hates the lower school and only enjoys teaching GCSE Physics.

  There’s actually not that many people in Year Eight or Nine, because our school, St Joseph’s, got put into Special Measures by Ofsted. But my dad said, after we had looked round the school, that he thought that was probably unfair as there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it, and that Ofsted is quite a flawed way of rating schools. Mum didn’t come because she’d had to take Nana Pearl to hospital again. Anyway, we’re out of Special Measures now, so there’s way more Year Sevens.

  “Oh, hi, Jas!” I leap on to her desk in the form room and sit cross-legged, displaying my shoes. “Notice anything different about me?”

  Jas puts down her phone sceptically. “Um…” She pauses. “No?”

  “Exactly,” I say triumphantly. “Exactly.” I move my legs around and wiggle my toes.

  “OK, you’re being weird,” says Jas.

  “I’ve always said you was weird,” says Debbie. Our other friend Kaya and Jas both laugh. The four of us sit together in some of our lessons too.