PopCo

  I am sitting next to Emma. She puts her hand up.

  ‘That’s sexist, sir,’ she says, bravely. Some of her gang murmur their approval of this.

  ‘Nothing wrong with a bit of sexism,’ Morgan says back. ‘Before we start the lesson, I have to tell you about chess club. Wednesday lunchtime, in the library. And computer club. Thursday after school. Got that? Groovy. Right. Let’s get on with the lesson then. Adding fractions.’

  Emma and I exchange a look while he turns to the blackboard. She starts writing a note to me on a scrap of paper. What an idiot!!! it says. Just as she has passed it to me, Moron (I have already started calling him this in my head) turns around and sighs crossly.

  ‘Girls. I knew you’d be trouble. Girls always are. Let’s have the note, then.’

  He looks at me and Emma.

  ‘What note?’ she says.

  ‘I haven’t got a note,’ I say.

  ‘Right. Both of you, outside.’

  I have never been sent out of a class before in my life. I would definitely cry if I was on my own but I am not on my own. I am with Emma.

  ‘Thanks for not telling on me,’ she says.

  ‘That’s all right,’ I say back awkwardly.

  ‘Do you want to come around with us lot, at lunchtime?’ she says.

  ‘Us lot’ is all the popular girls with pleated skirts and lip gloss. Bloody hell!

  ‘Yes,’ I say back, although I had been thinking of going to chess club. And then I can’t think of anything to add to the ‘yes’ so I lean back against the wall in the dark hallway. I think of other things I could say, like, Do you think there are ghosts here? But you can’t say things like that. Ghosts are far too babyish to talk about. Of course, at home, everyone reads books about ghosts and witches and gangs of plucky children. But that is home. School is the complete opposite of home, and anything you do in one can’t really translate into the other.

  This school has far more rules than my old school. These extra rules are not made by the headmistress or the teachers; they are made by the children themselves. Not just Don’t talk about ghosts or anything babyish. If you’re a girl, you can’t talk to a boy. Ever. If you talk to a boy (and I know this because I made the mistake of trying to say hello to Alex last week) he will blush while his gang of friends laugh, jeer and make licking/snogging noises. Girls will then ask you directly, with a kind of sneer, why you were talking to a boy. Talking to a boy attracts too much attention and the last thing you want at school is attention. It is for this reason also that putting your hand up in class to answer a question, or being really good at PE or something is also frowned upon. No one likes a show-off.

  If you do want to do something odd, it helps to have a gang. A gang makes this all right. Emma could only say what she said in maths class because the rest of her gang were there, backing her up. If you are in a gang, you can do anything, really, within reason. The only thing you have to be careful of is being thrown out of the gang for being ‘weird’ (say, wearing your hair differently from the other girls) or ‘a slag’ (talking to boys) or ‘a gyppo’ (wearing anything second-hand or mended) and so on. If you are in a gang and you do want to talk to a boy, you send someone else from your gang to do it. You never, ever, ask someone out yourself. If your friend’s mission is successful, and you end up going out with a boy, you still don’t get to speak to him. Not that this is likely to happen to me, of course. It’s still very confusing, though.

  A gang is not called a gang. If you are in a gang, you are ‘going around with’ the people involved. I can’t believe that I have been asked to join Emma’s gang. Is it just for lunchtime, or for ever? I have the wrong skirt. My ears aren’t pierced. I don’t have a TV at home (this would be seen as so weird and abhorrent by people at my school that it is already my biggest secret). I don’t have any lip gloss. As if she can read my mind, Emma pulls a small pot of lip gloss out of her pocket.

  ‘Do you want some?’ she says.

