Click

by L. Smyth

  There was a notification on Messenger. From Henry. I saw it flash across the screen and I sat bolt upright.

  Sorry for the late reply

  i don’t use Facebook very often

  I scrolled down. My fingers felt sticky against the glass.

  Have you heard from Mari over the last few days?

  Did she mention anything weird to you at the end of last term?

  Specifically to do with her email address

  I wrote back quickly:

  No I haven’t

  And no, nothing that I can remember

  What email address?

  Is everything ok?

  How is she?

  I stared at the glass, willing Henry to reply. The more I stared at it, the more the individual pixels on the screen seemed to separate: I could see in the blue of the Facebook logo a light yellow, a dark gold, flecks of green. It reminded me of the time my mother had once come back from an art class and said that I had different colours in the skin on my face: ‘You have a lot of blue underneath all that red.’ I looked briefly at the veins over my hand, then back at the screen. The three little dots in the corner indicated that he was replying. Then they stopped. Then they started again.

  I found my fingers drumming impatiently, of their own accord.

  …

  …

  …

  …

  There is something odd about the medium of online messaging. It is simultaneously instant and stationary. You have the opportunity to say something immediately – but if the recipient isn’t available, you are stuck in a state of paralysis. You are stuck behind the screen, just looking at it. Constant connectivity is contingent on other people interacting with you. This can be incredibly frustrating. And it was for me, sat there as I was, waiting for urgent information.

  When I looked back at the screen I saw that the dots had stopped moving again, so I gave up. I reached across to my phone, and furiously scrolled through my contacts for Marina’s number. It still wasn’t there. Seeing the empty contact space reminded me about having deleted it. I paused.

  I clicked back onto Henry’s message. I saw he had still not replied. The dots had stopped moving. I wrote to him again:

  Hey, what do you mean an email address?

  Has she been locked out of her facebook account?

  I see she hasn’t posted for ages

  A few minutes went by and still nothing. I picked up my phone and scrolled down to Henry’s contact name. My finger hovered above the green call button, then retracted. I told myself to be calm.

  I tossed my phone down onto the mattress and it bounced up and down briefly. Then I got up, out of bed. I needed to get out, to clear my head. I needed to think about doing something.

  Just before I left I quickly opened up my computer and went into an incognito window. I put Facebook in the search bar. Then I typed Marina’s email into the box and tried a new password variation: AncillA1930

  Incorrect password: 3/4. One attempt remains.

  I shut the laptop. I went on a walk and forced myself not to think about Marina.

  I managed to stave it off for a few days. I didn’t look at any form of social media, and I hardly touched my phone except to check the time. I distracted myself with various self-imposed tasks: painting my nails, watching TV, drinking with Oleana and Caroline. I checked my email a lot. I had lots of baths, read lots of books. I went out driving in my parents’ car.

  Some of my behaviour was a bit strange – too spontaneous maybe, maybe worryingly so. You could say that without my phone my life had less order. On New Year’s Eve, for example, I was supposed to go to a party that Oleana was hosting. But while driving there I found my hands sliding over the wheel, gripping it tightly, swerving it sideways, and then before I knew it the wheels were twisting off the country road towards the motorway. Sometime later I was standing on the beach. I looked out over the sand. The sea swilled underneath the cliffs. It looked grey in the moonlight. At midnight, a series of hot bright fireworks fizzed into the sky. They exploded, spread out into a star shape and then dissipated into nothingness. In the distance I heard someone shrieking with laughter at the top of the cliff. I thought about Marina running into the waves that day we went to the beach. I wondered what she was doing for New Year. I wondered if she was high or drunk; alone or with Henry.

  It was on the evening of the second of January that I cracked. I had been out driving again that day, with the windows down, with the air on my face. I had driven to another nearby town, walked around the buildings there, returned very quickly after a miserable encounter in the rain. I had drunk too much at lunch. I had made myself sick and depressed. I returned home, with my favourite clothes all soaked through, feeling horribly alone. There was nothing for it: I had to see Marina.

  I logged into Facebook and drew up her profile. Inevitably it was the same. There was still nothing there; there was also no message from Henry. I wondered whether Facebook had sent her a login alert via email. I felt a shiver of anxiety at the possibility. I thought about sending her an explanation, so that if she did somehow track it to me then she would understand. But I couldn’t face sending her anymore messages.

  I went through my old messages – a sadomasochistic reminder of my loneliness – and it was then I saw that I had one from Oleana. She had sent it days ago – indeed, a few days before I had implemented my social media ban. I must have been so distracted that I missed it. Now I opened it and read what it said.

  This is Suki’s boyfriend

  Literally lol

  There was a link attached to the message which – when I clicked on it – sent me directly to the Facebook profile of someone called Richard ‘The Legend’ Joseph. His was a very public profile: you could see all the likes, friend lists, statuses, plus most of his photos dating back to 2009. I scrolled through these photos with a passive curiosity. Most of them were selfies. They showed him reflected in a bathroom mirror, or a gym mirror, or a bedroom mirror, each time curling his arm into a bulge.

