Girl Online

by Zoe Sugg

  “Did I say that?”

  Tom nods.

  “But I didn’t sound like a Smurf.”

  Tom smiles. “Oh, yes you did. But you were right. And it was the one thing, out of everything that everyone said to me back then, that I actually listened to. It was the one thing that made me go back to school.”

  I stare at him. “Really?”

  “Yes. Because you were right. If I hadn’t gone back and kept hiding away in my bedroom, everyone would have believed him.” He grins. “And they’d never have got to know what a truly incredible, gifted, and wonderful person I am.”

  I smile. “Not to mention modest.”

  “Yeah, that too. But it’s the same for you now. If you hide away and let them say all that crap about you, then they’ll never get the chance to see what an amazing person you are.”

  My eyes fill with tears. “Tom!”

  “It’s true. You are. And you know that I’ll stick up for you always, but I really think you should say something. Tell your side of the story.” Tom pulls his fierce face, the one he always used to pull when he had play-fights with Dad. “Then I want you to give me Noah Flynn’s address and I’m going to go around there to New York or wherever and I’m going to kill him.”

  I laugh.

  “I mean it, Pen—well, the bit about telling your side of the story anyway.”

  “OK, I’ll think about it.”

  “Don’t just think about it—do it. You’ll feel way better. I know I did when I went back to school and told Jonathan Price where he could shove it.” Tom gives me a hug. “Love you, sis.”

  “Love you too. Please don’t tell Mum and Dad about what’s happened, though. You know what they’re like about the Internet. I don’t want them worrying.”

  Tom nods. “OK. I’ll put off going back to uni for a couple of days, just in case you need me.”

  “Really? But won’t you get into trouble?”

  “Nah, I never get into trouble.” Tom grins at me and I feel overwhelmed with gratitude. I might have lost Noah and Elliot but I’ll always have my family. The best family in the world.

  Chapter Forty

  As soon as Tom’s gone, I put my laptop back in my wardrobe and go to run myself a warm bath, rummaging through my basket of bath bombs until I find one called Chill Out Bliss. As the warmth of the fragrant soapy water soaks into my bones, I feel a weird kind of calm. I’m still hurting and sad but I no longer feel helpless. I dunk my head right under the water and feel my hair floating out around me.

  “You remind me of a mermaid.” Noah’s words from the underwater corridor echo around my mind, causing me to sit right up. As I squeeze the water from my hair a chorus of hows fills my mind. How could he seem so nice and so genuine? How could he lie so easily? How could he do that to me? But I force myself to block them out. It doesn’t really matter how. The fact is he did.

  I get out of the bath and slather myself with my favorite moisturizer. Then I wrap myself in my coziest dressing gown and go back to my bedroom. I turn on my fairy lights—and immediately I think of the tent Noah made for me on New Year’s Eve. I turn the lights off and put on my bedside lamp. Next door, I hear Elliot’s bedroom door slam.

  To stop myself thinking painful thoughts about Noah, I think angry thoughts about Elliot. He must have seen what’s been happening online by now but still there’s been no knocking on the wall and no texts or calls. Unless he tried contacting me while I was in the bath. I feel a glimmer of hope and go over to the wardrobe to retrieve my phone. When I see that there are no messages, my hope turns back to anger. It must have been him. I think of what Tom said to me earlier and I know what I have to do. I can’t hide away in my bedroom. I have to go around there and have it out with him.

  It’s only when I’m marching up Elliot’s driveway that I realize I haven’t set foot in his house for years. I can’t even remember what the doorbell sounds like. As I press it, a loud ding-dong rings out. I feel gripped by nerves. I hear footsteps on the wooden floor inside and the door opens. His dad looks at me like I’ve just interrupted him doing the most exciting thing in the world. He looks at everyone in this way, even Elliot, all the time.

  “Yes?” he says questioningly, like he doesn’t even know who I am.

  “Is Elliot there, please?”

  He sighs. “Just a moment.” And then he pushes the door to, leaving me out in the cold.

