Challenge Accepted!: 253 Steps to Becoming an Anti-It Girl. Celeste Barber

in this idea, then hearing he had died, and of something as terrible as blood AIDS, I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.

      Olivia: It gets worse.

      Me: How?!

      Olivia: When Dad built this Costume Room he knew we would love it and be here most of the time.

      Me: Dad’s so nice.

      Olivia: So they buried Michael under the Costume Room so we would feel connected to him.

      And with that she smiled, walked out, and closed and locked the door behind her, leaving me in there on my own, with dead fake Michael’s ghost.

      That was the last day I ever went into the Costume Room. Mum would be up all night beading our costumes, and I loved sitting and watching her, imagining myself dancing around wearing her intricate craftsmanship, but as soon as Mum asked me to quickly go down to the Costume Room to grab something for her, the dream ended. I would refuse, point-black. It broke both of our hearts.

      I love my sister more than I thought possible – she is my most favourite person in the world (well, her and Prince Harry) – but whenever we meet someone named Michael or Michelle, I need to take a deep breath and a big step back, and remind myself that my sister is blood, and there’s no way I would survive jail.

      Eight-year-old Celeste (left) with 176-year-old Olivia (right) in Sacramento, California. If you look close enough, you won’t see the ghost of our fake brother.

      The basis of any good relationship – trust.

      @maxxharley

      @rebeccaeliasek

      @hothusband_

      (Top photograph by Mark Del Mar)

The One Where I Was Bullied at School, I Think

      I WAS BULLIED AT SCHOOL, I THINK.

      See, this is one of the great things about having ADD. I don’t have a very good attention span, so when people at school started talking smack about me I’d hang around for the first part, the big opener: ‘You’re such a dumb slut.’ But by the time they got warmed up I was already halfway to the swing set, chasing a squirrel I thought I had seen three hours earlier. So I think a lot of it was wasted on me.

      The word ‘bully’ gets thrown around a lot. Much like the word ‘empowering’ (when a rich, topless model poses on her dad’s yacht on the French Riviera she’s not ‘empowering’, you guys, she’s spoilt). Or when my teenage stepdaughter says she will ‘literally’ slit her wrists if her three-year-old brother calls her Bum Bum one more time, again it’s not really an accurate description of what is going on.