Girl Online

Chapter Ten

The play runs without a hitch. Everyone remembers their lines and says them in exactly the right places, and even Ollie’s accent doesn’t sound too bad. By the time it reaches the scene where Juliet dies, I can actually hear members of the audience crying.

As Mr. Beaconsfield bounds backstage for the curtain call, he looks at me and grins. “Wasn’t it amazing? Weren’t they great?” he gushes.

I grin back at him. “They were brilliant.”

“Don’t take the picture until the whole cast has lined up for their final bow—including me,” he whispers.

I nod and turn my camera on.

As the actors come out from the other side of the stage to take their bows, the applause builds, until it reaches a roar for Megan and Ollie. And even though Megan has made me want to punch, smother, and kick stones at her recently, I can’t help getting swept up in the excitement of the moment. I’m really proud of her.

The applause is so loud now I can feel it vibrating through my body. As the cast line up, Megan gestures at Mr. Beaconsfield to join—a scene they had carefully rehearsed earlier, despite Mr. Beaconsfield throwing his hands up and faking embarrassed surprise. I wait for him to reach the center of the line and then I make my way onto the stage. And even though I’ve been dreading this moment, it isn’t that bad at all. The audience is so busy cheering the actors, I actually feel invisible.

Until I take a final step toward the center of the stage and the whole world seems to tilt on its axis. Only it isn’t the world that’s tilting—it’s me, as I trip on the lace of my Converse and go staggering forward.

I can tell immediately that this isn’t going to be one of those falls that I’ll be able to style out. I’m falling too fast and at too sharp an angle and all I can think of is the camera in my hand. I mustn’t break it. I can’t let it smash on the floor. So I land about as awkwardly as possible, on my elbows, face-first. With my bum in the air pointing at the audience.

A shocked gasp, multiplied by about three hundred, echoes around the hall. The awful silence that follows is filled only by my inner voice asking, Why does my bum feel so cold? I glance over my shoulder and see that—to my horror—my skirt has flown up over my waist. A chorus of new whys fills my mind. Why did I wear the skater skirt? Why did I take off my opaque tights backstage when I got too hot? Why, oh why, out of all the underwear that I possess, did I choose today to wear the most faded and frayed ones, covered in unicorns?

I stay on all fours—paralyzed by a skin-crawling mixture of shock and horror. And then the audience starts to cheer again—but these cheers aren’t like the ones before. These cheers are mocking and interspersed with wolf whistles and shrieks of laughter. I look up and see Megan glaring down at me. I see a hand reaching out to me. It’s Ollie’s. This makes me burn with embarrassment even more. I have to get out of there. I have to get off the stage. But instead of standing up and running, I make another terrible decision—I stay on all fours and crawl off. In slow motion. Or at least it feels like it. By the time I make it back into the wings, the hall is echoing with laughter. I stumble to my feet, grab my bag, and start to run.

I don’t stop running until I get back home. I stagger into the hall, gasping for breath. I race up to my bedroom, avoiding all human contact inside the house, and collapse on my bed. I am so embarrassed—SO EMBARRASSED—that I can’t even bring myself to tell Elliot. Instead, I’m just going to lie here and hope that eventually I will become so hot and flustered that I actually melt and never have to face anyone ever again.

But I will have to face people again. How am I going to face people again? What am I going to do? I reach into my bag for my phone. I squint at the screen, hardly daring to look, in case there are loads of mocking texts, but thankfully there are no new messages. I open the Internet browser. In the absence of being able to ask Elliot what I should do, I’m going to do the next best thing and ask Google.

How do you get over dire humiliation? I type into the search engine. Forty-four million results come up. OK, good, surely somewhere among all of them I will find my answer. I click on the first link. It sends me to a website called Positively Positive.

“Search for the lesson in your humiliation,” the article advises. “Things always seem better when we can attach a reason or meaning to them.” Hmm . . .

Lessons from what happened tonight:

Lesson 1: When going up onstage in front of three hundred people, always make sure that your shoelaces are tied.

