by Rae Earl
Grandad looks angry and his fists clench. He shouts, “Tell a teacher then. Or me. I could sort them out for you, love.”
This melts me a bit, but I don’t know where to start.
“The thing is, you don’t always know who they are, Grandad.” I’m thinking of Mr Style Shame. “Or you can’t prove they are really being horrible.” Now I’m thinking of Erin Breeler.
Grandad looks at me. “Millie. I don’t know if I want you being in that world much.”
“That world? It is the world,” I yell.
“Well, young ladies have to look after themselves.”
Grandad has a thing about young ladies having to be careful. It makes me cross.
“So do young gentlemen,” I snap. “Please can I use this shed?”
“You can use it, Millie. Because you’re not a daft girl. Your dad’s crackers gene missed you. But … just be careful. Look after yourself then look after everyone else.”
Grandad always says this to me. It seems a bit selfish to me but he is selfish. He had all his washing done and dinner made for him for thirty-five years. He doesn’t really understand thinking about others.
But he’s helping me, so I just give him a hug and say, “Thank you.”
Grandad nods. As he goes out of the shed, he says, “By the way, I’ll sort the tumble dryer before the whole place goes up.”
Grandad is like me. He likes me. He gets me. I love him.
I call Lauren in. “Grandad says we can use his shed for the vlog!”
Lauren says, “You sure, Mills? It’s not very glam.”
I explain that we don’t have an alternative and we are NOT allowed to touch the bird calendar.
Lauren looks disgusted. “We can’t do a serious vlog with a bird in the background.”
I can see her point. “Let’s change it to a different month,” I suggest. “Perhaps there will be a better bird.”
Lauren flips through the common sandpiper, the curlew and the whimbrel before she asks me whether the Temminck’s stint looks “a bit sexy with its incredible Olympic cyclist legs”.
I give her a bit of a look. “It’s a bird!” My best friend’s gone off the planet. I need to get her back. “Leave it on the bar-tailed godwit,” I tell her. “Let’s get started. Grandad’s not going to let us stay in here for ever.”
Lauren pulls her super serious face. There’s a long pause before she murmurs, “You know, I honestly think you should do it on your own.”
“What?!” The whole point was that this is something good that Lauren and me can do TOGETHER.
“Look, Mills, all I’ll end up doing is repeating what you say AND interrupting you! I’ll sound STUPID. I didn’t even want to do it that much at your mum’s. Seriously. I thought I would want to but I don’t.”
“Lauren, I’m gutted. Please do it with me!” I’m begging a bit now but I don’t care. “You’re funny and people love you. You don’t even have to try! And you look amazing!”
Lauren’s eyes are on the floor.
“No. You do it on your own, but I want to direct, do your make-up, dress the set and perhaps be off camera.”
And then Lauren admits the real reason why she doesn’t want to be on-screen. “I just hate how I look even WITH the contouring. I looked like such a spoon on Mr Style Shame. I hate my legs. And when I speak on camera, I get twenty-five chins!”
This makes me really angry. “Everyone has twenty-five chins, Lauren! If you didn’t have all those, your neck would split and your head would fall off.”
Perhaps we should vlog about that. People who don’t want to be on film because they hate the way they look, even when they are totally wrong about that.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Mills,” Lauren snaps.
I get it.
“Have you been trolled? Lauren! Don’t look! Turn them off!”
This is great advice but I don’t know if I would follow it.
Lauren gets angry. “Millie. I don’t want to talk about it but I can help with the other things. If I’m going to direct and dress the set, I’m going to tell you what I really think. Before you do your first vlog, you could do with some expert advice so it looks good. I don’t mean YOU looking good. I mean IT looking good. We’re in a shed. We need all the help we can get. Who do we know that does great videos or stuff online?”
“Erin Breeler and loads of famous people who won’t help us.” Yes. I’m getting breathless again now. This was exciting. Now it’s going bad very quickly.
“We do know someone who can help,” Lauren says, sort of sheepishly. “Bradley Sanderson.”
“Bradley Sanderson? The king of lifts and escalators?! But we’re not going to be vlogging about machines.”
