I glanced over to Mum and Dad drinking their hot chocolates. Dad’s long legs were stretched all the way out, so they practically went under the next table. I hated it when he did that.
“It’s so lovely to meet you!” the lady said. “Do you mind?”
“Um…” I started, but she was kind of squeezing my arm. Her phone took my picture a few times before I had a chance to say no.
“Jen and Lars!” She waved at them. “I can’t believe this!”
I stood at the edge of the bookshop and watched Mum’s face light up as the lady and her daughter went over. I paid for the book, but stayed in the shop, watching the woman speaking to my parents. She was clutching her phone in her hand and taking photos with them. They’d probably be online in a minute. At least she wouldn’t be on our plane. I didn’t think Berlin was in Denmark. But like Mr Khatri put in my Year Seven report, geography isn’t necessarily one of my natural strengths.
Me and Mum were still dressed like identical twins when we boarded the plane. Dad offered to put everyone’s luggage in the overhead rack like he usually did.
“No problem,” he was saying, “I’m up here anyway!” Thankfully he’d removed the giant bow by then.
I stuck my head in Ghost Lair and wrapped a blanket around me. I was way too hot, but at least you couldn’t see my outfit. My phone beeped in my pocket.
“You’d better turn that off, honey,” Mum said.
It was a message from Hallie. I smiled. Maybe she’d remembered I was going to Farmor’s. Only when I read it my heart stopped.
Not sure if you know about this already, but I just got sent it. You’re on it at 6.50. Just wanted to check if you’d seen it? Hope you’re ok. Really sorry x
I angled my phone away from Mum, who was busy reading the flight menu, and clicked on the link Hallie had sent. Only it was taking a million years to load.
“Hey, off your phone now, Eva,” Mum said. “We’re taking off soon.”
“Just a second.” I heard the beep of the seat-belt sign just as the page came up. It wasn’t my parents’ channel. Or the channel me and Carys had made. It was a video called Meet the Family Vloggers Turning their Kids into Profit. My stomach flipped over.
“Off,” Mum said, nudging my elbow. “Or flight mode. Ooh, what’s your book about?”
I glanced underneath the video. 264k views. I closed the app and switched my phone to airplane mode, my heart thumping. Mum took my book off my lap and read the back cover so loudly half the plane could probably hear. Then she started talking about this ghost TV show she’d auditioned for when she was younger. She kissed the side of my head and handed me a packet of chewing gum.
“So your ears don’t hurt, sweetheart.”
Dad was chatting to someone across the aisle in Danish. I tried to focus on what he was saying, to distract myself from the thoughts racing through my head: Turning their kids into profit? Is that what they think my parents are doing? Was whoever made that video one of the significant people Carys tagged?
The words Mum had said to me about Good Morning kept circling around in my head: Dealing with the media is like juggling fire. Say one wrong word and that’s it, total disaster.
As the plane took off, and I felt Mum squeeze my hand like she always did, I couldn’t shake this one thought out of my mind: What if this makes everybody hate them?
When the plane touched down in Copenhagen, I felt sick. I didn’t dare switch my phone back on while I was with my parents. But I couldn’t stop wondering what the video said about me. Any time my parents looked at their phones my heart stopped. I was still dressed as Mum’s mini-me as we waited by the luggage carousel. As soon as Dad grabbed our suitcases, I walked over to the toilets to get changed. Mum huffed the whole time we were queuing because she wanted to get a photo of us in our outfits outside the airport.
“I don’t see why it’s such a big deal, Eva,” Mum said through the toilet door as I pulled on my leggings. “It’s not like you know anyone in Copenhagen!”
“Farmor,” I said, pulling off the rainbow jumper.
“Farmor would think it was cute,” Mum said, like she genuinely believed that. “I should have got an outfit for her too, then we could all be matching!”
“I hope you are joking.” I put on my yellow hoodie then felt kind of annoyed when I opened the cubicle door and realized I still matched her slightly. Dad hadn’t put his hair bow back on, so at least that was something.
