If only it hadn’t been picked up by someone with two million followers.
The media consultant that Mum and Dad hired had said that was really unlucky. ‘It was a perfect storm,’ she said. ‘The fact that it’s such a topical issue, plus the university was in the news – it just got traction.’
‘But people say worse things every day,’ Dad said. ‘The internet is full of trolls—’
‘Yes. But Delilah used her real name.’
‘And it’s quite a memorable name,’ said Mum sadly. ‘We picked it to be unique.’
I reached for my phone, desperate to reach out to someone who would make it better. If I still had my social media accounts I would have put out a generic moan to the universe. Or if I still had my friends I would send them a message and get a virtual hug back. But I couldn’t do that now. I wasn’t even sure if they knew how to get in touch with me – assuming they wanted to.
Instead I looked up my new friends online. Kiyoshi’s Instagram was a work of art: street fashion, cute boys and the most beautiful photos of Paris. After a few minutes of watching his calligraphy videos, I felt as if I’d had a long massage or meditation session. No wonder Vee wanted to boost his self-esteem.
Vee, on the other hand, was even more full-on online than in person. Her Twitter bio described her as ‘Cat-Lover, Activist and Anarchist’ and her handle was ‘VeeforVagina’. Her profile picture was one crazy eye staring at the screen. There were cat gifs and art, but most of her tweets were anti-sexism, anti-capitalism, anti-war and anti-global heteronormative cisgender patriarchy. No thought went untweeted. She ate trolls for breakfast. And she had a ton of followers – way more than I used to.
Now I felt worse than ever. I admired Vee for fighting the good fight. She was like I used to be, before I got eaten alive.
In despair, I rang home.
‘Delilah!’ Dad said, sounding pleased to hear from me. ‘So … Enjoying Paris?’
‘Sort of.’
‘School all good?’
‘Yeah, it’s OK. I just—’
‘You must—’
‘Go on,’ I said, at the same time as he said, ‘Sorry.’
This always seemed to happen to us on the phone. Long silences, and then we ended up talking at the same time. I wanted to tell him about the lunch incident – not the whole thing, but that I did something embarrassing – but it seemed too difficult. After we managed the briefest of conversations, he said, ‘Listen, love, I’m afraid I’m running late – I’ve got to go out. I’ll get your mother.’
‘Hi sweetheart,’ she said, finally. ‘How are you? Everything OK?’
‘Yes … I mean, no. I don’t know.’ That was as far as I could before I had to bite my lip to stop tears coming.
‘Lola!’ Mum said, sounding distraught. ‘What happened?’
‘I’ve just made a huge fool of myself at school.’
‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ said Mum.
She said this a lot. When a friend said something mean: ‘I’m sure she didn’t mean it’. After an exam disaster: ‘I’m sure you did better than you think.’ When I had a spot: ‘I’m sure no one will notice.’
I’d tried saying ‘How can you be so sure?’ but it got us nowhere. It was meant well. I knew that. But sometimes it felt like she was saying, ‘I don’t want to hear it.’
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ I said. I didn’t want to tell her now. ‘Nothing major. But I made an idiot of myself and now I’m probably going to have no friends here.’
‘Well – why don’t you just come home then?’ Mum said, unexpectedly.
Completely thrown, I said, ‘I never said I wanted to come home! I just said I had a bad day, that’s all!’
‘I’m sorry, darling,’ Mum said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘I know,’ I said, sighing. It obviously wasn’t going to be a good conversation, and that was that. ‘It’s fine. Is Len there?’
‘No – he’s out with friends,’ said Mum.
‘Out with friends? But it’s nine o’clock on a weeknight!’
‘It was a special evening – they’re having a games tournament. Your dad has just gone to pick him up.’
‘What? But when I was his age, I had to be home by six!’
‘Well, you know Lenny!’ said Mum. ‘He’s so sociable. I don’t think you’d have wanted to be out till nine at his age, sweetie.’
Of course. I was a social leper while Lenny was a man about town. I wanted to scream but there was no point.
As soon as I got off the phone to Mum, I texted him, ‘What’s up, munchkin? Are you keeping my room clean?’