Lesson 2: Untied shoelaces are a total health hazard—if tripped on, they can cause you to fall over so hard your skirt will actually fly up over your bum.

Lesson 3: If you are wearing a skirt short enough to fly up over your bum, should you trip on your shoelace on a stage in front of three hundred people, make sure you are wearing your least embarrassing underwear.

Lesson 4: Never, ever, under any circumstances, wear multicolored unicorn knickers.

Lesson 5: Never, ever, under any circumstances, wear multicolored unicorn knickers that are so old they’ve FADED and FRAYED AT THE EDGES—no matter how comfy they might be.

Lesson 6: If you are stupid enough to wear multicolored unicorn knickers that are so old they’ve faded and frayed at the edges and you end up flashing them to three hundred people, do not crawl off, I repeat—DO NOT CRAWL OFF—the stage with them still on display.

My life is over! And the Positively Positive website lied. Trying to find a reason for my humiliation has only made me feel a million times worse. I cringe as I run through the whole terrible saga again in my mind. My life is a disaster. I seriously ought to have one of those government health warnings tattooed on my forehead. The sad fact is the only place I feel happy and confident is on my blog.

Instinctively, I click through to the blog on my phone. I have twelve new comments on my post about outgrowing a friendship. As I scroll through them, I feel slightly calmer. Yet again, they are all so loving and kind.

I totally get what you’re saying . . .

I’ve definitely grown out of friends before . . .

I’ll be your friend . . .

You sound so lovely . . .

It’s her loss not yours . . .

I know this sounds weird but I think of you as one of my closest friends . . .

My eyes fill with tears and I hug my knees to my chest. The fact is I’m totally honest on my blog, totally me—and my readers seem to really like me. So I can’t be all bad, can I? And at least none of them have seen my underwear.

According to Elliot, there are currently over seven billion people alive on the planet. Out of all those billions of people, only about three hundred have seen my unicorn knickers. That’s the equivalent of less than one pebble on the whole of Brighton beach. OK, so a lot of those three hundred people are my fellow schoolmates but still—they’re bound to forget about it soon. I wriggle down in the bed and close my eyes. Billions of people have not seen your knickers, my inner voice whispers gently, as if it’s telling me a bedtime story. Billions of people have not seen your knickers.

I’m having this really cool dream about a gigantic advent calendar with hundreds of doors when suddenly my email notification pings. I fumble around in the dark to turn it off when there’s another ping and another. I squint at my alarm clock. It’s 1 a.m. Why am I getting so many emails at this time? As the phone goes off again and again, my first thought is that people are commenting on my blog but when I click into my inbox all I see are Facebook notifications.

Megan Barker has tagged you in a post, the first one says. The others are all telling me that various people have commented on that post—half of the cast of the play by the looks of things. I feel really sick as I click on the link and wait for the page to load. On the page is a video of the cast taking a bow. I break out in a cold sweat as I watch myself going onstage and then tripping over. The camera zooms in, right in, on my knickers, so close you can actually see a piece of frayed thread hanging down the inside of my thigh. I fling the phone onto the floor.

Oh my God.

I’d totally forgotten that the play was being filmed. This is awful. Worse than awful. My entire body is prickling with horror and embarrassment. What am I going to do? Take a deep breath and keep calm, I tell myself. I can delete the post—can’t I?

I pick up my laptop and turn on my bedside lamp. My phone goes off again. I swallow hard and log on to Facebook on my computer. The tiny red icon in the top right-hand corner informs me that I have twenty-two new notifications. Oh no!

Seventeen people have liked the video already. I make myself look at the comments. “Whoops,” Megan has written in the original post. The other comments are mainly LOLs and red-faced emoticons. Then I see one from Bethany, who was the nurse in the play: “Ew, that is so gross! ” Underneath it, Ollie has put “I think it’s kind of cute.” I don’t think I’ve ever felt so sick. I hover my cursor over the post and remove the tag. This instantly removes the video from my wall, but my news feed is still full of it as one by one, various cast members comment on the link and share it.