I didn’t feel like talking, and the bus ride to Dragør was short enough for my parents not to notice. I couldn’t even check my phone because Mum sat right next to me and I knew I’d probably have a million notifications. I peered over at her screen. She was replying to people’s comments on Instagram with smiley faces and love hearts. I tried to relax. But my heart was hammering inside my chest, and I was sure that my parents would notice.
It was dark when we arrived at Farmor’s cottage, but the outside light was on. Farmor was sitting on the little wooden bench outside, waiting for us. When she spotted me she held out her arms and I ran into them like I was a little girl. I didn’t hug my parents like that any more, but I guess I’d never grown out of hugging Farmor that way. She smelled of the sea. Her silver hair was tied in a plaited bun at the back of her head, like it always was, and a few wispy bits had escaped and tickled my face in the breeze.
“Hello, my darling girl,” Farmor said, planting kisses on my face until it tickled. “It’s so good to see you, lille majroe!” It means “little turnip”. It’s what I looked like to Farmor when I was born, apparently, and it kind of stuck. It’s one of those nicknames that I’d hate if it came from anyone else, but with Farmor it felt like home. “Come in, come in!” she said, kissing and hugging Mum and Dad. She held my hand as she led us down the cobbled path to her front door and into her yellow cottage.
Farmor’s house always made me feel like I was little again. There are vines and flowers painted on the outside walls, and the thatched roof has a criss-cross pattern you’d only notice if you paid attention to that stuff. There’s a thatched mushroom right at the top near the chimney. It felt like an enchanted cottage from a fairytale when I was younger, and it still gave me that kind of feeling now.
The doors are kind of low, so Dad had to duck his head. Farmor’s tiny, even shorter than me, so I always imagined my grandfather as a giant. I never got to meet him, so that idea of him as a giant has always been stuck in my head. Dad used to tell me that he had to leave home when he was ten years old because he was so tall he couldn’t fit through the door any more. I know now that’s not true, but I did believe him for ages.
“Ah, it’s so peaceful here, Mathilde!” Mum said, looking out at the little lights dotted along the harbour.
“Yes,” Farmor said. “But yesterday the wind was blowing half a pelican! I couldn’t even ride my bike.” I smiled, and sipped the cup of kartoffel soup she handed me. Her weird expressions always made me smile. Google Translate can’t help you with half the stuff my farmor says.
“I still can’t get a signal here!” Mum said, holding up her phone.
“Me neither,” Dad said. “It’s one of the many benefits Dragør has to offer!”
Mum smiled, the way she does when she doesn’t find something funny. “Want to walk down the road with me later then, so I can check my messages before bed? I usually get a signal by the waterfront.”
I noticed Farmor give Dad a look, meaning she didn’t approve. She never let them film anything in her house, which was one of the reasons I loved coming here so much. It always felt like a completely different world.
“Why don’t you give yourself a night off, Jen?” Dad said, bending down to kiss her head. “We can get up early tomorrow. It’s the holidays. You’ve already posted the clothing thing.”
Mum’s face broke into a smile. “You’re right,” she said, and chucked her phone into her bag. “Goodness knows we could do with a break!”
After supper, the butterflies in my stomach began
to settle. Probably because I knew Mum and Dad couldn’t see the video tonight. And maybe because I was full of potato soup and æbleskiver.
“Right, my darling,” Farmor said, cupping my face in her hands, “you’d better get to bed! You don’t want to go cucumber!”
The next morning I overslept, which I never normally did at Farmor’s because the church bells chime every hour. But I couldn’t sleep for ages last night, thinking about what was on that video Hallie sent me. I checked my phone, but I still had no signal and Farmor didn’t have Wi-Fi. She didn’t even have a TV. It was like going back in time. I brushed my teeth, pulled on my jeans and a jumper and went down the creaky wooden stairs.
“Good morning!” Dad said in Danish. “Sleeping Beauty awakes!”
I yawned, trying to think of the right phrase. “Why have you got your coat on?” I asked eventually.
