#ya reading

The waiter: What would you like, girls?
Agnieszka: Strawberry muffin.
Carmina: Banana bun!
Hecta: Putin dead on a plate, please

In for a penny, in for a pound

Agnieszka dreamily: If you had to choose between the prettiest boy in our school and all the money I have, what would you take?

Hecta: And how much have you got?

Agnieszka looks into her purse: Um… only few pennies.

Hecta: I’d take the money.

Tuesday, 7 September

Mr Bertie is a stinky sneaker of a teacher. He told Daddy about my low grades, and now I am the lazy bun and total shame on all my bun kin. NO SIMS, NO SWEETS, and NO LIFE until I read all those books. Ow! I’m buried alive under the library! I feel like yelling at him, “I’m fifteen! Too old for reading Dickens. I have too much adult staff to deal with.” Well, mostly sewing dresses for my dolls and playing Sims, but the adult potential is there, I sense it!

He left me locked in his study with THREE books as big as bricks and the laziest bum Tom to guard my studying. Luckily, my cat is more interested in his own tail to catch rather than reading about dirty, smelly London streets. I read five pages of Oliver Twist and felt like puddling in the nasty gutter. Is that what they want me to learn from the author?

It’s nothing new. My life is FULL of nastiness, i.e.:

1. That ugly under-the-skin pimple on my forehead will never face the light of day but brood in the labyrinths of my brains for the next twelve years.

2. If I don’t read one million pages on how hard it is to live in Dickens’ head, I may never see the light of day either.

3. I am having a test in six days and I’m certain Mr Bertie is going to fit in the most sadistic questions to watch us suffer, like Oliver Twist did.

4. And I don’t even have a tail like Tom’s to play busy till the Kingdom comes. Ow!

                                                                            September, 9
                                                                            Damnville
Dear Dad,

Are you reading this holding something liquid and fragile in your hand? YOU BETTER PUT IT DOWN FIRST. I’m about to swipe you off your feet with completely, utterly ridiculous news.

Okay, *cracks her knuckles* You are safely footed, right? In a battle horse stance, I hope. Right-o. Coz guess what, I AM A MODEL! (You still breathing?)

It all started with Agnieszka having her *BRILLIANT IDEA* of getting rich and famous by simply being pretty. Then Amazons jumped into the warrior model campaign to get her into the spotlight. We hunted for agents on Dress Show Live in La Terra the other day and one obviously blind one took my insect persona for walking fashion and style.

I mean, shiver me thimbles, me, a model?? The closest I ever got to painting faces and dressing up in anything other than my old jeans was in drama lessons. When I played an aspen tree.

Ma threatened to give those jeans to charity but was too afraid the poor kids would run away screaming. She so misses the point! My jeans are NOT GOING ANYWHERE. They are my cosmic mega soulmate that stands it all for the sake of our sacred union. I don’t give two hoofs how ugly they sag and fray and people start accusing me of being a LESBIAN BOY. Inner beauty is all that matters, right? RIGHT? So unless they break in two on my very ass, I stand by and fend off the pink glittery wand of fashion with my wild jeansed leg. Ha. Ha!

Well, not anymore. I got hit-n-run by real blimey AGENT, promising a holy grail in my pockets and a label of a world beauty stuck to my forehead. For the record, Cap, it’s not really my looks with buckets of Ma’s stupendous ginger DNA, but Oliver’s ideaof an alien mantis on the magazine cover. He aches for bloody revolution crushed at the entire yoghurt fed baby-doll industry of fashion. Oliver is “a model minstrel” as he introduced himself to Ma, “in search of extraordinary poems among the dull prose of mob.” And Ma said I was rather a kids’ rhyme coz I was fifteen FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. What did he even think about!

“My daughter is NOT selling her dignity to your devil’s magazines!” she cried. Then Oliver said how much the devil pays for that. She blinked and, in a perfectly steady voice, asked to add a few numbers. “As a cherry on top of the cake,” she smiled. “Not for Carmina, of course. She’s on a strict diet now, aren’t you, sweetie?” Drop me dead.

You can’t say NO to Ma and keep the planet turning, so there I was, sitting in front of the mirror trying hard not to breathe. The makeover lady bustled around like a busy bee while I did what I do worst — held still. She glued the second layer of lashes on top of mine and shaped my hair into a fence-on-fire blast, so now I looked like that crazy club Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy.

“Well, at least they didn’t dress you in bikini,” Hecta cheered me up with her broken brow line.

