Follow Me, Like Me

by Charlotte Seager

  When I turn to look at Chloe, she’s standing there with her mouth open, staring up at me.

  CHAPTER 51

  Chloe

  There’s a low rustle as the wind sweeps across the open grass, separating the bracken. We both stand there, our chests rising and falling.

  I’m shaking all over. Every time I try to steady my breath, my chest tightens, and my mouth makes a loud, rasping sob.

  ‘Are – are you OK?’ says a quiet voice.

  Amber Nighy is standing there in front of me, plucking at the hem of her woolly dark purple cardigan. She has a large pusfilled whitehead on the tip of her nose, and her forehead gleams in the low sunlight, but her chin is tilted up, her shoulders square.

  My eyes begin to fill with tears.

  ‘I don’t – I don’t know.’ I shake my head. ‘He’s been stalking me. Online. I’m just so scared. Now this has happened, what’s he going to do next?’

  I’m almost just talking to myself, gnawing the inside of my cheek.

  Amber comes next to me, standing so close, we’re almost touching.

  ‘He’s not going to do anything,’ she says.

  I sniff. ‘W-why not?’

  ‘Look at this.’ Amber pulls out her phone screen, clicks on a video, and presses play.

  Immediately the screen springs into life. You can clearly see Sven standing up, right in my face, screaming at me. Then I hear my own shaking, high-pitched voice – ‘I’m sorry!’ He reaches over and grabs me, wrestling to push me to the ground.

  I stop sniffling. ‘You videoed it?’

  Amber nods. ‘Yes. We can take this to the police, or school. At the very least, he should get a warning for the things he said and did to you.’

  I look up at Amber then – actually look at her for the first time in my life.

  I never really thought of her like this. To be honest, I never really thought of her at all. She was always just that weird girl at the back of class. The person you forget is there.

  I clear my throat.

  ‘Thank you, um, Amber. For saving me. For everything.’

  Two spots of pink have appeared on her cheeks. She looks away.

  ‘It’s fine, really,’ she mumbles.

  ‘I never – I guess we’ve never really spoken . . . At school, I mean,’ I say.

  Amber is staring at the ground. ‘Oh yeah, I don’t speak to many people, actually. It doesn’t bother me. I don’t need anyone. It’s —’

  But she doesn’t seem able to finish her sentence. She avoids my gaze, but the evening sunlight catches her eyes, and I notice they’re shining. Without thinking what I’m doing, I wrap both of my arms around her shoulders and pull her close towards me. The air rumbles with a chill, but the warmth of Amber’s broad chest and shoulders stops me shivering.

  I hug her tightly, and I feel her body relax against mine. I want to show how much her saving me meant, how much tension has left my body, how grateful I am for that video.

  Amber lifts up her head, right next to mine, and I see tears are streaming down her cheeks.

  ‘You shouldn’t thank me. It’s the least I could do after everything I’ve done to him,’ she whispers.

  ‘What do you mean? ‘Everything you’ve done’?’ I say.

  Amber shakes her head. ‘I’m just as bad.’ She nods across to the distance. ‘As him. Ren.’

  I frown. ‘Ren? Don’t you mean Sven?’

  Amber’s brow is wrinkled. ‘Sven? That’s his Instagram handle, not his name. His real name is Ren Moore.’

  I feel the colour drain out of my face.

  Christ. Could I have known any less about this guy?

  I shake my head, changing the subject. ‘There’s no way you’re as bad as him. Whatever you’ve done.’

  Amber keeps opening her mouth like she’s on the brink of telling me something. Instinctively I link my arms in hers.

  ‘He destroyed my life. He messaged the school, Louise, Tom. And thought he deserved me because he sent a few messages. You haven’t done that to anyone.’

  I can see snot dribbling down onto Amber’s mouth. She wipes it away with her sleeve.

  ‘I stalked him,’ she says. ‘Online. I knew everything about him. The places he visited, who his best friends were. I even once turned up at his house. The only reason I knew he was here is because I saw his Snap Map location and followed him.’

  She says this all so quickly, it’s garbled.

