Solitaire

by Alice Oseman

  Sunday, 24 August

  Up at the crack of 10:30 a.m. Becky et moi went to the cinema today and saw Pirates of the Carribean (is that how you spell it???) 2 and OMG it was SO GOOD. Becky thinks Orlando Bloom is the fittest, but I like Johnny Depp best. He is hilarious and brilliant. Then we went to get pizza in the high street. She had Hawaiian but obviously mine was plain cheese. YUM! She’s coming round next week for a sleepover too, which is going to be so, so fun. She says she needs to tell me about a boy that she likes!! And we’re going to eat so much food and stay up all night and watch films!!!!!

  I put the diary back into the bottom of the drawer and sit calmly for several minutes. Then I get it out again and find a pair of scissors and start shredding it, cutting up the pages and the hard cover, slashing and ripping, until there is just a confetti-like pile of paper shavings in my lap.

  Also in the treasure box is an empty bubbles pot. Becky gave it to me for my birthday a long time ago. I used to love bubbles, even if I could never let go of the fact that they are always empty inside. And then I remember the GIF on the Solitaire blog. That’s another thing, then. Another thing to add to the list; the violin video and Star Wars, all that bullshit. I look at the bubbles pot, feeling nothing. Or everything. I don’t know.

  No. I do know.

  Michael was right. He’s been right this whole time. Solitaire. Solitaire is . . . Solitaire is talking to me. Michael was right.

  It doesn’t make any sense, but I know it’s me. It’s all been about me.

  I run into the bathroom and throw up.

  When I return, I shove away the box, shut the drawer, and open another. This one is full of stationery. I test out all my pens with wild squiggles on the pieces of paper and chuck those that don’t work under my bed, which is most of them. I’m humming loudly to cover up the sounds I’m hearing from the window, because I know that I’m making them up. My eyes keep tearing up, then calming down, then tearing up again, and I keep rubbing them so hard that I see sparkles even when they’re open. I grab the scissors again and spend at least half an hour sitting in front of my mirror and trimming my split ends obsessively. Then I find a big black marker and I get this sudden urge to write something. So on my own arm, in the big black marker, I write “I AM VICTORIA ANNABEL SPRING,” partly because I can’t think of anything else to write, and partly because I’m feeling as if I need to remind myself that I actually have a middle name.

  Solitaire is talking to me. Maybe deliberately, maybe not. But I’ve decided it’s on me, now, to do something about it. It’s all on me.

  I move to my bedside table. I take out a few old pens and a few books I haven’t read and my makeup wipes and my current diary, which I do not write in anymore. I open it up, read a few of the entries, and close it again. It’s very sad. Very cliché teenager. I disgust myself. I close my eyes and hold my breath for as long as possible (forty-six seconds). I cry, consistently and pathetically, for a full twenty-three minutes. I turn on my laptop and scroll through my favorite blogs. I don’t post anything on my own blog. I can’t remember the last time I did that.

  EIGHT

  IT’S BEEN A weird weekend. Not really knowing what to do, I stayed in bed for most of it, scrolling through the internet, watching TV, etc., etc. Nick and Charlie came to have a “chat” after lunch on Sunday and made me feel pretty bad for being a lazy slob. So my weekend concludes with Nick and Charlie dragging me to a local music festival at the Clay, which is a grassless field just over the river bridge, bordered by a scattering of trees and broken fences.

  Nick and Charlie and I walk across the mud toward the crowds surrounding the stage. It’s not quite snowing yet, but I can feel it coming. Whoever thought that January was a good month for a music festival is probably a sadist.

  The band, apparently some London indie band, is so loud that you can hear them from the other end of the high street. While there aren’t any actual lights, every other person appears to be holding a torch or carrying a glow stick, and toward the edge of the field is a violent bonfire. I feel significantly underprepared. I think about running back over the bridge and back up the high street and all the way home.

  No. No running home.

  “Are you all right?” shouts Charlie over the music. He and Nick are several paces ahead, Nick with a torch shining in my direction, blinding me.