No reply. Now I was picturing him out at a casino, suave in a dinner jacket, with blondes in diamonds hanging off his arm.
Obviously it wasn’t like that; more like four boys hunched over their consoles in a room that smelled of feet. But the awful thing was, Mum was right; Lenny had always had a better social life than me. Like everyone else, he was just … better than me.
I knew where these thoughts were heading. I knew what I was about to do, and that it would feel bad, but I couldn’t stop myself. The very definition of compulsive behaviour.
Slowly, like a sleepwalker, I typed my name into Google – my real name. I read the first few articles without feeling too much – I’d read them before. But then I flipped a few pages further, and got into the comments. If I’d thought that nobody could have hated me more than I hated myself, I was wrong.
Chapter Twelve
For the next three days, I managed to avoid everyone as far as possible, sneaking out to a local café for breakfast and lunch a few times. I even avoided Kiyoshi and Vee. I spent my evenings trying to get to grips with work, and watching old episodes of Friends.
I was halfway through ‘The One with the Dentist’, when there was a knock at my door. It was Fletcher.
‘Hey!’ she said. ‘How are you doing? I’ve barely seen you! I was just going to go out for a walk – maybe get some hot chocolate somewhere. You haven’t had hot chocolate till you’ve had it in Paris! Wanna come with?’
I was so lonely, I was tempted. But I was discovering that loneliness was a vicious circle; it made you terrible company, so you avoided people even more. I was so miserable there was no way I’d be able to hide it and keep up with her cheery chatter.
‘That’s really nice of you,’ I said, keeping my voice steady with an effort. ‘But – I’ve just got so much work to do. Trying to catch up, you know.’
‘Oh, totally,’ she said, obviously making an effort not to sound offended. ‘I hear that! So much pressure. Well, some other time!’
After she left, I felt guilty about turning her down, and promised myself that I would hang out with her next time she offered.
Then I realised something. If there was gossip about me, she obviously hadn’t heard it. Maybe Tariq hadn’t said anything. But how would I know?
I got my answer later that evening when I went down to the laundry room to retrieve a mini-wash – I had managed to pack twenty pairs of knickers and only four pairs of socks. I almost ducked behind a giant dryer when I saw who was there; Tariq himself, sorting out a huge pile of shirts.
‘Oh, hello again Lola,’ he said, when he saw me. ‘Do you know what “Do not triangle” means? And yes, I have googled it.’
‘I do actually, it means don’t bleach.’ Mum had a list of all the laundry symbols, and their meanings, taped inside the cupboard door under the sink. I never thought I’d feel emotional about bleach, but the thought of that cupboard door made me homesick.
‘Great, thanks. Any other advice? I’ve never actually done laundry before.’ He looked delighted with himself.
‘Well, first you want to separate your whites and your darks.’
‘Racist,’ Tariq muttered happily, sorting through his clothes. A second later, he looked up. My face must have been whiter than his whitest whites.
‘Hey! It was just a stupid joke!’
‘No – I know,’ I said, recovering myself. I plastered a smile on my face. ‘Listen,’ I went on quickly. ‘About the other day … When you met me at lunch …’
‘Don’t mention it.’
Before I could chicken out, I asked, ‘You didn’t tell anyone, did you?’
‘Of course not!’ He frowned, and I almost melted with relief. All of those days I’d been torturing myself – and he never said a thing. He could have been lying, of course, but I believed him.
‘Now, where does this go?’ He picked up his bottle of laundry liquid.
I helped him figure it all out, hoping that he wouldn’t notice my laundry basket, which was full of unmentionables. I managed to bung it all in quickly, while he was distracted with the machine’s settings.
‘So that takes – fifty minutes? Perfect, that’s time for two Pomodoros. Do you use the Pomodoro method? Best study method ever.’
‘No! I’ve never heard of it.’
‘Oh, it’s great. I’ll send you a link. Are you on Whatsapp?’ He took out his phone.
‘I’m not on Whatsapp,’ I said, my heart sinking as I imagined going through this conversation fifty billion more times until I died.
