A Girl Called Shameless. Laura Steven

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СКАЧАТЬ I’ve attempted to write: “To share with Colbie and Cyra”.

      Colbie and Cyra are his youngest brother and sister – they’re five and three respectively.

      Carefully he peels the Post-it note off the cover of the handmade picture book I’ve made him, and the moment he reads the words on the front cover, he collapses into a fit of laughter.

       Where do you hide a poo in a zoo? by Izzy O’Neill and Carson Manning

      “Man, that’s hilarious,” he cackles, shaking his head in astonishment.

      I had the idea last time I visited Carson’s house before the holidays. Even though there are ten kids living there, and it must be crazy difficult to keep them all fed and watered and clothed, Carson’s mom Annaliese has curated the most awesome collection of kids’ books.

      Arranged by age group on the bookshelves in the living room, she’s picked up funny picture books for her youngest, magic realism and middle-grade fantasy for the primary-school kids, a ton of sci-fi for the older teens. She’s even got well-worn book box sets of both Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.

      And honestly, it made me so emotional to see it. Because I never had that. Betty did an incredible job raising me, don’t get me wrong. I’ll never stop being grateful to her for all the sacrifices she made just to make sure I had a good life. But a mini library in my house? I can’t even imagine how cool that would have been.

      When I spoke to Annaliese about it, her face lit up. She told me about how a lot of the books were hers from when she was a kid – all the Enid Blyton originals, all the Roald Dahl classics, the full Chronicles of Narnia – and how, over the years, she’s always tried to pick up one book a month from a thrift store. No matter how broke she was, she could always find a quarter somewhere to bring home a new book, even if it meant she went without dinner that night.

      Isn’t that the most amazing thing you’ve ever heard in your life?

      So while I was agonizing over what I could possibly get Carson for under ten dollars [and also the fact that I didn’t even have ten dollars], I thought . . . why not write a kids’ book for him to share with his siblings?

      I bought a landscape A4 notebook with a hard cover and blank pages, did some word art on the cover – as best I could with my non-artistic abilities – and then wrote all the text throughout the notebook. Due to my abysmal handwriting, it took me days to write it all out in neat block capitals with a black sharpie, but, honestly, it looks pretty cool.

      Each page is told from the perspective of a different zoo animal who’s done a poo and wants to hide it inside their cage. So it’s kind of educational, because kids learn what every different zoo animal’s poo looks like [because this is the kind of important wisdom the education system neglects to impart], and also interactive, because the kid gets to help the animal find the best place to hide its poo according to its surroundings.

      [I know. My brain is weird.]

      “I thought you could do the artwork for it,” I say, gesturing to the blank spaces beneath the text I’ve written. “Since I have the sketching ability of a drunk toddler. I mean, I could probably stretch to painting the assorted poo variations, but when it comes to the actual animals and their environments I might be a little challenged.”

      Again he shakes his head, and he actually looks a little emotional. He wraps me up in one of his trademark bear hugs, and squeezes me real tight, and all the painstaking hours of dreaming up different voices [and poos] for fictional animals are suddenly worth it.

      “I love it,” he whispers in my ear, and for a second my heart flips, because I think he said something else, but then he adds, “And my mom’ll love it too.” Pulling away slightly, he kisses me tenderly on the cheek and says, “You’re the best. How am I supposed to match that?”

      He takes a deep breath almost exactly like the one I took before presenting him with the book, and hands over his own tinfoil-wrapped efforts. A wave of excitement hits, but also confusion. This gift isn’t just similar in size and shape to mine – it’s identical.

      Frowning in confusion, I peel away the foil to reveal the back of the exact same notebook I bought Carson, except this one is portrait instead of landscape. I flip it over to see the front, and gasp.

      Carson has painted over the original plain cover with his own artwork, and OH. MY. GOD.

      It’s like a collage, except every single component has been hand-painted by him. There’s the Hollywood hills in the background, an old school movie theater, palm trees, a bucket of popcorn, a ticket stub with the title of my movie on it, a film reel, a director’s chair . . . and me.

      I’m right in the center of the painting, clutching a script to my chest. I have huge movie star sunglasses on, but my hair is still the same unruly blonde mess it is right now. The stompy dark red Doc Martens are on my feet, but I’m wearing a sundress in the LA heat. In the drawing I’m smiling from ear to ear, like I am right now, and he’s even matched my slightly wonky front teeth to perfection. But I don’t look as terrifying as I often think I do; I look beautiful. The wild hair and crooked teeth just make me look even more so.

      “I don’t know what to say,” I murmur, completely blown away by the effort he’s gone to.

      “Do you like it?” he asks, looking shy for probably the first time in his life. “It’s for all your screenwriting notes. For when you inevitably fly to LA to meet a ton of hotshot Hollywood producers about your script.” A funny kind of smile. “Hopefully it’ll make it harder for you to forget me, right?”

      “Like I could ever forget you!” I say, with enough force that he knows I mean it despite the jesting tone. I look back down at the notebook, at the broad, colorful brushstrokes and vivid detail. “I love it, Carson. Really.”

      And then a nice little silence ensues in which we just . . . look at each other and smile. Then he leans in for a real kiss, and the clamor of the hallway dims. I’m painfully aware of the fact I smell like hours-old coffee, but he either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. His lips are soft and minty, and his warm body presses against mine, and oh. Oh. I desperately want to not be in a public place right now.

      Yeah. Being back in school definitely has its perks.

       2.36 p.m.

      I forgot about the whole inconvenient learning thing you have do. There I am, quite happily daydreaming in math class about what it’s going to be like when I win my Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, when I am rudely interrupted.

      “Miss O’Neill, are you listening to me?” Mr Wong seems to be saying from very far away, except he’s not far away, he’s right in front of me, wiggling his wooden ruler two feet in front of my face. [Fortunately, in this instance, wooden ruler is not a euphemism.]

      It transpires that I am not, in fact, listening to him. And yet somehow I get the impression that’s not the answer he’s looking for. So I lie. “Yessir, absolutely I am.”

      “Right. So you do know how to calculate the circumference of a trapezoid?”

      I mean, really. If they’re going to pretend we’ll need all of this shit in the real world, they could at least try and make it believable.

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