We vexed my Christmas tree outfit in the mirror and cracked with laughter. The glittery balls and tinsel pinned to the emerald ruffles tingled alone, and I rattled like one giant baby toy. Then, more busy bees rushed in and our faces dropped, coz

a) Hecta was supposed to be my over-eighteen y. o. chaperone, i. e. so deadpan serious milk goes bad in miles around. And

b) they brought the shoes. Blimey. Not even shoes, NINE INCH FEET WEAPONS!

“How do I walk in THIS!” I cried as I ventured a few crab steps, “How does anyone walk in this?”

“People dance on the rope too,” Hecta said.

“It’s not helping, Heck. The only way I can get in these on camera is to hop it all on my head. Do you think they can give me Kung Fu stuff for balance?”

No chance. They didn’t even give me A MINUTE to totter it out. Scooped me up like spruce from the placid wilderness and threw under the fireworks of Christmas tohubohu. The photographer was a bossy black woman with a ferocious crop of purple hair, a tanker body and the voice of an organ. I wasn’t the only one tested for the set. I figured out other victims with drag queen faces, and they all looked like Purple Hair Bulldog had sniffed their fear off and bit half their souls for that.

I toddled out to the spot where the people with tablets pushed me, with the face of a spartan soldier going for the battle to die in. Oliver thumbed me up from behind the photographer, and Hecta cried, “Break a leg!” from behind the painted clouds curtain. Which wasn’t as SUPPORTING as bloody PROPHETIC coz the next very moment I bashed into one of those one-eyed lamps on a leg and knocked it down. My Christmas tree dress wobbled like a ship dinging alone while the entire fashion host in the room yelled a yell of a burning jungle.

“What the hell is she doing?” Photographer cried like I wasn’t even there. “Get her the umbrella!”

The umbrella swept into my hand sharpish. The dude on a hybrid of a tractor-helicopter machine switched the fan on and it farted tinsel on top of my Groot head.

“Move, Christmas, MOVE!” Photographer commanded in a voice of a giant crushing Olympians.

I gazed around in search of a living Christmas, then realized it was me and, “HOLLY SHIT, this is real.” I hit my best tribal butt dance with a jolly Tarzan cry coz my heart drummed for it, stilettos begged for it and coz hell knows what else models do there. By the thundering gaggle from the fake-faced girls, I knew it was a blasting success, so it struck me as a complete surprise why Miss Shooter stopped clicking her camera and goggled back mouth open. “What the f…”

Then I had this stark *BRILLIANT IDEA* of doing Kung Fu form and lashed my leg up, wacked another lamp and ended up on the floor with it in an amorous embrace. Everyone crushed to pieces again about killing lamps and kid models. Makeover bees buzzed around and Hecta helped me stand up, not entirely the same person I was before, but desperate to kick these shoes back to where they belong — bloody CIRCUS.

“What’s your name, Christmas?” Photographer boated up to me, hands on hips.

“It’s Carm…”

“Listen up, girl. This is a speedy and serious business, okay? We’re not nursing crackers here. You need to be quick and creative, but serious.”

“I’d love to, ma’am,” I said and blew a clod of tinsel off my eye, “but these shoes.”

“What about shoes?” she stared at my feet and probably saw comfy sneakers instead.

“Well, er…” Think! Think quick. “Christmas trees are barefoot, ma’am.”

She eyed my shoes again and said, “All right. If that saves the rest of my lamps, take them off. And show me your true self.”

Blimey, I just did, and she said I was crackers. Okay, maybe I wasn’t that convincing. I threw stilettos off and took my battle stance. This is gonna be fun. I jumped and rolled around the stage, kicking and punching and yelling HIYAAA! flashing with my emerald shorts like the flag of freedom. I totally killed it and send it all to Kung Fu heaven. So ha! When I slapped the fist at my palm and bowed, closing my performance, nobody moved or laughed. Not even Photographer who failed to take a single shot.

“Well?” I asked panting. “Can I go now?”

They said DEFINITELY. And never. EVER. Come back. Yep, that was the end of my illustrious career, Dad, and drop me dead how lucky I am to get away with my life. Though it was a little sad too when Oliver cried all over my “poetic” hair and quite successfully watered my Groot.

“Do you think it means I’m useless?” I asked Hecta on the bus back home when the dust settled and I sensed like my Shaolin power screwed all up again. And she said into her e-book, “You kidding me? That was a phenomenal scoop. They crapped their pants at your Seven Star Fist.”