  ‘You can’t improve on perfection ;P,’ he had written under one; ‘Unilad #noparents,’ under another.

  Several night-club photos showed him stood next to girls with drawn-on eyebrows and dark puckered lips. ‘Schlags!!!’ was the caption.

  I picked a photo of The Legend in a bathrobe – the caption: ‘Don’t touch what you can’t afford’ – and pasted the link into the message box. ‘I didn’t know dickheads were a commodity,’ I wrote.

  Oleana replied instantly:

  Haha

  We had a short, derogatory conversation about The Legend, before Oleana said:

  Btw have u set up your Swipe account yet? ;)

  I stared at the words, blinked, then read them again. I let the idea sink into my brain. Then I clicked off the message and went onto another tab. I saw the option to set up a ‘Swipe’ account. I thought about it for a second, letting the reasoning cloud over my judgements. If I set one up quickly, then I could just peruse, I could just sample it – try it once to see what it was like. There was no need to be self-conscious. No one would have to even know that it was me. I didn’t even have to put up a photo of myself. I didn’t have to use my real name.

  Before I had time to understand why, I sensed that my fingers were typing. I was putting in an email address. I dragged several photos into the boxes, and typed a very succinct bio:

  18 years old, Northam University student.

  I didn’t think it needed more than that.

  When I was finished a short while later, I looked at my profile to see what others would see. I looked at the photo. It was faded, but you could just about make out the curve of my eyelids, my little nose and the seductive, slim shape of my mouth. I admired the slight silhouette of my figure. I liked the way that my fringe curled over my eyes. I liked the sound of my name. I mouthed it to myself:

  Marina.

  Then I set my location, my age range, and I began to swipe.

  ***

  It
is hard for me to think about that evening now. It is harder for me to write about it, to capture my thoughts and emotions without imposing a retrospective judgement. All the events that followed: the way that I embroiled myself with Marina’s family – the Bedes – the media attention, the death threats, the weeks of isolation … none of it would have happened had I not created that account. When I think back to my behaviour on that evening, I am physically repulsed by what I did. It was so invasive – so unnatural.

  But at the time I couldn’t see it that way, because it didn’t seem to be anything but an inconsequential experiment. It was a silly distraction; almost a joke with myself. I recalled the way Oleana had used that concept of a ‘game’ to describe dating apps, and that seemed to me to be accurate. I was only doing this as a way to experience Swipe, without committing to it as me. It was a temporary window in, a way of looking without having to partake. It was just like being on social media, but through the eyes of someone else.

  Is that true? I’m not sure. When I started actually using Swipe, Marina completely disappeared from my mind. Sliding my fingers over the screen, feeling the smooth glass against my skin – the movement and the sensation of it were like wiping away the physical barriers between us. It wasn’t that I was simply hiding behind Marina, using her as a mask. I was her.

  We morphed into one.

  ii.

  I spent that entire evening looking at profiles, browsing through boys. I scrunched my nose at their filtered photos and laughed at their tag lines. It surprised me how many of them there were. I set my location to just a 10 km radius and a very particular age range – yet there they were, zooming towards me for hours and hours. Many of them were boys that I recognized. A few of them I had secretly pined for at school, but now – posing as Marina, as someone both beautiful and intelligent – I could firmly reject them. It felt good to swipe left and see them disappear.

  Several hours passed before I spoke to someone. Joe. Joe seemed different from the other boys, simply due to the fact that his profile demonstrated restraint. Admirable restraint. He had a few casual photographs of himself. He mentioned that he was six foot three, and studying at Moreland, another university in the area. That was it. There wasn’t any crap about his favourite restaurants, how many countries he’d been to or whether he enjoyed ‘a snuggle’.

  Still, it made it harder to talk to him. What could I say? The weird thing about dating apps is that they have a sleazy reputation, but there’s no eroticism whatsoever. The fact you’ve matched means that you both know that you like the look of each other, so the frisson vanishes. With that out the way, how do you start a conversation? How do you seem natural?

  I had never had much experience of chatting up boys. It wasn’t that I was afraid of what might happen – I wasn’t a virgin – but I was never sufficiently sure of myself to know if I was reacting in the right way, saying the right things, making them feel at ease. I always seemed either too forward or too reticent. Maybe I didn’t care enough. That was one plus about social media, I thought, as I eventually went to type a safe ‘hey’. I could control how they saw me; everything was so one-dimensional.

  Joe took a while to respond, so in the meantime I flicked through the profiles of my other matches and thought about talking to them. Ultimately I didn’t. I stood up and went to the mirror to squeeze the blackheads on my nose. I had a very particular routine when it came to squeezing nose spots. I would start by pinching the ones on the top first, digging my fingernails so hard into the skin that they left a smattering of crescent-shaped indents. Then I would move to the side of my nose, squeeze the flesh between my thumb and forefinger, forming a pressurized, concave arc that hardened until tiny trails of pus oozed out of the tiny pores. It was satisfying to watch. I thought it looked like maggots crawling out of my skin.

