Page 84 of Unnecessary Drama

Or, my back-up plan. Revenge. One day in the future, I will write a novel about PJ and describe her in really harsh but recognisable ways, and she’ll pick it up in a bookshop and read it, and feel the icy cold recognition sliding down her spine, and she’ll write me an email and say, I was wrong, I was so wrong, Brooke, please forgive me…and I’ll write back and say, Sorry, I don’t remember being in your class, and then she’ll sit there and think, Maybe that character isn’t me after all, but no, it’s too coincidental, and she’ll need to examine her ego and her behaviour and the whole thing will haunt her forever.

Okay, calm down, let’s see what she has to say first.

Justin, Sophie and Ruby all messaged me before the class.

It’s so good!

I laughed but also the ending was really fucked up and sad!

It’s really funny!

This means they hate it and they think it’s not funny, obviously. If you truly think something is good, you tell the person, I loved it so much, I practically cried laughing, holy shit. And you use lots of emojis or at least six exclamation marks or all caps. You have to overhype and exaggerate so they know you’re being truthful. ‘It’s so good’ actually means ‘It’s average at best’, ‘I laughed’ means ‘I know I was supposed to be laughing at something in there but I wasn’t’ and ‘It’s really funny’ means ‘I do not understand your humour’.

Is it worse if people have something to say or nothing to say? From previous classes, if lots of hands go up, that’s a bad sign, but if no hands go up, that’s also a bad sign, because it means people were bored or didn’t finish, and you’ll find that out when PJ presses them to respond.

I want two or three people to put up their hands, say I’m brilliant and will probably get a book deal before I’m twenty, I’ll blush, and then we move on. Those people could be Justin, Sophie and Ruby, but they won’t be. Sophie never talks unless she’s encouraged to, Justin is deliberately withholding of praise because he thinks people take you more seriously if you never admit to enjoying anything, and Ruby doesn’t like me enough to put herself out there, I don’t think, although she’s probably my best chance. And when we read her story, I said really positive things. I look at her. Remember the nice things I said, Ruby. Remember.

‘I’ll start,’ PJ says.

This startles me. She never starts. She likes to go last so she doesn’t influence the discussion.

‘Great,’ I say. My mouth is very very dry. I grab my water bottle and chug down as much as I can. Which is a mistake, because I almost instantly need to pee and I’m giving my body more moisture—I’m basically forcing it to produce tears.

‘What many of you don’t know is that Brooke got some pretty harsh feedback from me when she first submitted her story. I told her I thought she could do better and gave her the weekend to rewrite it if she wanted to. This is not something I would say to everyone. It’s not easy to hear that kind of feedback, but I thought Brooke could handle it, and I was right. She went away, she didn’t have a tantrum, or maybe she did but she didn’t tell me about it, she didn’t email me and refute my criticism, she took on my feedback and she reworked her story, in two days, no less. And now it doesn’t matter whether the story is good or not because Brooke, you’ve shown you can take feedback, you’ve shown you can work hard, you can start over, you’ve shown dedication and that you’re not going to give up. These are very, very important skills for a writer. And you have them.’

My face is burning. The one good thing about her email had been that it was private. Now everyone knows my humiliation. But I sit up straighter and take the praise. I try to rearrange my face into a humble expression. I actually drafted several emails to her and had a tantrum, but I was too cowardly to send them. No one needs to know this.

‘Now let’s talk about the actual story. Brooke, it’s good. There’s a lot to be fixed, some of the transitions are clumsy, and I’m not sure about the reveal at the end, but overall, it’s good. You’ve nailed the voice, the dialogue is funny and authentic, and I believe in the characters.’

‘Yeah I was going to say, the voice is there,’ someone says.

‘I liked the bit where the car broke down.’

‘Me too.’

‘And the scene at the family dinner was funny.’

‘But I hated the guy.’

‘No, I like him!’

I thought I would be fixated on any criticism, and no amount of praise would feel enough, but, actually, listening to them talk about it, I feel detached in a pleasant way. It kind of feels like they’re discussing a real story. By a real writer.

35

I get home from writing class, high on happy feelings, and then I remember Jesse is going on a date with Amber tonight. The thought makes me irritable and itchy. Not itchy in a way I can scratch, but itchy in my brain, itchy deep under my skin, itchy in my soul. I can’t sit still. I pace around my room. I decide to clean the bathroom. I need to put my energy somewhere, and getting the bathroom really clean always makes me feel calm. The shine of a white bathtub! The gleam of clean tiles! But no matter how hard I scrub, it doesn’t give me the satisfaction I am looking for.

I want to tell Jesse about the class, the story, the fact that I’m not going to give up on writing, that I don’t need to dedicate my creative life to revenge on PJ Mayfield. He is the first person I want to tell, but I wish he wasn’t.

I decide to go for a run. An exhausted body simply can’t feel as many feelings—it’s practically a scientific fact—plus, despite everything that happened on my first run, I still have a vision of myself as a person who runs.

I start jogging very, very slowly. I have my pump-up-feelgood-you-can-do-this playlist on, and the sun is shining, and I have some of the skills it takes to be a writer. This is as good as it gets. And yet…

Jesse is going on a date with Amber.

I picture them. Staying up all night talking and then they’ll go out again and suddenly they’ll be in a relationship, and things will get serious quickly, and she’ll be at the house all the time, and she and I will pretend to be friends but we absolutely won’t be, and she’ll make comments like, ‘Wow, those earrings are eye-catching’ or ‘Oh, you got a haircut’, observations that might sound like compliments but are actually criticisms, and she and Jesse will double-date with Harper and Penny and I’ll be a fifth wheel all the time, and I’ll end up joining Amber’s mother’s book club and showing them how I do my fruit platter.

I drop to a walk, gasping for breath.