  Could this be a trick? On Monday, I saw one girl, Kali, offer another girl, Liz, one of the leftover sandwiches from her lunch box. ‘Do you want it?’ she said, sweetly. The moment that Liz reached over to take it, Kali pulled it away and she and her friends laughed, acting disgusted. ‘What a greedy gyppo,’ Kali said. And Liz has been known as ‘greedy’ or ‘gyppo’ ever since. She is fat, which doesn’t help. You have to watch out for these tricks. I should be fairly safe with this interaction with Emma, since there is no audience, but I still have to be careful. Is using someone else’s lip gloss ‘gyppo’ or ‘gross’? And if I refuse, will I be ‘stuck up’ or ‘posh’?

  ‘Are you sure?’ I say in the end.

  ‘Yeah. It’s grape flavour,’ she says, smiling.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, taking the little mauve pot from her. I put my finger into it and take a little bit, which I smear on my lips. I can see why that lot like lip gloss, now. It really tastes/smells of grapes! And my lips feel softer already. If I am going to be in their gang, I will have to get some lip gloss of my own. How would I do that? What shops sell lip gloss? I don’t have any money of my own. Can I ask my grandparents for money for lip gloss? It’s doubtful. I could never, ever explain to them why I need it, so it’s likely that the response would be something like, ‘Really, Alice. What a strange thing to want. You don’t actually need things like that, you know.’

  I am learning that the paradox of being a child is as follows. At school you are desperately embarrassed about everything you do at home. But at home, the odd rules and conventions of your school friends are just as weird and embarrassing. Is it possible that I still have seven years of this hell ahead of me? Still, at the moment I want to go around with Emma and her friends more than anything. I will find a way of obtaining lip gloss, and a pleated skirt.

  My heart beats fast all through RE, which is the last lesson before lunch. Then it’s time. I worry that Emma will have forgotten her offer but when the bell goes she walks over to my desk.

  ‘Are you coming, then?’ she says.

  Some people eat their packed lunches in the hall with the school dinner people. But Emma and her friends have found a way to sneak into one of the Portakabins in Rural Studies. One of them, Michelle, has brought a small portable stereo in her bag, so we can play tapes in there and make up dance routines to go with songs. This is really ace! There’s one song in particular that they are working out a routine for but I don’t know it. I manage to wing it today but tomorrow, if I am invited here again, I will have to know this song. Today, I learn about my new friends. Michelle is small and blonde, and goes ice skating after school. She has a real, actual coach! She wants to get to the Olympics but swears us to secrecy about this. If the other kids found out she would be seen as a terrible snob/show-off. Sarah and Tanya both like horses and go riding together at weekends. They both want to work at the local stables when they leave school. Lucy does ballet. Emma and I both don’t really do anything like that outside of school. Lucy and Michelle are actually on diets, even though they are very thin. No one eats their packed lunch at lunchtime, which seems odd. Lucy and Michelle don’t eat anything at all and the others just eat chocolate bars they got from the van on the way to the Portakabin.

  The van is a burger van which parks in the school car park at lunchtimes and sells hot-dogs, burgers, ice-cream, fizzy drinks and chocolate. You can go to this van to buy sweets and drinks and that’s OK, but if you buy actual food from it you are a gyppo. It’s all so complicated.

  I don’t get to eat my lunch at all on Wednesday, so I throw it away before I get the bus home. I throw it away because I don’t want to hurt my grandfather’s feelings (he always makes my lunch) but once I have done it I feel guilt like a boulder in my stomach. Instead of talking to him about the Voynich Manuscript, I escape upstairs as soon as I get in, claiming to have lots of homework (another lie; another boulder). Then I lie on the bed with one of my mother’s books, listening to the radio and waiting for that song to come on – the dance-routine song. Whe
n it eventually does, I tape it, and by the next day I have it memorised.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  My notebook is filling up … The wooden block with the ‘A’ on it. Kieran asking who I am. Identity. DVD collections. My dream. I am writing so fast my hand hurts. I have never had something pop out of a dream quite like this before, but it makes sense to me. A necklace bearing an identity, a proof; a locket with a lock of hair. Not just a necklace, necessarily. A bracelet, perhaps. Bracelets carry all sorts of things: hospital details, festival entrance ID, charms that your aunt gave you. But you can shrink this stuff, the mess of identity, in the same way my grandfather shrank all he thought I needed to know about the Stevenson/Heath Manuscript. You can shrink it and wear it and then everyone can know who you are (or the people you want to know can know, if they can read your code). Cultural DNA. A DVD collection can say things about you, sure, but you can’t carry it around with you. Teenage girls, perhaps a bit young for the DVD-identity test, have all sorts of unwieldy ways of expressing who they are. You can wear some of it – black nail varnish, Hello Kitty hair clips, torn fishnet tights, cute tartan skirts – and give some people some idea of who you are. But this entire ‘who I am’ process could be made a lot simpler.

