by Alice Oseman
And the fandom scared me. Not gonna lie.
Now that everyone knew who Aled Last was in real life, the Universe City tag went through a phase of posting and reblogging every single picture of Aled they could get. To be fair, there weren’t very many. A couple stolen from his personal Facebook. One stolen from the Johnny R’s Facebook page. A blurry one in the street at his university. Thankfully, after a few people made posts about how this was all a disgusting invasion of the privacy of a person who clearly wanted to remain anonymous, most people stopped posting them.
Yet no one seemed to know anything about him. They didn’t know how old he was, where he lived, what he was studying at university. Aled didn’t confirm anything on Twitter – he just ignored everything, like nothing was happening. And gradually everyone stopped talking about him, and got back to talking about Universe City again. Like none of it had happened at all.
In general, I started to feel like it really wasn’t as bad as we’d all thought.
Until the end of November.
That was when everything got a hundred times worse.
The first post to circulate the fandom was a new picture of Aled.
He was sitting on a stone bench in what looked like a town square. I hadn’t been to Aled’s university town before, but I assumed that’s where it was. He had a Tesco bag in one hand and was staring at his phone. I wondered who he was texting.
His hair had grown enough again to fall into his eyes and he looked almost like the Aled I’d first met properly back in May.
There wasn’t a caption with the picture and the Tumblr blog that had posted it didn’t have its ask box open, so the only way for people to criticise the person who posted it was to reblog it, which is what happened, and within a couple of days the post had 20,000 notes.
The second post wasn’t even from a Universe City blog.
troylerphandoms23756
hey so I gave ‘Universe City’ a go since phil recommended it recently but … does anyone else think it’s like … super elitist? Like really really privileged? The whole thing is a giant metaphor for how crap the writer thinks the education system is, right? There are people in third world countries starving themselves so they can get an education lmao … I mean, ‘Universe City’ = ‘university’ … it’s not exactly subtle is it lol
Dozens of Universe City blogs reblogged it with a variety of snarky comments and I almost wanted to say something myself – it was an absolutely ridiculous statement.
Then again, I guess Aled had said something about not wanting to go to university. Hadn’t he? Or had he been joking?
And then came the third post, from the same person who had posted that sneaky picture of Aled in town.
They posted another picture of Aled. It was moderately dark and he was unlocking a door. The words ‘St John’s College’ could clearly be read on the building’s wall.
Which meant that everyone who saw it would know where Aled lived.
This time there was a caption underneath the photo:
youngadultmachine
gonna kill aled last privileged prik he doin bad things, education is a privilege and hes got No rite to make are kids question there Way in life. Hes brain washing are kids.
My stomach actually lurched while I read it.
They weren’t serious, were they?
There was no way of knowing whether the person who’d written it had been the one to take the picture.
I didn’t know what to make of any of this.
It was all just hate. Internet hate.
Universe City was just a story – a magical sci-fi adventure story that gave me a tiny twenty-minute period of happiness once a week. There weren’t any deeper meanings. If there were, he would have told me.
Wouldn’t he?
UNIVERSE CITY: Ep. 140 – fine
UniverseCity 96,231 views
do you think this is all some sort of a joke?
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[…]
I wonder why you’re even listening to this in the first place! Are you just turning your radio on each week to listen to some funny story about silly old Radio and their friends zapping a new monster and solving the mystery like we’re the bloody twenty-sixth century Scooby Doo gang? I can see you now. Having a right old laugh to yourselves while we’re here, slowly dying from the city fumes, being murdered in our sleep. I bet you have the power to contact us, but you just can’t be bothered. Have you even been listening to anything I’ve been saying?
You’re just the same as everyone I knew in the old world. You can’t be bothered to do anything.
[…]
GUY DENNING
“Frances … I wouldn’t advise putting your entire face on the desk when I’ve been using henna,” Raine said to me during one of our art lessons in early December. I was doing an artist copy of a Guy Denning portrait using chalk and charcoal – my art coursework was on isolation. She was applying henna to a papier-mâché skeleton hand – her art coursework was on racism against Hindus in Britain.
I sat back up and touched my face. “Did I get any on me?”
Raine looked at me and made a face of concentration. “Nope, you’re good.”
“Phew.”
“What’s up?”
“Just got a headache.”
“Again? Mate, you should get that checked out.”
“It’s just stress. And lack of sleep.”
“You never know. It might be a massive brain tumour.”
I grimaced. “Please don’t mention brain tumours. I’m an extreme hypochondriac.”
“Might be an aneurism just waiting to happen.”
“Please stop talking.”
“How are you ladies getting on?” Our art teacher, Miss García, appeared at our table like she’d apparated there. I jumped so hard I nearly smudged my drawing.
“Fine,” I said.
She studied my drawing and then sat down on the stool next to me. “This is going well.”
“Thanks!”
She tapped the paper with one finger. “You’re very good at capturing likeness but keeping it in your own style. You’re not just drawing things photographically – you’re really interpreting it into something new. You’re making it your own.”
