Girl (In Real Life) Page 11

  “Sit down, Eva,” Dad said.

  “Is everything okay?” I said, remembering what Carys had said earlier. They’re ruling me out, I told myself. They don’t know anything. But already I could feel the blood draining from my face. “You both look…serious.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, sweetie,” Mum said, wafting her hand like she was swatting away a fly. “We’ve just had a hard day. Technical glitches. We don’t know what happened, something I did wrong probably. But it’s all fixed now.” She smiled. “You didn’t go on the computer this morning, sweetie, did you? I mean, for school or something?”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m not allowed to use that computer.”

  Dad smiled. Probably because I’d given a correct answer for once in my life.

  I sat down at the table next to Mum. “So, what’s up?” I tried to sound casual. But when I leaned back I realized I still had my rucksack on. I pretended I’d done it deliberately.

  “We thought we needed a family triangle,” Mum said, gently pulling my hair from behind my ear. That’s what they call family meetings. Dad used to say we were three points in a triangle – him, Mum and me – and without each other we’d fall over. But our family didn’t feel like a triangle to me any more. Not now there were so many people watching. It felt more like one of those 3D shapes Mr Gregory showed us once in maths. The one that Spud said blew his mind and went on about the whole summer. Some kind of truncated rhombus. Mr Gregory showed us a video of it rotating. That’s what our family was like. Being stuck inside a million-sided shape with faces on each side, all staring in.

  Mum shifted around on her seat. “We’ve had a few comments from the For-Evas—”

  Dad caught me rolling my eyes. “Just hear Jen out, okay.”

  “They’ve been saying you don’t seem like yourself lately. And because of these technical issues this morning, we ended up watching old videos and, you know what? They’re right. You used to make up dance routines, we’d bake together. Disney Princess karaoke every Friday, do you remember?”

  I smiled at the memories, even though I didn’t mean to. “That was years ago,” I said. “Do you think dressing up as Disney Princesses and singing ‘Let it Go’ live on YouTube would actually improve my life right now?”

  “I’m up for it.” Dad grinned. “We’re just saying, it seems like you’re not having so much fun on the channel.” He picked up one of the hot chocolates and put it in front of me. The marshmallows had melted, and there was a layer of chocolate-marshmallowy goo that was literally the nicest taste in the world. But I didn’t touch it.

  “You know I’m not having fun,” I said. “I don’t even want to be on the channel.”

  “Okay,” Dad said. “We also got an email from your science teacher.” I looked out the window. Mr Jacobs was such a snake. “Thirty-eight per cent, Eva. It’s lower than your last test score!”

  “Well, maybe Hope Park Academy isn’t very good then. Because it seems like I’m actually getting less intelligent by going there.”

  Mum tried not to laugh, then moved her hand over her mouth so Dad didn’t see.

  “Mr Jacobs said you told him you couldn’t revise for the test because of filming. Is that really what you said?”

  I swallowed. “I might have given him that impression. Accidentally.”

  “But you said you revised with Hallie,” Mum said. “At the Crêpe Cabin.”

  Dad looked concerned. His forehead was all wrinkled. He put his hand over mine and squeezed. If he thought the channel was why I’d failed science, this could be my chance to convince him to close it down.

  “I mean, I probably would be doing a lot better in school if it wasn’t for the channel. I’d definitely have passed that physics test, for a start.” I fixed my eyes on the tablecloth. I was kind of telling the truth. “Maybe we should close down the channel after all. I mean, you said Year Eight is important. And Mr Jacobs seems pretty clever. If he thinks it’s bad for me then…”

  Mum snorted. “That’s not what Mr Jacobs said, Eva. He’s never even watched the channel!”

  “Yeah, Eva,” Dad said. “That’s not really what we meant. We can’t stop the channel – it’s our job! We just need to get the balance right. So we’re getting a schedule worked out so you can do your homework as soon as you get back from school. No leaving it all until Sunday night! We’ll fit filming around the new schedule.” Dad drummed his fingers on the table. “We’re getting hundreds of new subscribers every day. So, it’s really important that we stay on-brand. Our subscribers need to see fresh content. But, obviously, we don’t want you to fail at school.”

