Prince Charming
extract from Chapter Six: ‘Be Yourself’
For context: everyone is 13 years old, in Year 8 of Whittington School. Jason and Cass have offered to give our hero, Hector, some tips on fitting in. Jason is a well-meaning new kid. Cass and Hector’s parents are friends, meaning Cass resents being forced to spend time with Hector but knows him better than anyone else.
We found a picnic bench out of sight of the main playground, around the back of the art department. The only company we had was an overflowing bin. Jason and Cass sat on the same side, facing me. They looked me up and down like a couple of purple-uniformed inquisitors interrogating me.
“So I guess first we’ve got to figure out what you want,” said Jason.
“A friend,” I said.
“Great. You want to find some friends.”
“One would be enough,” I clarified.
“Alright. So what’s been the problem so far?”
I shot a look in Cass’s direction. “I suppose none of the people I want to be friends want to come near me.”
“OK. OK,” Jason said, nodding. He was even taking notes. Little did he know he would need more than a mere single notebook to give a complete account of my social issues. He would need an encyclopaedia. A library.
I tried to explain the whole situation as best I could. I ran quickly through my experiences in primary school as well, just in case they thought me being shunned was a uniquely Whittington phenomenon.
“I guess it’s hard…it’s hard to even know what the problem is when you’re, you know, on the inside of it. Right?” said Cass.
“Yes,” I said. “I know I’m doing something wrong or people wouldn’t react so badly. But I have no idea what.”
“I think the only reason people don’t seem to like you is because they don’t get a chance to know you properly,” said Jason. “I think all you need to do is be yourself.”
I swallowed back a spitball of anger. Be yourself? What kind of stupid advice was that? I knew Jason meant well and it was wrong of me to be upset. But be yourself was not the advice I’d come here for. Be yourself was the kind of advice therapists gave. It was the advice given by well-meaning adults with no clue about the harsh realities of my social sphere.
Be yourself was the kind of advice attractive and charming people always offered, because it’s what worked for them. But if you’re not attractive or charming, being yourself is never going to work because nobody likes who you are. That is precisely the problem. Being myself is what had got me into the trainwreck of my daily existence in the first place.
I didn’t want to be myself. I wanted to be Jason. I wanted to be Cass. Heck, I would even have been Yaz or Hazza if ‘push came to shove’ as they say.
Cass understood. I could tell that she understood from her sceptical expression, her sideways glance at Jason. She’d spent plenty of time with me being myself, and she knew better than anyone what a bad person I was to be.
“Be yourself,” she said. “Yeah. Great. But maybe we could talk about what being yourself means exactly?”
Jason nodded genially. “Sure.”
“Because…like…there’s not one way of being yourself. And the whole point of having this conversation is to figure out how best to be yourself when you’re talking to other people. Right?”
I nodded, bouncing with excitement because for once I’d worked out what was going on. Cass was being ‘diplomatic’ by which I mean she was taking Jason’s bad idea to be myself, and carefully turning it into her own idea, which was to not be myself at all, but to completely change who I was. A much better plan, I think you’ll agree.
Cass pulled a notebook out of her bag. “So I thought I could get things going by thinking where you might be going wrong.” She took a piece of paper out of the notebook. “I…kept this as short as possible, so some of it might sound a little…harsh. I don’t mean it like that. I just thought you’d prefer it if I kept things simple. Would you like to see?”
“Yes,” I said automatically, transfixed by the single shaking leaf of paper.
Cass slid it over to me. I opened it up right away.
Things To Maybe Think About
Muttering to self all the time
Never making eye contact (staring at people’s mouths while they’re talking, or at the floor)
Staring at the floor while walking around as well
Body curled up or hunched over when walking or sitting
Using old-fashioned words and phrases
Using long/complex words
Being strangely formal (shaking hands with people, using their full names, being too polite with people our age)
Bringing up obscure interests e.g. Ancient Greece (fine to have these interests, just don’t bring them up unless asked, and even then, not too much)
Most conversations are just you stating facts – maybe you could talk about something else
Not picking up on stuff, e.g. hints, sarcasm, jokes
Flapping hands like a bumblebee when excited
Rocking back and forth when excited
Suddenly grinning or laughing when nothing has happened
Don’t worry about the epilepsy thing, you can’t help that and anyway it doesn’t happen much
I handed the list to Jason after I was done.
“Whoa, don’t take this stuff personally, Hector,” he said. “I wasn’t planning to do things like this.”
“It’s amazing!” I cried. “It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
There I was, imagining it would take at least a booklet to explain where I was going wrong, and Cass had somehow fit everything onto just one side of A4. I could see it all at once. I was alive with excitement. So this is what optimism felt like.