I felt sort of happy. “Thank you …”
She looked at me through her square glasses and wrapped her crocheted cardigan around her body. “What subject is it you’re applying for at uni, Frances?”
“English lit.”
“Oh, really?”
I laughed. “Is that surprising?”
She leaned over the table. “I didn’t know you had any interest. I thought you’d do something more practical.”
“Oh … like what?”
“Well, I always thought you’d do art. I could be wrong, but you really do seem to enjoy it.”
“Well, yeah I do …” I paused. I’d never even considered doing an art degree. I’d always enjoyed art, but the idea of doing it as a degree … it’d just be a bit useless, wouldn’t it? And what would be the point when I got such good grades in more useful subjects? I’d just be wasting my potential. “I can’t choose a degree based on what I’d enjoy though.”
Miss García raised her eyebrows. “Ah.”
“I’ve already sent off my applications anyway. I’ve got my Cambridge interviews next week.”
“Yes, of course.”
There was an awkward pause, and then she stood up straight again and said, “Keep up the good work, ladies,” before walking off.
I glanced at Raine, but she was back concentrating on the henna. She wasn’t applying to uni, much to our school’s irritation – she was applying for a few business apprenticeships instead. I wanted to ask her opinion, but she didn’t really know the extent to which drawing was a part of my life so she probably wouldn’t have been able to help.
I looked back at the artist copy I was working on. It was a smudgy face of a girl with her eyes closed. I wondered wh
ether Guy Denning went to university, since he was one of my favourite artists of all time, and I decided to look it up when I got home.
According to Wikipedia, he’d applied to a load of art colleges and didn’t get into any of them.
PRESS PLAY
It was three days before my Cambridge interviews when I realised I hadn’t listened to an episode of Universe City in three weeks. I hadn’t looked at Aled’s Twitter. I hadn’t checked Tumblr. I hadn’t drawn anything.
It wasn’t a big deal. It just made me feel weird. I thought I enjoyed all this stuff, but maybe I was an academic at heart after all. I kept peeling off layers of my personality, but I seemed to be going in circles. Every time I thought I’d worked out what I really enjoyed, I started to second-guess myself. Maybe I just didn’t enjoy anything any more.
Aled and I had been good friends; there was no way he could possibly lie to himself about that. He’d decided to end it and never talk to me again, so why should I get sad about it? He was the one who was in the wrong. He didn’t have any right to be angry at me. I was the one who had to go back to being School Frances, quiet, boring, stressed, tired. He was having the time of his life at university and I was sleeping five hours a night and speaking to maybe two people per day.
I loaded up an episode of Universe City to listen to, but couldn’t bring myself to press play, because I had work to do, and that was more important.
UNIVERSE CITY: Ep. 141 – nothing day
UniverseCity 85,927 views
I didn’t do anything today
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[…]
Every week something happens and it feels strained. The truth is, old sport, sometimes there isn’t anything to report. Sometimes I might exaggerate a bit, just so I have something exciting to say. That time I told you I surfed the BOT22 down to Leftley Square? Well – that was a lie. It was only a BOT18. I lied. I really, really lied. And I am sorry.
I feel a bit like a BOT18 sometimes. Old and rusty, aching and sleepy. Wandering through the city, lost, circling, alone. No gears left in my heart, no code whirring in my brain. Just kinetic energy, being pushed gently onwards by other forces – sound, light, dust waves, the quakes. I’m as lost as ever, friends. Can you tell?
I’d like it if someone were to rescue me soon. Oh, I’d like that very much. I’d like that. I’d like that very much indeed.
[…]
WHAT ELSE WERE YOU SUPPOSED TO DO
At 9am on the day of my Cambridge interviews, Raine rolled up outside my house in her purple Ford Ka. She texted me ‘YO I’M OUTSIDE’ and I texted back ‘out in a sec m8’, despite the fact that I absolutely did not in any way want to step out of my front door.
I had the two essays I’d submitted to the college in my bag so I could reread them in the car. I also had a bottle of water, a packet of Polos, a few Universe City episodes downloaded on to my iPod to calm me down, and a good luck/calm down message from my mum that she’d written underneath a printed-out picture of Beyoncé. Before Mum had left for work, she’d given me a massive hug and told me to keep her updated via Facebook messages and to call her immediately after the interviews. That had made me feel a bit better.
I was wearing what I thought was a very successful balance of I’m-a-mature-and-sophisticated-and-intelligent-young-woman and I-don’t-believe-that-what-I’m-wearing-today-should-influence-your-decision, which was some plain blue skinny jeans, a very plain and normal black jumper and a green checked shirt underneath. I would never normally wear this, but I thought I looked quite intellectual yet still sort of like myself.
Basically, I was feeling extremely uncomfortable. I put it down to nerves.
Raine’s eyes followed me as I walked towards her car.
“You look very boring, Frances,” she said, as I got into the front seat.
“Good,” I said. “I don’t want to scare them.”
“I was keeping my fingers crossed for colourful leggings. Or your black denim jacket.”
