The History of Hilary Hambrushina Read online

  Copyright © 2017 Marnie Lamb

  Published by Iguana Books

  720 Bathurst Street, Suite 303

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada

  M5V 2R4

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise (except brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of the author or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Publisher: Kathryn Willms

  Editor and interior design: Lazarus James

  Front cover design and illustration: Zyesa Lo

  Library and Archive Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Lamb, Marnie, 1974-, author

  The history of hilary hambrushina / Marnie Lamb.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77180-201-7 (hardback).--ISBN 978-1-77180-200-0 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-77180-202-4 (epub).--ISBN 978-1-77180-203-1 (kindle)

  I. Title.

  PS8623.A4826H57 2016 jC813’.6 C2016-906303-8

  C2016-906304-6

  This is the original electronic edition of The History of Hilary Hambrushina.

  -1-

  Dear Whoever

  Dear Whoever,

  I’ve never done anything like this before, and I’m scared. You know that excited-but-terrified feeling you have right before you do your big scene in the school play? You’re standing backstage, squeezing your legs so you don’t pee all over your costume, and trying not to hyperventilate. Well, right now it feels like the director has just shoved me into the spotlight, only I was never given a script. I just have to improvise.

  Don’t get me wrong, I love writing. In fact I want to be a writer when I’m finished school. And I’ve written stories about stuff that’s happened to me. But when someone told me I should write my autobiography, I thought it was a pretty weird idea. Me … Hilary Laura Boles? I’m only seventeen. Isn’t that something old people do? Once the idea got into my head, though, it wouldn’t go away. It was a challenge that I couldn’t let myself back down from. Maybe you’ve felt this way about something before, like you have to run the marathon just to prove that you can.

  The big question is where to begin. I guess I could start with my earliest memory (only I can’t think of it right now) and then tell you every detail of my life, like the time in grade two when my best friend and I decided to crawl home from school to see who could crawl the fastest. But those are the parts I always skip in other people’s autobiographies. I want to know the major stuff, the life-altering drama. You know, like the time the author, a clumsy amateur rock climber, was dangling by one hand over a river full of piranhas and her life flashed before her eyes, but somehow she managed to find the strength to pull herself to safety, and when she finally made it home, she vowed to call her mother more often and plant trees and give money to the theatre…

  Hey, maybe that’s what I’ll do. No, not give money to the theatre. I’ll tell you about the most life-altering thing that ever happened to me. Yeah, that’s it. We have to go back five years, to when I was twelve. That’s where I’ll start.

  -2-

  Hey, Loser!

  It was two days after we’d graduated from grade six, and I was visiting my best friend, Lynn. Summer had officially started three days earlier. As I rode my bike, I noticed that pink and purple flowers were sprouting up in neighbourhood gardens. We were free from school for the next ten-and-a-half weeks. And when we did have to go back, we were going to junior high instead of elementary school. I know what you’re thinking. All of this should have made me happy. Well, it didn’t. I was upset.

  “I just wish you didn’t have to go!” I said.

  Lynn looked up from folding a T-shirt. “It’s not forever, Hil. It’s just for a few weeks.”

  “Eight weeks,” I said.

  I fingered the smooth magenta satin of the canopy draped over Lynn’s gigantic double bed. Lynn’s family was going to California for almost the whole summer, while I had to stay at home doing nothing. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she was leaving the next day, so we didn’t have time to do anything together before she left. Lynn and I had never been separated this long, and I didn’t have anyone else to hang around with. So as far as I was concerned, I might as well have been spending the summer scrubbing public toilets with a toothbrush.

  I sat on Lynn’s bed, feeling like a huge bag of wet sand.

  “Hil, you’re not really helping.”

  “Sorry.” I began folding a scarf. “It’s just that there won’t be anything to do with you gone.”

  “Aren’t you going somewhere with your mom and dad?”