  ‘I thought I was doing something for him. But I wasn’t. I was doing it for me. My whole life was checking him, watching him. I was obsessed. I . . .’ Amber looks around, her eyes skimming the fields. ‘I know exactly how Ren did this to you. How he got so angry with you. I didn’t want to believe he did it. I – I would have done anything to believe him. I almost did.’

  She blinks, hard, staring at the spot Sven was stood minutes earlier.

  Amber shakes her head. ‘I could have done the exact same thing.’

  As she says the last bit, she stands up.

  ‘I’m a freak. You don’t have to tell me; I know it already.’

  I stare at her for a moment.

  It’s like I’m really seeing her for the first time. For a second, I can almost imagine being Amber. Or even Sven. Having nothing in my life to focus on. Creating a fantasy, an obsession about someone I didn’t know. I felt Sven’s anger when he grabbed me, but I didn’t understand it – it just seemed uncontrolled, mad.

  Now there’s also a twinge of sympathy. Imagine being Amber. Getting up every day, no one even noticing you’re there, never speaking to anyone.

  Stuck in your own head with your own thoughts.

  Every. Single. Day.

  ‘Sit down,’ I say firmly.

  Amber blinks at me. ‘What?’

  ‘Sit down, next to me. I wanna chat.’

  I flop into a cross-legged position on the ground. Amber is eyeing me warily, like she thinks I’m about to bite.

  ‘Honestly, I want to help you with this. You saved me from Sven. Sit down!’ The strength in my voice is returning.

  Amber folds her legs next to mine and settles on the grass.

  I lean forward. ‘You’re not the same as him, for one. And do you know why?’

  Amber shakes her head.

  ‘Because you didn’t do it. You didn’t attack him, or call him names. You didn’t act like he did.’

  Amber is still staring at the ground. That’s not the heart of the problem is it? That’s not what this is really all about.

  My voice softens. ‘It doesn’t come easily to you, does it. Speaking to people, making friends.’

  Her face stiffens. ‘No – but I don’t need friends. I’m not—’

  ‘Everyone needs friends,’ I cut her off. ‘They might not need to be loud. They might not like parties. They might want to spend ninety per cent of their time alone, doing their own thing, but everyone needs someone they can open up to – someone they can trust.’

  My mind turns over my own relationships.

  ‘I need Tom,’ I say, only realizing the words are true once I hear them out loud. ‘Louise and Ameerah, they’re nice, they’re fun to go out with, but I don’t need them. I don’t even need my mum, actually. But I need Tom.’

  I think of that night I got with J, me veering round wildly at that party, flirting with everyone. ‘I kind of go off the wall without him. He’s my best friend; he makes me grounded. You might not need a boyfriend, or a girlfriend – but you need someone in your life. Someone you can be honest with, someone you can open up with.’

  Amber blinks several times. ‘But no one wants to be that person for me,’ she says, so quietly I almost miss it. ‘I can’t . . . I can’t get on with people like you can. I’m not pretty. I can’t make them laugh. I don’t understand it. I don’t—’

  Amber’s face has contorted like she’s thinking too hard.

  I put a hand on her forearm. She looks up in surprise.

  ‘Do you know how I do it?’

 
She blinks. ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t think about it so much. Honestly, everyone is so fixed on themselves, no one is even thinking about what you’re saying. No one even remembers. Just talk. If you say something weird, laugh at yourself. Say something else, everyone will have already forgotten.’

  Amber half-smiles. ‘It’s easy for you. You’re Chloe MacNeil.’

  ‘And you’re Amber Nighy. You just saved me from a guy that was twice your size, when you could have kept on walking. I don’t know many people who would have done that.’

  Amber’s lower lip trembles. ‘Thank you,’ she says.

  I lean forward and give her a tight hug.

  CHAPTER 52

  Amber

  On the walk home, I can’t stop thinking about what Chloe said. ‘You saved me from a guy twice your size when you could have kept on walking. I don’t know many people who would have done that.’

  The air has grown bitterly cold and is numbing my cheeks, but it’s almost like I can’t feel it. No one has ever said something like that to me before. Well, no one other than Mum or Dad.

  Certainly not someone like Chloe MacNeil, the most popular girl in school.