“It doesn’t matter what he vlogs about, Millie. The point is, he does it really well. He gets loads of views! You should ask him about it at school tomorrow. And keep out of Erin’s way.”
Erin. She’d make my advice vlog into something about birdwatching and wading birds in an instant. I can’t imagine her EVER posting anything filmed in a potting shed. Lauren is totally right. I need James Bond’s geek genius, the one who sorts out his gadgets. I need Bradley Sanderson to be my secret weapon.
#GEEKHELP
It is not as simple to find Bradley Sanderson as I thought. I try on Thursday lunchtime. We are not meant to use our phones in school hours, so I suspect he is hiding in the shadows somewhere. It can’t be easy to have a hugely successful but absolutely terminally dorky vlog. Your friends must be mainly online not offline.
I try the library, the computer lab, the empty Year 10 classrooms and just about every corner that exists in school. Eventually, I lift up a massive furry parka on the coat racks. Bradley is hidden underneath. With just the light of his phone in his eyes, he looks really spooky. He has thick-rimmed geek-chic glasses and a floppy fringe. His hair is like a blind he can pull across his face.
“What do you want?” Bradley looks up at me.
“Hello, Bradley. I’m Millie Porter from Year 8. I was wondering if you could help me with my vlog?” I’m feeling a bit nervous about talking to him.
“Ah! A damsel in distress. ‘Help me, Obi-Wan!’ she says. ‘You’re my only hope.’ I don’t think we’ve met before, but yet now, because it’s vlogging, you want my help!”
I think Bradley is being a bit snarky. Maybe I’m not the first person to try and make friends with him for socia media advice. I’m clearly out of my depth but I want to learn. So I carry on.
“Well, you’re a bit like a famous bat. We all know about you, but no one sees you in daylight. You have loads of subscribers, Bradley. Please can you let me know your secret?”
This seems to soften Bradley a bit. “What’s your vlog about?”
I sit beside him underneath a blazer. It feels weird but right at the same time. I try to explain. “Well, I want to make a vlog that will help people. People who don’t always fit in at school or are finding it hard at home or who are being trolled. But it’s not going to be all Captain Dullard advice. It will be silly too!”
Bradley looks down at his phone. I get the sense that this might not be the greatest idea for a vlog he’s ever heard. “Vlogs are easy. Do it in landscape on your phone. Download an app. The app talks to your laptop. Upload and edit.”
Bradley clearly thinks I am very stupid indeed. Talk about mansplaining.
“I know all that. I mean, how do you get people really interested? How do you get people to subscribe? What’s the right way to talk to your subscribers?”
Bradley looks up again and smiles. “Millie. I’m happy to give you advice. But it isn’t as simple as having the right hashtags or uploading stuff regularly.”
“But Bradley, I really, really need some help! I’ve never done this before. All I’ve got is my grandad’s shed and a best friend who’s great at contouring! And a cat!”
I’m feeling pretty desperate and it’s starting to get rather hot under this blazer. “Look, I’m not being funny, but
can we come out from under these blazers and I’lI—”
Suddenly, the coats lift up and I see something that takes every single bit of oxygen away from my body, even though that isn’t actually possible or I would die.
Looking at both of us is Danny Trudeau.
I lose control of some of my atoms and my brain blurts out the first thing it can think of. “We are not kissing!” I bark, pointing at Bradley.
Bradley agrees so quickly it’s almost a bit rude. “No. We are NOT.”
”Hello, Millie! And don’t worry, it’s none of my business.” Danny beams. His smile is like the Northern Lights. Probably. It’s certainly like that really beautiful screen saver featuring the sky at night with all the stars. “It’s just that’s my blazer.” He gestures to the coat I’ve currently got draped over my sweating forehead.
As I try and untangle myself, going EVEN redder in the process, I manage to blurt out some words. “We’re just talking about vlogging!”
Danny leans on a locker and winks. “Of course you were. Sorry to disturb you!”
