CHAPTER 2
SHERIDAN
I blink at my laptop screen, and then I blink again. Still there. I try a third time just to be safe, but the email isn’t going anywhere. It’s really there, in all its terrifying glory.
Dear BennyBetty
Congratulations!
We are delighted to inform you that your web series has been shortlisted for a Toonie Award. Please see the full list of Nominees at the bottom of this email.
We will be hosting an award ceremony on the 15th of December to announce the winners and we would love you to join us. If you would like to attend, please fill out the attached RSVP and return it to us before the 1st of December.
We hope to see you there!
Best wishes,
The Team @ ToonTime
An award? I’ve been nominated for an award?!
I hastily scroll down to the bottom of the email and start scanning the names. My mouth falls and I cover it with my hand. My heart is beating in my ears, thump thump thump.
There are so many incredible shows on this list and I’m in there amongst them. There’s no way I’m as good as the others. No. Not a chance. But my web name is there, right next to my silly little animated show. Goth Frogs was always just supposed to be for me—a daft idea to get me out of a creative slump. To get the ball rolling. To get me away from the interior design hell I found myself in the very pit of. It was just for fun. It was never supposed to garner this type of attention—to get award nominations.
“Shit!” I squeal.
Hector, my little nervous ball of curly white canine, barks in response to my outburst. I blindly reach down to pat his head before he can break into the shakes.
Three nominations. Three. I’m in utter disbelief.
“Shez?!” My sister’s voice rings through the house.
I’m comfortable enough with all of my siblings—and parents—that they have a key for my cottage and can come and go as they please. A feat that I’ve only encouraged the past six months or so.
“In here!”
Brinsley, my twin, pops her head into the room. “What’s all the shouting for?”
I spin in my chair to face her, and it’s like looking in a mirror. Blonde hair, big blue eyes, and about half an inch taller than me, and slimmer in places that only I would notice. “I’ve been nominated for an award.”
“Seriously?!” She squeals and starts jumping up and down. “Sheridan, that’s amazing! Which house?”
I stand from my chair, wringing my hands. Only Brinsley and Beau know about my web show. Nash can be a judgemental prick at the best of times, and I just know he wouldn’t get it. I spent years in school feeling like a weirdo for making drawings of things that made no logical sense. Frogs dressed as goths is tame compared to my overactive fifteen-year-old brain, and when some boys got hold of my little black sketchbook filled to the brim with animals in precarious costumes and abstract landscapes and creepy creatures formed out of dark shadows, Nash only jumped on the bandwagon to laud my weirdness for the entire school body to see. I love him, and we’ve grown closer since then, but he never understood me, and he never wanted to, and I’ve just learnt to accept that. Beau and Brin, on the other hand, while often cautious given my anxiety, are much better at accepting the things I do.
“Uh, no. Not for that. For the web show I’ve been doing.”
“Goth Frogs?”
“Yeah.”
Brin places her hands on my shoulders and squeezes. “That’s awesome.”
“You think so?”
“Of course I do, Shez! I’ve seen that show and I know it’s funny. It’s good! Your brain is weird and bright and complicated, and I love it. We love it.”
I struggle to keep my smile away at that. “Thanks, Brin.”
“So come on, what were you nominated for? How many?”
I pick up my laptop and show her. “Best Animator, Comedy, and Show of the Year,” she reads aloud. “Wow. This is amazing—look at you!”
“I know, I’m a bit in shock, to be honest.”
“Well, we need to celebrate! I bought some dye to refresh your tips,” she scrunches a handful of my curls—the tips I’ve had dyed in various different colours since I was sixteen, currently more pastel pink than the bright magenta it was the last time I touched it up, “and then we can open a bottle. Sound good?”
It did sound good.
After tidying up my home studio and putting all of my art supplies back in their places, I huddle up to the bathroom where Brin has set up the box dye ready. While she gets to work, we talk about her, mostly, which I don’t mind because her life tends to be much more interesting than mine. It doesn’t matter what clothes I wear, or what I get tattooed on my body, or if I do add that cartilage piercing to my left ear; Brinsley isn’t socially inept the way I am.
When my parents” friends ask about me, they call me a ‘homebody’. I guess it’s true in most senses—I do love being home and working on art and reading in my nook and watching comedy panel shows on the TV. I’ve never understood that crippling anxiety I get when I go out, but I’ve had it for as long as I can remember.