“We’re all going into Copenhagen,” he said. “Want a quick bowl of havregrød?” Havregrød is basically warm oats. If Dad made it, it definitely wouldn’t have enough sugar in. I screwed up my nose.
“Let’s take buns,” Farmor said, filling a paper bag with freshly baked buns from a bowl on the side. “We can get something proper in Copenhagen.”
“Put on your coat,” Dad added. “We’ll have to catch Jen up.”
I waited for my brain to translate what they’d said. Speaking Danish with Dad and Farmor was harder than the advanced level on Hej Danmark!
“Okay,” I said, which I think is the same in Danish.
We caught up with Mum, who was standing by the bus stop. She was staring at her phone so hard she barely even noticed us arrive.
“What’s happened?” Dad said, reading the expression on her face at the same time as I did. I shoved my hands into my pockets so no one would see them shaking.
“You’d better take a look at this,” Mum said, handing her phone to Dad.
The church bells rang and made me jump. Farmor rubbed my back. I kept my eyes on my dad’s face. His forehead wrinkled up, like it did when he was concentrating on something. A bus appeared at the end of the road.
“Shall we get this one?” Farmor said. “It’s a little cold to wait for the next one.”
But my parents didn’t reply. They were both staring at Mum’s phone.
A man’s voice was saying, “Okay, so now let’s talk about privacy. And I think this is a separate issue from the fake, scripted, set-up kind of content that some family vloggers are posting. Today I’m going to talk about some of the family vloggers who are actually pretty popular but who are exploiting their children for money.”
The way he said it sounded bad. Like, really bad. I didn’t want to look at my parents, so I stood there trying not to feel worried. But it was impossible because the bus came and went and we didn’t get on it. And the man’s voice kept coming out of Mum’s phone.
“There are kids out there, right now, who have their entire childhoods online. And maybe some are okay with that, but I’m going to show you some kids who make it so clear they are not okay with it. I’ve already talked about the Hadley family and the cruel pranks they play on their twins. But let’s take a look at some clips of the Andersen family. The parents are Lars and Jen and they’re established family vloggers. They have about half a million subscribers and vlog usually two or three times a week about their only daughter, Eva. You might have caught the vlog they made about her starting her period. Yep, you heard me right – these people vlogged about their daughter’s period!”
I gasped. Only by accident it came out really loud.
Dad looked at me. “Eva, I don’t think you should watch this.”
Mum nodded. “You shouldn’t see this, Eva.” Her eyes were watery and I could tell any minute she was going to cry.
“It’s okay. I want to.” But actually, I felt like I was falling into the sea. “Who is it?”
“Someone called Brooklyn Evans,” Dad said. “And he doesn’t seem to like us very much. Look at his other videos: Family Vloggers Should Not Exist. The Worst Families on YouTube. He’s made a stack of them!”
I swallowed. Brooklyn Evans sounded like the kind of significant person Carys might have tagged in our video. I felt Farmor’s arm around my shoulders. She said something in Danish to my dad, but I didn’t understand what it was.
“Yes. Sorry,” Dad said. “We have to deal with this right now, thanks, Mor.”
“And I’ve got a voicemail from the newspaper,” Mum said.
“Let’s go for a little walk along the docks, just me and you,” Farmor said. “We can go into Copenhagen another time.” And she led me away.
I knew Farmor was trying to protect me. But what would she think if she knew I had caused all this in the first place?
The sea looked calm, but the wispy bits of Farmor’s hair were blowing all over the place. Boats bobbed against their docks and coloured sails rippled in the breeze. I’d been here like a million times. But everything felt different that day. It’s weird how having a secret can change the way things appear. Even Farmor’s eyes, which always got watery in the wind, seemed to look at me differently.
“Your parents are having some problems with the website,” Farmor said, sitting on a bench facing the sea. She sounded out of breath. Maybe we’d walked faster than I realized.
“I guess so,” I said, keeping my eyes on the ocean.
“And what about you, my lille majroe?” She pulled me closer. “What are you having trouble with?” She gave a nudge, and I felt her warm breath on my cheek.
“Nothing.” I brushed my hair out of my eyes.
