Читать книгу Losing It - Jane Asher - Страница 12

He thought I didn’t know he was watching me. But I always know, don’t I? And it’s not as if I dunno why, is it? Like that time at school. Just bend your leg up on this bench, Kylie said. Just bend it up. What for? I said. Just do it, she says. Why? I says. I want to show you something, she says. So I bend it up and she calls the others over and they all start laughing. ‘It’s gross’ – that’s what Steph said. ‘Oh my God, it’s so gross!’ Just ’cos she’d heard that on TV. She never said gross before that. No, she never.

It did look gross. They was right. I had my gym shorts on and the way she’d made me put my foot up on the bench and then bend my knee it made all my leg go wide. It was gi-normous; even I could see that. Even then. That’s what I can’t stand. They think I don’t see it just as well as what they do. I’m not stupid. I may be fat, but I’m not stupid.

So this idiot guy today thought I didn’t see him looking at me while I was serving the customers in front of him. He was staring at my hands and all like anything and thought I didn’t know. Fuck me, he’s the one that’s stupid. I had to say everything over to him. Bleeding stupid – and trying to be clever. Like little Andy in the back stores: he’s so dim he don’t know a fishfinger from a packet of Persil.

I had another letter from Crystal today. I knew it was her straight I saw the pink envelope. And the writing. All loopy and sideways. I always know it’s her. Not just the stamps – there’s a few of them write to me from America. I had loads of replies when I put that ad in the slimming mag, and they come from all over. That was my mum’s idea. She saw it on Kilroy or something: a problem shared is a problem thingummied. It’s true, in fact – Crystal knows the way I am better than anyone and I don’t feel embarrassed at telling her stuff. Anyway, in today’s letter she’d put glitter in again: angel dust, she calls it. With little red shiny hearts mixed in. It went all over the table and bits went in the cornflakes. I hate that. She really does believe in them, though. The angels. Weird. Says she has her own angel watching her. Well, he couldn’t miss her really, could he? She says she’s even bigger than what I am now: not a bad job for an angel if you’ve got to watch someone, I suppose. At least Crystal makes it easy.

And she’d wrote LYLMS on the back of the envelope. God knows what that means. I like her letters but I can’t be arsed to work out all that stupid writing on the back. It was OK when she stuck to LOL for Lots of Love, but now they’ve got so long and complicated I can’t be fucked. And all those stickers with little hearts and teddies and ‘May the Lord be your whatever-it-is. Helper – no, Guide’. Something like that. They’re quite cute, in fact, the stickers, but she uses too many of them.

She’s going over to the other side soon, Crystal. That’s what they call it over there. Anyone who’s done it is ‘on the other side’. ‘The Lord will welcome you, too, Stacey, when you come over to the other side.’ That’s what she said at the end of today’s letter. Some chance. It’s all very well for her: it’s easy to get it over there. No one will listen to me here. So I’m stuck. On this side.

That old guy today wouldn’t have looked at me like that if I was on the other side, would he?