“But was I pretty, at least?” Maybe, I did miss something.

Hecta lowered her phone and stared at me. “Dude, you looked like a baby whore.”

Nope. Nothing missed. What’s the point of being pretty and photogenic if you can’t kick your leg? I would rather play actual trees and in proper pants and be ugly all I like coz it’s like my natural, original sin born before the Big Bang turned chaos into order and divided all to pretty and not.

The only trouble is… I need to give Ma the bills for broken lamps. And live.
Fingers crossed.

                                                                                  Your modelSkipper

Monday, 6 September

Got a horrible bruise on my hip and still stink of the river no matter how thoroughly I wash. I was resolved to earn my millions with far less dangerous crafting or blogging, or just marrying a PRINCE. Then at school, Amazons showed me my rather funny pics all over the Net and said only sissies give up after the first try.

“It doesn’t matter how many times you fall. It only matters how many times you get up,” Hecta quoted her favourite Shaolin monks.

“And guess what,” Carmina piped in, “There’s Dress Show Live at Terra Mall today! It’s gonna be a total sell-out and huge fashion event meaning lots and lots of…” she looked over her shoulder to check if our potential rivals listened, and whispered conspiringly, “big fish to fish for.” She wriggled her eyebrows at me, and my heart started thumping the click-clock song of the glam shoes on Milan catwalks. Oh, Lord!

Luckily, my black knight costume dried up by the time I got back into my model role. Hecta did me a mega horrific battle make-up and Carmina sneaked a real camera from her ma. We took a bus to the town, and I breathed into a paper bag all the way to calm my nerves. Hecta went berserk at the smeared mask on my face. But by the time we arrived, I looked more like a dead (few times) knight, and it pleased her even more.

The fair-show was a big noisy place with so many people bustling around the stalls and talking total gibberish (probably, French). Anyone could be a disguised agent, so we pretended we didn’t care and simply played up. Carmina took pics of me yelling pirates’ commands and I wobbled in Hecta’s boots like a wretched ship but kept my powerful and mysterious face.

It was rather fun but not until some Oscar Wilde like man DID come up and fell to pieces with most exquisite compliments. “What grace, what elegance! What zest! A gust of fresh, spicy gale to my lungs! Or dear me, miss, have you ever considered being a model?” he sang.

And turned to Carmina.

Carmina turned to Hecta,
Hecta turned to me
and I turned and ran away, crying. I stumbled and bumped into all French on my way. I wanted to lock myself up in a toilet, but Hecta fished me out and said to screw it. “Forget it, okay? Modelling sucks!” she said. “This all sucked from the start.”

“But…” I snivelled, getting even deader dead knight. “But then I’ll never be rich and famous.”

“Y’know, you’d better be yourself.” She said, fixing my smeared mascara with a wet napkin. “And eat as much cookies as you like.”

That sounded like a good idea. I was so hungry. And I REALLY hated walking in two-size bigger boots. We went to buy sweets instead, and Hecta held my hand so I wouldn’t tumble over again. I’ll think about being rich and famous tomorrow, but right now, I want my cookies!

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Haunted

“Ghosts aren’t real,” Agnieszka says as she lights a candle in my attic. Carmina peeks under the covered mess of broken furniture and blast-sneezes, sending a cloud of dust dancing in the air.
“Of course, they are real,” I huff and place my bum on one of the old chairs. “What do you think you’ll do after you die?”
“I’ll go straight to heaven,” Agnieszka murmurs, keeping an eye on the shimmering shadows cast by the candlelight.
“I’d better go to hell,” Carmina beams. “If demons offer infinite pleasures, their homeland must be a treasure island!”
“Nobody goes anywhere,” I state. “Your heavens and hells are right here, in this world. There is no another. We are haunt…”
All of a sudden, the chair crushes under me. I flop on the floor, and we yell like freaking psychos.

Sunday, 5 September

I said no to cream buns and a cupcake for breakfast. I can only eat veggies now. Ow! T_T I went to Hecta’s for a makeover and hoped for some cookie with tea as a small compensation for my deadly sacrifice. But she said if I must, I must, i.e. no cookies FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!

I felt like crying, but Hecta started pinching my cheeks to revive my natural blush and it was rather inconvenient to cry and blush at a time. Then she gave me her ruthless goth boots, macabre skirt with a spiky belt and some ghastly hoodie with a rotting skull on it.

“Are you going to turn me into a walking nightmare?” I vetted a giant sleeping BAT in the mirror.

