Popular Read online

  RAZORBILL

  Gareth is superbly fabulous and something of a socialite himself. Early twenties and not long out of Oxford University, he was born in Belfast, but grew up in County Down. He wrote the first chapter of Popular last summer and nearly all the book is based upon events that have happened during his schooldays – the more ridiculous they seem, the greater the chance that they are close to real life. Gareth’s accent is now best described as polymorphous, shifting with the greatest of ease from Northern Irish to English to American. And this pleases him greatly. His first ever word was ‘shoe’.

  Books by Gareth Russell

  Popular

  Gareth Russell

  PENGUIN

  RAZORBILL

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  penguin.com

  First published in Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd, 2011

  Text copyright © Gareth Russell, 2011

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978–0–241–95175–0

  To

  my parents,

  Heather and Ian,

  and

  my uncle,

  Richard Mahaffy

  CONTENTS

  1. Bus Passes and Baby Pink

  2. Saruman the Stupid

  3. The Irresistible Rise of So Beau

  4. Pray for Us Sinners

  5. Mistletoe and Wine

  6. The Hangover from Hell, the Sweater from Heaven

  7. PS I Love You

  8. The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre

  9. Tittle Tattle

  10. An Uneasy Peace

  11. The Field of Dreams

  12. The Curious Incident of the Birthday Piñata

  13. Emergencia

  14. Everything That Really Counts

  ‘It’s better to be popular than right’

  – Mark Twain

  1

  BUS PASSES AND BABY PINK

  On the first Monday of September, Meredith Elisabeth Anne Harper stood staring at her own reflection in the huge mirror of her private closet on the first floor of her seven-bedroom, three-storey home in Malone Park, Belfast. The phrase most commonly used to describe Meredith Harper was ‘the girl who has everything’. She was rich, popular, clever, elegant, manipulative, graceful and almost unnaturally beautiful. Thin and fashionable, she had long, perfectly coiffed brown hair, flawless pale skin and delicate facial features. At the age of sixteen, Meredith Harper was already a social legend.

  Realizing that it would almost be time to go, she quickly checked her expertly manicured nails and not-too-shiny glossed lips. Her skirt was the perfect length – not too long (loser) and not too short (slut). She then picked up her black Birkin handbag that was now her schoolbag (backpacks were hideous things, used only by juniors and library-loving trolls) and swung it over her left shoulder while giving her reflection one more congratulatory smile. The only thing ruining how good she felt right now was the fact that her black school-uniform sweater was made of wool; Meredith was a devout and regular worshipper at the shrine of cashmere, and being forced to suffer wool five days a week was something she had never quite got over. She bent down and carefully adjusted her regulation knee-length socks and picked up her blazer, draping it over her right arm.

  From downstairs came the sound of her father’s voice reminding Meredith it was time to leave for school, so she exited her room and swept down the large staircase into the hall. She saw the cup of tea and plate of toast her housekeeper had left for her on the table but naturally walked straight past it and out to the waiting car.

  The front door closed behind her and she stepped lightly into the back of the car as her father’s driver took his place in the front seat and began the short journey to Meredith’s school. The autumn leaves fluttered down from the majestic-looking trees that lined Malone Park and, all around her, Meredith could see the flurry of activity that marked the first day back to school. Yummy mummies were hustling their well-groomed offspring into waiting cars or were being eco-friendly and walking to a prestigious prep or grammar school nearby.

  Meredith sat back against the cool grey leather of the car seat and checked her BlackBerry. She had a BBM from her best friend Imogen saying that she was walking to school that morning, at her father’s insistence, because she had to accompany one of her younger brothers for his first day.

  Five minutes later, the Harpers’ car drew to a halt outside the main entrance of Mount Olivet Grammar School and Meredith alighted from the car, thanking the driver and turning her attention towards the impressive redbrick Victorian building that had been her educational home for the last eleven years. Of course, with just over twelve hundred students, the school had expanded a lot since a Protestant bishop had first laid the foundation stone one hundred and twenty years ago and there were now modern buildings sprawling out across the complex – including the Drama wing, the sports hall and the new Science block. The only eyesore, Meredith thought, was the truly hideous 1960s swimming pool, but thankfully it lay at the back of the school, so nobody but the sports freaks had to see it on a regular basis.

  She was already aware of the many pairs of eyes watching her from the school courtyard as she walked towards the foyer doors. Clutching their new bus passes with maniacal zeal, a group of terrified-looking first-years gazed at her with a mixture of confusion and awe. By the end of the month, they would know who she was. Only the awe would remain. Meredith smiled a little at this reassuring thought and then widened the smile into a gracious thank-you as a third-year held the door open for her. Moving past the portrait of the Queen, which hung loyally in the lobby, Meredith was surprised to feel a leaflet being pressed into her hands by a fourth-year girl manning the Christian Union stand. ‘Jesus loves you,’ said the girl, smiling.

  ‘Everybody does,’ answered Meredith, handing back the leaflet.