I don’t want him to go. So I keep talking. “Yeah, so I’m thinking of doing an advice vlog. Sort of following on from the other stuff I’ve done with the bike, the panda and Dave.”
This sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud.
“Who’s Dave?” asks Bradley.
Danny purses his lips together. “Yeah… That sounds…” When he thinks, he gets a crease in his forehead. “Yeah!” Suddenly, he brightens. “I know! You could call it something short and quick and memorable, like … #Help!”
I leap up. “#Help! Danny, that’s actually fantastic. Thank you!”
“It was your idea.” Danny says. “I was just your muse.”
I have no idea what he means, so I just say, “Yes!”
“Anyway!” Danny exclaims. “I’ve got to go. Enjoy your brainstorm.” Then he drifts off like he’s being carried by wings. And not the wings of a wading bird. The wings of a mighty hot eagle.
When I regain a sort of sensible consciousness, Bradley is giving me a funny look. It’s almost like he feels sorry for me. “Now THAT conversation, Millie Porter from Year 8, would have made a great vlog!”
I regain some dignity. A bit.
“I was just a bit shocked at … that, but I need your help. I don’t want to beg. I’ve got a name for it now at least! Will you please help me do something actually, possibly useful?”
Bradley sighs. “Come to the shopping centre on Saturday. They’ve had Schindler MRL traction scenic elevators installed. Believe me, they are world class. I’ve had requests to film them.”
“You’ve had people asking to see them?!” I find this very surprising.
“Yes, Millie. My vlog has got global reach. Meet me there on Saturday at 2 p.m. I’ll try and help you a bit.”
“It’s a date!” I quickly correct myself. “Well, it’s not a date but you know what I mean. It’s a date.”
“Don’t worry, Millie. I’ve got a girlfriend. She likes lifts too. This isn’t a date.”
“I never knew you had a girlfriend! What year is she in?” This is turning into a day of quite enormous surprises.
Bradley puffs up his chest and says in a rather cocky way, “She lives in the States. She’s mainly into walking pavements and scenic escalators. That’s how we met. Online. I want to fly over to see her next year but my mum doesn’t really get it.”
“They never get it. My mum is lovely but she’d freak out if she knew I was thinking about vlogging.”
Bradley raises one eyebrow. “She’ll find out, Millie. They always do. If you have any success, she’ll find out. See you Saturday. Got to go. Double Maths. Some relief from the hell that is this place.” Bradley disappears, sort of clinging to the wall in a way that makes him invisible to other people.
Really, I should get to class. Really, I should tell Mum what I’m doing. Really, I should do a lot of things, but I’m too busy thinking about the fact Danny last saw me when I was pretending to be a pile of coats.
I am turning into a boy idiot. I need to stop. I hate it when girls go like that. Dumping their friends for men and being ridiculous. And besides, we all know what is going to happen to Danny Trudeau.
#PREDICTABLE
“He is totally going to end up going out with Erin Breeler.”
During the Thursday afternoon torture that is Shakespeare, Lauren manages to say what the whole of our year is thinking. And it’s a real tragedy.
“I know,” I whisper. “I spoke to him at lunch and thought exactly the same thing. He even SMELLS good. Like a really expensive oil diffuser.”
Lauren giggles. “Expensive oil diffuser?! Like Gary has in his car? Christmas Spruce and Gingerbread? But how have you been close enough to him to smell him?”
How to explain this one? “I was under the coats with Bradley Sanderson and he disturbed us.”
Lauren looks like she has developed seriously miffed disease and hisses, “I think your next vlog should be about when you don’t tell your best friend actually the biggest things that are happening in your life right now.”
I have to spend the next five minutes reassuring Lauren that we were just having an undercover vlogging masterclass. Which was her idea in the first place. When I finally convince her that she’ll be the first to know WHENEVER I kiss someone, she shouts, “Now TELL ME what you found out about Danny!”
The class goes quiet. Erin Breeler and Miranda turn around and look at us. Once we have been told to calm down by Mrs Foss and are safely holding our copies of Romeo and Juliet in front of our faces, I have to admit that I don’t know a lot more than she does. But I do tell her that he had the idea for #Help.