“Fashion world sucks,’ Hecta grumbled. ‘Everyone looks the same, and it’s boring. You are gonna be something else altogether! A black knight of tremendous power and an air of dark mystery.”

“I don’t look like a black knight. I look just BLACK,” I protested.

“Black is new pink, silly,” Hecta said and got to painting my lips black, too.

When Carmina turned up with her camera phone, she laughed so hard it grew into hiccups. I started doubting she’d take a single picture of all that tremendous power and mystery of mine.

We chose the river bank for the shoot. Hecta’s outfit was so big, I swam in her boots and walked like a fish faking human gate. But it won’t get to the pics, right? Hecta said all models wore two-size bigger drags and still kept cool and fab.

So I pulled myself together and climbed the rock half buried in the river sand. Then crawled over to another panting and sweating and hoping it wouldn’t get to the pics either.

Carmina cried at me some inconceivable commands to “heave ho, mi hearty, set sail!”. “And don’t mess up my rags!” Hecta piped in while I did my best to look powerful and mysterious.

Till my left foot stuck in a crack. I lost my balance and plopped down into the dirty shoal, with one blasted boot still standing on the rock. OUCH! “Sink me!” Photographer said and Stylist joined, “Holy shit, that was cool. Did you shoot that?” as they ran up to get me out of mud.

Okay. Enough of being a model! I’m going home to eat a cake.

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Staff!

After weeks of daily kung-fu practice, Carmina cried, “Look how masterly I swing my staff!” and hit her head and lamp.

Saturday, 4 September

How to be a model? How people become models? Do they need to be simply pretty and wait till someone notices it? I flipped through the pile of Mommy’s magazines that she leaves at her clinic for the ladies in waiting to tune my fashion vibe. I took notes too (like a good girl).
First of all, I must be myself. Secondly, I must gain the mainstream style, i. e. NOT be myself. I must look really catchy and flirty (and naked) but super confident about my slim, tall and entirely WRONG kind of body. Is it even possible?
I asked Amazons, and they started talking complete business instead of anything useful. ‘It doesn’t matter how you look as long as you’ve got a solid strategy,’ Hecta said. ‘Your photos should be everywhere. Like a toothpaste commercial. The more people know about you, the higher your chances to grab an agent are.’
I said I’m not the grabbing sort of girl. If I am pretty (and I am pretty), agents will come running to fight for me like street dogs for just one pic on Instagram. Hecta gave me her annoying humph noise and went back to killing zombies on her phone.
‘Let’s make a plan!’ Carmina beamed, took her kiddish pen with a rainbow pompon on top and made a list of all things that will turn the pretty duckling me into a millionaire model swan.

• A good camera. Since we’ve only got seventy pence left from my magic pot campaign, it has to be Carma’s phone just yet.
• Lots of brand clothes or something really fabulous. And since only Heck among us knows the right way to apply rouge, she has to be my stylist.
• All princess’s composure I could master to charm all possible agents and it means, we’re going to HUNT in every shopping mall in town.
• Inconceivable LUCK and true warrior mood. It’s a do-or-die matter now. Yay!

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Why!

Agnieszka: Why doesn’t he ever ask me out!
Me: Why, you hate him, you’ll send him to hell anyway.
Agnieszka: So? He could have at least tried.

                                                                              September, 7
                                                                              Damnville

  Dear Dad,
Do you know what’s really wrong about teens? Everyone wants to be SOMEBODY and do something UNIQUE. And not like spooky-psycho-sick, but you know, POPULAR. So that everyone will double-tap, comment and follow it. I must have caught the wrong planet coz I really like to be nobody. I think it gives me like freedom to be all I want, not just what’s streaming.
But anyway…

I dropped by Aidan’s the other day. He had his next absolutely *CRAZIEST IDEA* to paint his bedroom walls. And I don’t mean paint like cover it with one colour but draw a complete and utter masterpiece instead of using canvas as all normal painters do. I just caught him climbing the helluva stepladder to do the mountain tops and helped him stay there, not plop down and do the grass instead.

His mom Daffodil (well, actually Annella but nobody calls her that) got suddenly possessed, but not by devils, by LATIN PROVERBS. She kept telling how it was important to BE somebody, DO something, ANYTHING, but try and LIVE not just exist. ‘CARPE Diem, amica mia, carpe diem!’ she splashed out with a graceful swing of her hand.  
I had no idea what she wanted from me but I must have looked really boring and inexpressible coz the very next day she told Ma how really boring and inexpressible I looked. ‘My son is doing a full-sized mural,’ she said with a proud nod. ‘He enjoys his life and brings colours to it while some teens can only climb trees and fall down from them.’ *A glance my way*
Ma was so furious. I thought she’d bring THE SKIES down to Vengeance Her Kin! But she only barked, ‘You’re right, Daff, some teens are true vandals, not like our darlings. You know, we’ve been fixing the pipes and our bathroom is such a mess. My talented little girl was just about to paint the shower tiles with dolphins and mermaids!’

