The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson Read Free Book Online Page B

sanctuary. Last year, for my thirteenth birthday, Mum and Dad let me paint it any colour I liked. The shade I really wanted was a gorgeous hot pink, but I was too afraid to ask for it. After much thought I ended up going for a deep red instead, which, according to Essie anyway, is very ‘womb-like’. Dad prefers to refer to my bedroom as ‘the cave’, in a deep gravelly voice he thinks is hilarious. Mywalls are decorated with framed prints, mostly black-and-white shots of New York City, or vintage film posters, and photo collages of Essie, Felix and me through the ages, the three of us changing remarkably little, except perhaps for Essie’s ever-evolving hair colour.
    I turn on the fairy lights that loop their way around the entire room, and clamber on to my bed, spreading the newspaper out in front of me on the duvet. I turn to page twenty-three and let out a sigh. The page is dominated by a photograph of the beaming homecoming queen; black hair cascading down her tanned shoulders. She is officially beautiful. My finger traces the contours of her face and the curves of her body in its sparkling dress. According to the article she is sixteen. She looks older, twenty-one maybe. Could I look like that in two years? I try to imagine myself on the school stage, wearing a glittering ball dress and smiling serenely as I wave down at my cheering classmates, Zachary (crowned homecoming king, naturally) on my arm, gazing at me adoringly. But the image fails to form properly in my head. It feels silly and fake, like a half-hearted game of Let’s Pretend.
    Taking a pair of scissors from my desk, I carefully cut out the article. Lying on my stomach, I reach under my bed and pull out my bulging scrapbook.
    A tenth birthday gift from a distant great-aunt, my scrapbook represents four years of careful curation. At the front, the pages are populated with postcards, sweet wrappers and cinema tickets glued neatly on to its black pages. After a while I started gluing in anything I found interesting or beautiful– a peacock feather collected on a school trip to Newstead Abbey; a tissue imprinted with a pink lipstick pout, swiped from Mum’s dressing table; pictures of beautiful women snipped out of magazines. My favourites are the old film stars – Elizabeth Taylor dripping with diamonds, Marilyn Monroe on a beach in a gleaming white swimsuit, Audrey Hepburn wearing long black gloves and pearls. These days, my movie stars mingle with clippings from newspapers and medical journals, statistics and tables, facts and figures.
    I open the scrapbook on the most recent page. It smells sweet from the perfume sample I glued in last week. I let my eyes fall shut and bury my nose in the pages for a moment, inhaling deeply. On the opposite page I carefully glue the article into place, smoothing it down so there are no bubbles or creases.
    I glance at my phone. Twenty minutes until dinner. Just enough time for an inspection. I shove my desk chair under the handle of my door and turn on some music to make the process more bearable. I pick out Lady Gaga’s
Born This Way
album, cranking up the volume to maximum.
    I’m finished and reaching for my underpants when the door handle begins to rattle.
    ‘David?’ Livvy calls over the music. ‘Let me in!’
    ‘Hang on!’ I yell, pulling on my bathrobe, tying the belt tightly round my stomach. I turn off the music and remove the chair from under the door handle. As the door begins to open I realise my inspection notebook is lying open on my pillow. In a panic I pick it up and chuck it into my school bag before leaping back into the centre of the room.
    Livvy enters cautiously, wrinkling her nose as she spots me standing ramrod straight, wearing my bathrobe hours before bedtime.
    ‘Didn’t you hear us yelling you to come for dinner?’
    ‘Obviously not.’
    ‘Why did you have something up against the door?’ she asks, frowning at my desk chair.
    ‘I was changing.’
    ‘Like any of us are interested