Solitaire

1 Loud, experienced girls who use fake IDs to get into clubs, wear a lot of things that they see on blogging sites, frequently pretend to starve themselves, enjoy a good bit of orange tan, socially or addictively smoke, are open to drugs, know a lot about the world. I very much disapprove of these people.

2 Strange girls who appear to have no real concept of dressing well or controlling their freakish behaviour, examples being drawing on each other with whiteboard pens and being physically unable to wash their hair; girls who somehow end up with boyfriends who are just as terrifying as they are; girls who on average have a mental age at least three years younger than their physical age. These girls sadden me greatly because often I feel that they could be very normal if they put in some effort.

3 So-called ‘normal’ girls. Approximately half of these have steady, average boyfriends. Are aware of fashion trends and popular culture. Usually pleasant, some quiet, some loud, enjoy being with friends, enjoy a good party, enjoy shopping and movies, enjoy life.

I’m not saying that everyone fits into one of these groups. I love that there are exceptions because I hate that these groups exist. I mean, I don’t know where I’d go. I suppose I’d be group 3 because that’s definitely what Our Lot are. Then again, I don’t feel very similar to anyone from Our Lot. I don’t feel very similar to anyone at all.

I circle the room three or four times before concluding that he’s not here. Whatever. Maybe I just imagined Michael Holden. It’s not like I care anyway. I go back to Our Lot’s corner, slump on to the floor at Becky’s feet and close my eyes.

*

The common-room door swings open as Mr Kent, Deputy Head, strides into the crowd, followed by his usual posse: Miss Strasser, who is too young and too pretty to be any kind of teacher, and our Head Girl, Zelda Okoro (I’m not even joking – her name really is that fantastic). Kent is a sharply-angled sort of man most often noted for his startling resemblance to Alan Rickman, and is probably the only teacher in this school to hold true intelligence. He is also my English teacher, and has been for over five years, so we actually know each other fairly well. That’s probably a bit weird. We do have a Headmistress, Mrs Lemaire, who is widely rumoured to be a member of the French government, explaining why she never appears to be present in her own school.

“I want some quiet,” says Kent, standing in front of an interactive whiteboard, which hangs on the wall just below our school motto: Confortamini in Domino et in potentia virtutis eius. The sea of grey uniforms turns to face him. For a few moments, Kent says nothing. He does this a lot.

Becky and I grin at each other and start counting the seconds. This is a game we play. I can’t remember when it started, but every single time we’re in assembly or a sixth-form meeting or whatever, we count the length of his silences. Our record is seventy-nine seconds. No joke.

When we hit twelve and Kent opens his mouth to speak—

Music begins to play out of the tannoy.

It’s the Darth Vader theme from Star Wars.

An instant uneasiness soars over the sixth form. People turn their heads wildly from side to side, whispering, wondering why Kent would play music through the tannoy, and why Star Wars. Perhaps he’s going to start lecturing us on communicating with clarity, or persistence, or empathy and understanding, or skills of interdependence, which are what most of the sixth-form meetings are about. Perhaps he’s trying to make a point about the importance of leadership. Only when the pictures begin to appear on the screen behind him do we realise what is, in fact, going on.

First, it’s Kent’s face Photoshopped into Yoda’s. Then it’s Kent as Jabba the Hutt.

Then it’s Princess Kent in a golden bikini.

The entire sixth form bursts into uncontrollable laughter.

The real Kent, stern-faced but keeping his cool, marches out of the room. As soon as Strasser similarly disappears, people begin to tear from group to group, reliving the look in Kent’s eyes when his face appeared on Natalie Portman’s, complete with white Photoshop face paint and an extravagant hairdo. I have to admit, it’s kind of funny.

After Kent/Darth Maul leaves the screen, and as the orchestral masterpiece reaches its climax through the speakers above our heads, the interactive whiteboard displays the following words:

SOLITAIRE.CO.UK

Becky brings the site up on a computer and Our Lot cluster round to have a good look. The troll blog has one post now, uploaded two minutes ago – a photo of Kent staring in passive anger at the board.

We all start talking. Well, everyone else does. I just sit there.