  Moving up a nearby stairway and past a group of nervous third-year girls, one of whom tried to squeak a ‘Hello’, Meredith arrived outside her house form room. Standing against the wall was Meredith’s other best friend and neighbour, Cameron Matthews, who was almost six feet tall, thin and toned, with blue eyes and dark hair. He had his usual morning fix of Diet Coke in his hand and he was busy texting when he spotted Meredith and smiled.

  ‘Hey!’ he said, putting his phone back in his blazer pocket.
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  ‘Hello, lover. You are looking delightful this morning.’

  ‘Thank you. You too. Of course. And how are we?’

  ‘Better.’

  ‘Than?’

  ‘Everyone.’

  At that moment, they heard the sound of a girl’s shoes clacking along the corridor floor at immense speed as Kerry Davison hurtled into view, her pink handbag flailing along beside her and her perfectly styled blonde curls bouncing enthusiastically in rhythm to her running. She came to a skidding halt next to Cameron and Meredith, with a sort of demented gleam of happiness on her face.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she squealed. ‘I’ve been bursting to tell someone all morning! OK. This is like major gossip.’

  ‘This had better be good,’ said Meredith. ‘Not like the time you thought you’d seen Cheryl Cole in Nando’s.’

  ‘OK. So I was totally sworn to secrecy, so you can’t tell anyone you heard it from me. Somebody told me at Titus Pitt’s barbecue yesterday that Danielle Morrison apparently fooled around with Zach Stevens when she was still going out with Neil Pole. Isn’t that unbelievably scandalous? What. A. Slut. But you didn’t hear it from me. Seriously. I was sworn to secrecy.’

  ‘I know,’ replied Meredith icily. ‘I told you that.’

  Kerry’s lip began to quiver and her voice became more whiny than usual at the prospect of a telling-off. ‘Oh. Sorry. Well, still … it’s not like we even like Danielle all that much. So it doesn’t really matter, does it?’

  Meredith considered for a moment before sighing. ‘I suppose you’re right. But just don’t tell anyone you heard it from me.’

  Mrs Vaughn lumbered into view, her arms weighed down with books as she desperately tried to find the room keys. Rather than offer to take the books, Cameron, Kerry and Meredith stepped lackadaisically out of her way, which Meredith counted as helping.

  The class slowly filed in and Cameron headed over to the group’s table at the back of the room. Within seconds of Kerry and Meredith sitting down next to him, their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Catherine O’Rourke, hair swept up in a ponytail and sporting a bizarrely tiny blue backpack. Cameron and Meredith both inhaled in preparation for Catherine’s several-decibels-louder-than-required greeting.

  ‘Hey!’ she bellowed. ‘Happy first day back! Anyone want an Evian from the machine?’

  It was then that Meredith spotted the backpack. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Just going to get Evian like I said,’ Catherine chirped brightly.

  ‘No. I mean, what are you doing with that?’

  ‘Oh, my schoolbag? OK. Well, you know the way everyone says that wearing a bag on two shoulders is like a thing for losers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I thought that it’s been so loserish for so long that it might actually have become cool again,’ explained Catherine, even as her smile began to falter. ‘So ta-da!’

  Meredith and Cameron shook their heads. ‘No.’

  ‘But I said ta-da.’

  ‘There isn’t a ta-da big enough in the whole world,’ said Cameron.

  ‘So you mean … I’ve walked through school looking like a loser?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, but maybe –’

  But before Cameron could finish his sentence, Catherine had hurled the bag off her back and on to the floor with a scream. ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!’

  ‘Catherine, calm down!’

  ‘Calm down? Everyone will have seen me walking into school with a bag on both shoulders. Everyone will be looking at me tomorrow and they’ll all be like, Oh, look there’s the two-strapper freak!’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry,’ said Meredith sweetly. ‘It’s not as if people know you well enough to start making fun of you. They probably didn’t even notice you, Catherine.’

  Catherine nodded, but she now wore the sort of shaky half-smile that Meredith’s victims frequently sported when she delivered words of comfort wrapped in a barbed wire of bitchery. The moment the doors closed behind Catherine as she walked out to the vending machine, Meredith turned to the others.

  ‘Can you believe that?’

  Cameron nodded his head in agreement. ‘I know. Why can’t Catherine just take a look in the mirror before she leaves the house?’

  ‘I mean, everybody else thinks the bag looks horrendous, right?’ asked Meredith.

  Kerry looked up from her hand-held mirror. ‘What’s happening?’

  Meredith glanced at her with obvious irritation and left Cameron to answer. ‘Catherine’s bag. She was wearing two straps. She thought it looked cute. Instead, she looked like a weird extra from one of the St Trinian’s movies.’

  ‘Kerry, do you ever notice anything?’ snapped Meredith.

  Kerry’s bottom lip began to quiver, threatening tears if the criticism wasn’t immediately stopped.