Lauren grunts. “There’s a photo of him on Instagram. Well, of his back. Have you seen it?”
We hide my phone in my pencil case and find the photo. It’s on Leanne Pilton’s Instagram, which is mainly full of her dog. She managed to basically pap the back of the lovely. He looks Big Ben tall and has a fantastic bum even in regulation school trousers.
“Should we be looking at a photo of a bum?” I ask Lauren. “I feel a bit wrong and sweaty. As feminists, we have a go at boys who do that to girls.”
We stop looking. It’s hard but as Mum says, principles are often hard to carry but that doesn’t mean you should drop them. I keep the image in the guilty bit of my mind though.
I know Lauren is still thinking about it too. She starts off discussing the latest Mr Style Shame post, but midway through talking about what everyone is now calling “the Pug Print disaster”, she changes the subject.
“You should share that you’ve spoken to him and that you like him, Millie. You’re basically being a journalist by doing that. It’s the breaking news everyone wants to know. OR you could just comment on Leanne’s photo and say something like, ‘Canada’s a great place and full of quite excellent people’ and then just add loads of winky faces and hearts. We’ll know what you mean!”
The truth is, I do like him. Even more after the coat incident. It’s not just his looks. It’s his whole vibe. And why shouldn’t I tell people I met him and he was nice?! I’m going to do just as Lauren says. That’s what a strong woman does. I can’t worry about what other people think ALL the time. I can’t worry what Erin might do, or even if Danny sees it. That’s sensible. I am sensible. IT IS SENSIBLE TO LIKE CANADA and share that fact. I have decided.
#TWOFACED
When I check my phone between lessons, I find that the Canadian High Commission in London and someone called Annabelle D’Sa have hearted my post. I suppose it doesn’t really matter that actually the entire country of Canada thinks I love it.
Lauren agrees. “They are probably nice people too. Their flag has a leaf on it that looks really approachable and friendly.”
How can a leaf look friendly?
Lauren googles it. “Look at it! It’s sort of jumping in the air and saying, ‘Come in … to my hot tree!’”
“You’re off your tree, L
auren – that’s the basic problem.”
We collapse into giggles.
“Seriously though, Mills, we mustn’t get distracted from the vlog. Let’s see how things are going on the Dave one. Maybe someone’s got an idea for #Help.” Lauren flicks the phone out from her pocket.
The numbers haven’t changed from last time. Not one more like. Not one more view.
I’m a bit gutted by this. However much #Help means to us, it’s probably not going to be a success. How do people even become popular?! How do you win against all the celebrities, people jumping into frozen swimming pools and experiments involving gunge and massive water balloons?! Or the Erin Breelers of this world?
Lauren sees I’m down. “You know what you’ve got to do. When you see Bradley Sanderson on Saturday, you HAVE to get him to tell you how he gets so many hits for his stuff about boring stairs. Then we can start vlogging properly.”
I will, but after today, I’m not sure he’s going to tell me that much. I think he’s probably just being kind. He’s only really interested in his own thing though. Between you and me, I admire him.
Anyway, I should just get over myself and ask for more advice.
“Yeah. You should … ask … or talk or … whatever you think is the right thing, Mills.” Lauren seems distracted. “Sorry!” She looks embarrassed. “I’m looking at the Instagram photo of the Canadian bottom again.”
I’m still a bit uncomfortable with it. I would hate it if someone did that to me, but I just have a quick look. It is fabulous. It’s a really tremendous view of someone’s back. Since I commented on it, it’s got loads of likes and more comments, including—
“Lauren. LOOK at the comments!” We’re late for History now, but I am FULL of rage. We read it together.
I hope @LeanneP asked permission from @DannyTruds before posting this #creepy
It’s from Erin.
She’s also replied to my comment about Canada with the embarrassed monkey emoji. Maybe my Danny love wasn’t so subtle after all.
Lauren points to the phone and says every word in slow motion. “Can you EVEN believe the total hypocritical, two-facedness of it! After what she did to you with the exercise bike. She really is a major piece of work.”