It has definitely got better with age—I have a solid group around me, mostly including my siblings, where I can be myself. My real self. But I am that elusive Bennett sibling that people always ask about, simply because I’m never around to talk about myself. Maybe being called a ‘homebody’ is better than ‘shy’ or ‘strange’. I know my parents love me and understand that it can’t be helped. I know that Beau understands that a football game is too overwhelming for me to attend, even though he keeps a ticket aside for me just in case I do want to go. I know that it’s strange for my family to have one member who seems to hide and thrive behind the scenes while the rest of them blossom in full view of the world, but that they get it. It took them a long time to, but they do get it.
“Andy asked after you today.”
Andy, short for John Andrews, because there are too many people in this city with the first name John (and Steve, and Emma, and Sarah come to think of it) to be able to ever follow what anyone is talking about.
I snort, trying to mask my real feelings for my sister’s piece of work boyfriend. “Did he ask if I was still content living my witchy life rolling around in mud in my little hovel?”
Hector barks, too attuned to my various tones of voice. He is not a fan of the mortgage advisor my sister shapes her life around.
Brin’s hesitant pause tells me she is confused—that, little does she know, John Andrews asked me that very question a few months ago at family dinner. I try to keep my disdain for him under wraps, because everyone else seems to love him. Well, except Hector. “No, he asked if you were okay. I thought it was nice of him.”
It’s a polite social standard that she’s trying to use to get me to like him more, because as much as I pretend otherwise, she can tell I don’t.
Instead of saying what I really want to say, I settle on, “Yes, very nice.”
She continues applying dye to the underside of my hair again, “Not everyone thinks you’re weird, Shez.” But John Andrews does.
“Is he coming next week?” I ask, if only to make conversation.
She sighs, a sad little sound, “No. He had planned to, but he’s working now and can’t get out of it.”
“Can’t he join for the weekend like Mum and Dad?” I don’t really want him to do that, especially at the delightful news that I won’t have to see his stupid face. But I want my sister to be happy, and for now, he seems to be the one doing that.
“Oh, I hadn’t thought about that… I’ll ask him when I get home.”
“It’s not far, is it? Where we’re going? Lerwick is only a couple of hours at most.”
“Not even that far, I don’t think.” She gives another happy sigh as she brushes dye onto the tips of my hair. “I don”t see why he can’t. At least it’ll be another familiar face for you until you get used to the others.”
I didn’t want her to use that excuse. Part of the reason I agreed to go on this week away was to better cope with my anxieties with smaller groups. Yes, my siblings and our cousin are going, and two girlfriends I don’t see nearly as much as I used to, but Nash and Beau have invited three of their friends that I’ve never met before. One of them is Beau’s best friend, another is Nash’s business partner. I should have met them by now.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Oh!” Brin gasps, remembering something. “I spoke to Mum just after lunch and she was reeling.”
“Why?” I laugh, because when Mum gets going about something, she’s hard to stop.
“So, you know Beau’s friend Myles, who’s coming next week, starting as a teacher at the school with me?”
“I might have heard him mentioned once or twice.” Only all the fucking time.
Brin swats my arm at my sarcasm. “Well, she’s been lunching with him all week while he sets his classroom up. Apparently that French teacher she hates has her sights set on him.”
“Oh, God.” I grin, I can’t help it. “Not the ‘frolicking tart from Toulon’?” Yes, that is really what Shirley Bennett had once called this French teacher she so despises. We don’t actually know if she”s from Toulon. “What is it about this woman that gets under her skin so much?”
“Fuck knows, but it’s hilarious. I mean, she was going on and on about it, as if Myles was some helpless, dickless moron. That harlot better stay away from our boy. Like, I had to remind her at least twice that Myles is not related to us, no matter how much Beau might wish he is.”
“I’ve never even met him.”
“Neither have I, come to think of it.”
“Really? Beau says he’s always at the football.”
“He sits in a different stand to me. I’m behind the home goal, I think he uses Beau’s box.”
“Oh. Someone new for both of us, then.”
“I know! If this Emily woman is hitting on him—if that’s actually true—then he must be halfway decent looking.”
“I can’t remember from any pictures the boys have shown us.”
“Me neither. But Mum loves him which must mean he’s at least a nice person.”
“That means fuck all. He could be a complete dickhead when he’s with his friends.”
“True. I guess we’ll find out next week.”