  “Elliot!” he bellows. “There’s someone at the door.”

  I hear Elliot’s voice muffled, but can’t work out what he’s saying. The door re-opens and his dad reappears.

  “I’m afraid he can’t come to the door at the moment.”

  “What? But . . .”

  “Thank you. Goodbye.” And that’s it. The door’s shut and he’s gone.

  By the time I’ve stormed back home and up to my room, I’m in a fury. I stare at the bedroom wall, wishing Elliot and I had a secret knocking code for I hate you, you stupid coward! But we don’t have anything even close because we’ve never needed anything like that. We’ve never, ever fallen out. Until now.

  I sit down on my bed and look around the room in despair. Why would Elliot do something like this to me? Why would he do something so horrible, and then hide away from me like this? But he can’t hide away from me forever. I consider keeping watch at my window so that I can ambush him the second he leaves his house. But that would be nuts. I contemplate drilling a hole in the wall to punch him through, but that’s even crazier. In the end, I get my phone from my wardrobe and send him a text.

  I can’t believe you would do that to me. Some best friend!

  As I press send, I feel a fresh wave of sorrow. I’m not alone, I remind myself, thinking of Mum and Dad and Tom. I’m not alone. But all I feel is loneliness and loss.

  I stare at my phone, waiting for a reply. But there’s nothing. I get more and more frustrated. How dare he and Noah hurt me like this and then hide away from me? And then I do the worst thing I could possibly do. I get my laptop out of the wardrobe and go online.

  First, I check Elliot’s Twitter to see if he’s updated lately. I’m not sure what I’m looking for really—proof that he’s been online, a hateful comment about me . . . But his last tweet was on Christmas Day.

  @ElliotWentworth Worst. Christmas. Ever.

  I can’t check his Facebook without reactivating my account so I leave that and check his Instagram. He hasn’t posted since his last day in New York—a selfie of me and him at breakfast, grinning over a bottle of maple syrup. For a moment, I wish I could magically transport myself back to when the picture was taken so that I could stop things from going so horribly wrong. But then I feel a stab of anger. I wasn’t the one who made everything go wrong in the first place.

  And then I do something really stupid. I go onto Google and do a search for Noah Flynn. Now all of the top results are to do with me. I see a new headline from the Celeb Watch site: Noah Flynn Had Breakdown Over Parents’ Death.

  I click on the link with trembling fingers.

  Noah Flynn must really be regretting the day he decided to play away from home with UK blogger Penny Porter aka Girl Online. Another of the revelations to come from Penny’s blog is that Noah had a breakdown after the tragic death of his parents four years ago. Could this explain his less-than-wise choices over the holidays? Is he still struggling to deal with his loss? A spokesman for the new star declined to comment. Leah Brown has also remained silent over the Internet storm surrounding the couple. Girl Online has now deleted all of her posts referring to “Brooklyn Boy” but I think it’s safe to say the damage is done.

  There’s a link at the bottom of the post to another article, titled: Girl Online Reveals Noah Flynn’s Favorite NYC Hangouts. I don’t click on it. I can’t. I’m too shocked by what I’ve just read. What are they talking about? What breakdown? Can they really just make stuff up like that? Then I think back to the post I wrote about facing fears and how I talked about the exercise Noah shared with me. My face fl
ushes red-hot. But I didn’t say that he had a breakdown. I didn’t even mention his parents. I just said he’d lost someone close to him. I stare at the screen in disbelief. How can they do this? How can they twist things like this?

  I click back to my search, swinging between feelings of guilt and anger. I scan through the list of results until I see one that fills me with dread: The Girl that Noah Flynn Cheated on Leah Brown for—yes, really!

  I click on the link and it goes to the YouTube video of me falling over onstage. How have they found that? But it doesn’t take a genius to work it out. A simple search for my name would have thrown it up. The sad fact is, apart from my blog, my entire Internet presence before today was that stupid video. Thousands of people have now posted comments. I tell myself to shut the laptop, to put it back in the wardrobe, but it’s like I’m on some weird kind of self-destruct and I automatically start scrolling down. “Ew, gross” and “What a state” are the nicest comments on there. The rest are so horrible I can barely believe what I’m reading. Clearly Leah Brown’s fans have embarked on a major hate campaign against me.