“Some kids probably thought it was clever,” snorts Becky. “They probably came up with it on their blogs and thought they’d take pictures and prove to their hipster friends how hilarious and rebellious they are.”

“Well, yeah, it is clever,” says Evelyn, her long-established superiority complex making its regular appearance. “It’s sticking it to the man.”

I shake my head, because nothing is clever about it apart from the skill of the person who managed to morph Kent’s face into Yoda’s. That is Photoshop Talent.

Lauren is grinning widely. Lauren Romilly is a social smoker and has a mouth slightly too large for her face. “I can see the Facebook statuses already. This has probably broken my Twitter feed.”

“I need a photo of this on my blog,” continues Evelyn. “I could do with a couple of thousand more followers.”

“Go away, Evelyn,” snorts Lauren. “You’re already Internet famous.”

This makes me laugh. “Just post another photo of your legs, Evelyn,” I say quietly. “They already get reblogged, like, twenty thousand times.”

Only Becky hears me. She grins at me, and I grin back, which is sort of nice because I rarely think of funny things to say.

And that’s it. That’s pretty much all we say about it.

Ten minutes and it’s forgotten.

To tell you the truth though, this prank has made me feel kind of weird. The fact of the matter is that Star Wars was actually a major obsession of mine when I was a kid. I guess I haven’t watched any of the films for a few years now, but hearing that music brings back something. I don’t know what. Some feeling in my chest.

Ugh, I’m getting sentimental.

I bet whoever did this is really pleased with themselves. It kind of makes me hate them.

Five minutes later, I’ve just about dozed off, my head on the computer desk and my arms barricading my face from all forms of social interaction, when somebody pats me on the shoulder.

I jerk upwards and gaze blearily in the direction of the pat. Becky’s looking at me oddly, purple strands cascading around her. She blinks.

“What?” I ask.

She points behind her, so I look.

A guy is standing there. Nervous. Face in a sort of grinning grimace. I realise what’s going on, but my brain doesn’t quite accept that this is possible, so I open my mouth and close it three times before coming up with:

“Jesus Christ.”

The guy steps towards me.

“V-Victoria?”

Excluding my new acquaintance Michael Holden, only two people in my life have ever called me Victoria. One is Charlie. And the other is:

“Lucas Ryan,” I say.

I once knew a boy named Lucas Ryan. He cried a lot, but liked Pokémon just as much as I did so I guess that made us friends. He once told me he would like to live inside a giant bubble when he grew up because you could fly everywhere and see everything, and I told him that would make a terrible house because bubbles are always empty inside. He gave me a Batman keyring for my eighth birthday, a How to Draw Manga book for my ninth birthday, Pokémon cards for my tenth birthday and a T-shirt with a tiger on it for my eleventh.

I sort of have to do a double take because his face is now an entirely different shape. He’d always been smaller than me, but now he’s at least a whole head taller and his voice, obviously, has broken. I start to look for things that are the same as eleven-year-old Lucas Ryan, but all I’ve got to go on is his greyish hair, skinny limbs and awkward expression.

Also, he is the ‘blond guy in skinny trousers’.

“Jesus Christ,” I repeat. “Hi.”

He smiles and laughs. I remember the laugh. It’s all in the chest. A chest laugh.

“Hi!” he says and smiles some more. A nice smile. A calm smile.

I dramatically leap to my feet and look him up and down. It’s actually him.

“It’s actually you,” I say and have to physically restrain myself from reaching out and patting him on the shoulders. Just to check he’s really there and all.

He laughs. His eyes go all squinty. “It’s actually me!”

“Wh-ho-why?”

He starts to look kind of embarrassed. I remember him being like that. “I left Truham at the end of last term,” he says. “I knew you went here, so …” He fiddles with his collar. He used to do that too. “Erm … I thought I’d try to find you. Seeing as I don’t have any friends here. So, erm, yes. Hello.”

I think you should be aware that I have never been very good at making friends, and primary school was no different. I acquired only the one friend during those seven years of mortifying social rejection. Yet while my primary school days are not days which I would choose to relive, there was one good thing that probably kept me going, and that was the quiet friendship of Lucas Ryan.

“Wow.” Becky, unable to keep away from potential gossip, intervenes. “How do you two know each other?”