  “No. My dad has to plan some conference at work, and he can’t take any time off, so we won’t be able to go anywhere.”

  Lynn made a sympathetic noise. “But think of all the fun things I’ll be able to do! Just imagine. Summer in California. I still can’t believe it!”

  “Where are you guys going exactly?”

  “First we’re staying with my aunt and uncle in San Francisco, then we’re travelling around for a few weeks. We’re going to see everything. Disneyland, Death Valley. But the part I’m looking forward to most is L.A.”

  “That’s going to be so cool. You’ll probably get to see some movie stars! Do you think you might see Damian Sámos?”

  The Damian Sámos was just getting big as a movie star then. That summer he was starring in Over the Big Top, a movie I would’ve scrubbed a hundred toilets to see. It was a thriller about a rebellious cop who gets kicked off the force and goes undercover as a dog trainer in a circus to catch a psychopathic clown. I think the police chief’s daughter was a contortionist in the circus, and she and Damian Sámos’s character fell in love. But I used to imagine I was the one Damian Sámos was rescuing, my hair billowing in the breeze like a silk nightgown, our eyes meeting as he carried me away from the burning popcorn stand… Anyway, I’m not into him now, but I was then. Big time.

  Lynn shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “You don’t sound very excited. I thought you really liked him,” I said, pointing to a poster on the wall. In the black and white poster, Damian Sámos was slouched against a pier. He had a disgusted expression on his face. Lynn said it was sexy. I thought it made him look like he’d just eaten a rotten egg, though I’d never dared say that.

  “Maybe my tastes have changed,” she said lightly. A little smile crept onto her lips. It could only mean one thing.

  “Oh my God, Lynn! You like someone! Who? Tell me!” I demanded.

  “O.K., but I don’t think I’d ever have a chance with him.”

  “Who?”

  “Brett Filburn.”

  Brett was my second biggest crush. He was only slightly less cute than Damian Sámos, and he was someone I knew. Well, O.K., I didn’t actually know him. He’d gone to Simcoe, the other elementary school in my neighbourhood. But I’d seen him at the movies. Brett would be going to Mackenzie High School with us in the fall. I pictured his sly grin and slick black hair. In my mind’s eye, he winked at me.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, “he’s cute. But isn’t he going out with —”

  “Yeah.”

  And then we both said at the same time, “Chanel Winters.”

  Every sixth grader at my school had heard of Chanel Winters. She was the most popular girl at Simcoe. Rumour
had it that she and her mother lived in a mansion with a swimming pool and a tennis court. Chanel was also beautiful, she modelled, and she was allowed to wear makeup. I tried to picture how my mother would react if I asked her whether I could wear makeup, and it always involved her face turning into the wicked witch’s from The Wizard of Oz, all green and warty. It would’ve been funny, if it wasn’t so depressing.

  Of course I’d never had the privilege of meeting Chanel. She was way out of my league. I’d only ever seen her in the distance at the mall or the movies. But even those glimpses made me admire her. She had long, silky blond hair, and she was taller than all the other girls at Simcoe and at my school, Susanna Moodie. Her figure was like a licorice whip, slightly curvy, but mostly slender. No wonder all the boys, including Brett Filburn, were after her.

  My greatest hope was that I might one day be friends with her. Lynn and I had been talking about it all year, how cool it would be to hang around with the right people in junior high. Lynn said that maybe, if we knew what we were doing, we might be able to become part of Chanel’s group. I asked her if she thought that would happen anytime soon.

  “Are you kidding? It’s Chanel Winters we’re talking about. You’d be lucky if she even looked at you right now!”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  I stared at the pattern of entwined roses on the carpet. Lynn was right. Chanel would never be friends with someone like me. I didn’t need to look in Lynn’s huge round mirror, with its fancy golden edging, to tell me that. I knew all my faults by heart. My hair — which I thought was the colour of a burnt meat loaf — refused to grow any longer than shoulder length. The last time I’d been to the hairdresser, my mom had suggested I try a new style. So now my hair was chopped bluntly into an ugly bowl cut. As for the rest of me, I was four foot eight and had wide hips and flat feet. I felt like Humpty Dumpty, especially in the striped sweaters and brightly coloured pants my mom insisted on buying me.