‘Facebook? Instagram? Snapchat? Twitter?’
‘I’m not on anything. I’m taking a social media break,’ I said, like the big fat liar I was.
To my surprise, Tariq looked at me with admiration.
‘That is so cool,’ he said, raising an eyebrow. ‘What a great decision. Your life must be so productive! Did you just decide to cut it all out because of the IB?’
‘Um – sort of,’ I said, cringing inside as I imagined what he would say, if he knew the real reason.
He looked at the time on his phone. ‘Well, got to go. See you later!’
I was a bit disappointed that he’d disappeared so quickly. But honestly, what did I expect? He’d been in this school forever; he already had friends, not to mention a girlfriend. It was probably just as well. The more I got to know people here, the more risk of them finding out who I was. Monica, Rachel, Phoebe and the rest were the only safe friends for now.
Chapter Thirteen
It all started so innocently. All I wanted to do was make friends.
That is – I wanted to make friends and impress people. Specifically, people at universities.
I had applied to loads of universities, but I had my heart set on one. I won’t say what it was, but let’s call it Dream Uni. Meanwhile, I was really busy; with my Junior Prefect stuff, the basketball team and Model United Nations. I didn’t want to give everything up just to focus on A-Levels. I wanted to be well-rounded, so that I could put interesting things on my UCAS forms.
And part of being well-rounded was having a good social media presence. I figured that if employers looked at your social media profiles, why wouldn’t universities? So along with gifs and cat videos, I posted links to interesting articles, and I retweeted and favourited interesting things. And I tweeted against things that were sexist, racist or otherwise bad. It didn’t always have much effect but at least I tried. I couldn’t understand my friends who just posted selfies of themselves all day long.
I also followed the universities I wanted to go to. And the Student’s Union of Dream Uni. The day that Dream Uni Students’ Union followed me back, I actually jumped for joy.
And then came an even more exciting day. I was fuming over a sci-fi film I’d just seen. It had only two female characters and they were both naked. I tweeted, ‘Seven hundred years in the future and a woman still needs to take her clothes off to get in the story. Not cool.’ And I at-mentioned the production company, and hash-tagged the film. And @DreamUni retweeted me.
I screamed so loud that Mum actually came running.
‘They retweeted me! They retweeted me!’ I said, waving my phone at her.
‘Is that all? I thought you’d had an offer from them or something,’ she said, when I told her.
‘No, but … it’s the next best thing!’ How could she not understand? If the Student’s Union were retweeting me, the admissions people were bound to notice. But more importantly, it meant, surely, that I was the kind of person who belonged there. I was so proud that they’d already heard the name Delilah Hoover.
For the next few weeks, I tweeted back and forth casually with @DreamUni – not so much that I was a stalker, but just enough that they wouldn’t forget me. And I also started to get interested in the other thing they were tweeting about: the Student’s Union elections.
All the candidates for president looked pretty great. The two front runners were a guy called Tashfiq Raham and a girl called Liberty Bennett, who was gay. But one famously horrible newspaper columnist wrote a snarky article about British universities, trashing Dream Uni by name, and directly mentioned Tashfiq as an example of ‘angry minorities’.
When I saw the link to the article on Twitter, and read it, I practically choked on my Pop-Tarts. It was so gross, I had to say something. So I drafted a tweet that said, ‘Ignore this ignorant woman. I support all the candidates. #celebratediversity’.
But that was so boring! Also I didn’t like that hashtag – making these students sound like they were pets in my diversity zoo. I didn’t just want to write a supportive tweet, I wanted to write something that was supportive and witty and memorable. Something that would impress people. So I wrote, ‘If the president of DUSU is not a straight white man, I’m withdrawing my application! #stuffstupidwhitepeoplesay’.
That was clunky, though. The wittiest tweets, and the ones that got the most retweets, were always the shortest. I decided to go for out-and-out sarcasm, without the hashtag. I wrote, ‘Yes! Sick of minorities moaning. Straight white people FTW!’