Now I am a fairly awkward person, but Lucas really takes the biscuit. He turns to Becky and goes red again and I almost feel embarrassed for him.

“Primary school,” I say. “We were best friends.”

Becky’s shaped eyebrows soar. “No waaay.” She looks at both of us once more, before focusing on Lucas. “Well, I guess I’m your replacement. I’m Becky.” She gestures around her. “Welcome to the Land of Oppression.”

Lucas, in a mouse voice, manages: “I’m Lucas.”

He turns back to me. “We should catch up,” he says.

Is this what friendship reborn feels like?

“Yes …” I say. The shock is draining my vocabulary. “Yes.”

People have started to give up on the sixth-form meeting as it’s the start of Period 1 and no teachers have returned.

Lucas nods at me. “Erm, I don’t really want to be late to my first lesson or anything – this whole day is going to be kind of embarrassing as it is – but I’ll talk to you some time soon, yeah? I’ll find you on Facebook.”

Becky stares in relatively severe disbelief as Lucas wanders away, and grabs me firmly by the shoulder. “Tori just talked to a boy. No – Tori just held a conversation by herself. I think I’m going to cry.”

“There, there.” I pat her on the shoulder. “Be strong. You’ll get through this.”

“I’m extremely proud of you. I feel like a proud mum.”

I snort. “I can hold conversations by myself. What do you call this?”

“I am the only exception. With everyone else, you’re about as sociable as a cardboard box.”

“Maybe I am a cardboard box.”

We both laugh.

“It’s funny … because it’s true,” I say and I laugh again, on the outside at least. Ha ha ha.

THREE

THE FIRST THING I do when I get home from school is collapse on to my bed and turn on my laptop. This happens every single day. If I’m not at school, you can guarantee that my laptop will be somewhere within a two-metre radius of my heart. My laptop is my soulmate.

Over the past few months, I’ve come to realise that I’m far more of a blog than an actual person. I don’t know when this blogging thing started, and I don’t know when or why I signed up to this website, but I can’t seem to remember what I did before and I don’t know what I’d do if I deleted it. I severely regret starting this blog, I really do. It’s pretty embarrassing. But it’s the only place where I ever find people who are sort of like me. People talk about themselves here in ways that people don’t in real life.

If I delete it, I think I’ll probably be completely alone.

I don’t blog to get more followers or whatever. I’m not Evelyn. It’s just that it’s not socially acceptable to say depressing stuff out loud in the real world because people think that you’re attention-seeking. I hate that. So what I’m saying is that it’s nice to be able to say whatever I want. Even if it is only on the Internet.

After waiting a hundred billion years for my Internet to load, I spend a good while on my blog. There are a couple of cheesy, anonymous messages – a few of my followers get all worked up about some of the pathetic stuff I post. Then I check Facebook. Two notifications – Lucas and Michael have sent friend requests. I accept both. Then I check my email. No emails.

And then I check the Solitaire blog again.

It’s still got the photo of Kent looking hilariously passive, but apart from that the only addition to the blog is the title. It now reads:

Solitaire: Patience Kills.

I don’t know what these Solitaire people are trying to do, but ‘Patience Kills’ is the stupidest imitation of some James Bond film title that I have ever heard. It sounds like an online betting website.

I take the SOLITAIRE.CO.UK Post-it out of my pocket and place it precisely in the centre of the only empty wall in my room.

I think about what happened today with Lucas Ryan and, for a brief moment, I feel kind of hopeful again. I don’t know. Whatever. I don’t know why I bothered with this. I don’t even know why I followed those Post-its into that computer room. I don’t know why I do anything, for God’s sake.

Eventually, I find the will to get up and plod downstairs to get a drink. Mum’s in the kitchen on the computer. She’s very much like me, if you think about it. She’s in love with Microsoft Excel the way I’m in love with Google Chrome. She asks me how my day was, but I just shrug and say that it was fine, because I’m fairly sure that she doesn’t care what my answer is.

It’s because we’re so similar that we stopped talking to each other so much. When we do talk, we either struggle to find things to say or we just get angry, so apparently we’ve reached a mutual agreement that there’s really no point trying any more. I’m not too bothered. My dad’s quite chatty, even if everything he says is extraordinarily irrelevant to my life, and I’ve still got Charlie.