  “And we got you this.” Mum pushed the iPad box towards me. “Lars wanted to wait until your grades improve, but I managed to convince him otherwise.” She smiled, like we were sharing a secret. “We know you’ve been wanting a new one for a while. And this way, you might actually enjoy doing your homework! It’s rose gold, just like you wanted. The screen is ultra-low reflectivity – it’s so versatile! You can shoot, edit and share videos, all on this one device! It’s got a magic keyboard, and is actually faster than most laptops. It will even make physics homework fun! And, because we know you’re good at art…ta dah!” She pulled a brand-new Apple Pencil from under the table. “It attaches magnetically to the side of the iPad, it has pixel-perfect precision and it’s super easy to use. Perfect for all of your creative projects! And look, we had it engraved.” She held it up and I could see Eva Andersen in gold letters down the side. “Dream it up. Jot it down!”

  I did wonder why Mum was talking like that. Like someone out of an advert. But I was kind of distracted. A new iPad with an Apple Pencil was the one thing I’d have wished for if a genie popped out of my hot chocolate. I looked at the gifts, then at Mum. And it took every milligram of willpower I had to say, “I don’t accept bribes.”

  Mum looked at me for a second, then laughed, “Oh, Eva! I actually thought you were being serious then! It’s a peace offering, silly. And a thank you, for being our star. You make us so proud.” She stood up and hugged me as I opened the box. “We love you so much, Eva,” she said into my hair.

  It was a pretty good speech. I mean, it was definitely better than her performance in Justice Force. I actually felt bad about deleting their videos. Until Dad went over to the bookcase and I heard it.

  Beep-beep.

  I was so stupid for thinking they hadn’t been filming this. They hadn’t even hidden the camera. It was right there on the shelf, pointing at us the whole time. It was on before I even walked through the door. This was just another scene to be edited and uploaded and liked and shared and commented on later. This wasn’t a family triangle. This didn’t even feel like a proper family, not with strangers invited.

  That’s why I didn’t feel bad about any of the stuff I did next.

  The next day I was allowed to go to Carys’s house after school, but only because I told my parents how good she is at languages. And only if I showed them my German homework when I got back. They wanted to make a special We Made Half a Million Subscribers! vlog ready for when the channel hit 0.5 million. (That was the way Spud told me to put it – 0.5 million. He said the zero would make me feel better about it psychologically. I wasn’t so sure.) Anyway, with Dad’s new schedule, homework had to come first. Mum was already annoyed about it. And about the unplugging day on Sunday. Miss Wilson had sent an email to all of our parents telling them about it. She invited parents to take part too, apparently. Mum was panicking in case we got our 0.5 millionth subscriber that day and we missed the big moment. It made me smile just to think about that happening.

  Carys lived at the bottom of Lavender Lane, a dead-end surrounded by fir trees, a few streets away from mine. You couldn’t even see her house from the road. We walked up this really long gravel drive then Carys said, “Home sweet home!” and pointed to a gigantic house. It had a name and everything. Raven Manor. It was almost completely covered in ivy, all the way up to the roof.

  “Woah!
” I said, gazing up at it. “All this is your house?” I really wished I’d polished my shoes.

  “You don’t need to be impressed,” Carys said. She poked her finger into a crack in one of the pillars and a little cloud of dust escaped. “It’s literally falling apart.” She laughed and pushed open the door. It creaked and barking echoed up the hallway.

  I quickly stepped behind her. “Would now be a good time to tell you I’m more of a cat person?” I said as a dog the size of a small horse lumbered towards us.

  “Don’t worry, he’s perfectly friendly!” Carys said, rubbing the dog’s ears. “You’re a teddy bear, aren’t you, Bernie?” I carefully stroked Bernie’s head. “See?” Carys said, just as a blob of dog drool hit my shoes. We both laughed, Carys maybe slightly more than me. “He is kind of gross too, sorry!”

  Our laughter drifted down the hallway. Carys shouted, “I’m home!” but I didn’t hear anyone answer. She trailed her fingers over the keys of a dusty-looking piano and stopped at the bottom of a giant staircase. It spiralled upwards, like the giant nautilus shell Farmor kept on her windowsill.

