Girl Online (9 page)

“Where are the others?” I ask, looking around the empty hall.

“They’ve gone up to the drama studio to do a final run-through while we—
you
—sort out the set.”

I look up at the stage. “What’s wrong with the set?”

“I’m afraid my graffiti-artist friend has let me down, so I need your help.”

For weeks now Mr. Beaconsfield has been making a big song and dance about how he’s got this street-artist friend who was going to come in and decorate our set to make it look more “ghetto.” I should have known nothing would come of it. The closest Mr. Beaconsfield probably gets to the street is watching
Corrie
.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask as he hands me a carrier bag.

“Do some graffiti on the trailer and the back wall,” Mr. Beaconsfield says as casually as if he’s just asked me to sweep the floor. “I’ve got to get back to the others. Poor Megan is having terrible trouble remembering her final speech.”

“Do some graffiti on them?” I look inside the bag. It’s full of cans of spray paint. “What kind of graffiti?”

Mr. Beaconsfield looks even more stressed. “I don’t know. Just do a few tags or something. You are supposed to be the set design assistant.”

I frown. It’s true that I’m supposed to be helping with the set design as well as be the official photographer but I never would have volunteered if I’d known it meant becoming some kind of Banksy. I mean, I did write
I LUV 1 D
on a park bench three years ago . . . but I don’t think that really counts.

“OK, I’m going to head up to the drama studio,” Mr. Beaconsfield says, grabbing his clipboard from one of the chairs. “I’ll come down to see how you’re getting on at first break.” And before I can say a single word he’s scuttled off.

I look at the blank back wall of the set. This is crazy! If I go anywhere near it with a can of spray paint I’m going to wreck it and one thing I’m absolutely determined about today is that I’m not going to mess anything up. So I do what I always do in an emergency and I text Elliot. We know each other’s timetables by heart so I know that he’s in Latin. Elliot says his teacher is so old he actually spoke Latin when it was still a living language so hopefully he’ll be able to text me back without being spotted.

HEEEEEEEELP!!! MY DRAMA TEACHER WANTS ME TO GRAFFITI THE SET—LIKE PROPER GRAFFITI!!! I THINK HE MIGHT HAVE LOST HIS MIND. PLEASE HELP ME BEFORE I LOSE MINE!!! WHAT SHALL I DO?!!!

I send the text and go up onto the stage and over to the pretend trailer. Maybe I could practice doing a “tag” behind it. Then if I mess it up no one in the audience will ever know and if I do discover that I miraculously have a latent talent for graffiti art, I can save the day—and the play.

I take one of the cans from the bag and flip off the lid. What would my tag be if I were a graffiti artist? I have no idea, so I
decide to try drawing something instead. But what? What would people draw in a New York ghetto—that would go really well with
Romeo and Juliet 
? Maybe some kind of broken love heart?

I cautiously press on the button at the top of the can. Nothing happens. I press a lot harder and a jet of bright purple paint shoots out. I try painting a heart but it looks just like a pair of butt cheeks. Thankfully, at that precise moment, my phone goes off. It’s a text from Elliot.

STEP AWAY FROM THE SPRAY CANS!!! You are a girl of many talents but painting isn’t one of them ;) Don’t you remember the picture you did of the Easter Bunny that time we were babysitting little Jennifer from down the road and how it gave her nightmares for months? Why don’t you ask the lighting person if they can project one of your photos of street art onto the set? Remember the ones you took in Hastings? One of them would look great. PS my Latin teacher has just broken his false teeth biting on an apple!

As I read Elliot’s text, I breathe a massive sigh of relief. I have a solution for the seemingly unsolvable and this fills me with hope. Maybe today won’t be so bad after all . . .

And I’m right—the rest of the day goes surprisingly smoothly. The actors stay holed up in the drama studio with
Mr. Beaconsfield, frantically rehearsing, while Tony, the boy from Year Eleven who’s doing the lighting, turns up to do a tech rehearsal and he’s able to project one of my street-art photos onto the backdrop no problem. It looks amazing.

When I do finally see Megan, midway through the afternoon, everything’s fine. Yet again, writing my blog seems to have helped me sort things out in my mind and now that I’ve accepted that I’ve outgrown her friendship, I feel under a lot less pressure. Even seeing Ollie again isn’t too awkward. He and Megan are so nervous about the play, they’re totally preoccupied going through their lines.

Just before curtain up, Mr. Beaconsfield calls us all together backstage. “You guys are going to be awesome,” he says. “And, as my hero Jay-Z says, don’t live life uptight—live up in the sky.”

We all look at Mr. Beaconsfield blankly.

“Break a leg,” he mutters. “Oh and, Pen, I’ll need you to take one more photo for me at the end of the show, when the cast comes out to take their bow. Can you just nip onstage and grab a few shots?”

I feel a sudden flash of fear. This will mean going up onstage in front of a whole hall full of people, aka MY WORST NIGHTMARE. But then Mr. Beaconsfield races off to check that the videographer is ready to begin filming and the others all take their places backstage.

I fetch my camera from my bag and take my seat in the wings. It’ll be fine, I tell myself. After all, it’s not as if I have to remember any lines. All I have to do is go onstage, take a picture, and come off again. What’s the worst that can happen . . . ?