  ‘It’s OK, Kerry! No one’s mad at you – we’re mad at Catherine. Don’t cry, princess,’ soothed Cameron. ‘Meredith told her to get rid of the bag.’

  Kerry brightened immediately and smiled at Meredith. ‘For her own good, Mer?’

  ‘What?’

  Mrs Vaughn cleared her throat to begin taking the register, but naturally she had to clear it four more times before anyone paid the slightest bit of attention. The first name on the list was Coral Andrews. When Coral answered, Cameron turned round to glare viciously at her. ‘Damn,’ he hissed. ‘She lived through the summer … Again.’

  Coral Andrews was, in many ways (apart from the crucial elements of beauty and money), a sort of short, indie version of Meredith Harper. Coral was the unacknowledged queen bee of the ‘anti-popular crowd’. Every school has one of these and they vary only in degrees of how annoying they are. They are the kids who make every effort to show that they don’t care about popularity and that they definitely don’t approve of cliques. The ironic thing is that they are infinitely more cliquey, judgemental and insular than the most shameless of plastics. They wear clothes that look as if they’ve been rejected by both Oxfam and the dry-cleaners. Their Bebo and Facebook profiles are littered with drawings of anorexic self-harmers or quotes from Kurt Cobain. They hate any form of music that is in the charts and their house parties generally consist of guitar-strumming, a large amount of marijuana and even larger amounts of self-pity. Shaking his head in disgust, Cameron turned back in his seat, muttering, ‘Hippy bitch.’

  Coral was sitting at a table on the opposite side of the room surrounded by her registration-class posse – the politically conscious bookworms Alice Fenchurch and Patsy Harris and the famously repulsive duo that was Hector Colliner (science-genius-smart) and Callum Quigley (science-experiment-ugly). These four had been Coral’s devoted power-base for most of junior school, but by the beginning of fourth year she had outgrown them and moved on to the indie clique that spanned several form classes. She still took care to sit with her former followers in registration class, perhaps because she had no other friends there. She regularly and enthusiastically told them how much she loved them, how they were definitely going to be friends for life, how much they had changed her life for the better and gave them notes with song lyrics written on them. However, she never invited them to any of her house parties and didn’t introduce them to any of her other friends. They, of course, failed to notice and worshipped her devotedly.

  Mrs Vaughn continued with the register. ‘Keith Bryce? Shaun Carson? Hector Colliner? Kerry Davison? Kerry Davison? Kerry Davison?’

  ‘… which is why no one even knew about it until Danielle told Carolyn last week and she apparently told everyone the secret but left the names out, but she told it to Nicola Porter, who put the clues together and figured out that it must’ve been Danielle and Zach. So Nicola told Cristyn Evans, who she doesn’t really like but that’s not important, and Cristyn apparently told Meredith at Mass, which is when –’

  ‘Kerry Davison. Kerry Davison! Can you hear me?’

  Kerry turned round from her conversation and gave the world’s surliest ‘Yes,
miss. Present, miss.’

  Mrs Vaughn looked pleased with herself for securing this small disciplinary victory and she continued with the roll call with far more aplomb than usual. ‘Alice Fenchurch? Billy Finster? Lisa Flaherty?’

  At the mention of Lisa Flaherty, Kerry stopped dead in her conversational tracks and shot a look of pure venom at the peroxide-blonde object of her hatred. ‘What the hell is that wab doing back here?’ she hissed.

  ‘She does go to this school, Kerry,’ said Meredith, moving her Birkin to make room for Catherine as she returned to the table, Evian in hand.

  ‘I can’t believe she has the nerve to come back here after what she did to me! What a wab.’

  Cameron rubbed Kerry’s shoulder soothingly. ‘Kerry, listen. What Lisa did was awful but –’

  ‘That is not her name!’ Kerry squealed. ‘Her name is Dumbo-Eared McMotherfucker!’

  ‘Yes …’

  Kerry had gone to summer camp with Lisa Flaherty throughout childhood and they had maintained their friendship into high school, until there had been a falling out last summer, when Lisa had spread a rumour about Kerry and a boy she had kissed over the Easter holidays. Kerry responded with a not-necessarily-true story that Lisa’s father was drug dealer for the IRA and that Lisa snorted printer fluid in her spare time. In retaliation, Lisa had sunk to an unspeakable low by telling everyone that Kerry was a compulsive overeater and that her parents had to pay for regular liposuction because she was naturally a size 22. Needless to say, an enduring hatred had been born once that particular story became public knowledge.

  Kerry’s tirade was interrupted as the new homework diaries were passed around. In a transformation of delightfully bipolar extremes, she beamed deliriously at the shiny new offerings. Catherine and Kerry plucked out their felt tips, glitter pens and stickers from their bags to begin the sacred annual decoration ritual.

  Meanwhile, Meredith glanced at her new timetable and groaned. ‘Oh my God, we have Mr Edgars for double Religion on a Friday afternoon. That is going to be hell! And the irony of that is not lost on me.’