  “My mum would die to film in your house,” I said without thinking. Then I felt like an idiot, because the main reason I was there was to plan our next hack. “I mean, your house is amazing.”

  “Thanks.”

  We went up two flights of stairs to her bedroom. “The other one leads to this really old turret,” Carys said. “But there’s an owl nesting in there.” I really wanted to ask to see but I didn’t.

  Carys’s bedroom had huge posters stuck to the walls with Sellotape. I was not allowed to do that in my room. Posters had to go in a frame, and Mum had this special tool to check they were straight. I never got to pick them. Mum curated every room in our house like it was an art gallery, including my bedroom. There was an old film poster above Carys’s bed with a woman smoking a cigarette. Mum would literally faint if I put something like that in my room. It would be about as “on-brand” as graffitiing the coffee table. I looked at the photo stuck to the edge of the dressing table mirror. Carys and three other girls, squashing their faces together.

  “My friends,” Carys said. “I mean, my old friends. They’ve dropped me now.”

  “They stopped being friends with you?” I asked. “But you look so close here.”

  Carys looked over. “I guess they were worried about being associated with me or something. Sabrina still messages me sometimes, but no one else.” She pointed to the dark-haired girl next to her in the photo, then walked over to a chest of drawers by the windows. I didn’t know what to say, so I sat on an oversized cushion and watched Carys root around in the bottom drawer.

  “So, this stuff we’re going to upload,” I said eventually. “It’s not anything too bad, right? I mean, obviously I want the channel to lose subscribers. If they hit 0.5 million, they’ll probably make Eva Andersen’s Period: The Movie.”

  Carys laughed and carried on rummaging about in the drawer.

  “It’s just, I know it’s got to be something bad for their brand, but I don’t want to like…offend anyone.” I felt totally awkward.

  “Don’t worry, I get it,” Carys said, pulling out a laptop and charger. “They’ve just had a bunch of new subscribers, right? So, if we upload something weird, those subscribers will think the channel is super lame, and unsubscribe. They might lose some of their regular subscribers too.” She opened her laptop. “And their sponsors might get a little nervous if they think their page has been hijacked. We don’t have to do anything mean to have an impact.”

  I swallowed the giant lump that had formed in my throat. “And what if my parents trace it back to us?”

  Carys wiped the laptop screen with her sleeve. “They won’t find anything because we’re using their password which, let’s face it, isn’t exactly hard to guess. They might as well use the name of your cat!” I made a mental note to change my social media passwords from Ilove_MissFizzy. “You already said they think the deleted videos were a technical hitch.” Carys looked at me. “Hey, if you’ve changed your mind, we don’t have to do it.”

  “No, I need to do it. There’s no other way to stop them.” It was true, but I still felt like I was sitting at the top of the death slide at the park. “It’s just, I don’t want us to get in trouble.”

  “Don’t worry,” Carys said. “Look –” she held up a giant USB stick – “this is a VPN which uses an encrypted layered connection to a proxy server.” I looked at her blankly. “Basically, I’m surfing as a ghost.” Like that made me feel any better.

  Don’t ask me why I picked shark videos. I was clicking on random stuff on YouTube and there was this one of a diver in a metal cage. Two great white sharks were ramming it with their noses. It seemed like an appropriate metaphor for my life. We were watching it for the second time when Carys’s bedroom door opened and her dad poked his head round the door. Carys paused the video at such lightning speed that I wondered if she did ju-jitsu.

  “Hello, darling!” he said. He looked a lot older than my dad. And he was wearing a tie. My dad never wore a tie, even when he went out for dinner. I don’t think he even owned one. “Hello! You must be Eva. Carys tells me you’ve made her feel very welcome at school.”

  “Dad, we’re busy with our homework right now!” Carys said, without looking up.

  Carys’s dad looked at the laptop, concerned.

  Carys sighed. “It’s fine, Dad. It’s German homework. I’m helping Eva with verbs. Come and have a look if you want.”

  My heart stopped.

  “No, it’s fine!” her dad said. “You two carry on.”

  Then her mum appeared at the door. She looked exactly like Carys, but much older and with tidier hair.