  “Penny, come and have some dinner,” Mum calls up the stairs.

  I groan. I think about saying I’m not hungry but then that will only make them worry. So I drag myself downstairs, my head buzzing with thoughts of Elliot. I must have really hurt him to make him do what he’s done. To make him end our friendship in this way. I go into the kitchen and sit down at the table.

  “Are you OK?” Mum asks the question, but she, Dad, and Tom are all staring at me, concerned.

  “Yes. Yes, I’m fine.”

  “I’ve been asked to do another job in New York,” Mum says, sitting down next to me. “A Valentine’s Ball.” She looks at me excitedly. “I’ve been trying to get through to Sadie Lee to see if she’ll do the catering but she’s not picking up.”

  “I bet she’s not,” Tom mutters.

  I frown at him and shake my head.

  “What?” Mum looks at him questioningly.

  Tom looks down at his plate. “Nothing.”

  Mum looks back at me. “It’s great news, isn’t it? We can all go over there again.”

  No, it’s not! I want to yell. It’s actually the worst news you could possibly tell me. If I set foot in America right now I’ll probably be lynched! But I somehow force myself to nod.

  As Mum and Dad talk excitedly about how these American jobs have really turned the business around, I focus on making myself eat some lasagna without having a choking fit. It’s so weird to think that when Megan posted that video of me, imagining the whole school seeing my underwear felt like the worst thing ever. But now the whole world’s seeing it. Now, thanks to Elliot, I truly have gone viral. Just like the Black Death. Or smallpox. Great.

  I manage to eat half of my dinner before the need to get back to my bedroom becomes overwhelming. Thankfully, Mum and Dad are still engrossed in a chat about Valentine’s Day themes so they don’t notice the food left on my plate. As soon as I get back to my room, I go straight to my phone to see if I’ve had a reply from Elliot but there’s nothing.

  “Fine!” I say to the wall crossly.

  But then that weird self-destruct urge kicks in again and I start scrolling through the photos on my camera. When I get to the one of Noah, my finger hovers over delete. But for some weird reason I can’t bring myself to do it. I keep on scrolling through until I get to the photos of my room in the Waldorf Astoria. At first it feels as if it was all a dream; that I never even stayed there. But then little details start catching my eye. The blanket on the chair. The orange moon. Princess Autumn on top of my pillow. These things did happen. They were real. Even if Noah was lying, I wasn’t. I was in that room. And I sat in that chair. And I felt for the first time, that my life was my own.

  Then I have an idea. I remove the memory card from my camera and slot it into my laptop, removing the pictures of the hotel room and sending them to the printer. Then I stick them around the edge of my dressing-table mirror like a frame.

  I look at each of the photos in turn. The way I felt back in that hotel room was only partly down to Noah. But most of it was down to me. I chose to face my fear and fly to New York. I chose to believe in myself. I chose to trust Noah and fall in love. I am a good person. It doesn’t matter what anyone says about me online. I know the truth because this is my life story, not theirs. And OK, so it hasn’t turned out to be the perfect love story, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t have one, one day. My life can be anything I want it to be—as long as I keep on remembering that it’s mine. Not theirs.

  I catch my reflection in the mirror. I look really, really tired and my eyes are bloodshot from crying. But I take my hair down and shake it out. I still love that it’s red. That love is still there, even if Noah’s kind words about it were all lies. I turn off my laptop and phone and I get into bed.

  Chapter Forty-One

  The first thing I do when I get up the next morning is go and sit at my dressing table and stare at the photos again, absorbing the positive memories like a battery recharging. After about ten minutes, I feel ready to go downstairs. Tom is already up and sitting at the table.

  “I’m going to give you a lift to school,” he says as soon as he sees me. “And I’m going to wait outside in the car all day, in case you need me.”

  “What? You can’t do that!”

