Girl (In Real Life) Read online

  I selected the box next to the video and clicked delete. A warning popped up saying, Deleting is permanent and cannot be undone. I glanced at the framed photo next to the computer, only just visible in the light of the screen. Me, Mum, Dad and Farmor standing on the Øresund bridge in Copenhagen last summer. It had been a really good day. Farmor never let them film anything when she was there. They always listened to her, why did they never listen to me?

  It took me a minute to delete that first video. Mainly because I had to click a button saying DELETE FOREVER and it felt kind of scary. But then I saw the other videos they were about to share:

  Eva Gets Cross!

  Eva’s Epic Eye-Rolling Compilation!

  Eva Talking to Miss Fizzy!! So Cute!!

  And suddenly deleting as many All About Eva videos as I could seemed like the best idea I’d ever had.

  Then I remembered Carys’s instructions. I had to memorize the password for the channel. I opened the security settings and clicked the box that said Show password. It was the same as their computer login, but a mixture of capitals and lowercase and the “o” of “tambourine” was a zero. I’d never be able to memorize that. I looked around for my phone to take a picture, but I must have left it upstairs. I grabbed a pencil from the pot by the keyboard, scribbled the password on a sticky note, and stuffed it in my dressing-gown pocket. Without thinking, I doodled clouds on the sticky-note pad while I waited for the Top Videos page to load. I deleted My Little Girl is a Woman!! and Happy Vegetarian Day! I was about to click on their Playlists section, when I heard a ringing coming from upstairs. I stopped dead. It was my phone. I must have forgotten to switch off the alarm.

  My heart froze with terror. I quickly closed the browser and hit sleep. Then I ran up the stairs two at a time, as silently as I could. I grabbed my phone from under my pillow and hit stop as I dived beneath the duvet. I lay there for a minute or so not moving a muscle, my heart beating in my ears like gunfire. I got up, carefully closed my bedroom door and got back into bed.

  I don’t know why exactly – maybe the adrenaline, maybe pure relief – but tears started falling down my face. I felt completely terrified. Not because of what I’d done, but how close I’d come to getting caught. I pushed my legs under the covers and lay my head on the pillow. And it took me ages to get to sleep.

  I didn’t realize it then, because I felt like I was recovering from a heart attack. But I’d left the dumbest piece of evidence ever, right next to their computer.

  I felt sick with worry the next morning, and I was sure Mum or Dad would notice. Like, maybe the delete icon I’d clicked so many times was visible on my eyeballs, or tattooed on my skin. But secrets feel like that to begin with – when they’re fresh and new you worry everyone can see them. But I guess you must get used to how they feel. Because they become a lot easier to live with. After a while, you barely even notice them at all.

  Farmor said this thing to me a couple of summers ago, when I was climbing the giant beech tree in her garden. She’d told me not to climb it when Dad was out, because she couldn’t get me down if I got stuck. But I didn’t exactly listen. I climbed to the highest branch I could reach, almost at the top. It was an amazing view: I could see all the way past the harbour right out to sea. Which was good, because I had to stay there for ages until my parents got back from this play they’d gone to see in Copenhagen and Dad had to get me down. It was the most embarrassing moment of my life. But that was before the avocado costume. And the period video.

  Farmor had watched me climb the tree, shaking her head and said, in the gentle Danish voice I hear whenever I think about her, “Don’t sail out farther than you can row back.”

  While Mum filmed me and Dad making granola that morning only a few hours after I’d hacked their channel, Farmor’s words crept back to me like a song. Or a warning. Her advice, sailing all the way across the North Sea and into my head. But I never paid enough attention to what Farmor said.

  As we sat at the table, I quietly chewed a spoonful of granola and noticed Dad staring at me.

  “Well?” he said. I blinked a few times and tried to swallow, but my mouth suddenly felt really dry. “Aren’t you going to say something?”

  My heart raced. “About what?”

  “The granola! What do you think of the new ‘morning brain booster’ recipe?”

  I sank back into my chair with relief. “Oh right. It’s fine.”