  But deep down I knew that even if I lost weight or dyed my hair blond (and my mother would ship me as a mail-order bride to some foreign country before she’d let me do that), Chanel probably still wouldn’t be my friend. My biggest problem was I just wasn’t cool. Lynn tried to teach me the latest slang, but whenever I used it, I always sounded fake, like I was some loser who’d been practising it in front of her bedroom mirror. No guy — cute, normal, or repulsive — had ever even looked at me. Every time a cute guy came near me, I managed to say something stupid or stumble into a table. Face it, a voice in me snarled, you’re just not good enough for someone like Chanel.

  “Hey, loser!”

  My head snapped up and I saw Lynn’s older sister, Morgan, standing in the doorway. I felt the blood rush to my face. But when I noticed that Morgan was looking at Lynn, I exhaled.

  “Where’s my black scarf?” Morgan demanded. “I need to wear it on the plane tomorrow.”

  Lynn scowled. “You lent it to me.”

  “Yeah. And now I’m asking for it back.”

  “Well, I don’t know where it is. It’s probably already packed,” said Lynn impatiently.

  I realized I was still holding the scarf. I handed it to Morgan.

  “Oh, thanks, Hilary,” she said, smiling. “I’m glad someone’s organized.” She left.

  “I’m glad someone’s organized,” mimicked Lynn. “She is so annoying.”

  “I think she’s really nice.”

  “Yeah, you don’t have to live with her.”

  “You’re so lucky to have a sister. I wish I had one.”

  “Why? She hogs the bathroom. When her friends come over, she barely lets me say more than hi to them. Then she lends me things and gets mad when I don’t give them back right away.”

  “Yeah, but she still lends you stuff. And she drives you places. I mean, let’s face it. It’s much cooler to be driven to the mall by your sister than by your mom.”

  “I guess.” She had her back to me now.

  “Just gets boring being alone,” I said. But I could tell she wasn’t listening, so I changed the subject. “I can’t wait to go to Mackenzie! I’m so glad to finally leave dumb old Susanna Moodie!”

  Lynn rolled her eyes. “Mackenzie’s going to be so much better. We won’t have all those babyish little sixth graders around.”

  I laughed. “Lynn, until two days ago, we were those babyish little sixth graders.”

  “I know. But we’re not anymore.” We giggled.

  “You know what I heard?” I said eagerly. “Mackenzie might be getting a swimming pool. Wouldn’t that be neat?”

  “Sure, if you want the boys to see you in a bathing suit.”

  I felt my cheeks go the colour of overripe tomatoes. I picked up one of the flower-shaped throw pillows lying on Lynn’s bed and hugged it to me. For the past year, my weight had been the bane of my existence. Well, one of the banes. My doctor told me that my weight was normal for my height, but I figured she was probably just being nice. Because when I checked my height and weight on the chart in her office, I noticed I was in the high end of the “ideal zone.” I knew it would only be a matter of time before I crossed the line into the “caution zone.” Don’t kid yourself, I thought, they might call it the caution zone, but it’s really the fat zone.

  And the worst thing was I didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it. I knew that to really lose weight, I’d have to go on a diet. But I hated the idea of dieting. I loved food too much to give up any of it, except maybe Mom’s meat loaf. I’d tried a diet once. It was called The Two-Week Roasted Red Pepper Soup Diet, and I read about it in a magazine. You had to eat a large bowl of roasted red pepper soup every day. Fatty snacks were strictly forbidden. I was thrilled when I read about it. I was convinced this was the answer to all my problems. I told my mom I’d had roasted red pepper soup at Lynn’s and it was so delicious I wanted her to make it at home every day. I stuck to the diet faithfully, although soon I couldn’t stand roasted red peppers or soup. At the end of the two weeks, when I checked my weight on the bathroom scale, I was ecstatic to see that I’d lost almost three pounds. What a great start, I told myself. But this great start didn’t last. I went back to my regular diet, complete with sweets and potato chips, and in two weeks I’d gained back all the weight and more. So I figured I was one of those people who was doomed to remain forever fat.