  “Oh, yes I can.”

  “But won’t you die of boredom?”

  Tom grins. “Probably. I’m going to bring my laptop and finish off my uni assignment.”

  I smile back at him. “Thank you.”

  Tom puts his arm around me. “You can do this, you know.”

  • • •

  As I walk into school, I keep reciting his words like a mantra. I can do this. I can do this. I feel like I have a neon sign above my head saying SILENCE because everyone I walk past stops chatting within seconds. But I don’t mind silence. Anything’s better than the abuse I was getting yesterday. Even when people nudge each other and stare at me, I don’t mind too much. It’s really weird because I’ve spent most of my school years feeling invisible, living in the shadow of Megan’s spotlight. But not anymore. Now, everywhere I go, people seem to notice me. Even kids in other years seem to know who I am. As I walk down the corridor to my form room I think of Tom, parked outside school in Dad’s car. I’m so glad I didn’t persuade him to go home.

  As soon as I walk into my form room, everyone stops talking and stares at me. But that’s OK. It’s like the walk through the school was a warm-up for this moment. And at least I won’t have to face Megan and Ollie until drama, as they’re in different form groups. I go to the table next to Kira and Amara. They’re both looking at me like I’ve grown another head.

  “Hi,” I say as calmly and confidently as I can.

  “Oh, hi,” Amara says. “How are you?” She looks genuinely concerned.

  “OK.” I pull my chair back and sit down.

  “Are you sure?” Kira says, leaning across to me.

  I nod and bite down on my lip. Their obvious concern is giving me the urge to cry.

  I become aware of everyone else looking at us and my face starts to burn.

  Kira pulls her chair even closer to me. “Is it true? Did you . . . ?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “It’s not?” Amara whispers. She and Kira exchange glances.

  “No. Someone told a load of lies to that website.”

  “So you’re not Girl Online?” Amara says.

  “Yes, I am. I was. But the rest of it isn’t true. Not the way they’re saying.”

  “I can’t believe you’re Girl Online. I love Girl Online,” Kira says, smiling. “I found it when I was doing a Google search for Snooper’s Paradise. That post you did about potholes was hilarious!”

  “I love it too,” Amara says, nodding enthusiastically.

  “Really?” I feel a prickle of hope. They’re being so nice. They don’t seem to be judging me at all.
<
br />   The twins move their chairs so they’re right up to my table.

  “So, was Brooklyn Boy someone else then?” Kira asks.

  I take a deep breath. “No. He was—is—Noah Flynn but”—I fight down a wave of embarrassment—“I didn’t know who he was. He didn’t tell me he was a musician and I’d never heard of him before anyway.”

  “I hadn’t either,” Amara says.

  Kira shakes her head and sighs. “So he lied to you?”

  I nod. I wonder how long it will take before I can acknowledge this fact without feeling sick to my stomach.

  Amara places her hand over mine on the table. “That’s so horrible.”

  I swallow hard. I mustn’t cry now. Not with everyone looking.

  “We couldn’t believe it when we found out,” Kira says. “I told Megan there was no way you would have done something like that. I didn’t even believe that you were Girl Online. But then it went all over the Internet and—”

  “All right, you horrible lot, holiday’s over. Let’s have some order, please.” We all turn to see our teacher, Mr. Morgan, standing in the doorway.

  The twins take their chairs back to their table and fumble in their bags for their planners. But I sit there motionless, with Kira’s words on repeat in my mind. “I told Megan there was no way you would have done something like that. I didn’t even believe that you were Girl Online. But then it went all over the Internet . . . But then it went all over the Internet . . .”

  I barely register a single thing during form period. All I can think is, how did Megan know about my blog before the news broke online? Ollie could have told her I’d met Noah but he didn’t know anything about my blog. For a second, I have the crazy notion that Elliot must have told her, but that is truly insane. But if Megan somehow knew about the blog and Noah before it got out online, could she be the one who leaked it? Form period goes torturously slowly but as soon as the bell finally rings, I’m over at the twins’ table like a shot.