She tutted. “Oh, you don’t want to tell your old farmor, hey?” She smiled. Her wrinkles spread all the way from her eyes to her hairline. “All right. So, tell me – what mischief have you and Spud been getting up to?”
I laughed, and told her about our ferrofluid experiment. I felt my racing heart go kind of back to normal. Farmor still spoke to me the way she did when I was about six. But that felt okay. Nicer than okay.
Farmor has this thing she says when she feels really cosy: Jeg har det som blommen i et æg. It literally means “I feel like an egg yolk”. It sounds weird, but it means you feel happy and safe and like you have everything you need. I didn’t realize it at the time, but being cuddled up next to Farmor on that bench looking out to sea, was the last time I would feel like that for a while.
When we got back to Farmor’s house, Mum and Dad weren’t there, and a cold feeling made its way over my skin. I really had to watch the rest of the Brooklyn Evans video.
“Would you pull a chair out for me, darling?” Farmor said, out of breath. She had her hand on her forehead like she was dizzy. I pulled a wooden chair out from the kitchen table and guided her into it.
“Are you okay, Farmor?” I asked and she fanned her hand at me, which was her way of saying not to fuss.
“Yes, yes!” she said. “Just need a moment to get my breath back. Pop the kettle on, lille majroe.”
We had a cup of tea and ate squares of Farmor’s homemade drømmekage, which translates as “dream cake”. I mean, it is pretty good. And way nicer than her homemade dandelion root tea, which I pretended to like but tasted like mud.
“So, everything going well at school?” Farmor asked, putting another slice of drømmekage on my plate.
“Kind of,” I said. “My grades aren’t exactly…you know.”
Farmor smiled and her cheeks dimpled on both sides. “Grades isn’t what I meant. I mean the juicy stuff!” She laughed. “The stuff you don’t tell your parents.”
I smiled. The last thing on earth I’d tell Farmor about was the hacking. She probably didn’t even know what hacking was. I definitely didn’t know the Danish word for it.
“Not much to tell,” I said. But her eyes pushed me to say more, so I told her about Hallie and me not hanging out so much.
“Ah, well,” Farmor said. “You know what they say, a stork is not always a stork.”
Like I had any idea what that was
supposed to mean.
Mum and Dad got back a couple of hours later. I was helping Farmor plant seeds in her garden, and suddenly I heard Dad calling us. I froze. I still had no idea what the video said about them. And it was impossible not to look guilty.
“Hej,” Dad said, “what are you up to out here?”
“Eva’s helping me plant some cucumbers.”
“Ah, pickling again, huh?” Dad’s face looked more relaxed and he smiled at me when I glanced up from the soil.
“Everything okay with your channel?” Farmor asked.
“Nothing to worry about,” he said. Only when Mum came into the garden, they exchanged a look that told me that wasn’t true.
Later that night, after Farmor had gone to bed, I heard Mum and Dad sit at the little table on the patio just outside the kitchen door. My bedroom window was open, so I sat under it, hardly breathing, trying to listen to what they said. I made out, “damage limitation” and “brand” and “press on our side”. Then the church bells started chiming, and they must have gone back inside.
The next morning, I heard the little latch go on the door of my bedroom.
“Morning, sweetie!” Mum said as I sat up. I’d already been awake for a while, but I couldn’t face going downstairs. The way Mum and Dad had been acting told me whatever was on the video was really bad. And the whole reason Brooklyn Evans was targeting my parents, was because of me. “Want to take a walk into town, or down to the sea or something? Would be great to get some fresh air, and have a chat, just me and you.”
I took a deep breath, examining Mum’s face for clues about whether or not she suspected something. “Sure!” I said, which came out way too enthusiastic. Inside, my heart felt like lead.
Mum’s phone beeped non-stop when we got to the waterfront. She replied to messages while I sat with my legs dangling over the stone wall, watching boats bob in the harbour. I found myself looking for flat stones to skim, even though I hadn’t done that for years. My phone vibrated. Three messages from Carys. I pushed it back in my coat pocket.
Girl (In Real Life) Page 18