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

will only come home once it’s been shagged. Natural instinct, apparently. So now only one cat will have designer kittens, and all the others will be cheap knockoffs.

Instead of Chanel, they’ll have to be called Shanel.

PS: I realize it’s actually not funny.

Wednesday, January 17 #OnwardsAndUpwards

I feel so bad about the designer cat debacle that I’ve decided I need to get a job ASAP and pay Kate back the money she lost.

In an ideal world, the designer cat could have had four designer kittens, and according to the internet, your average, squishy-faced Persian designer kitten costs £500, which means I owe Kate £2,000. Though it’s probably going to be more, because Kate’s probably not going to be able to sell the knockoff kittens. And then she’s going to have to feed them, too, because I’ve concluded that if she can’t find owners for them, she would never:

a)  give them away to Battersea or

b)  drown them.

So this is what I’m thinking:

Minimum wage for people under eighteen is £4.20 per hour (rip-off alert).

2,000 ÷ 4.20 = 476.19

So I’m going to have to work 476 hours to make up that money.

If I get a weekend job, let’s say for twelve hours, that would mean earning £50.40 per week.

2,000 ÷ 50.4 = 39.68

Conclusion: It’s going to take me just under forty weeks to pay back the money I owe Kate.

That’s almost a whole year. How depressing.

Thursday, January 18 #CurriculumVitae

I’ve done my CV, and it’s proper shit:

Phoebe Alexandra Davis

3 Rochdale Close, Wimbledon, London SW19 1AL

Phone: 0796 550 0713, Email: phoebead666@gmail.co.uk

I am fifteen years old and am currently looking for part-time employment on evenings and/or weekends.

Curriculum Vitae

Education

Currently attending Kingston Sixth Form. Straight A student (apart from English Lit, Art, and History).

Other

I was awarded my cycling proficiency diploma in Year Five.

In my free time I enjoy going to the cinema. References are available on request.

I wouldn’t even give myself a job, but what can I possibly put on it that makes me sound interesting? I’ve done nothing in my life.

Friday, January 19 #ReturnOfTheDesignerCat

The runaway designer cat’s back.

Apparently it took no more than seventy-two hours for it to get shagged.

Today Polly said that she feels like she hasn’t really seen me for ages.

I can’t think why she would feel that way …

Anyway, I figured I’d give her a break because of her hormonal imbalance, and I agreed to go to the cinema with her and Training Wheels tomorrow.

Only now I feel like I’m the one with the hormonal imbalance, because why would I agree to that?

Saturday, January 20 #CinemaDateHell

I got to Kingston ridiculously early because I forgot that on a Sunday the bus only takes fifteen minutes versus an hour during school traffic. I went into the Bentall Centre to kill time, and guess who was there, right outside Starbucks, pretending to talk on her phone?

Miriam Patel.

And she was wearing the teeniest, tiniest belly top and no coat, even though it was, like, minus three outside.

Me (thinking whyyyyy are you everywhere?):…

Miriam Patel (ending her pretend conversation): Oh, hi, Phoebe, are you on your own? I’m meeting the girls at Starbucks, feel free to join us.

Me: Oh, hi, Miriam. No, thanks, I’m going to the cinema with Polly and Tristan. (Why oh why did I even have to mention him?)

Miriam Patel (scrunching up her face like she’s sucked on a lemon): Really? Because you know what they say—three’s a crowd.

I know that she only says these things because she’s trying to get a reaction, and I really wish she didn’t annoy me so much, but she does; she makes me bilious. I hope beyond hope that she froze to death in her teeny tiny top.

Unsurprisingly (because deep down I knew) things got worse. From the moment we said hello, it was awkward central with Polly and Training Wheels.

How is it possible that two people who used to talk all day every day since the beginning of time suddenly have nothing to say to each other?

Polly was trying so desperately to start a conversation between the three of us, but all I could see in her huge, dark eyeballs was her silent apology for no longer loving me the most.

And that’s fine.

I get it.

Things change.

But what happened next wasn’t fine at all.

Turned out Polly and Tristan didn’t really want to watch the film, but spend one hundred and twenty minutes snogging instead.

All I could hear in my left ear were wet, juicy, tongue-y kissing noises, and at one point, I swear she actually put her hand on his crotch, which, like, no!

I’m never going to forgive Polly for this.

Before Tristan she never would have been that person. She never would have invited someone only to then exclude them. She was the best person I knew. And now she’s just like everyone else: self-absorbed and wanting to have sex, sex, sex.

When I got home, I went straight to my room and shut the door. Kate knocked a bit later to ask if I was okay or if I needed to stroke a cat. I told her I was fine, but I think she knows I’m not.

I’m not even sure what upset me most, Polly reaching for Tristan’s crotch or Miriam Patel being right about three being a crowd.

Sunday, January 21 #MedecinsInternationale

Mum WhatsApped from Ankara.

She looked like shit already, and they’re not even in Syria yet, but they’re going tomorrow.

She said she didn’t know when she’d be able to WhatsApp next. Same old, same old, blah blah blah, yawn.

Monday, January 22 #IHateEveryone

I’m not going to watch the news anymore.

I mean, diseases spreading is one thing, same with earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons, erupting volcanoes, etc. But wars?

They flew drones around Aleppo, or maybe I should say around where Aleppo used to be when it was still an actual place with houses and shops and schools, because now it’s just a pile of rubble. The place has literally been bombed to shit.

They showed a legless woman being wheeled down what once upon a time could have been