But that looked clunky too. Maybe I should just retweet the horrible columnist and write, ‘Ugh, gross’. But that was lame. Surely I could do better than that? What was wrong with me? I stared in frustration at the screen.
‘Delilah,’ Mum called. ‘Come and have dinner.’
‘Hang on,’ I called back. ‘I’m just writing a tweet.’
Mum put her head around the bedroom door. ‘Delilah.
Internet Sabbath. We agreed – remember?’
‘Oh yeah.’ In the interests of family unity, Mum had decided to impose a twenty-four hour ‘technology Sabbath’, starting at on Friday evening. We had agreed that nobody would be allowed online; not Dad, not Lenny, and especially not me. ‘Hang on – I just really need to do this first.’
‘Can’t it wait?’ Mum said.
I shook my head. This was urgent. If I didn’t tweet about it now, it would be too late. And if I stayed quiet, it would look like I was condoning it. I was positive that Dream Uni – not to mention all of Twitter – would be looking to me for my reaction.
So I went with my original tweet. But at the last minute I deleted ‘straight’ to make it punchier and just put, ‘Yes! Sick of minorities whining. Give white people a chance!’
I considered adding the hashtag #stuffstupidwhitepeoplesay, but I didn’t want to overdo it. Everyone would know, from looking at my timeline, that I was being sarcastic.
‘Delilah! Come on!’
‘OK! Fine!’ I pressed tweet and went to dinner. Five minutes later, I couldn’t resist having a peek under the table. @DUSU hadn’t favourited my tweet and I was a bit disappointed.
Mum saw me. ‘Delilah! Stop! This is why we need this digital detox. Give me your phone now. Let’s all put our phones away.’
She took all our devices away, and put them in a biscuit tin. And the next day we all went out for a long, healthy walk and a pub lunch where the food took ages to come. By the time we got home, and picked up the first message on the landline to tell us what was happening, the damage was done. And it could never be undone.
Chapter Fourteen
It was my first Friday night at Jean Monnet. From out of my window, I could see lights, people, movement. I’d been trying to focus on my maths homework, but I kept getting dist
racted. I’d seen a poster earlier, that said the Film Club was showing some old film in the cafeteria. Maybe I could sneak down there and sit at the back. Like a homeless person in a library, I wanted to be in a warm room with other people.
I ran downstairs, straight into Vee and Kiyoshi who were sitting in the reception area.
‘Hey – there you are!’ said Vee. ‘We were just saying we hadn’t seen you all week.’
‘I actually knocked on your door earlier, but there was no answer,’ said Kiyoshi.
‘Oh, did you?’ I couldn’t hide my grin, I was so overwhelmed with pleasure. ‘Sorry, I must have had my head-phones in.’
‘We’re going out for some food. Come,’ said Vee, thrusting her hands into the pockets of her trench coat.
‘Do you like sushi?’ Kiyoshi asked.
They were going out for sushi. Of course they were. My friends sometimes went to Nandos or Pizza Express. I had never actually been to a sushi restaurant – even if I could manage the raw fish I was bound to impale myself on a chopstick or try to eat the decorative green grass or something. But if they really wanted me to come, I didn’t want to pass it up.
‘I don’t know if I’m dressed for it …’ I plucked at my hoody and jeans.
‘We’re not dressed up,’ said Vee. She was wearing wide denim culottes, old tennis shoes and a red blouse plus lots of eyeliner. Her curly hair was in a big knot on top of her head, and she was carrying a bag that said I KNIT SO I DON’T KILL PEOPLE. ‘Anyway you look good. Your hair is so awesome. I was thinking of dyeing it that colour but don’t worry, I’m not going to copy you.’
‘Here’s Priya,’ said Kiyoshi.
‘Priya! This is Lola. She’s new and she’s awesome,’ said Vee.
Priya was very pretty and tiny – almost doll-sized – with an incredibly high-pitched voice to match. She seemed to be constantly on the move, bouncing from one foot to another. She was also very into dancing; I had seen her dashing to and from class, with her dance stuff crammed into a backpack. Tonight she was wearing a denim jacket with a colourful portrait of a woman on the back.
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