The house phone rings.

“Get that, would you?” says Mum.

I hate the phone. It’s the worst invention in the history of the world because, if you don’t talk, nothing happens. You can’t get by with simply listening and nodding your head in all the right places. You have to talk. You have no option. It takes away my freedom of non-speech.

I pick it up anyway, because I’m not a horrible daughter.

“Hello?” I say.

“Tori. It’s me.” It’s Becky. “Why the hell are you answering the phone?”

“I decided to rethink my attitude towards life and become an entirely different person.”

“Say again?”

“Why are you calling me? You never call me.”

“Dude, this is absolutely too important to text.”

There’s a pause. I expect her to continue, but she seems to be waiting for me to speak.

“Okay—”

“It’s Jack.”

Ah.

Becky has called about her almost-boyfriend, Jack.

She does this to me very often. Not call me, I mean. Ramble at me about her various almost-boyfriends.

While Becky is talking, I put Mms and Yeahs and Oh my Gods where they need to be. Her voice fades a little as I drift away and picture myself as her. As a lovely, happy, hilarious girl who gets invited to at least two parties a week and can start up a conversation within two seconds. I picture myself entering a party. Throbbing music, everyone with a bottle in their hand – somehow, there’s a crowd around me. I’m laughing, I’m the centre of attention. Eyes light up in admiration as I tell another of my hysterically embarrassing stories, perhaps a drunk story, or an ex-boyfriend story, or simply a time that I did something remarkable, and everyone wonders how I manage to have such an eccentric, adventurous, carefree adolescence. Everyone hugs me. Everyone wants to know what I’ve been up to. When I dance, people dance; when I sit down, ready to tell secrets, people form a circle; when I leave, the party fades away and dies, like a forgotten dream.

“—you can guess what I’m talking about,” she says.

I really can’t.

“A few weeks ago – God, I should have told you this – we had sex.”

I sort of freeze up because this takes me by surprise. Then I realise that this has been coming for a long time. I’d always kind of respected Becky for being a virgin, which is kind of pretentious, if you think about it. I mean, we’re all at least sixteen now, and Becky’s nearly seventeen, and it’s fine if you want to have sex, I don’t care, it’s not a crime. But the fact that we were both virgins – I don’t know. I guess it made us equal, in a twisted way. And now here I am. Second place in something else.

“Well—” There is literally nothing I can say about this. “—okay.”

“You’re judging me. You think I’m a slut.”

“I don’t!”

“I can tell. You’re using your judgementy voice.”

“I’m not!”

There’s a pause. What do you say to something like that? Well done? Good job?

She starts explaining how Jack has this friend who would supposedly be ‘perfect’ for me. I think that is unlikely unless he’s entirely mute, blind or deaf. Or all three.

Once I get off the phone, I sort of stand there in the kitchen. Mum’s still clicking away at the computer and I start to feel, again, like this whole day has been pointless. An image of Michael Holden appears in my head and then an image of Lucas Ryan and then an image of the Solitaire blog. I decide that I need to talk to my brother. I pour myself some diet lemonade and leave the kitchen.

My brother, Charles Spring, is fifteen years old and a Year 11 at Truham Grammar. In my opinion, he is the nicest person in the history of the universe and I know that ‘nice’ is kind of a meaningless word, but that’s what makes it so powerful. It’s very hard to simply be a ‘nice’ person because there are a lot of things that can get in the way. When he was little, he refused to throw out any of his possessions because to him they were all special. Every baby book. Every outgrown T-shirt. Every useless board game. He kept them all in sky-high piles in his room because everything supposedly had some kind of meaning. When I asked about a particular item, he’d tell me how he found it at the beach, or how it was a hand-me-down from our nan, or how he bought it when he was six at London Zoo.

Mum and Dad got rid of most of that rubbish when he got ill last year – I guess he sort of got obsessed with it, and he got obsessed with a whole load of other things too (mainly food and collecting things), and it really started to tear him apart – but that’s all over now. He’s better, but he’s still the same kid who thinks everything is special. That’s the sort of guy Charlie is.