  “Wow, hold back on the compliments, Eva,” Dad said. “I might get a swollen head!”

  “You mean, big head, Dad.” Then I remembered this Danish expression I’d learned at Languages Club last year. It means “Everything is fine” but the literal translation is “There are no owls in the bog”. Like I said, Danish is kind of weird.

  I said it and Dad laughed so much he accidentally sprayed bits of granola onto the tablecloth. He patted my shoulder and replied, “Great one! Great one!” in Danish. And for a few seconds, I forgot about the cold slab of guilt that had been sitting in my stomach ever since I woke up.

  Just then, Mum’s voice called from the office, “Eva! Have you been in here?”

  My skin went cold. I couldn’t chew the massive spoonful of granola in my mouth because my jaw was stuck together with fear. Mum came out, holding out the sticky note I doodled on last night. Quick thinking is not my speciality, so maybe Dad’s new brain-boosting granola recipe actually worked, because after only a few seconds of brain freeze, I said, “Oh yeah, I needed a pencil for art; I was just testing it out.”

  “Okay, well, please don’t touch anything in there, sweetie. Our notes are all over the place.” She went back in and I could finally breathe. Then she walked out again and my heart stopped. “And, sweetie, don’t speak with your mouth full.”

  I was upstairs brushing my teeth, when I heard it.

  “LARS!” Mum shouted. “Can you come in here a second? Something’s happened!”

  I froze. A gloopy blob of toothpaste made its way down my chin. Why didn’t I close the bathroom door?

  “What is it?” Dad shouted from the bedroom.

  I stared at their bedroom door handle, paralysed, waiting for it to move.

  Just act normal, I told myself. Just act totally normal. And definitely don’t stand frozen in the middle of the bathroom looking like a criminal!

  The bedroom door opened and I quickly closed the bathroom door. I stood still listening, my heart whacking the inside of my chest like a sledgehammer. I heard Dad’s footsteps on the stairs.

  “The scheduled video is missing!” Mum said. “Did you delete it or something?”

  “I haven’t touched it,” Dad said. Then he must have closed the door, because I couldn’t make out the rest of what they were saying.

  I went to my room and sat on my bed for a minute, hearing Carys’s words in my head telling me to just act normal. But I couldn’t actually remember what acting normal was like. My brain felt trapped and tangled up, like a kite stuck in a tree that kept catching the wind. But somewhere under that fear, there was a tiny feeling of achievement. I stopped at the top of the stairs as the office door opened.

  Dad was saying, “Yes, I know, Jen, but what else can we do? I know you think you uploaded it, but maybe it didn’t save properly. It can’t have disappeared. It’s saved on the hard drive. Just upload it again. I’ll get you a coffee.”

  Wait, it was saved on the hard drive? They were going to just upload it again? I’d practically risked my life deleting their videos and it was all for nothing! I went downstairs and put my shoes on, still listening. It sounded like they hadn’t noticed the others I’d deleted. Not yet anyway. I hoped Mum dropped her coffee on the computer when she realized.

  My phone beeped and I almost jumped out of my skin. It was a message from Hallie.

  Walk to school just us?

  I’d arranged to meet Carys at the end of Lavender Lane so I could tell her how it went. We couldn’t message about it because of the footprint thing. But this was Hallie.

>   I replied: Yeah definitely.

  I sent Carys a message saying my German homework went okay and I’d see her at school. German homework was our code word for hacking. We were only supposed to use it in emergencies. Although, thinking about it, my parents would probably find me messaging anyone about German homework highly suspicious.

  “Hey,” Spud said as I practically bumped into him on the doorstep. “I signed us up to partner in the science homework.”

  “Okay,” I said. “What science homework?”

  “Don’t you check the homework app at all?”

  “What homework app?” I was only half-joking.

  Spud smiled. “I’m going to say two words, and you tell me the first thing that comes into your mind.”

  “Okay, go.”

  “Ferromagnetic fluid.”

  “Spud, the idea of that game is you say words people have actually heard of.”

  “It’s a liquid that is attracted to magnetic poles.” I looked at him blankly. “So, what do you think? For our science project!”

