Page 26 of Role Model
“Well,” she sounds really uncomfortable. “Don’t get mad, okay? It wasn’t my idea.”
“What?”
“Well. The picture company, they call ahead and ask some of the parents about Photoshop and stuff. My mum always has a problem with the picture, so they call her a lot to stop her complaining online. They apparently offer to cut people out if you want. So Mum asked them to…”
“To cut me out.”
“Yeah.”
I feel like I’ve been pushed into ice cold water. “Why?”
“Aeriel, don’t ask me, I don’t know. Said you were making a strange face or something.”
I remember being ordered to smile. How much I hated it. How the noise made masking hard. I suppose it all showed on my face in the end. “Oh.”
“It’s not personal. And when you blew up online, she called them straight away and told them to send her the whole class photo, the original. So, this will be replaced soon. And she asked for them to remove97Toby Shankman, as well”
I look at the picture. Sure enough, Toby is gone. He struggles with eczema on his face. I suppose that was behind her decision.
Toby is nice. He doesn’t deserve this.
All that remains are the supposedly perfect kids. They all know how to smile. They’re all so comfortably normal.
I feel sad. Mostly sad. But somewhere, buried deep down with all of the other feelings I’m not allowed to feel…
There’s anger. They have no right to do this to me. They shouldn’t have the right to do this to anyone.
“I think your mum is a coward to do that.”
The words are harsh but I don’t care. Ana recoils as I say them but I don’t take them back. “Aeriel…”
“She’s a coward to ask them to take me out of the picture and then suck up to me when she suddenly thinks I’m famous and interesting. That sucks. It’s cowardly.”
I’ve stunned Ana into silence but it needed to be said.
“It’s not okay to treat people like this,” I tell her fiercely. “I’m the same person. I’m not different just because I’m on the news and in the papers. The girl you’ve erased from that picture is right here.”
“Aeriel, come on. We didn’t know you’d ever find98out. And you can’t act like life is hard because you’re on the news. It’s so cool! Everyone is so jealous of you. I wish I were on TV, just once. Then she might actually be proud of me. Even if it were just a fifteen minute story.”
“It’s not a fifteen minute story on the news for me, Ana. It’s my life. And I live it every day whether I feel like it or not. I’m not inspiring, I’m a person. I’m not a topic or a debate or an issue. I spoke because I thought people actually wanted to listen. But I was wrong. They don’t. They just want to make themselves feel better about the kid they cut out of the school picture!”
I grab my things and leave without saying goodbye.
99
Chapter Twelve
Snow fell overnight and I don’t think anything makes me happier.
Fizz is with us in the car and she and I beg Ilya to blast festive music as we drive to school. It’s quite a heavy fall of snow, like the kind we see in Scotland. Unusual for London, Ilya tells me. All of the radio presenters are acting like it’s the apocalypse. Trains are being cancelled left and right and the message is clear: stay home from work.
Which, I realise with delight, means the same might be said for school.
“I’m calling reception,” Fizz says, her voice full of the excitement of a possible Snow Day. We’re almost at the school but I just know. Deep inside, I know that it’s cancelled. We get to have a Snow Day and it’s the most amazing feeling.
100“Thank you,” Fizz says into the phone as she finishes her conversation. She hangs up. We wait in silence for a moment, as she gives nothing away.
Then–