  “Are you sticking with us?” Nick points at the stage. “We’re going to go watch.”

  “No,” I say.

  Charlie just looks at me as I walk off. Nick pulls him away and they disappear into the crowds.

  I disappear into the crowd, too.

  There are so many people here that I’m actually warm, and I can’t see much—just the green and yellow of glow sticks and the lights of the stage. This band has been on for at least half an hour, and the Clay is now more like the Swamp. Mud splatters my jeans. I keep seeing people I know from school, and every time I do, I give them a large, sarcastic wave. In the middle of the crowd, Evelyn shakes me by the shoulders and screams that she’s looking for her boyfriend. It really makes me dislike her.

  After a while, I realize that I keep treading on bits of paper. They’re literally everywhere. I’m alone in the crowd when I decide to pick one up and look at it properly, lighting it up with my phone torch.

  It’s a flyer. Black background. There is a symbol in the middle in red: an upside-down heart, drawn in a scrawly sort of way so that it looks like an uppercase A, with a circle around it.

  So that it sort of looks like the symbol for anarchy.

  Beneath the symbol is the word:

  FRIDAY

  My hands begin to shake.

  Before I have time to think any more about what this might mean, I’m pushed right next to Becky, where she’s jumping up and down near the barrier with Lauren and Rita. We catch eyes.

  Lucas is there too, behind Rita. He’s wearing this shirt with little metal edges on the collar, underneath a granddad jumper and a large denim jacket. He is also wearing Vans and rolled black jeans. Just looking at him makes me feel really sad.

  I shove the FRIDAY flyer into my coat pocket.

  He sees me over Rita’s shoulder and kind of cowers backward, which must be pretty difficult in a crowd as packed as this. I point at my chest, not dropping my eyes. Then I point at him. Then I point toward the empty end of the field.

  When he doesn’t move, I grab him by the arm and start to pull him backward, out and away from the crowds and the throbbing speakers.

  I’m reminded of when we were ten, or nine, or eight, in a similar situation—me pulling Lucas along by the arm. He never did anything by himself. I was always very good at doing things by myself. I guess I sort of enjoyed looking after him. There comes a point, though, when you can’t keep looking after other people anymore. You have to start looking after yourself.

  Then again, I guess I don’t do either of those things.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks. We’ve broken out from the crowd and stopped a little way in front of the bonfire. Various groups of people wander past with drink bottles in their hands, laughing, though the area around the fire is largely empty.

  “I’m doing things now,” I say. I take hold of his shoulder and lean forward, quite seriously. “Why—when did you turn into a hipster?”

  He gently removes my hand from his shoulder. “I’m serious,” he says.

  The band has stopped. There is momentary quiet, the air filled only with voices merging into one swirling noise. There are several of those flyers at my feet.

  “I sat outside the café for a whole hour,” I say, hoping to make him feel really bad. “If you don’t tell me now why you’re avoiding me, then, like, we might as well just get it over with and stop being friends.”

  He stiffens and turns red, even visible in the dim light. It dawns on me that we’re never going to be best friends again.

  “It’s . . . ,” he says. “It is very difficult . . . for me . . . to be around you. . . .”<
br />
  “Why?”

  It takes him a while to answer. He smooths his hair to one side, and rubs his eye, and checks that his collar isn’t turned up, and scratches his knee. And then he starts to laugh.

  “You’re so funny, Victoria.” He shakes his head. “You’re just so funny.”

  At this, I get a sudden urge to punch him in the face. Instead, I descend into hysteria.

  “For fuck’s sake! What are you talking about!?” I begin to shout, but you can’t really tell over the noise of the crowd. “You’re insane. I don’t know why you’re saying any of this to me. I don’t know why you decided you wanted to be BFFs all over again, and now I don’t know why you won’t even look me in the eye. I don’t understand anything you’re doing or saying, and it’s killing me, because I already don’t understand a single thing about me or Michael or Becky or my brother or anything on this shitty planet. If you secretly hate me or something, you need to spit it out. I am asking you to give me one straight answer, one sentence that might sort at least something out in my head, but NO. You don’t care, do you!? You don’t give a SINGLE SHIT for my feelings, or anyone else’s. You’re just like everyone else.”

