Girl (In Real Life) Read online

  “I didn’t hear anything,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t want you filming in my bedroom.”

  Dad kept the camera pointing at me. “Oh, Eva, come on. This is Jen’s diary from when she was your age! It’s funny! Want to hear some of it?”

  “Not if you’re filming,” I said, although Mum was already clearing her throat. I rolled over so I was facing the window. “I hope there’s nothing gross about you and Dad in there!”

  Mum laughed. “Eva! I was thirteen. I hadn’t even met Lars then!”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “So, this is from 8th June 1987,” Mum read. “Mum ALWAYS has a go at me for EVERYTHING! She’s confiscated my cassette player for TWENTY-FOUR HOURS!!! because I accidentally played it too loud a COUPLE of times. She must be the only person on the planet unable to appreciate the music of Kim Wilde. Anyway, she forgot about my Walkman so I can still listen to my tapes! HA HA! I’ve told her to call me Jennifer a million times, but she STILL calls me Rainbow!!! She knows I hate it. Why can’t she respect my wishes and call me JENNIFER!!!? I can’t wait until I’m a famous actress called JENNIFER JONES and then she will have to stop calling me Rainbow. I practised my autograph loads of times today. Who knows when I’ll get discovered! In other news, Garface has started wearing Dad’s aftershave!! He’s eleven! He doesn’t even have stubble and it STINKS.”

  Mum collapsed onto my bed giggling. I curled up my legs so she didn’t touch me.

  “Oh my goodness!” she said, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. “Your poor granny. What a brat I was!”

  “Yeah, poor Granny,” I said seriously, and Mum howled with laughter again.

  “Oh, Eva!” Mum said, hugging me. I kept my body rigid, like a plank, and eventually she got the message and stopped. “It’s so tough being thirteen, isn’t it?”

  I knew she was trying to make friends, but if she wanted to make friends that badly, Dad wouldn’t be in here filming it. And she wouldn’t be crying with laughter.

  “So,” Mum said, scraping my hair back. “What do you think of your mum at thirteen?”

  “Annoying.”

  Mum laughed, and kissed me on the head. I wiped it off straight away. She laughed again but I didn’t join in, and it was awkward for a moment.

  “I found growing up tough, you know,” she said. “I didn’t always agree with what your granny did. But now, I can see that actually, she always had my best interests at heart.”

  I sat up. “Did Granny announce your first period to a worldwide audience?”

  “No,” Mum said. “But she did make me share a bathroom with your Uncle Gareth.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Like that’s even the same. If you’re trying to say I’m a brat because I don’t want my life broadcast to the entire planet then fine, I’m a brat.”

  Mum looked at Dad, confused, like an actor who’d forgotten their lines. Dad put the camera down. “Eva, you do understand we can’t stop making new content right now?” he said. “Especially with our newspaper column going live next weekend. It wouldn’t make sense.”

  “Right,” I said. “It wouldn’t make sense.” Because what was the point in saying anything else?

  “Want to play a Virtual Escape Room later?” Mum asked, like we hadn’t even had this conversation.

  I shook my head and waited for the door to close before I got my sketchbook out again.

  So what if Granny confiscated Mum’s “cassette player” a million years ago? Like that proved anything. I didn’t feel sorry for her, if that’s what she’d wanted. If Mum knew what it felt like to not be understood by Granny, why couldn’t she at least try to see what she was doing to me?

  I unlocked my phone and looked again at the screenshot Charley had sent of the St Augustine’s Meet the Team page. It was hard to believe Carys had done this. My friend had done this! And she’d almost got away with it. If she hadn’t told her friend, no one would have found out it was her. If only she’d kept it a secret. A proper secret, from everyone. She would have got away with it.

  I knew what I was thinking was bad. I had this cold feeling in my stomach, like when I’d forgotten to do my science homework. But I was excited too. Like, maybe I’d figured out a way to finally get my life back.

  I picked up my phone and clicked on Carys’s name.

  Feel like helping me with something big? I wrote, and tapped send before I could change my mind.

  Carys: Sure. What?

  I hesitated for a few moments before I replied:

  Hacking All About Eva.

  The next morning, I woke up to Mum’s voice shouting, “Lars! Can you check this article? I want to send it today.”

  Followed by, “Just a sec!” and Dad’s footsteps going down the stairs. I opened my door and listened carefully as Dad read Mum’s article aloud:

  “Introducing our new columnists, Lars and Jen Andersen, founders of the popular parenting vlog All About Eva. They produce twice-weekly YouTube videos sharing their parenting highs and lows featuring their thirteen-year-old daughter, Eva. In this brand-new column, they bring us both sides of the parenting puzzle.”

