Page 11 of Role Model

There are even more photographers waiting outside of the school gates now.

Ilya curses at the sight of them and ushers me to the school entrance with swift speed.

They call my name and yell questions, but I’ve learned to ignore them.

What I can’t ignore, however, are the looks and (sometimes) glares from the other students.

I see Ana and her mother, Naomi, in reception. She turns and, upon seeing me, breaks into a wide smile.

“Aeriel, darling!”

I stop. This woman’s dislike of me has never been hidden, yet suddenly she is smiling at me and reaching out her hands.

“This silly receptionist is saying she can’t phone your mum to tell her you’re coming back to ours this afternoon,” Naomi says. The phrase ‘silly receptionist’ comes out very icily, and the woman in question looks 87 very put out.

“I can’t get permission from her mother with such little notice,” Miss Bates, the receptionist, says wearily. “She’s the Prime Minister.”

I realise what’s happening. Ana’s mum has finally decided that it’s okay for me to come back to Ana’s house after school. Sable and Jaya go all of the time. It seems that I’ve been accepted at last.

“Phone my dad,” I hear myself say to Miss Bates.

She frowns. “It’s school policy to call the first point of contact, who is always the mother.”

I frown just as hard. “Mine isn’t.”

Miss Bates shakes her head. “It won’t be, Aeriel.”

“Can you please check?” I ask and I hate how desperate I sound. So needy to be a part of the group.

Miss Bates sighs but after a prickly glance from Ana’s mother, she looks back to her computer screen. She clicks and scrolls, while clucking her tongue and then her expression freezes. I feel slightly smug at the sight. She gives me a cursory glance before dialling a number.

After four or five rings, she speaks into the phone. “Is that Mr Sharpe? Yes, hello, this is the upper school receptionist at St. Catherine’s. I’m calling about a pickup for Aeriel after school today?”

88 While Miss Bates speaks to Dad, Naomi turns to me and beams. Ana looks uncomfortable and I don’t understand why.

“I’m making my famous macaroni and cheese tonight,” Ana’s mother tells me, in a tone of voice that would suggest we’re friends, even though she’s always refused to let me come over before. “So, fingers crossed he says yes.”

She cartoonishly does just that, crossing her fingers in an exaggerated fashion. She has had an expensive manicure and her hair is as yellow as a lemon.

“He wants to talk to you,” Miss Bates suddenly says and for a moment I think she’s speaking to me, but Ilya moves from behind me to take the phone. He murmurs quietly into the mouthpiece, clearly discussing the whole matter with dad.

When the call is over, Ilya hands back the phone and gives Naomi a cursory nod of consent.

“Yay!” she shrieks, clapping her hands like a little girl. “Excellent. See you after school then, girls!”

I feel like I’m glowing all throughout the day.

When I go to lunch, the girls let me sit with them.

Sable only makes one passive-aggressive comment.

Jaya even says she’s watched some of my videos and they’re ‘really interesting’.

When Ana talks about plans for her house 89 after school, she says ‘we’ and ‘us’ and for the first time, that includes me.

It feels amazing.

It’s pizza for lunch, we each get one large slice with a really thick crust. Ana and Jaya gently make fun of Sable for eating hers with a knife and fork and I feel myself relaxing.

I’m usually so stressed around the three of them, constantly worrying about what to say and how to say it.

Also what not to say. Now it feels almost okay.

I’m practicing my laugh while Jaya tells a story about Mr Hely in the maths department when Txai suddenly appears by the table.

“Hey,” he says, smiling broadly at me.

I feel my own smile slip as the rest of the girls stare at us both. “Hi, Txai.”

“You’re not coming to the workshop?”

“What’s the workshop?” Ana asks flatly.

Txai glances at her and then back to me, his brow furrowing. He’s confused, he doesn’t know why I’m being cold and aloof.

“It’s the special club,” Sable whispers. Jaya shushes her but it’s deeply half-hearted.

“No,” I tell Txai stiffly. “Obviously not. Bye.”

He hears the brushoff and his eyebrows fly up. 90 But he doesn’t move.

“She said bye,” Sable finally says, leaning across our lunch table to glare at Txai. “Did you, like, see her on TV or something? She’s not interested in talking to you.”

