The Tangible Truth To Billie James - Chapter one

Chapter one of The Tangible Truth To Billie James. Meet Billie.

THE TANGIBLE TRUTH TO BILLIE JAMES

A NOVEL

JEMIGREEN

Chapter One

Alarm clocks. We claim to hate them yet we act as though our lives depend on them. Yet, we take them for granted and still end up hitting that snooze button repeatedly. Then when we sprint to school or work late, we blame them. I guess they can never win. Poor alarm clocks. No matter how hard they try to do their job, (and let's be honest, they do a rather smashing job of getting us up) they are still probably one of the most hated objects on this planet. I think it's fair to say that if someone ever asked me if I had to be an object, what would I be? alarm clocks wouldn't even pop into my mind when choosing. Toasters on the other hand... now there is an object you want to be. I mean what kind of sane living being doesn't want to be something that can turn something as mundane as a piece of bread into a crispy, delectable piece of absolute yumminess. It's also rather impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you. No matter whom that person may be, whether they've had the last digestive biscuit in the biscuit tin or whether they've been controlling and not let you watch your favourite programme on T.V, or whether they've failed you massively by making you wear some inexplicably atrocious outfit to school, all gets dissolved into insignificance as your teeth soak into the soft doughy centre of the toast and you're instantly smitten with it. Still not convinced? All right imagine this: It's Monday (don't worry it gets better), you've got a somewhat abominable day ahead of you where everyone and everything you look at is an abomination and you just want to wave your hand, say a magic word and hey presto, they disappear right before you. (You can tell I'm not a morning person.) However you know that as soon as you wake up all you have to do is get out (more like roll out) of bed, trudge to the dreaded steps of let's make all your joints ache as you attempt to climb down me, and walk over to the perhaps only thing that wants to bring joy into your life: the toaster. Once you've spread the butter (may I recommend Lurpack �" God if Lurpack butter was a person, it'd be a prodigy �" and the (Lurpack) butter starts to seep through those perfectly toasted granules and you take that momentous Monday morning first bite of the toast and DING DING DING!!! HEAR THE BELLS RING, oh listen to those gospel choirs sing... you've reached complete and utter bliss. You're liking the sound of being a toaster now, aren't you?

Now, let me bring you back to the stupendous news that it is in fact Monday. If Monday were a person I'm pretty sure it would be a severely bullied, friendless dweeb. We love you Monday. It's the teenagers I feel sorry for on a Monday morning. Having their mothers screech down their ears that they're LATE FOR SCHOOL! FOR HEAVENS SAKE YOU'RE GOING TO MISS THE BUS and they have to drag their still aching bodies from being on the lash on Saturday night out of bed. Now you'd think I'd be one of the many culprits who suffer from the two day hangover. But no, I'm not your average teenager. Hell I'm not your average person. I don't fit into societies idea of “normal”. But everyone must feel like that once in a while right? We all feel like the whole world is against us or we're the most unlucky person on the face of the blue planet. I can assure you that all of those factors of possible 'not-normalism' (yes I just made up a condition for not being normal) is what sums me up. I actually don't fit in the world. And I've learned to embrace it. Let me give you an insider as to why I don't quite fit into the tightly packed circle that all teenagers are meant to look, smell, and act like like: (1) My name is Billie. Seem normal? I'm female... (2) My natural hair colour is the colour of what most teenagers binge drink on: beer stained wee is all I can describe it as. (Don't worry, I dye it regularly.) (3) My eyes are every eye colour rolled into one. (4) My Mum is obsessed with Elvis Presley and has it fixed in her mind that he is her husband �" FYI mum... he died of constipation somewhat a billion years ago. (5) My little sister is convinced she's a cat. Like literally... she's so convinced she's had everyone she knows call her whiskers. I just play along because she starts to hiss if I call her by her actual name, Souzie. (6) We live in a … I want to call it a caravan with what looks like two hand made make do shelters made out of curtains growing out of the windows, but we decide to call it The Curt-mobile (curtain/mobile home). Which explains why (7) I have absolutely no friends. (Unless you count the fat drunk guy in the caravan next to us who is an aspiring folk singer). It's okay though, I'm used to it. It allows me to live in this dream world and imagine what could be. Like the fact I have a really cute boyfriend who loves everything about me and writes cute love songs about me and plays them on guitar. And whenever he finishes it and I clap and wipe away the tear that has escaped my weird-coloured eye, and he goes all cute and hides his face. But you see that's the problem with imagining what could be. It's the thing that screws us up most in life. You obsess over the picture in you head of how it's supposed to be and you begin feeling comfortable with using the future to escape the present. Like the fact that I will probably die alone. I'm okay with having no friends though. They wouldn't understand my lifestyle anyway. They wouldn't understand why my family (if you can call it a family) have no T.V or computer or functioning microwave. In fact the one thing we actually do possess which functions beautifully �" and comes from the twentieth century - is the brand new shiny toaster. (Hence the detailed explanation as to why I want to be one if I could). I bet you're wondering why I live in some hippy 1960s anathema of a home? I can only say that it is because of the woman that birthed me, Allie James. The woman who fabricated our home into an Elvis Presley show room. The woman who was left at the alter with a 4 year old and a bun in the oven. The woman who barely makes ends meat so she can put some organic green gloop on the table. All in all, Allie James is my quirky and slightly dis-functional mother. There are perks to being the fruit of her womb though. Like when she lets me decorate my room however I want. She lets me buy a book a week whereas most kids would buy the latest game or piece of clothing. She's also not strict on my choice of hair dye or choice of music either. But there are catastrophic down sides to having Miss Allie James as a mother. Like not having a phone because it “messes with the chemicals in my soul and causes me to have a bad aura.” (My mum's recently taken up the spiritualist lifestyle thing. Another phase.) But I can't complain really. She tries her best and that's good enough for me. I can be quite judgemental person. But it's not like I have anyone to talk to about it anyway. It's a lesson I've learned: The quieter you are, the more you can listen. Allie says my best quality is that I'm empathetic though. I guess it's good to be able to see beyond why the “s***s” in school have such high skirts and bras three sizes too big. Or why the guys who love football deem it necessary to flirt with everything that has a pulse. I'm sure they all just want to fit into societies prospective of “normal”. Or they all have daddy issues... I vote for the latter. I can't judge. They probably look at me as if I'm some freak with ripped jeans and jumpers three sizes too big. It's odd though, they say not dressing like the crowd would single us out, make us alone. But it's those people that have been singled out and made alone that are, well, alone together. People say that love is what unites us, but I think it's more than that. I think it's fear and being alone that we all share. Or I'm just over thinking life and chatting absolute s**t again. I need to stop doing that.

Author's Note

First attempt. Tell me what you think!

Reviews

[MaliKate]

Okay first thing's first before I get started on reviewing.

You need to turn these into paragraphs. You could fit about eight, nine or ten in here. Probably eight.

I'll edit this into a proper review once that is done.