Love Is for Losers by Wibke Brueggemann (ebook pc reader .txt) 📗

yourself more you time.

Me: I actually need to study for GCSEs.

Bill: You need to see your friends.

Me: I’ve got no friends.

Bill (laughing that laugh that makes the walls shake): I’m finding that very hard to believe.

Me: It’s true.

Bill: We’re your friends, but I doubt you’d want to spend your precious free time with old farts like us—

Melanie: Who’s old?

And then they both laughed, and he gave her a kiss.

Imagine it. Being married to the same person for sixty years and still finding them funny and wanting to give them a kiss.

I’m such a failure as a human. I couldn’t even get my best friend to wish me a happy new year.

Sunday, May 13 #SecretGutWrenchingPanic

I know we’ve been talking about GCSEs for years, and maybe that’s why it always seemed like they’d never happen, but now they’re tomorrow.

I feel like I’m about to be involuntarily inserted into a hamster wheel that isn’t going to stop spinning. I’ll eventually be thrown back out of it, dizzy, disoriented, and possibly puking, and only when everything’s too late, I’ll realize what went on and what was required.

The most terrifying thing for me is the anticipated pace of this exam hell. The pressure that you have to be on top form every day.

And still I can’t study.

Instead, I found this really funny website where people deliberately make poetry shit.

So instead of:

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert …

It goes:

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said nothing …

LOL.

7:53 P.M.

I told Kate I wasn’t hungry and didn’t want dinner, but of course that never works, and so she brought dinner to me.

Kate (holding a tray with tomato soup): Phoebe. Talk to me.

Me:…

Kate (sitting down on my bed, scooping soup onto a spoon, blowing on it, then pushing it in front of my face): Eat.

Me (opening mouth, eating soup):…

Kate: Better.

Me:…

Kate: What’s going on?

Me: I’ve got a tummy ache.

Kate: Okay. Where does it hurt?

Me (pointing to it):…

Kate (feeding me more soup): Okay.

Me:…

Kate: Do you think you’re sick, or could you be worried about something?

Me: Worried about what?

Kate: Tomorrow.

Me (shrugging):…

Kate: You understand that these exams aren’t the be-all and end-all, though, don’t you?

Me: But they are.

Kate: No, they’re not. Their outcome doesn’t change your brilliance or your potential as a person, Phoebe. And don’t let anybody convince you otherwise. There are bigger things in life than GCSEs.

Me: That’s what Emma thinks.

Kate: And Emma’s a very wise woman.

Me (being spoonfed more soup):…

Kate: You know you’re my favorite person in the whole wide world, don’t you?

Me: I thought Mum was.

Kate: What? Boring old Amelia? Don’t be daft.

Me: What about James?

Kate: Oh, please.

Me (taking the bowl off the tray and eating by myself):…

Kate: And what’s happening with Polly?

Me (shrugging): Don’t know. I don’t know if she’s had a boyfriend-induced orgasm yet.

Kate (laughing): Well, I think you should definitely check, and if the answer is no, I think we need to have her over for dinner and explain a few things.

Me: I’ve read about the vaginal orgasm.

Kate: Oh yes? Good for you.

Me: You think I should tell her about it?

Kate: The trick is to tilt your hips upwards.

Me: I know. But please let’s not talk about it.

Kate: You started it.

Me: I’m regretting it.

Kate: Eat.

Me: Fine.

After I finished the soup, we went downstairs, and James made me cheese on toast.

Kate said I should rest my brain for a minute, and so we watched a David Attenborough program, and the designer and nondesigner kittens literally lost their shit over it.

They all sat in front of the telly, and every time the lioness went for the kill, they stumbled all over each other and meowed like crazy.

Isn’t it weird to think that lions and cats have the same ancestors?

To be fair, though, ancient humans used to be able to make fire by rubbing stones and twigs together. I know people who can’t light a match.

PS: Twenty-seven exams over six weeks.

Monday, May 14 #RoundOne

I had computer science in the morning, and religious studies in the afternoon, and I can already tell that the biggest challenge during GCSEs is going to be to not write on the blank page that says: DO NOT WRITE ON THIS PAGE. And being in the same room with so many people and trying to ignore their rustling and breathing and fidgeting.

Between exams, Miriam Patel was all like: “I need to quickly go over some dates for this afternoon.”

I was like: “Could she be any more ridiculous?” Because little in life is more obvious than the year Jesus was born, but then Polly told me what’s been going on with Miriam, because she found out from Tristan, who found out from Jacob, and it’s actually so tragic, and maybe I shouldn’t have made fun of her.

Apparently it’s not Miriam stressing about GCSEs; it’s her parents.

Polly said that Miriam’s dad is obsessed with wanting her to go to Cambridge, and because he works all the time and Miriam’s mum is at home all the time, he reckons it’s Miriam’s mum’s job to make sure Miriam gets all the grades, and when she doesn’t, her mum goes proper ape-shit, because it means Miriam’s dad is going to shout at Miriam’s mum for failing as a mother.

When Miriam did majorly badly in her math mock exam, she apparently heard her parents having a shouting match in the kitchen over it, and her dad was going: “You’ve got one job, Grace, one fucking job,” to Miriam Patel’s mum, and then he smashed a glass.

That’s proper shit, isn’t it?

No wonder Miriam gets panic attacks.

I mean, I still don’t like her, but imagine your parents being that horrible to each other because you didn’t get a good grade that one time.

I’m lucky, really, because at least every time I don’t do very well, I can be all like: “It’s because I’m literally an orphan,” and instead of being angry, Mum just feels guilty.

Polly reckons we should help Miriam Patel with math.

That means she thinks