“Um, Hector, you’re doing one of the things on the list,” Cass said, pointing at my hands, which I was shaking loose up by my shoulders.
Cass tapped an item on her list with a pen. The item that said Flapping hands like a bumblebee when excited.
I sat on my hands. “Good point. Thank you.”
Without anywhere to go, the excited vibrations travelled up my arms into my chest. I started rocking back and forth.
I scanned the list again. “I knew about a fair amount of these already,” I said. “But there’s several new ones to think about too. Any I never thought to put them all down in one place before! This is marvellous. What do you mean, I should talk about something other than facts? Isn’t everything a fact?”
“Well, most people like talking about their friendships and relationships, and what they’ve been up to, and how stuff makes them feel.”
“I see. But I don’t have any friendships and relationships. And what I’ve been up to is learning facts, and I feel interested in them,” I explained.
“Look, I like it when someone tells me a new fact,” said Jason.
“Yeah, but not when all they’re doing is spewing random facts about Greek history at you,” said Cass impatiently. “Like, forever.”
“Cass is right,” I added. “I often get carried away and tell people too many facts. More facts than they really want to know. Even if they’ve told me they want to hear some facts. I think I quite easily end up saying too many facts. But I’m not sure what else there is to talk about.”
“If you can’t think of anything to say about yourself, you could try asking people about their lives instead?” suggested Cass.
“That’s a great trick! My mum always says people love talking about themselves most of all,” added Jason.
“Try practising on Jason. First, ask him how his day’s been.”
“How’s your day been?” I asked, staring at Jason’s mouth. (Yes, I knew that was on the list too. But I could only hope to concentrate on one thing at a time.)
“Fine, thanks!” he replied. “How about you?”
I looked at Cass for moral support. She nodded encouragingly. It turned out that moral support was not what I really needed in this situation, but specific advice on how to respond.
“Fine,” I replied.
Jason stuttered into the silence, but said nothing resembling a follow-up point. For several horrible moments, I wondered whether my power to destroy other people’s social skills would prove a stronger force than other people’s power to improve mine.
“Maybe we should work on the eye contact thing,” suggested Cass. “That’s a much easier problem to fix.”
“I mean, I don’t think it’s like a problem or anything,” Jason said hastily.
“It is quite weird, though. And isn’t that what today is all about? Fixing all the weirdness. And fixing this one doesn’t require any thinking, or skill. All you have to do is learn to look people straight in the eye while you’re talking to them. Or they’re talking to you. Look, just try it on me. We don’t even need to talk.”
“Sure. OK. That sounds easy,” I said nervously. Nervously because looking people in the eye, something so simple that even babies did it without thinking, stung me whenever I did it by mistake. (And I only ever did it by mistake. I’d never willingly inflict that pain on myself.) When someone looked into my eyes, it felt like they could see straight through them, into my innermost thoughts. It felt as close and as uncomfortable as being suddenly naked in front of them. Or kissing them.
As for what being naked in front of someone or kissing someone is like, I honestly have no idea. It’s not something I imagine I’ll ever have to worry about.
But Cass was waiting for me to look her in the eye, and if there was one thing I was more afraid of than pain, it was Cass’s scorn. So I dragged my eyes along the ground and up into Cass’s face.
It was like trying to lift a slippery boulder. My muscles grew weaker as they lifted my eyes up to Cass’s lips, then over her nose. The icy heat from her own eyes grew stronger and stronger, pushing me back. It was like trying to stare at the Sun.
I blinked and stared at the overflowing bin. “Sorry,” I mumbled.
Obviously there was no reason to say sorry. Cass was not upset. Just deeply confused, I assumed, that something as easy and natural as looking someone straight in the eye was impossible for me.
“Don’t worry. Just try again,” Cass said.
I decided I’d need a new strategy. Slow and steady made the task too painful to bear. Instead, I flicked my eyes straight from the bin, into Cass’s dark and bottomless pupils.
Pain burst into me, a jet of cold water forcing itself through my pupils and filling up my skull. I clutched on and refused to look away. It felt as if slimy hands were touching me all over my face, from the inside out.
But to my surprise, Cass flinched first. She stared at the ground, blinking.
“Weird,” she muttered to herself.
“What’s the matter?” I was sure I’d done something wrong. Something offensive, maybe. I wouldn’t put it past myself to turn making eye contact into something deeply shameful.
“Nothing. That was just kind of…more intense than I was expecting.”
“Want to try on me?” said Jason cheerily.
“No. No, maybe we should just…try something else for now,” said Cass, looking at Jason. Looking at the trees, the brick wall, the overflowing bin.
Looking anywhere but at me.