In the living room, it is extremely unclear what Charlie, his boyfriend Nick and my other brother Oliver are doing. They’ve got these cardboard boxes, and I mean there’s, like, fifty of them, piled up all over the room. Oliver, who is seven years old, appears to be directing the operation as Nick and Charlie build up the boxes to make some kind of shed-sized sculpture. The piles of boxes reach the ceiling. Oliver has to stand on the sofa to be able to oversee the entire structure.

Eventually, Charlie walks round the small cardboard building and notices me staring in from the doorway. “Victoria!”

I blink at him. “Shall I bother asking?”

He gives me this look as if I should know exactly what is going on. “We’re building a tractor for Oliver.”

I nod. “Of course. Yes. That’s very clear.”

Nick appears. Nicholas Nelson, a Year 12 like me, is one of those laddish lads who actually is into all those stereotypical things like rugby and beer and swearing and all that, but he also has the most successful combination of name and surname I have ever heard, which makes it impossible for me to dislike him. I can’t really remember when Nick and Charlie became Nick-and-Charlie, but Nick is the only one who visited Charlie when he was ill so, in my book, he’s definitely all right.

“Tori.” He nods at me very seriously indeed. “Good. We need more free labour.”

“Tori, can you get the Sellotape?” Oliver calls down, except he says “thellotape” instead of “Sellotape” because he recently lost two front teeth.

I pass Oliver the thellotape, then point towards the boxes and ask Charlie: “Where did you get all of these?”

Charlie just shrugs and walks away saying, “They’re Oliver’s, not mine.”

So that’s how I end up building a cardboard tractor in our living room.

When we’re finished, Charlie, Nick and I sit inside it to admire our work. Oliver goes round the tractor with a marker pen, drawing on the wheels the mud stains and the machine guns “in case the cows join the Dark Side”. It’s sort of peaceful, to be honest. Every box has a big black arrow printed on it pointing upwards.

Charlie is telling me about his day. He loves telling me about his day.

“Saunders asked us who our favourite musicians were and I said Muse and three people asked me if I liked them because of Twilight. Apparently, no one believes that it is possible to have an original interest.”

I frown. “I would like to meet a boy who has actually seen Twilight. Do you not both live in the realm of the FA Cup and Family Guy?”

Nick sighs. “Tori, you’re generalising again.”

Charlie rolls his head through the air towards him. “Nicholas, you mainly watch the FA Cup and Family Guy. Let’s be honest.”

“Sometimes I watch the Six Nations.”

We all chuckle, and then there’s a short, un-awkward silence, in which I lie down and look up at the cardboard ceiling.

I start to tell them about today’s prank. And that leads me to thinking about Lucas and Michael Holden.

“I met Lucas Ryan again today,” I say. I don’t mind telling this sort of stuff to Nick and Charlie. “He joined our school.”

Nick and Charlie blink at the same time.

“Lucas Ryan … as in primary-school Lucas Ryan?” frowns Charlie.

“Lucas Ryan left Truham?” frowns Nick. “Balls. I was going to copy off him in our psychology mock.”

I nod to both of them. “It was nice to see him. You know. Because we can be friends again. I guess. He was always so nice to me.”

They both nod back. It’s a knowing sort of nod.

“I also met some guy called Michael Holden.”

Nick, who had been in the middle of taking a sip of tea, chokes into his cup. Charlie grins, widely, and starts to giggle.

“What? Do you know him?”

Nick recovers enough to speak, though still coughs every few words. “Michael fucking Holden. Shit. He’ll go down in Truham legend.”

Charlie lowers his head, but keeps his eyes on me. “Don’t become friends with him. He’s probably insane. Everyone avoided him at Truham because he’s mentally disturbed.”

Patting Charlie on the knee, Nick says, “Then again, I made friends with a mental person and that turned out pretty spectacular.”

Charlie snorts and slaps away Nick’s hand.

“Do you remember when he tried to get everyone to do a flash mob for the Year 11 prank?” says Nick. “And in the end he just did it by himself on the lunch tables?”

“What about when he gave a speech on the injustice of authority for his Year 12 prefect speech?” says Charlie. “Just because he got detention for having that argument with Mr Yates during his mock exams!” Both he and Nick laugh heartily.