How could Megan do this to me? I would never, ever do something like this to her. I quickly fire her a private message. “Please can you take that video down?” I sit and stare at the screen waiting for a response, but nothing.

“Come on!” I mutter over and over again. But there’s not a peep from Megan.

After about half an hour, my Facebook feed falls quiet. My school friends must have finally gone to sleep. I should try to get some sleep too. But how can I? In the morning everyone else is going to see the video. I feel as if I’m sitting on a ticking bomb, just waiting for it to go off.

I lie in bed for hours, checking and rechecking my phone. Refreshing and re-refreshing my Facebook page, in the hope that Megan has seen my message and taken down the video. At 5:30 a.m., when I’m starting to go a little demented from tiredness, I send her another message begging her to remove it. Then I lie back down and close my eyes. It will be OK, I tell myself. As soon as she wakes up and sees my messages she’ll delete it.

I finally fall into a fitful sleep just as it’s turning light outside. Then I hear Elliot knocking—and knocking and knocking—our secret code equivalent of dialing 999. I sit bolt upright, filled with dread. I knock back, telling him to come over. The text alert goes off on my phone. Please, please let it be Megan, I think, grabbing it. But it’s from Elliot.

OMG HONEY! DO NOT GO ONLINE UNTIL I GET THERE. I’M LEAVING RIGHT NOW

I hear his front door shut and the sound of his feet pounding up the path. I run downstairs to let him in.

“Have you just woken up?” Elliot says as soon as I open the door.

I nod.

“OK, I don’t want you to panic but something terrible’s happened,” he says gravely.

“It’s OK, I know,” I say back.

“You do?” I can’t help thinking Elliot looks the tiniest bit disappointed; he does love being the bearer of bad news.

“The video?” I say, leading him up the stairs.

Just as we’re walking across the landing, my parents’ bedroom door opens and Dad comes out. When he sees Elliot, he shakes his head and grins. “It’s seven o’clock in the morning,” he says.

“Actually it’s one minute to, but thanks, Mr. P,” Elliot says, looking at his watch.

Dad raises his eyebrows and sighs. “No, I wasn’t giving you the time. I was trying to say that it’s a bit early for a visit, isn’t it?”

“It’s never too early to give your best friend some moral support,” Elliot says seriously.

Dad instantly looks at me, worried. “Is everything all right, love? You rushed up to your room last night like you needed to put out a fire.”

“Yes, I’m fine,” I say. “It’s just a . . .”

“Homework crisis,” Elliot finishes for me. “Those pesky French verbs.”

“But Penny isn’t doing French.” Dad stares at me like he’s trying to see inside my mind to work out what’s really going on.

“No, but I am,” Elliot says, quick as a flash. “That’s why I need Penny’s help.”

“Oh.” Dad frowns and scratches his head. He doesn’t look convinced at all. “Well, when you’ve sorted your French crisis, come down and have some breakfast. I’m making eggs over easy,” he says in an American accent, “and we need to talk about New York.”

“Will do,” I call over my shoulder as Elliot and I race up the second flight of stairs.

As soon as we’re in my room, I shut the door tight.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Elliot says.

“I was too embarrassed.” I sink down onto my bed. “And, anyway, it’ll be OK. I’ve sent Megan a couple of messages asking her to delete the video so hopefully it’ll be off Facebook as soon as she wakes up.”

Elliot stares at me. “When did you last go on Facebook?”

“About five o’clock this morning.” I get a sick sensation in the pit of my stomach. Why do I get the feeling Elliot knows something I don’t? And how has he even seen the video? I untagged myself from the post, so it shouldn’t have come up on his Facebook feed; he isn’t friends with any of my schoolmates. I open up my laptop and refresh my Facebook page. “Oh no!”

Some kid from Year Nine has tagged me in a link to the video—the video that is now on YouTube. I’ve also been tagged in a link to the school “unofficial” Facebook group. The video is on there too.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” Elliot says to me gravely. “But it looks like you’re about to go viral.”