  This is the basis for my idea.

  You can wear your identity. Of course you can. But why not go further? If you like a certain pop star, don’t put a poster on your wall, wear the code that says you like him or her! So, you’re best friends with the most popular girl in the school? Don’t just tell people – wear the code for it. Something, perhaps, that she gave you. Yes! You give these things away – thus the automatic transmission factor. You give someone a ‘bead’ (which I am seeing as like the thing in my dream, a tiny cube like a kids’ wooden block, with six faces and a space inside) that means ‘You’re my friend’, or ‘best friend’.

  Eventually you end up with a string of these things (like a string of DNA, or computer code). The ‘beads’ will be colour-coded, perhaps? Pink for friendship, say. Blue for things you like? Mint green for memories. Black for politics. I don’t know. But you could instantly look at someone and know where their priorities lay in life. An environmental activist loner may choose to wear only one black bead, with pictures of animals on the outside and some earth inside. The popular but boring girl-next-door type would have various pink beads from her friends. Megan or Jackie or Sally would each have given her a bead, with little photos of their holiday together on the six faces, and a Friendship Stone inside it (Friendship Stone …? Could be a good addition). Perhaps the inside of the beads is the private bit, where you can store something that relates to whatever is on the outside of the bead. A modifier, perhaps. Teenage girls could hide drugs in these things! That would give them cult appeal. Their boyfriend’s pubic hair. A miniature version of their favourite poem.

  The locket and the charm bracelet updated for a kick-ass, post-punk generation. The (think of a name, Alice) is a unique way of creating and broadcasting your own special identity. People say that all today’s teenagers think about is themselves. Who am I? is the number-one question on teens’ lips today (the number-two question, of course, being Who are you?). Teenage girls buy products that tell people things about who they are – clothes, make-up, CDs, DVDs. We can give them that sort of product, too.

  I can see the kits already. This would have to be done right, probably using the mirror-brand concept. The kits would be heavily customisable, of course, and would have to have organic potential built in, i.e. the kids must be able to customise these things in ways we haven’t even thought of. A kit would come with several different choices of string for your neck or arm. You could choose from a chain, a piece of ribbon, a leather string … Whatever. You could make or find your own. It doesn’t matter at all. You would get a ‘starter’ kit of, say, ten pink blocks and various other colours (pink being most important, as these are the ones you give away and thus spread the concept of the product). Each block has six faces and an inside. The six faces either have little doors, or transparent slots, so you can insert little pictures, or whatever you want (locks of hair, magical symbols, initials, mathematical formulae …). Then of course there is the secret chamber inside the block where you can put anything you want … This would be the place to hide secrets. Teenagers could come up with their own language about what this means …? We could include different coloured ‘rocks’ or ‘stones’ (like tiny Go stones) in the kits. Possibly set up a website with guidance on the ‘mysterious meanings of the stones’? (Not sure about this bit.)

  We could sell all kinds of miniaturisation technology, which is perhaps where the real profits would be. A miniature Kodak-style camera that prints out pictures exactly the right size for the blocks, for example. What about mini scrolls, on to which love letters and poems could be copied? Little sets of laminated letters, perhaps, so you could spell out a secret message and carry it around with you inside one of your blocks/beads.

