The Union Jack - Fiction

Chapter 1

"Leanne is the most popular girl in school. Her grade point average? Well, let's not get into that. The point is that she's got something that I don't have and it's slowly eroding away every ounce of fake contentment within me."

Meet Charlotte Layne. Blonde, tall, decked in designer wear. Meet Leanne Crawford. Blonde, tall, decked in designer wear and also the most popular girl in Sandyshore high school, California.

Charlotte hated the way her hair looked perfect in the sunlight. She hated the way her brand new Prada bag looked amazing with her other designer duds. But most of all, Chazzy hated the crowd of adoring fans surrounding her at her locker.

It wasn't in Chazzy's personality to be bitter; at least, that was what the latest quiz in CosmoGIRL had revealed. But something about Leanne made her blood boil.

Might have something to do with the gorgeous guy with his arms around her shoulders.

Meet Tristan St. Paul. Single most gorgeous guy at Sandyshores, according to a survey conducted by the Sandy Towel, the school's newspaper.

Of course it helped that he was so astonishingly modest about being loved by every organism with an ounce of estrogen in them. And also that he was the son of the one and only Lukas St. Paul, frontman of the band Splynter.

Not many could remember the time when Chazzy actually went out with him. It was a few months before spring break. Chazzy thought those were the best moments of her seventeen years in California. At least until spring break actually came. The funny thing that Chazzy discovered was that spring break involved forgetting everything you ever had with a person.

Chazzy and Tristan didn't last long; most people remembered it as the time Leanne began dating him.

(Quote form Sandy Towel: "Making out on beach; in each others arms!")

Needless to say, Chazzy gave up the popular life that she had when she first moved to Cali from England. God, things hadn't changed at all back home. Mum was still making bacon and eggs etc. Wasn't it just her luck that she had to live in Cali with ridiculous aunt Maggi and her idiotic cousin Rian?

How was she supposed to know that in Cali people from "Enger-land" didn't fit in? How was she supposed to know that Tristan was a lying, cheating brat? Or maybe it was just her; maybe her perception of people was slowly slipping as she spent more time at home with aunt Maggi and Rian.

The thing was that Rian had Tourette's syndrome and Chazzy couldn't go a minute without being sworn at. Something she was still getting used to.

Back in "Enger-land" she would have been sitting at a table with her friends as Leesha ate Walkers crisps and Amelle practised her singing. They were sad, these Americans, obsessed with how they looked to others.

Of course it was Chazzy's fault that she fell for Tristan. But who wouldn't with those emerald eyes and his amazing smile?

***

Day two of awful summer term in Cali. Chazzy never used to keep a diary but after six months in the US she felt someone should be notified of her present state of mind. The big worry was that Rian might find it and read it to all his other mentally unstable fourteen-year-old friends. Chazzy could juts imagine her beautiful life story punctuated by random swear words that Rian was so famous for.

She had to admit, life with aunt Maggi wasn't as bad as she had made it out to be; Maggi was a good cook and she loved to talk. But she was no match for Chazzy who was used to people like her nana telling her stories about the war, however much she protested.

Everything in America seemed so different: they drove on the other side (bizarre), they wore huge clothes and ginormous "bling" (ridiculous). But what Chazzy hated the most was the way everyone seemed so relaxed. It was disgusting.

She remembered all too well how Tristan had spilled the beans.

"Oh, yeah. It wasn't working out between us; you know what I'm saying?"

Eugh. So relaxed; so carefree. Made her want to tear out his highlighted hair. But that was how it was in America apparently. Or so she found out from all the things she heard from the other recently unpopular losers.

She knew exactly what Leesha would have said: “Screw him! Screw him upside down, darling, he’s so not worth it.”

Then she, Leesha and Amelle would have gone for a big shopping trip to Claire’s. Leesha and Amelle would buy her a burger from McDonalds and they’d laugh all at Tristan’s sorry face.

She sighed and looked around her room. It still looked rather impersonal even after six months of intense shopping at Wal-Mart. The curtains were purple, the colour of royalty and the closest thing to monarchy in America. Her bed was one of those low ones with six inches of wood sticking out on all sides; her wardrobe was a lot smaller than what she used to have but her clothes were pristine and hung perfectly inside.