  “Hello! Hello! Lovely to meet you! I’m Caroline!”

  I said hi then Carys said, “Can you go, Mum? We’re really busy with homework.”

  “Okay, sorry!” she said. “Didn’t mean to disturb you. Just saying hello! Dinner will be about six, okay? Will Eva be staying for dinner?”

  Carys said, “Yes.” Then her mum shut the door and just…went away. It was like visiting another planet. There’s no way my parents would have believed I was doing homework. But Carys’s parents didn’t even want to see evidence. After everything that happened at St Aug’s. She didn’t even get told off for not saying please. I felt kind of dizzy with the freedom of it. Like at Spud’s house where you’re allowed as many fizzy drinks as you want.

  After we’d finished editing the shark video, we agreed to wait a few days before uploading it. We didn’t want my parents to get suspicious. So, we lay on cushions listening to music and doing German homework for our cover story. We’d almost finished before I felt brave enough to ask Carys more about the hacking she did at St Aug’s.

  “Most of it’s been taken down,” she said. “I had to hand over all my logins to the head teacher. But there is still some stuff online if you want to see?”

  “Hmm, let me think,” I said. “Definitely!”

  “Okay, but you have to understand that this isn’t the original. That got taken down. Someone reposted it with weird music. And the bat emojis are nothing to do with me.”

  “Just play it!” I said, laughing.

  She clicked the touchpad. This creepy music started playing and a cartoon vampire popped up. “That’s my head teacher’s real face. And that’s my PE teacher.” The head teacher figure bit the teacher’s neck and blood spurted everywhere. I could not stop laughing. Carys grinned. “See why they excluded me now?”

  “Yeah, kind of.”

  “My parents have only just let me back on the Wi-Fi. And only for schoolwork.”

  Just then, a gong sounded.

  “Dinner’s ready,” Carys said, rolling her eyes.

  “You have a gong to signal dinner?”

  “No, we have a gong and my dad finds it funny to use it when I have friends over. Not that that’s happened for a while. Hey, I’ll ask my parents about you sleeping over on Frida
y if you want. We can upload the shark video then, maybe?”

  I smiled, bubbles of excitement fizzing in my stomach. “They won’t know what’s bit them.”

  I ended up getting back late from Carys’s. Mum was annoyed because she wanted us to film the 0.5 million subscribers video. Luckily, she and Dad couldn’t agree about where to film it, which props to use, or which subscribers to personally thank. So, I showed Dad my homework, then lay on the sofa looking at my phone. As they were deciding which sponsors to namecheck, I asked if I could sleep over at Carys’s on Friday.

  Mum said, “We’ll see, honey.”

  Dad said, “If you’re cooperating.” Cooperating was code for “look like you’re having fun while we’re filming”. I sighed and scrolled through the comments on the “family triangle” video.

  So spoiled!!!

  Ungrateful brat. (Only “brat” wasn’t the exact word they used.)

  Your honesty is such a breath of fresh air! You guys are awesome!

  Love this trio!!!!!

  Sorry, guys, love you but Eva is getting worse mannered every day.

  I felt quite proud of that last one.

  As I headed up to bed, Mum said, “Oh, we’ll definitely be doing your day of unplugging on Sunday.”

  I looked at Dad for an explanation. “Someone commented on the school Facebook group that the Andersens wouldn’t be taking part.” Mum held a cushion above his head, ready to bash him with it. Dad laughed and tried to duck. “Jen rage-replied saying of course we would! So now we have to.”

  “I did not rage-reply, Lars!” she said, laughing and bashing him with the cushion on every syllable. Which obviously meant she did. “Anyway, we’ve got a sponsor for the day, so it’s all worked out perfectly.”

  “You got a sponsor for my form’s day of unplugging?” I said.

  “Yep! We’re handing over the channel to this new mindfulness app called Tranquil Eyes for the day. Should be nice! And they’re giving us a special discount code you can share with your class.” Dad showed me the Tranquil Eyes website on his phone. Their slogan was KICK STRESS AND NEGATIVE THINKING OUT! which sounded stressful to me. Anyway, I couldn’t say anything about it because I was cooperating.