  People have always worn various forms of their identity around their neck. People don’t wear crucifixes so much any more, but this was an obvious sign, telling you about the person’s religion (and taste in religious jewellery). People who are allergic to penicillin have to wear a necklace saying so. This would be all that and more … Possibly launch in Japan, with a Japanese name? Or is Japan too over/ too K? This will be the Pokémon for teenage girls. It has ‘trading’ potential. You get to build up your necklace/bracelet in a unique way. It has broad, multi-cultural appeal.

  Tie-in potential: every time a new product (outside PopCo – I’m thinking new fizzy drink, pop group, movie) is launched, a new ‘bead’ (limited edition?) can be given away with it. Other corporations will want to give away beads to go on our necklaces/bracelets because the concept will be so popular … (And we can make them.) Fans of the product can wear its bead (along with all their others, adding to their unique identity). You will easily be able to spot another fan of The Matrix, as he or she will be wearing the same bead you’ve got (will this have appeal to guys, too? Possibly not, but could be some potential …). People can wear the bead of their favourite band until they decide they don’t like this band any more and then just throw the bead away. No! The bead can be recycled. You can whip out the pictures of whoever was number 1 last week, and replace them with pictures of whoever’s in this week. Or, if you’re a different sort of person, you will wear the same bead for years. This really can appeal to a lot of people.

  The customisable element of this means that people can always express their identities, by making up beads as cult or as mainstream as they want. Badge-makers and T-shirt printing sets have become popular because people want to create customised messages about themselves. But this has much more potential than that. You will be able to download themes, perhaps, from the Internet? Just as you can currently download ‘desktop themes’ for your computer from fan sites, you’d be able to download themes for your beads/blocks (must think of good name). PopCo (well, mirror-brand) would create the ‘hardware’. People create their own ‘software’. We sell them tools to help them create their own ‘software’. And it’s all about expressing yourself. PopCo are not telling someone who they are. We give them a blank canvas and say, ‘You already know who you are. Here’s how you can tell other people.’ In this way, it should have wide appeal across different teenage girl demographics. If we can get this concept out there as something that everyone has to have (using viral marketing, network theory, etc.), no one will even notice us selling it. It won’t be a fad that will come and then go. It will be the constant. Different ‘beads’ themselves may come and go but we won’t make those, just kits and blanks and miniaturisation devices.

  Imagine something that combines the appeal of tattoos, piercings, badges, slogan T-shirts, posters, certain styles of clothing, friendship bracelets … Yes, it’s the new concept (insert name here).

  So this is my idea. I read back over the notes I have just made. Then I go and throw up in the bathroom.

/>   At about half-past four, the doctor comes. Already, I have that being-ill sensation of time moving very slowly. Half-past four feels like two weeks later than this morning when Ben brought me breakfast. I think it’s been quite a hot day outside, although it always stays cool in here. The day outside my window has been almost silent, apart from a single bird singing occasionally. I wish I had my guitar here.

  The doctor is a guy in his forties with expensive glasses, chinos and a linen shirt.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ he says.

  ‘Nothing,’ I reply, coughing. ‘Just a cold.’

  I hate doctors. The last doctor I saw was the one who told me my grandfather was dead. In my life, I have been told by doctors that I am asthmatic twice (I am not) and offered anti-depressants three times, despite not being depressed. When I was about seventeen I was going through a very rough patch and they tried to give me Prozac. I didn’t need pills, I just needed to get hold of my life. Even that isn’t shocking compared to something I read not long ago about ten-year-olds being stuffed full of pills because they are, apparently, hyperactive. Not just a few, either, this report said that something like one in seven school children were on these drugs: Ritalin, or similar. Some schools were saying that children couldn’t attend unless they agreed to take drugs for their ‘behavioural problems’. The piece suggested that kids were bound to be hyperactive given their lifestyle: TV, videogames, junk food. If I watch TV for more than a couple of hours I feel sick. Imagine what kids must feel like. Living on sugar, salt and fat; over-stimulated by bang-bang visual culture. Are pills the answer? I don’t think so, but what do I know?