  For the first time, I’m starting to think maybe I’m not quite such a freak. Maybe the weird way I am isn’t so bad . . . Maybe there are parts of me that are quite good too.

  * * *

  When I get home, I stand in the hallway for a few seconds. Usually the first thing I would do is run up to my bedroom and pull out my laptop so I can start checking Ren’s social media pages. But now I have absolutely zero desire to see what he’s posted. It’s almost like he’s been scrubbed out of my mind – the thought of looking at his photos again just makes me cringe.

  How was I so naive?

  So I don’t run upstairs. Instead, I rest my hand on the banister and listen. The muffled voices of Mum, Dad and Seb chatting in the living room echo through the hall. I pause for another moment and then slowly walk into the lounge.

  Seb is standing up, pacing around the room, telling a loud story about something that happened to him and his friends at school. Mum laughs, and I can see the ghost of a smile playing on Dad’s lips, though he’s staring at the screen of his Kindle.

  When I step in the room, Mum and Dad look up. Seb notices me and stops talking. He immediately comes bounding over, wrapping his arms around my shoulders.

  ‘Y’all right, sis? Don’t you need to go stalk people in your room?’

  ‘Sebastian!’ shouts Mum, frowning.

  But I just roll my eyes at him, and then I go and sit between Mum and Dad on the sofa. I curl up my legs into the warmth, feeling like a small child again.

  ‘You were right, Seb,’ I say quietly.

  ‘What?’ he bellows. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘You were right about Ren.’

  Mum’s eyes snap with recognition, and she raises a hand to her head, groaning. ‘Oh, Amber, please tell me you’re not still stalking that poor boy . . .’

  Seb snorts. ‘He’s not exactly a poor boy, Mum.’

  My cheeks prickle with heat.

  ‘Yeah, um, he’s not. He tried to attack another girl. I saw him . . . um . . . with Chloe MacNeil.’

  ‘Wait – what? You just saw Chloe MacNeil?’ says Seb.

  He immediately wheels on me and starts asking a million questions a second. Rather than shrinking away from him, I instead pluck at a thread on my jumper and quietly tell him, Mum and Dad exactly what happened.

  I tell them about finding Ren and Chloe on a date together. That I heard her scream, and he tried to pin her to the ground. That I . . .

  I pause for breath at that point. Mum’s eyes have grown wide, and even Dad has pushed his glasses to the end of his nose and is looking right at me. He opens his mouth, and Seb cuts in, laughing.

  ‘And then a guy came over, scared him off, right?’

  I shake my head. ‘No. That’s not what happened. I shouted at him. I scared him off.’

  ‘You – what?’

  ‘I scared him off.’

  All of my family are looking at me like I’ve grown an extra head. But then Dad gives a snort.

  ‘Well sounds like good riddance,’ he says, giving me a small smile before he goes back to reading his Kindle.

  Mum is looking at me agog. ‘You shouldn’t have done that – you should have called for help,’ she says, and then starts giving me a lecture on safety.

  I nod, and try to look like I agree, but when I glance up,

  I can see Seb’s face behind Mum and Dad, on the far sofa, grinning at me.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, me and Seb have retired to his bedroom. I’m sitting on the edge of his bed, playing with the same delicate thread on the hem of my jumper. He’s pacing around the floor, throwing a tennis ball up and gently bouncing it off the ceiling.

  ‘Christ,’ says Seb, after a while. ‘You saved Chloe MacNeil from Ren. He’s a built guy.’

  There’s a note of admiration in his voice. When I look up, he’s staring at me with his head tilted to one side.

  ‘I know –’ he clears his throat – ‘you guys aren’t friends, but you . . . you did that, for Chloe—’

  It sounds like a question.

  I shrug. ‘No. She’s not my friend, but I’m not going to let her get hurt.’

  Seb is still looking at me. The tennis ball falls with a thud somewhere between us.

  ‘I dunno, he was a dick to all those girls, and no one really said anything. Or did anything. It’s just . . . pretty cool, what you did.’

  I furrow my brow. ‘Pretty cool?’