  I looked up at Lynn. Her mouth was open, and her eyes were wide. “Oh, Hil. I didn’t mean it that way —”

  “No, it’s O.K. You don’t have to be nice to me. I know I’m fat.”

  “You’re not fat!”

  “Oh, yeah? Look at this!” I performed this new trick I’d made up for whenever someone said that to me. I grabbed my stomach at either end and wiggled it so it bobbed up and down like Santa Claus’s.

  “See?” I demanded. “That proves I’m fat. If I wasn’t fat, I wouldn’t be able to do that. Try it. I bet you can’t do it.”

  She hesitated. “You just have some leftover baby fat.”

  “Yeah? Well, when’s it going to go away? When I retire? By that time, I’ll have old person’s fat!”

  Lynn sighed. She’d heard this before. Many times.

  “Lynn, how can you deny my fatness? You’re three inches taller than me, and you weigh fifteen pounds less.”

  “I just have a faster metabolism than you do. I can’t help it.”

  “Yeah, well where I can buy a faster metabolism?”

  “Hil, there’s more important things to think about than that. Like getting my suitcases packed. And where did my black, high-heeled sandals go?”

  My mouth dropped open. I couldn’t believe she thought her stupid sandals were more important than my weight problem. What kind of friend was she? One of the sandals was lying next to me. Without thinking, I tossed it at Lynn.

  “Here you go, your Highness. And I wouldn’t call those high heels. I could stick a piece of gum on a sneaker and it would be a higher heel than that.”

  Lynn looked at me, hands on hips.
/>   “Hilary, what is your problem? Look, I’m sorry you’re not going anywhere this summer. But I can’t help it if I’ve got plans and you don’t.”

  I turned away and folded my arms.

  “Are you even helping me pack?” she demanded.

  “It’s not even my trip!”

  “Fine. If you don’t want to help me, why don’t you just leave?”

  There was a pause. We stared one another down. I really wanted to leave. Why should I care about her stupid trip, I thought, when she’s acting like this. Bon voyage, don’t bother to send me an e-mail.

  But I knew that wasn’t true. I did want Lynn to have a good time on her trip, and I definitely wanted an e-mail. And it would be silly to let Lynn’s comment bother me, I told myself. She didn’t mean to hurt me, she’s just really into her trip, so of course it’s more important to her than my weight. Right now.

  I looked at the carpet. I’d almost memorized the exact position of every rose by now. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, too. It’s this packing. It’s driving me crazy!” But I could tell she didn’t mean that last bit by the way her voice rose at the end of the sentence, like she was happy.

  “Yeah, well, I guess I’m not making it any easier.” I tried to smile.

  “Hil, I shouldn’t have said that. You’re a guest. You don’t have to help.”

  “No. I want to.” I began folding a T-shirt. “And you’re right. I am jealous of your trip. You’re going to have an awesome time in California, and I’ll just be … here.”

  “I know. But you’ll be O.K.”

  Lynn didn’t see the tears beginning to form in my eyes. I commanded them back like they were rebel soldiers advancing without their queen’s permission.

  “Hey! I know something that’ll make you feel better!”

  “What?”

  “Why don’t we look at our report cards? Mine’s right here,” she said, grabbing an envelope off a shelf. “Did you bring yours?”

  I nodded, reaching for the worn-out canvas bag my mom had given me for going out. She wouldn’t allow me to have a purse because she said I wasn’t old enough. Her usual excuse for denying me anything I wanted.