Beside her bed was a table with her mobile phone which was decorated with rhinestones that Leesha and Amelle had done the night before she left “Enger-land”. Aunt Maggi always made it a point to put fresh flowers in the purple vase mum had given her. That was on the table too.

Chazzy didn’t exactly have anything special to do that night. Yes, shame on her for not having something to do on a Saturday night. She imagined Leesha and Amelle doing each other’s hair.

Then she imagined Tristan and Leanne. Eugh. The image was burning a whole in her head. She shook her head violently making her hair flop all over.

“Damn this weather.” She said to herself. She heard laughter and looked up to see Rian rolling on the ground. Fearing that he was having a fit she ran towards him and pulled him up. He cackled louder causing his entire body to shake.

For a fourteen-year-old Rian was a stick. He didn’t really have friends; at least that’s the excuse Chazzy made up so she wouldn’t strangle him when he read her books or messed up her precious CD collection. He had a ridiculous sense of humour and always picked Chazzy when he was in the mood for a swear-fest.

He was aunt Maggi’s last child. She had five. Chazzy was just thankful that the other four didn’t live anywhere near her.

No, Chazzy wasn’t a snob, God no. She just had standards. It was an English thing. All her life she had been the lucky one: she got the first kiss; she danced with Danny Jones, the hottest guy in her school at the time. But then why on earth was lucky Chazzy living with aunt Maggi and her deranged son?

The phone rang suddenly, shaking her out of her self-loathing dream. She rushed to grab it and narrowly avoided crashing into her headboard.

“Leesha!” She squealed happily at the sound of her best friend’s voice.

“Honey! Oh my God, I still can’t believe you’re so far away! I keep thinking you’re in your room with Coronation Street on!” Leesha yelled.

“Ew, Leesh! I never watched Corrie,” Chazzy groaned even though she was secretly delighted that Leesha remembered that much about her.

They talked for hours it seemed; until they heard a buzzing sound.

Chazzy knew exactly what it was.

“Rian, get off the phone, NOW!” she yelled, forgetting that aunt Maggi was probably taking her nap.

By the end of the night she was so sick of Rian and missing her friends. This was the deal: if she, Chazzy, would study in America for the remaining years of her academic life, mum wouldn’t tell daddy that she had “experimented” with certain items last spring.

Okay, so she went with Leesha and Amelle to a party; she knew she shouldn’t have but Chazzy was sick of being the good girl: the girl who stayed a virgin till her eighteenth birthday. Leesha and Amelle told her it was a good idea to go after Max Princeton. Unfortunately nobody told her that Max was completely stoned.

Well, that was a time that Chazzy cared not to remember. She was so embarrassed when her mother found her puking in the next-door neighbour’s orchids. It didn’t help that she had “experimented” and was incapable of stringing two letters together much less a coherent sentence.

It sucked, sure, but Chazzy figured that anything was better than the whole of Liverpool knowing that she couldn’t hold her drink.

After hanging up the phone she crept passed aunt Maggi’s room. Her aunt was snoring softly in her teddy bear pyjamas. She looked around to make sure Rian hadn’t left any objects on the floor for her to trip over.

The hall phone ringing ruined the quietness. Chazzy raced to pick it up before aunt Maggi woke up, Too late, Maggi was stretching and yawning; exposing her not-so-toned tummy.

“Yes!” Chazzy barked down the line. She was through with Americans and their nonsense. No offence to any nice ones out there.
No one talked for a while but eventually a small female voice spoke.

“Charlotte?” it whispered.

“What?” Chazzy snapped, getting more annoyed by the moment. Aunt Maggi was standing beside her. Rian was walking towards them.

“It’s your mother.”

***


So there was one catch. Her mother, well the one she lived with in England, wasn’t actually her real mother; she was her aunt. Her real mother had fake her death and run off with someone. At least that’s what daddy had said. Chazzy’s real mum had never bothered to call ever. So aunt Massie was like her mum. Chazzy had been so upset when aunt Massie had sent her away.

Upset enough to cry on Leesha’s shoulder at the airport: something that Liverpool had never seen before. The thing about it was that aunt Massie didn’t even seem that upset. That was what Chazzy hated the most.