  “I think you’d be better working with Rami.”

  “I already tried to sign up with Rami, but Mr Jacobs said we have to partner boy-girl. You’re basically the only girl in our class who talks to me.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But maybe we should do something simple.”

  “It’s not that complicated!” Spud grinned. “I’ll show you the experiment on YouTube. It’s epic.”

  When he mentioned YouTube, I felt a bite of guilt in my stomach, like a stitch. “Maybe later,” I said and watched him cross the road to join the rest of Nerdophobia.

  Hallie was waiting at the corner. Her hair was tied in Dutch-style braids, plaited halfway down so her curls were loose around her neck. I tried to read the expression on her face.

  “Your hair looks amazing.”

  “Thanks. My auntie came over and did it for me. I’m thinking of wearing it like this for the finals.”

  It was awkward for a minute as we both thought about the empty seat at her last competition.

  As we got closer to school, she said, “Gabi is pretty upset about what you said, you know. I’ve heard some bad stuff about Carys. And not just from Gabi.”

  “Carys wants to forget about what happened at St Aug’s. A fresh start, you know,” I said. Only it sounded like the biggest lie ever. I turned my eyes away from Hallie and looked at the railings. “We could all hang around together.”

  “It’s just…” Hallie said, “I’m on the student council, don’t forget. If she ends up getting us into trouble, I could lose my place. I mean, Carys did get excluded.” She said “excluded” like it was a crime. “Becca Matthews thinks we should avoid her.”

  “Hallie,” I said, “the student council can’t tell you who to be friends with.”

  “I know, but Gabi thinks it’s better if we don’t hang around with her too. There’s loads of other people in our class she can be friends with.”

  “But I want to be friends with Carys.”

  “More than you want to be friends with me?”

  “But, Hallie…” I imagined telling her about how Carys was helping me. About secretly deleting All About Eva videos at two a.m. I knew how she’d react. She’d probably take me straight back home to confess. I could never tell her. But I could feel the secret in the air between us, like a glass wall.

  Maybe she could feel it too, because she said, “Okay, well, guess I’ll see you later,” and jogged up the road to where Gabi was waiting before I had the chance to say anything else.

  That morning, Mr Jacobs made us sit with our science project partners, so I sat next to Spud and Carys moved next to Rami. Every time I tried to concentrate on writing our hypothesis, I thought about what I’d done last night. I had to press my lips together to stop myself from blurting it out. I hadn’t really kept a secret from Spud before. The more I thought about it, the more I realized All About Eva meant I’d never actually kept a secret from anyone before. My whole life was like a free-to-download movie. Only now, it had a few deleted scenes.

  Mr Jacobs started handing out the scores from our physics test last week. Spud said, “YESSSS!” when he got his back. I peered at his score. 97%. I glanced at the paper on my desk. It said 38%, circled in red pen. Nothing good is ever circled in red pen. Not by Mr Jacobs, anyway.

  “Not a great result, even for you, Eva,” Mr Jacobs said, raising his bushy eyebrows. “Clearly you didn’t revise.”

  I could feel people’s eyes on me. Alfie was sniggering at the end of the row. “I was kind of busy filming, sir,” I said. “I’m really sorry, but my parents think there is more to life than physics.”

  Mr Jacobs raised his eyebrows again. “Is that so?”

  I swallowed. “I obviously disagree.” I smiled weakly, and stuffed my test paper into the back of my science book as he went to the next table. I hoped he wouldn’t call my parents. The last thing I needed right now was a YouTube video about me failing science.

  “Okay,” Spud said. “I’ve already written the list of stuff you need to ask your parents to order online. Tell them to get the largest quantity they can get delivered by Friday.” He handed me a piece of paper from his pocket. It felt kind of warm.

  “What is half this stuff?” I asked. “And why can’t your parents order it?”

  “Because they’re not getting me any more science materials after that sheep’s lung, remember.”

  I screwed up my face. “Oh yeah.”

  “What happened with the sheep’s lung?” asked Lucas, who was sitting next to Gabi. I avoided eye contact. Annoyingly so did she.