  “You’re wrong,” he says. “You’re wro—”

  “Everyone’s got such dreadful problems.” I shake my head wildly, holding on to it with both hands. I start speaking in a posh voice for no reason. “Even you. Even perfect innocent Lucas has problems.”

  He’s staring at me in a kind of terrified confusion, and it’s absolutely hilarious. I start to crack up.

  “Maybe, like, everyone I know has problems. Like, there are no happy people. Nothing works out. Even when it’s someone who you think is perfect. Like my brother!” I grin wildly at him. “My brother, my little brother, he’s soooo perfect but he’s—he doesn’t like food, like, literally doesn’t like food, or, I don’t know, he loves it. He loves it so much that it has to be perfect all the time, you know?” I grab Lucas by one shoulder again so he understands. “And then one day he got so fed up with himself, he was, like, he was so annoyed, he hated how much he loved food, yeah, so he thought it would be better if there wasn’t any food.” I start laughing so much that my eyes water. “But that’s so silly! Because you’ve got to eat food or you’ll die, won’t you? So my brother Charles, Charlie, he, he thought it would be better if he just got it over with then and there! So he, last year, he”—I hold up my wrist and point at it—“he hurt himself. And he wrote me this card, telling me he was really sorry and all, but I shouldn’t be sad because he was actually really happy about it.” I shake my head and laugh and laugh. “And you know what just makes me want to die? The fact that, like, all that time, I knew it was coming, but I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even say anything to anyone about it, because I thought I’d been imagining it. Well, didn’t I get a nice surprise when I walked into the bathroom that day?” There are tears running down my face. “And you know what’s literally hilarious? The card had a picture of a cake on it!”

  He’s not saying anything and he doesn’t find it hilarious, which strikes me as odd. He makes this pained sound and turns at a sharp right angle and strides away. I wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes, and then I take that flyer out of my pocket and look at it, but the music has started again and I’m too cold and my brain doesn’t seem to be processing anything. Only that goddamn picture of that goddamn cake.

  NINE

  “VICTORIA? TORI? ARE you there?”

  Somebody is talking to me on the phone.

  “Where are you? Are you all right?”

  I am alone on the outskirts of the crowd. The music is gone. Everyone is waiting for the next band, and more and more people begin to join the crush, and it only takes a minute or two for me to be once again trapped in the heaving masses of bodies. The ground is covered in those flyers, and people have started to pick them up. Everything is happening very fast.

  “I’m fine,” I say at last. “Charlie, I’m fine. I’m just on the field.”

  “Okay. Good. Nick and I are heading back to the car now. You need to come too.”

  There’s a rustling as Nick takes the phone from Charlie.

  “Tori. Listen to me. You need to get back to the car right now.”

  But I can barely hear Nick.

  I can barely hear Nick because something else is happening.

  There is a huge LED screen on the stage. Up until this point, it has been displaying decorative moving shapes, and occasionally the names of the songs being played.

  Now it’s gone black, leaving only the dots of the glow sticks spread across the dark crowd. I begin to be jostled closer to the screen, the figures around me irresistibly drawn toward it. I turn away, intending to start to push out of the crowd, and that’s when I see it—there’s a figure, a boy figure, staring blankly from across the river. Is that Nick? I can’t tell.

  “Something’s . . . something’s happening . . . ,” I say into the phone, twisting back toward the screen.

  “Tori, you NEED to get back to the car. It’s going to get INSANE out there.”

  The LED screen changes. It shines pure white, then bloodred, then back to black.

  “Tori? Hello? Can you hear me?”

  There’s a tiny red dot in the center of the screen.

  “TORI!?”

  It magnifies and takes shape.

  It’s the upside-down heart.

  The crowd screams as if Beyoncé has just graced the stage.

  I press the red button on my phone.

  And then a distorted, genderless voice begins.