  “It sounds great!” he said. “Perfect! And I love that headline: When your little girl grows up…and goes rogue!” His laughter travelled up the stairs. “It sounds just like Eva!”

  I don’t know why I was surprised they were making me out to be some kind of major idiot.

  “And what about this for an opening?” Mum said. “Parenting a teen is always revealing to us new skills. Like, how to talk your daughter through the traumatic experience of her first spot, learning to accept a shrug as a meaningful conversation, and how to remain calm when the mobile phone becomes your new dinner guest.”

  Dad laughed, then suggested some changes and I could hear Mum’s fingers tapping the keys on her laptop. I crept back into my room. The article was going online next weekend. I wondered if I could anonymously post sick emojis.

  Later that day, Hallie posted TikToks of her and Gabi practising gymnastics on some mats in Hallie’s living room, like we always used to do. Hallie did a perfect back extension roll and I could hear Gabi cheering into her phone. There was one of them doing headstands opposite each other so their feet touched in an arch above their heads. Watching them together was like being dragged across gravel. But I tapped to like the videos anyway.

  By Sunday night, Carys still hadn’t replied to the message I’d sent her about hacking All About Eva. I’d seen the little grey bubbles appear and disappear under my message a few times. And now I felt really bad for sending it. But she’d liked the sketch of Miss Fizzy I’d done for art homework that I posted on my Instagram, so I guess she wasn’t too annoyed with me.

  On Monday morning, Spud talked about Minecraft the entire way up the hill, and I barely said a word. I wasn’t even listening. I was going through what to say to Carys in my head. I’d only just made friends with her and already I’d messed it up. She’d been excluded from St Aug’s for hacking, why would she want to risk doing the same thing for me? I was waiting on the corner, feeling completely stupid and selfish, when I spotted her walking towards me. She had a giant grin on her face.

  “Hey!” she said. Her hair was tied in a tiny ponytail. The front bits were pinned up, but most had fallen out. I wished I could get mine cut short like that. But there was no way Mum would ever let me. “Thanks for waiting.”

  “I’m so sorry about that message,” I blurted out. “I feel like an idiot for asking you that.”

  “It’s okay. I was going to reply, but—”

  “Just forget I even sent it. I was annoyed with my parents and…it was a really bad idea. I know you’ve just got in a load of trouble at your old school and…I’m sorry.”

  Carys squinted at me in the morning sunshine. “Who said it was a bad idea?” A tiny smile flickered on her lips. “Just don’t send me any messages about it. And delete that one you sent on Saturday. If you’re serious about doing this, we can’t leave footprints anywhere.” I looked d
own at my shoes and Carys laughed. “I mean digital footprints.”

  “Right!” I said, my stomach churning with excitement. “I knew that.”

  “I mean it,” Carys said. “We can’t leave a trail. So don’t tell anyone.” She looked me dead in the eyes. “I mean literally not a single person. Even if you trust them, okay?” I nodded, wishing I could write all this down so I wouldn’t forget. “It’s the only way to avoid detection.”

  Detection? That sounded serious. The pavement suddenly felt uneven, like when you first step off an escalator.

  Carys turned and started walking towards school. “Are you coming?”

  “You’ll do it?” I said. “I mean, you’ll help me?”

  A wide smile spread across her face. “I can’t believe you didn’t ask me sooner.”

  It was weirdly easy after that. Hallie and Gabi still didn’t want to hang around with us. I felt a stab of jealousy when they walked off together at the start of lunchtime. But me and Carys needed to speak somewhere in private, so we went to the big oak tree on the far side of the football field, where no one could hear us. We sat on its low branches, eating our lunch and making plans.

  Carys munched on a cheese sandwich while I picked weird yellow bits out of leftover black-bean noodles. Dad must have given me extra yellow bits deliberately. “The computer where your parents edit and upload stuff. Reckon you could get the password to log into that?”

  “I already know it,” I said. “It’s 1990_TambourineMan, same as their Netflix password.” Carys gawped at me. “What?”

  “Eva!” she said, laughing. “You can’t just share passwords like that!”

  “Oh, sorry. It’s just easy to remember because it’s the year they met and the name of the song that was playing.”

  Carys raised her eyebrows. “Sounds like they’re about as security-conscious as you are.”

  “I don’t know the one for their channel, though.”

  “It’s okay, as long as you have the main computer password, you should be able to access the rest. I’ll tell you how.” I fished around in my blazer pocket, looking for a pen. “Hey, you didn’t tell your parents about my hacking at St Aug’s, did you? I don’t want them to get suspicious.”

  “Course not,” I said, pulling my pencil case out of my bag.

  “What about Spud?” Carys said. “You think he might suspect anything?”

