Page 24 of Role Model
Txai glances at her and then back to me, his brow furrowing. He’s confused, he doesn’t know why I’m being cold and aloof.
“It’s the special club,” Sable whispers. Jaya shushes her but it’s deeply half-hearted.
“No,” I tell Txai stiffly. “Obviously not. Bye.”
He hears the brushoff and his eyebrows fly up.90But he doesn’t move.
“She said bye,” Sable finally says, leaning across our lunch table to glare at Txai. “Did you, like, see her on TV or something? She’s not interested in talking to you.”
“I–” I instinctively want to cover up that statement, because it’s not true. It’s mean, too mean. I don’t know what overpowering force is making me be mean as well, but I don’t want to be like her. “It’s fine. I’m just not coming to the workshop.”
I pull the sleeve of my school jumper down so it covers my elephant bracelet. He stares at the movement and I have to look away.
“Buh-bye!” Sable says loudly. It makes Ana laugh. I can feel Jaya watching me. She’s detached, as she always seems to be. I can’t tell what she’s thinking.
“You can go now,” Ana tells Txai.
I wince but he’s gone before I can say anything to him. I watch him walk out of the lunch hall, his body language stiff. I feel guilty. He looks so dejected and I know exactly what that feels like because I’ve been feeling like that since the first day of term at this horrible new school.
I don’t know what’s making me do this to him, especially when I know how it feels.
91But when the rest of the group move on to another point of conversation, and when they include me in it for once, I push the guilt away.
It feels good to be on the inside for a change.
*
Ana’s house is unbelievable.
It’s in Hampstead and Ilya parks outside to wait out our after-school dinner. Naomi slips her arm through mine as I enter the huge foyer. A small poodle scurries up to me in greeting but Naomi moves her away from me with her foot. She introduces me to a man in his twenties called Jed, who is her videographer.
I don’t know what that word means, but he follows her around with a video camera and films her every move so I suppose it’s someone who does that. I remember Ana saying at one point that her mother is an influencer. Sable had interrupted to say “a momfluencer”, then she and Jaya had snickered.
She and Sable aren’t here today and maybe that’s why. They don’t like being made into content.
I notice a huge spread of food laid out on the breakfast bar in the gleaming white kitchen. Jed zooms in on Naomi’s face and she smiles.
92“My famous macaroni and cheese,” she tells the camera. Ana saunters into the room, looking extremely bored by the whole thing. She opens the fridge and pulls out some diet soda. Naomi puts some of the mac and cheese onto a teal plate and hands it to me. I pick up a fork and, feeling the camera on me, I take a bite. I always get nervous trying other people’s cooking, I like food to be predictable. But it tastes really good. So I smile and nod, trying to tell the camera that I’m enjoying it.
“Yay!” Naomi cries again. Then her happy expression drops and she turns to Jed. “Leave it there then.”
He lowers the camera. I wonder if I’m allowed to keep eating the food but Ana grabs some for herself so I think it’s okay.
We sit at the breakfast bar and eat in silence and I wonder if this is what she does with Jaya and Sable.
“So,” Naomi says, smiling at me in a way she never has before. “How’s it all going? All of this fame?”
I wince. “Dad says if you’re not in Madame Tussauds, you’re not really famous.”
I suppose I’m trying to be funny. I thought it was funny when Dad said it, and I also felt quite relieved. But I think perhaps Naomi doesn’t see the funny side.
93“Well, I disagree,” she says, straightening the fluffy white turtle neck she’s wearing with her white designer jeans. “You’re everywhere. I can’t scroll for a minute without seeing you. Plus the newspapers. And all of the forums!”
“Mum reads all of these weird online forums about famous kids,” Ana says, in a voice that is so deadpan, it tells me exactly how dull she finds her mother’s interests.
“Lots of my mutuals have their kids in their content,” Naomi says, throwing Ana a look. “Theirchildren are so accommodating and cooperative. Unlike mine.”
Ana smiles very slightly around a spoonful of macaroni.