“I–” I instinctively want to cover up that statement, because it’s not true. It’s mean, too mean. I don’t know what overpowering force is making me be mean as well, but I don’t want to be like her. “It’s fine. I’m just not coming to the workshop.”

I pull the sleeve of my school jumper down so it covers my elephant bracelet. He stares at the movement and I have to look away.

“Buh-bye!” Sable says loudly. It makes Ana laugh. I can feel Jaya watching me. She’s detached, as she always seems to be. I can’t tell what she’s thinking.

“You can go now,” Ana tells Txai.

I wince but he’s gone before I can say anything to him. I watch him walk out of the lunch hall, his body language stiff. I feel guilty. He looks so dejected and I know exactly what that feels like because I’ve been feeling like that since the first day of term at this horrible new school.

I don’t know what’s making me do this to him, especially when I know how it feels.

91 But when the rest of the group move on to another point of conversation, and when they include me in it for once, I push the guilt away.

It feels good to be on the inside for a change.

*

Ana’s house is unbelievable.

It’s in Hampstead and Ilya parks outside to wait out our after-school dinner.

Naomi slips her arm through mine as I enter the huge foyer.

A small poodle scurries up to me in greeting but Naomi moves her away from me with her foot.

She introduces me to a man in his twenties called Jed, who is her videographer.

I don’t know what that word means, but he follows her around with a video camera and films her every move so I suppose it’s someone who does that. I remember Ana saying at one point that her mother is an influencer. Sable had interrupted to say “a momfluencer”, then she and Jaya had snickered.

She and Sable aren’t here today and maybe that’s why. They don’t like being made into content.

I notice a huge spread of food laid out on the breakfast bar in the gleaming white kitchen. Jed zooms in on Naomi’s face and she smiles.

92 “My famous macaroni and cheese,” she tells the camera.

Ana saunters into the room, looking extremely bored by the whole thing.

She opens the fridge and pulls out some diet soda.

Naomi puts some of the mac and cheese onto a teal plate and hands it to me.

I pick up a fork and, feeling the camera on me, I take a bite.

I always get nervous trying other people’s cooking, I like food to be predictable.

But it tastes really good. So I smile and nod, trying to tell the camera that I’m enjoying it.

“Yay!” Naomi cries again. Then her happy expression drops and she turns to Jed. “Leave it there then.”

He lowers the camera. I wonder if I’m allowed to keep eating the food but Ana grabs some for herself so I think it’s okay.

We sit at the breakfast bar and eat in silence and I wonder if this is what she does with Jaya and Sable.

“So,” Naomi says, smiling at me in a way she never has before. “How’s it all going? All of this fame?”

I wince. “Dad says if you’re not in Madame Tussauds, you’re not really famous.”

I suppose I’m trying to be funny. I thought it was funny when Dad said it, and I also felt quite relieved. But I think perhaps Naomi doesn’t see the funny side.

93 “Well, I disagree,” she says, straightening the fluffy white turtle neck she’s wearing with her white designer jeans. “You’re everywhere. I can’t scroll for a minute without seeing you. Plus the newspapers. And all of the forums!”

“Mum reads all of these weird online forums about famous kids,” Ana says, in a voice that is so deadpan, it tells me exactly how dull she finds her mother’s interests.

“Lots of my mutuals have their kids in their content,” Naomi says, throwing Ana a look. “ Their children are so accommodating and cooperative. Unlike mine.”

Ana smiles very slightly around a spoonful of macaroni.

“So who’s the most exciting person you’ve met?” Naomi asks me.

Talking about fame and well-known people lights her up. She is fascinated by it. I mumble something about the royal family and some of the interviewers on television. I realise that she is more interested in taking footage of food than eating any. She only seems hungry for information.

We take more pictures and video content before Naomi calls for a woman named Charlotte to come and tidy the kitchen. Charlotte, a middle-aged woman with a kind face, appears from the pantry to clean.

“Did you like the pasta?” she asks me.

94 “It was brilliant,” I say, honestly.

Charlotte beams at me. I don’t know how but, as I watch her clear and tidy, I realise that she’s the one who made it, not Naomi. I want to say something to her but I can’t think of the right words. Naomi and Jed have gone to Naomi’s office to film some unboxing videos.

Ana and I go into the living room, which is bigger than the first flat we lived in back in Scotland.