  “GOOD EVENING, SOLITAIRIANS.”

  Everyone puts their arms in the air and shrieks—with glee, with fear, I don’t know anymore, but they’re loving it. Bodies edge forward, crushing against one another, everyone sweating, and soon I’m struggling even to breathe.

  “ARE WE HAVING A GOOD TIME?”

  The ground vibrates as the voices screech across the air. The flyer I picked up is in my hand. I can’t see Lucas, or Becky, or anyone I know. I need to get out. I throw my elbows outward and turn 180 degrees and begin to barge my way through the howling crowd—

  “WE’VE POPPED IN TO TELL YOU ABOUT A SPECIAL EVENT WE’RE PLANNING.”

  I push against the bodies, but I don’t seem to be moving. They’re staring upward at the screen as if hypnotized, shouting indiscernible strings of words—

  And then I see him again. I peek through the gaps in the heads of the crowd. There, across the river. The boy.

  “WE WANT IT TO BE A BIG SURPRISE. THIS COMING FRIDAY. IF YOU ATTEND HARVEY GREENE GRAMMAR SCHOOL, HIGGS SCHOOL, YOU HAD BETTER BE ON YOUR GUARD.”

  I squint, but it’s so dark, and the crowd is so loud and so happy and so terrifying, and I can’t see who it is. I swivel my body back to the LED screen, elbows and knees digging into me at every angle, and there’s a countdown timer now showing, with the days, hours, minutes, and seconds—the crowd has started to fist-pump—04:01:26:52, 04:01:26:48, 04:01:26:45.

  “IT’S GOING TO BE SOLITAIRE’S BIGGEST OPERATION YET.”

  And with that, all at once, at least twenty fireworks go off within the crowd, shooting upward from the bodies like meteors and raining sparks down onto the heads, one of which is only five meters away from me. Those closest release petrified screams, jumping backward and away from harm, but most of the screams are still screams of happiness, screams of excitement. The crowd begins to sway and shake and I’m buffeted in every direction, my heart pounding so hard I think I might be dying, yes, I’m dying, I’m going to die—until eventually I burst out the edge of the crowd and find myself right on the riverbank.

  I gaze in horror at the crowd. Fireworks of all shapes and colors are continuously exploding among the bodies. At the edge, I see several people fleeing, one or two on fire. A few feet away a girl collapses and has to be dragged away by her wailing friends.

  Most of them seem to be enjoying themselves, though. Entranced by the rainbow lights.


  “Tori Spring!”

  For a moment, I think it’s the Solitaire voice speaking, speaking to me, and my heart stops completely. But it’s not. It’s him. I hear him scream it. I turn around. He’s across the river, which is narrow here, his face lit up by his phone like he’s about to tell a scary story, out of breath, in just a T-shirt and jeans. He begins to wave at me. I swear to God he must have an internal central heating system.

  I stare across at Michael.

  He’s got a flask of something in one hand.

  “Is that . . . is that tea!?” I shout.

  He raises the flask and studies it, as if he’d forgotten all about it. He looks back at me and his eyes sparkle and he bellows into the night, “Tea is the elixir of life!”

  A fresh wave of screams ripples through the group near me, and I spin around, only to find people backing away, squealing and pointing at a small light on the ground only two steps away from me. A small light slowly fizzling toward a cylinder, dug into the ground.

  “WE WOULD ESPECIALLY LIKE TO THANK THE CLAY FESTIVAL COMMITTEE, WHO DEFINITELY DID NOT ALLOW US TO BE HERE.”

  It takes me precisely two seconds to realize that if I do not move, a firework is going to go off in my face.

  “TORI.” Michael’s voice is all around me. I seem to be incapable of movement. “TORI, JUMP INTO THE RIVER RIGHT NOW.”

  I turn my head toward him. It’s almost tempting to just accept my fate and be done with it.

  His face is locked in an expression of pure terror. He pauses, and then he jumps into the river.

  It is zero degrees out here.

  “Holy,” I say before I can stop myself, “shit.”