I started laughing but choked on it when Ma dragged me to the first art-n-hobby shop around and then shut me in the bathroom one on one with the blasted wall. ‘If some Aidan Rossetti can do it, you surely can,’ she said lighting a joss stick of patchouli.
‘But Ma, Aidan was born with a brush in one hand, a guitar in the other, two right feet and a mouth full of languages! The best I can do is to draw a smiley on a stick,’ I protested.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! You’re a daughter of a witch. You can do anything. Now. Open your chakras, connect your spirit to the Space and bring it to life!’ She slapped my cheeks and shoulders to bring some of my blood back to life too and was off for her daily shot of terribly artless Poldark.

Dad, I sat there for HOURS, smudging paint by the cracked tiles. I cried, I laughed, I played with my cats and drew a Halloween make up on my face. I honestly tried to paint dolphins too but they suddenly turned into deeply troubled octopuses. And my mermaids have probably lived all their lives in Picasso seas. By the end of the day, all I wanted was to BURN THIS FRIGGED WALL and all the frigged house with it. Then RUN, RUN as fast, RUN as long as I could and only stop when somebody sees a painter’s brush in my hand and asks,
‘What is that for?’

When Ma came to check on my progress, hands on hips, she found it nice, though. ‘Oh, I love it, Carma! So spiritual and symbolic. I expected a sea theme but your pterodactyls look even better.’
‘Ma, they are dolphins.’
‘As you say, darling. Now, clean the mess and let it dry. The paint tube says, for three full days…’

Three days, DAD!!! I haven’t had a shower for THREE! DAYS! I didn’t think I’d ever take it home, though. Those monsters were truly creepy. I even had nightmares about them chasing me all the way to school. When Hecta saw them, she offered to film a horror flick in my bathroom. And when Aidan saw them, I thought he’d crack from laughing that loud.

Anyway, the funniest thing of it all is that I did have a shower there, just today. My usual steamy shower and you know what? That blasted paint just, peeled off.IT PEELED OFF MY GOD! Like drops of wax from a glass. Ma was off her rockers calling the shop and blaming all the dead and alive for selling her “fake snot” of paint. Then she bought me a chocolate cake to eat down the TRAGEDY but blimey, there’s no tragedy. I’m BEAMING! The tiles are clean, and I even have a cake for that. Yay!

Will write to you soon,
                                                                   Yours (so ordinary) Skipper

Friday, 3 September

After classes, Amazons and I went to spend my first royalty money. We bought three packets of super healthy chocolates on stevia from my dream-list, with macadamia nuts and blue matcha and all sorts of posh ingredients. It cost us fifty-four, thirty and tasted like old soap. Still, we felt like sultans on the feast! But then… we are poor again.
‘You must do more pots like this,’ said Hecta deleting my ad from the Internet boards.
‘Yeah,’ Carmina joined, ‘You should make at least fifty pots, so we could get our millions.’
‘That will only get us two thousand seven hundred and fifty,’ Hecta noticed with her eyes glued to her phone, and Carmina grunted, ‘Yes, alright, cap.’ And back to me, ‘Get to work, little bee.’
I said I wasn’t a bee. I was a butterfly! And fluttered back to my studio. Inspired by my extraordinary success, I sat to sculpt another masterpiece, humming, 

Money, money, money. Always sunny in a rich man’s world…

But the pot turned out so ugly and shapeless. I started again and it went even loopier. Even Tom looked it up and down, coughed that way and walked scornfully away.
What a calamity. Calamonety! I can’t work like that! I can’t create anything thinking about money!
I called Carmina to share my distress and she said, ‘You better don’t. My cat smashed your pot to pieces and Ma is in hysterics. Another masterpiece like this and my house is gonna get blasted.’
Just great! They killed my magic pot! Now it’s a completecalamity. A caTamity! Oww, I’m not gonna cry, I’m not. Okay, just a little… No, wait. Why would I waste my life on some dirty pottery if I can get rich by simply looking amazing? YES. I better be a

❀model❀

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