  “It exploded,” I said. “In his kitchen.” I shuddered at the memory.

  “Awesome!” Lucas said, laughing.

  “You exploded a sheep’s lung?” Gabi said. “That’s so gross.”

  “I was investigating the respiratory system,” Spud explained. “The explosion was a minor calculation error.” He turned back to me. “I still owe Chip a new bike pump.”

  “Your brother’s called Chip?” Gabi’s face went into a sneer. “Is everyone in your family named after potatoes?”

  “No. Chip means ‘chip off the old block’, because he looked so much like our dad when he was born.”

  “So why did they call you Spud?” Gabi asked.

  “They didn’t.” Spud grinned. “They called me Euan.” He went back to explaining how to make ferromagnetic fluid, which was a lot better than listening to Gabi. She had been mean about Spud ever since the beginning of Year Seven. Maybe because he was in Nerdophobia. Or because he brought a live frog to school that time.

  It was raining at lunchtime, so Carys and I went to our form room. Miss Wilson said we could sit in there as long as we were drawing. We chose a table right at the back and Miss Wilson had her headphones in, so it felt safe to talk.

  “It’s good they didn’t suspect you,” Carys said, trying to sketch the raven skull that was on a nearby shelf. “Don’t be surprised if they ask you about it though. I mean, act surprised obviously. But deny all knowledge.”

  “But they’ve uploaded the videos again. Look.” I tapped on my phone and scrolled down their YouTube homepage. “Eva’s Epic Eye-Rolling Compilation is literally online already.”

  Miss Wilson was humming along to her music and scraping paint onto a canvas with some kind of metal tool. I passed Carys an AirPod and tapped play. A song started playing that said, I hate you so much right now. At least that was weirdly accurate. The video sliced between clips of me rolling my eyes. Some of them were from years ago. 14.8k likes. I rolled my eyes, then hoped Carys hadn’t seen.

  “Okay,” she said quietly. “So what if we don’t delete stuff next time? What if we do something else?”

  “But what else can we do?”

  She smiled and bit the end of her pencil. “I think I have an idea.”

  That afternoon in English, Miss West was going on about Shakespeare as usual. I concentrated really hard on keeping my eyes open. Sh
e kept calling the sixteenth century “the golden age of humanity!” But she’d literally told us last lesson that people only had a bath once a year and used clumps of hay instead of toilet roll. I put my hand over my mouth to cover a yawn, and thought about what Carys had suggested at lunchtime. Instead of deleting content, we could upload some of our own. I felt a twitch of excitement in my stomach.

  “Eva!” Miss West said sharply. “Are you paying attention?”

  “Yes, miss.” I sat up straight and chewed my cheeks so I didn’t yawn again.

  “Then perhaps you can tell me how many sonnets Shakespeare wrote in his lifetime?”

  Miss West always picks on people who aren’t paying attention to answer her questions. I really did not see the point. Last year she caught me doodling and made me read out loud. She tutted when I pronounced the word sorbet wrong. I scanned the board for any information, but there was nothing about sonnets on there. I glanced over at Spud. He held one finger up at me.

  “Er, one?” I said.

  A few people laughed and Spud banged his head against his desk.

  Miss West sighed. “William Shakespeare wrote one hundred and fifty-four sonnets, young lady! I can guarantee he didn’t spend his English lessons daydreaming! Learning doesn’t happen by magic, you know.” Which, if you ask me, is one of the worst things about the education system.

  I spent the rest of the lesson trying really hard to look interested. Which was not easy. Miss West must have read us every single one of those sonnets.

  By the time I got home, I was exhausted and my jaw ached from stifling yawns. As I opened the front door, I told myself to act normal, but my hands were trembling slightly. I saw them before I’d even stepped inside. Both of them sitting at the kitchen table. Waiting for me, like an ambush.

  I stood in the doorway for a second, my mind see-sawing between immediate confession and total denial. There were mugs of hot chocolate on the table, and what looked like a brand new iPad. Dad’s hands were resting on the table. Mum’s phone was face down. They weren’t even filming? This was so weird.