  ‘Yep.’ Seb’s eyes crinkle. ‘Now don’t make me say it again.’

  I twist the thread of fabric round and round my thumb, and I smile.

  CHAPTER 53

  Amber

  On Monday morning, I’m walking towards the humanities block before school starts, on my way to meet Chloe. We’ve been messaging ever since Saturday, but somehow it doesn’t feel like all the messages I’ve got before. They haven’t made me dizzyingly pleased, or worried about how to reply. They just make me feel . . . happy.

  I keep fidgeting on my way to the school. Part of me can’t really believe that Chloe doesn’t mind being seen with me. Won’t it make her look worse, somehow, that she is hanging out with me? Won’t it make her popularity crash by about a million points?

  It’s the same hot, prickling feeling I get when Seb wants to speak to me at school. I know he doesn’t actually want to speak to me, not really, so how can I minimize myself enough that I won’t make him look bad?

  Despite the cold, the sun is breaking through the clouds, and I can feel a warm tickle across my cheeks. I see Chloe standing there at the front of school looking utterly radiant, even though it’s only 7 a.m., her clear cheeks and glossy hair shining as she beams at me.

  ‘Hey,’ she says with a confidence I could never fake, smiling at me.

  ‘Hey,’ I whisper back.

  But Chloe doesn’t give me time to think, she launches into talking a mile a minute about our plan.

  She’s got a meeting before school this morning with Ms Benewood, to ‘reintroduce’ her after her suspension, but Chloe wants to confront her. Well, she wants us to confront her. Show her the video of Ren. Get her to apologize.

  After Chloe has finished talking, she glances at me, her eyes sharp. ‘Does that work for you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, feeling my mouth turn dry.

  What I don’t understand is how Chloe can do this – be so confident, while I’m so quiet. And yet when Ren was there, attacking us, she broke down, and I was the one who had the strength to fight back.

  Right now, it feels like the last thing I could do. But when Chloe glances back and smiles at me, I begin to feel like I can.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, we’re both sitting across from Ms Benewood at her desk, and Chloe is explaining everything.

  Ms Benewood leans back in her chair. She’
s got her arms folded across her chest and raises an eyebrow as Chloe recounts her theory.

  Before she speaks, Ms Benewood glances at me with one eye.

  Ms Benewood sighs. ‘The thing is, girls, that I just can’t see how this could have happened. All right, you know he followed you on social media, but we’ve had no reports of someone hacking your emails, Chloe. No unauthorized sign ins.’

  This is my cue. ‘He wouldn’t have had to sign in—’ I interrupt, my mind ticking over all the things I found (and almost used) when I was tracking Ren.

  Ms Benewood blinks. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Chloe, you never found the sent emails, did you?’

  Chloe shakes her head.

  ‘Well, then,’ I go on, ‘he could have used a ghosting program, where they look like they’re sent from your email. All he would need to know is the email address, or the format of our email addresses – which he could have guessed from the school website.’

  Ms Benewood is still looking at both of us levelly. ‘How would he have gotten those photos of Louise? Girls, I understand this desire to prove your innocence, but honestly I do think this is a little elaborate—’

  ‘We don’t know about the photos—’ I start.

  ‘Show her the video,’ cuts in Chloe, nodding to my phone.

  My mouth turns dry. ‘A-are you sure?’

  Chloe’s teeth are set. ‘Yes. It’s the only way. Show her.’

  I turn and spin my phone towards Ms Benewood, while Chloe starts slowly explaining how she decided to confront Ren.

  As Ms Benewood watches the video, her face changes from a mixture of disbelief to horror.

  There’s a long pause after the video finishes, and she shuffles uncomfortably in her chair.

  Chloe is looking straight at Ms Benewood, her big green eyes piercingly steady.

  Ms Benewood eventually clears her throat.

  ‘I think we need to phone the police.’

  CHAPTER 54

  Chloe

  By the time I walk into the Year Eleven block, I know the news will have already swept through school. This morning, I posted a long Facebook post about ‘my experience with a cyberstalker’ and even attached a snippet of the video from Amber’s phone, which I put together over the weekend. The post has already got 113 likes and more than twenty comments.