“I don’t think people wear those in Cambridge.”
We both laughed heartily and drove off to Daniel’s house.
Daniel lived right in the middle of town opposite a Tesco Express in a very thin terraced house that did not have a drive. It took Raine a good three minutes to park properly.
I texted Daniel – I had his number now – and when he emerged from the house, he was wearing his usual sixth-form suit.
I got out of the car so he could climb into the back. “Went for the sixth-form suit, then?”
He looked me up and down. “I thought that’s what everyone wore.”
“Is it?”
He shrugged. “I thought so. I might be wrong.” He turned and got into the car. My anxiety about today had multiplied at least three times.
“Daniel, you’re not helping, mate,” said Raine with an exaggerated eye-roll. “We’re all feeling very nervous as it is.”
“You?” Daniel laughed as I got back into the car. “You don’t even have interviews. You’re just gonna sit in Costa Coffee for six hours and play Candy Crush.”
“Excuse me, I’m extremely nervous for both you guys. And I gave up Candy Crush two months ago.”
This made me laugh again, and for the first time since we’d agreed to do this, I was kind of glad that I wasn’t going to these interviews on my own.
The drive to Cambridge was two and a half hours. Daniel sat in the back with headphones on and did not talk to us at all. I didn’t blame him to be honest. Every couple of minutes my stomach would flip and I’d feel like I was about to throw up everywhere.
Raine didn’t try to talk to me that much either, which I was thankful for. And she let me choose the car music from her iPod. I picked some Bon Iver remixes and then read over my essays for half an hour before staring out of the window for most of the journey. There was something calming about the motorway.
Everything I’d ever done at school had come down to this.
I found out what Oxford and Cambridge were when I was nine and I knew that was where I was clearly meant to go.
What else were you supposed to do when you got the best grades in the class, without fail, every single year?
Why would I waste an opportunity like this?
UNHELPFUL THINGS
“Well, mother of balls,” said Raine as we drove through Cambridge. “It’s like they built it out of caviar.”
It was nearly midday. My first interview was at two, Daniel’s was at two thirty. I was trying not to have an anxiety attack.
“Everything’s very brown,” Raine continued. “Like, there’s not a lot of grey. It’s like a film set.”
It was a beautiful place, to be fair. It felt almost fake compared to the greyness of our town. The river in Cambridge felt like it belonged in The Lord of the Rings, whereas the river in our town was more like somewhere you might find some shopping trolleys or a dead body.
After a good ten minutes of randomly turning corners, we managed to find somewhere to park. Raine wasn’t sure whether it was entirely legal, but decided not to worry too much about it. I worried a lot about it, but she was the driver so I couldn’t really say anything about it. Daniel appeared to have entered an entirely different dimension and wasn’t quite registering anything we were saying.
Some of the Cambridge colleges looked like palaces. I’d seen them in pictures, obviously, but they didn’t really do the real things justice.
It didn’t even feel like the real world.
We very quickly found ourselves a Starbucks.
“I take back what I said about everything being brown,” said Raine, once we’d sat down. “I haven’t seen a single brown person since we got here.” Even she looked sort of uncomfortable, which was fair enough because she really did stick out with her undercut hair and a pastel blue bomber jacket and platform trainers.
“Preach,” I said.
I sipped my coffee, but wasn’t sure whether I was going to manage any of the sandwich I’d bought.
Daniel had brought his own lunch and it made me think of Ron Weasley on the train to Hogwarts, sandwiches wrapped in cling film. Not that he was eating it – he was sitting entirely still except for one leg which was bouncing up and down.
Raine leaned back in her seat and stared at us for a moment.
Then she said, “Well, I have a few things to say about this.”
“Please don’t,” said Daniel immediately.
“Helpful things.”
“Nothing you say will be helpful.”
“Then … not-unhelpful things.”
Daniel gave her a look that said, ‘I want you to die.’
“Guys, I just think, like, if you two can’t get into Cambridge, like, who actually can?”
Both Daniel and I looked at her.
“That’s really not helpful,” said Daniel.
“Seriously though.” Raine held out her hands. “You two have been top of the year group since, what, like, Year 7? And I bet you were top of your primary schools as well. Like – if you two can’t get into Cambridge then I don’t really understand who would.”
We didn’t say anything.
“What if we mess up the interview though?” I said quietly.
“Yeah,” said Daniel.
Raine looked a little lost for words before she said, “Well, I don’t think you will. You both know lots about your subject, you’re both super smart.” She grinned and gestured to herself. “Like, if I tried to sit in one of these interviews, I’d probably just have to walk out. Or, like, bribe them into letting me in.”
I chuckled. Even Daniel smiled a little bit.
We ate our lunch and then I set off for the college I’d applied to – I’d chosen it because it was one of the famous ones, one of the supposedly more academic ones. Raine gave me a massive hug before I went. Daniel sort of nodded at me, but even that was comforting in its own way. I messaged Mum that I was going in and she messaged back saying she believed in me. I just wished I believed in me, to be honest.