Chapter Ten

The play runs without a hitch. Everyone remembers their lines and says them in exactly the right places, and even Ollie’s accent doesn’t sound too bad. By the time it reaches the scene where Juliet dies, I can actually hear members of the audience crying.

As Mr. Beaconsfield bounds backstage for the curtain call, he looks at me and grins. “Wasn’t it amazing? Weren’t they great?” he gushes.

I grin back at him. “They were brilliant.”

“Don’t take the picture until the whole cast has lined up for their final bow—including me,” he whispers.

I nod and turn my camera on.

As the actors come out from the other side of the stage to take their bows, the applause builds, until it reaches a roar for Megan and Ollie. And even though Megan has made me want to punch, smother, and kick stones at her recently, I can’t help getting swept up in the excitement of the moment. I’m really proud of her.

The applause is so loud now I can feel it vibrating through
my body. As the cast line up, Megan gestures at Mr. Beaconsfield to join—a scene they had carefully rehearsed earlier, despite Mr. Beaconsfield throwing his hands up and faking embarrassed surprise. I wait for him to reach the center of the line and then I make my way onto the stage. And even though I’ve been dreading this moment, it isn’t that bad at all. The audience is so busy cheering the actors, I actually feel invisible.

Until I take a final step toward the center of the stage and the whole world seems to tilt on its axis. Only it isn’t the world that’s tilting—it’s me, as I trip on the lace of my Converse and go staggering forward.

I can tell immediately that this isn’t going to be one of those falls that I’ll be able to style out. I’m falling too fast and at too sharp an angle and all I can think of is the camera in my hand. I mustn’t break it. I can’t let it smash on the floor. So I land about as awkwardly as possible, on my elbows, face-first. With my bum in the air pointing at the audience.

A shocked gasp, multiplied by about three hundred, echoes around the hall. The awful silence that follows is filled only by my inner voice asking,
Why does my bum feel so cold?
I glance over my shoulder and see that—to my horror—my skirt has flown up over my waist. A chorus of new whys fills my mind.
Why did I wear the skater skirt? Why did I take off my opaque tights backstage when I got too hot? Why, oh why, out of all the underwear that I possess, did I choose today to wear the most faded and frayed ones, covered in unicorns?

I stay on all fours—paralyzed by a skin-crawling mixture of shock and horror. And then the audience starts to cheer again—but these cheers aren’t like the ones before. These
cheers are mocking and interspersed with wolf whistles and shrieks of laughter. I look up and see Megan glaring down at me. I see a hand reaching out to me. It’s Ollie’s. This makes me burn with embarrassment even more. I have to get out of there. I have to get off the stage. But instead of standing up and running, I make another terrible decision—I stay on all fours and crawl off. In slow motion. Or at least it feels like it. By the time I make it back into the wings, the hall is echoing with laughter. I stumble to my feet, grab my bag, and start to run.

•  •  •

I don’t stop running until I get back home. I stagger into the hall, gasping for breath. I race up to my bedroom, avoiding all human contact inside the house, and collapse on my bed. I am so embarrassed—SO EMBARRASSED—that I can’t even bring myself to tell Elliot. Instead, I’m just going to lie here and hope that eventually I will become so hot and flustered that I actually melt and never have to face anyone ever again.

But I will have to face people again.
How am I going to face people again? What am I going to do?
I reach into my bag for my phone. I squint at the screen, hardly daring to look, in case there are loads of mocking texts, but thankfully there are no new messages. I open the Internet browser. In the absence of being able to ask Elliot what I should do, I’m going to do the next best thing and ask Google.

How do you get over dire humiliation?
I type into the search engine. Forty-four million results come up. OK, good, surely somewhere among all of them I will find my answer. I click on the first link. It sends me to a website called Positively Positive.

“
Search for the lesson in your humiliation
,” the article advises. “
Things always seem better when we can attach a reason or meaning to them
.” Hmm . . .

Lessons from what happened tonight:

Lesson
1:
When going up onstage in front of three hundred people, always make sure that your shoelaces are tied.

Lesson
2:
Untied shoelaces are a total health hazard—if tripped on, they can cause you to fall over so hard your skirt will actually fly up over your bum.

Lesson
3:
If you are wearing a skirt short enough to fly up over your bum, should you trip on your shoelace on a stage in front of three hundred people, make sure you are wearing your least embarrassing underwear.

Lesson
4:
Never, ever, under any circumstances, wear multicolored unicorn knickers.

Lesson
5:
Never, ever, under any circumstances, wear multicolored unicorn knickers that are so old they’ve FADED and FRAYED AT THE EDGES—no matter how comfy they might be.

Lesson
6:
If you are stupid enough to wear multicolored unicorn knickers that are so old they’ve faded and frayed at the edges and you end up flashing them to three hundred people, do not crawl off, I repeat—DO NOT CRAWL OFF—the stage with them still on display.

My life is over! And the Positively Positive website lied. Trying to find a reason for my humiliation has only made me feel a million times worse. I cringe as I run through the whole terrible saga again in my mind. My life is a disaster. I seriously ought to have one of those government health warnings tattooed on my forehead. The sad fact is the only place I feel happy and confident is on my blog.

Instinctively, I click through to the blog on my phone. I have twelve new comments on my post about outgrowing a friendship. As I scroll through them, I feel slightly calmer. Yet again, they are all so loving and kind.