  A vibration in my pocket alerted me back to the Swipe conversation. I wiped the remnants of pus on the mirror – my trophies – and looked at the message.

  Joe: You’re at Northam Is it as bad as everyone says?

  I wrote back:

  Almost. Full of pseudo-intellectuals and anoraks

  Joe: Yikes

  Me: Still not as bad as Moreland.

  It’s not exactly unembarrassing for me to recall all this, but it’s a realistic representation of how it began. I remember feeling surprised at how easy it was to talk to Joe, having never previously spoken to a stranger online. From behind a screen, it was easy to strike up a conversation. Everything was pretty much taken on face value. They weren’t looking to see whether you were telling the truth. They couldn’t look at the way your eyes slid sideways as you spoke about yourself. They couldn’t analyse the way your hands gripped your chin or the way your mouth wavered. There were still some conversational boundaries, obviously, but even if I embarrassed myself, even if I made a remark that was off-key or badly timed, I could leave at any time.

  Besides, I was Marina. I had nothing to lose.

  Joe continued:

  How come you’re down here? are you local?

  I paused. There was a ‘mutual friends’ feature at the bottom which unnerved me, despite the fact it showed no matches. Obviously.

  I said:

  I’m visiting someone

  Over the holidays

  It wasn’t exactly a lie. Since I had come back from university, my room had basically become a store cupboard. I was a guest in my own home. Still, I felt a need to divert the conversation away from myself, so I followed up with:

  How come you’re down here?

  Joe: I’m also visiting someone

  It’s my cousin’s birthday. We always stay for a few weeks after the Christmas period

  Me: Weeks???

  Sorry to hear that

  Joe: No, it’s fun. Nice big house.

  This is a beautiful part of the world

  Me: Sure

  Joe: well it’s nice to see my cousin

  Me: When are you heading back to Moreland?

  Joe: Tuesday 20th

  I’m getting the train

  We spoke about our families, about our relative experiences at university. It was comforting talking to him, even a bit exciting. I had to keep reminding myself that it was not really me that he was interested in. I was speaking as Marina.

  PART III

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Early January

  i.

  That first night of my Swipe initiation, I slept well. It was a deep, suffocating sleep – the kind of sleep from which you wake with bright wet eyes and clear air passages. That brief experience of being Marina, of inhabiting her virtual skin, had invigorated me.

  On the morning of the 3rd of January, I woke up with a vague awareness that something was vibrating in the room: my phone. When I looked at the screen I saw to my astonishment that it was Henry. He was calling me.

  I picked up. ‘Henry?’

  ‘Hey,’ he sounded breathless, unnatural. ‘Eva, have you heard from Marina at all today?’

  I wavered.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Is everything OK?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ There was a rattling sound in the background: it sounded like he was on a train. ‘She’s done this weird running away thing. Are you in Northam?’

  ‘What do you mean running away?’

  ‘Are you in Northam?’

  ‘What – no, I’m back in like two weeks. What’s happened?’

  ‘Fuck, OK, look I’m not sure yet. Sorry I’ve got to go it’s …’

  His voice was muffling. I couldn’t hear the rest of what he said, and then the signal cut out. I jabbed at the buttons, tried ringing again but after the second ring it continually went straight to voicemail. Frantically I sent him a message. I felt ridiculous explaining my situation:

  Henry, I’m at my parents’

  The signal is bad here

  Are you on a train?

  Or free to Facetime?

  There was a pause. I saw that he’d seen it, but hadn’t replied. I typed aga
in:

  Henry

  ???

  I can drive to Northam if necessary

  Just let me know what’s happening

  Ten minutes passed. I flicked frantically between Henry’s and Marina’s profiles; I googled her name and arrests in her area. I looked up the local hospitals, the local police station, and thought about ringing them. What could be happening to her? Why wouldn’t Henry tell me? It infuriated me that he’d had the nerve to alarm me like that, that he’d ignored my messages and called me only to keep me on tenterhooks. If something had happened to Marina, then I had the right to know. I sent him a message again:

  Tell me Henry

  I typed with a furious speed and intensity. I felt the words flowing out from my head into my fingertips and I couldn’t control myself – they kept on coming and the less he replied the more I typed. It was unrestrained, pathetic, and I knew that I was embarrassing myself but I couldn’t stop. Then I noticed he was typing. I felt slightly calmer. I watched with growing anticipation as three little dots wiggled in the corner of the screen. Then, he wrote:

  so I think it’s sorted now

  Sorry

  I didn’t mean to alarm you

  We’ve traced location through her iPhone which says shes in Northam

  I’m going to go up and see if I can talk to her

  My fingers lifted from the keyboard. I felt a mixture of intense disappointment and burning curiosity. I began typing again, but every time I saw the three little dots in the corner something made my fingers stop and erase what I had written. There was a pause, a kind of tentative rephrasing from his side, and then I saw the words:

  Shes prone to these running away acts

  Theres something not right with her

  You know she’s probably not coming back for the new term right?

  I stopped.

  The words seemed thick and black on the screen.