We were told to take our shoes off at the front door, so I’m allowed to put my feet on the white leather sofa.

“Mum’s gearing up to do Vlogmas,” Ana says. “I told her no one under forty does that but she won’t be told.”

I smile. “Right.”

Ana regards me for a moment before she says, “We’re all going to Westfield on Saturday. To shop for dresses for the Christmas dance. And maybe something for Sable’s party.”

Her voice lilts as though it’s a question, but she hasn’t actually asked a question and I don’t know what I’m supposed to understand from her silence. So I wait.

“I don’t think I’m invited to that,” I finally whisper.

She looks surprised. “Oh, Aeriel, you totally are. 95 I know Sable’s not always, you know, the nicest. But you’re totally invited.”

I feel a sudden flicker of hope. “Oh. Great.”

“So will you come shopping with us on Saturday?”

“Yeah. Sounds–sounds good.”

She rolls her eyes and laughs. “It’s so hard talking to you sometimes, you’re so weird.”

She isn’t saying it to be mean but the word stings nonetheless. “Sorry.”

We watch videos on Ana’s phone. She says that she’ll do my hair for both the party and the dance.

“You’re so lucky it grows,” she tells me. “Mine never does.”

I grimace, grateful for the compliment. Then I notice something on the mantelpiece.

“Oh,” I say. “I didn’t know pictures were out.”

Our class photo is in pride of place, next to a vase of orchids.

“Oh,” Ana says quickly, sounding nervous all of a sudden. “That’s–that’s an old one.”

But as I approach the framed picture, I notice Miss Leslie. Miss Leslie wasn’t their form tutor until I joined. Our whole class has been stitched together and photoshopped into one whole class picture, as planned.

Except, when I see Sable, Ana and Jaya…

96 I’m not there.

I’ve been erased from the picture somehow.

“What is this?” I ask Ana, completely dumfounded.

“Well,” she sounds really uncomfortable. “Don’t get mad, okay? It wasn’t my idea.”

“What?”

“Well. The picture company, they call ahead and ask some of the parents about Photoshop and stuff. My mum always has a problem with the picture, so they call her a lot to stop her complaining online. They apparently offer to cut people out if you want. So Mum asked them to…”

“To cut me out.”

“Yeah.”

I feel like I’ve been pushed into ice cold water. “Why?”

“Aeriel, don’t ask me, I don’t know. Said you were making a strange face or something.”

I remember being ordered to smile. How much I hated it. How the noise made masking hard. I suppose it all showed on my face in the end. “Oh.”

“It’s not personal. And when you blew up online, she called them straight away and told them to send her the whole class photo, the original. So, this will be replaced soon. And she asked for them to remove 97 Toby Shankman, as well”

I look at the picture. Sure enough, Toby is gone. He struggles with eczema on his face. I suppose that was behind her decision.

Toby is nice. He doesn’t deserve this.

All that remains are the supposedly perfect kids. They all know how to smile. They’re all so comfortably normal.

I feel sad. Mostly sad. But somewhere, buried deep down with all of the other feelings I’m not allowed to feel…

There’s anger. They have no right to do this to me. They shouldn’t have the right to do this to anyone.

“I think your mum is a coward to do that.”

The words are harsh but I don’t care. Ana recoils as I say them but I don’t take them back. “Aeriel…”

“She’s a coward to ask them to take me out of the picture and then suck up to me when she suddenly thinks I’m famous and interesting. That sucks. It’s cowardly.”

I’ve stunned Ana into silence but it needed to be said.

“It’s not okay to treat people like this,” I tell her fiercely. “I’m the same person. I’m not different just because I’m on the news and in the papers. The girl you’ve erased from that picture is right here.”

“Aeriel, come on. We didn’t know you’d ever find 98 out. And you can’t act like life is hard because you’re on the news. It’s so cool! Everyone is so jealous of you. I wish I were on TV, just once. Then she might actually be proud of me. Even if it were just a fifteen minute story.”

“It’s not a fifteen minute story on the news for me, Ana.

It’s my life. And I live it every day whether I feel like it or not.

I’m not inspiring, I’m a person. I’m not a topic or a debate or an issue.

I spoke because I thought people actually wanted to listen.

But I was wrong. They don’t. They just want to make themselves feel better about the kid they cut out of the school picture! ”

I grab my things and leave without saying goodbye.