  “Don’t worry about Spud,” I said. “He lives on another planet most of the time.” I pulled out my notebook. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  Carys frowned. “Eva, you can’t write any of this down. You’ll have to remember it. We can’t leave any kind of trail. Hacking your parents’ channel could get us into serious trouble.”

  “Oh right. Sorry, I know.” I stuffed the notebook back into my bag. “I just don’t want anything to go wrong.”

  “It won’t.” Carys smiled. “At least not for us.”

  When I got home from school, Mum was being extra nice to me. Mainly because they had a new sponsor – this recycled stationery company called Salvage – and she still hadn’t got a photo of me using their stuff.

  “Please, Eva. It will only take ten minutes. We’re a week late with it now. Please.”

  “I have homework to do.” Carys and I had agreed for me to act as normal as possible, so my parents wouldn’t get suspicious. We had it all planned out – every last detail. Only maybe me wanting to do my homework wasn’t strictly normal, because Dad laughed for about ten minutes.

  “Did I hear that right?” he said. “Eva actually thinking about her homework? That’s a good one!”

  “But this is stationery,” Mum said. “You can do your homework while we take the photos!”

  “I doubt it,” I said. But they wouldn’t leave me alone until I’d agreed to do the shoot. “Fine!” I said eventually, letting out a long sigh. “But don’t complain when I fail my GCSEs.”

  Half an hour later I was sitting on the swing seat in the garden with a giant feather headdress on, pretending to write with a pencil made out of recycled newspaper. The sunlight was fading and the sky was striped pink.

  “Eva, tilt your head up slightly,” Mum called. “And hold the notebook a little higher?”

  I held it up as far as my arm would stretch.

  “Very funny,” Mum said. “And smile, or do a neutral face. Anything other than that scowl would be great!”

  I could tell she was getting annoyed. I stretched my mouth into a stupid smile.

  Mum sighed. “Lars, will you try?” She handed the camera to my dad. They talked quietly for a moment then Dad smiled at me.

  “Eva, indulge us, please, or we’ll be here for ever trying to get this shot. It’s one photo. Surely you are a tiny bit happy that this stationery is saving the planet?”

  I wrote the words THIS IS SO STUPID on the notepad and smiled.

  “Perfect!” said Dad. “Oh, of course, the F-Bomb!” Miss Fizzy jumped onto my lap and rubbed her face against the corner of the notebook, purring.

  “Photobombed me again, did you?” I whispered into her fur. She sniffed at the headdress, then started chewing on the feathers.

  “Don’t let her eat that!” Mum shouted. She rushed over to retrieve the headdress and wiped off cat saliva. I picked up Miss Fizzy and headed inside. “Hey,” Mum called. “Do you want to see the shot? You look amazing!”

  I was about to say no, because I was getting cold, and I probably looked like an idiot with that feather thing on my head. But it was the first time Mum had asked if I wanted to see a photo before she uploaded it. Maybe she was starting to listen?

  “Okay.” I put Miss Fizzy down, and Mum’s face lit up. I walked over and shielded my eyes so I could see the photo on the screen.

  “See? Amazing girl,” Mum said, kissing my head and pulling a couple of tiny feathers out of my hair. She let them go and I watched them float towards the hedge. That’s when I noticed Spud’s face in the bushes. I watched Mum as she typed replies to comments on the photo that were instantly popping up. So she hadn’t waited for me to say the photo was okay. She’d already uploaded it.

  “It looks like I have a peacock growing out of my head,” I said, and walked over to Spud.

  As I got closer, I realized his guinea pig’s face was sticking through the bushes too. And they were both wearing army helmets. Spud’s parents don’t let him appear in any of our videos, but that doesn’t stop him spying whenever we’re filming outside. Dad got this octopus hosepipe sprinkler a few summers ago, and Spud ended up on the video. They blurred out his face, but you could still see his Star Wars swimming shorts and when his mum realized she made them cut him out totally.

  “Spud, you can’t put helmets on animals,” I said through the bushes, and gently pulled the helmet off Toast’s head. “Where did you even get this? Is it from a Barbie?”

  “Reconnaissance mission. Stand by,” Spud said in an American accent. “Is feline in close proximity? I repeat, is feline in close proximity?”

  “Relax, Spud,” I said, laughing. “Miss Fizzy’s gone inside. But actually, I have some homework to do so…”

  “Roger that,” Spud said. “It’s a negative. I repeat, negative. Retreat!” And both of them disappeared back into the bushes. A moment later, Spud’s hand protruded from the leaves and grabbed the doll’s helmet I was still holding.

  I heard Dad take a deep breath. “That boy gets weirder every day.”

  I headed inside and went up to my room. Suddenly the reality of hacking into my parents’ computer later hit me. I went through the plan in my head: log on, open their channel, see if the password is saved, find it in security settings and memorize it, then delete stuff. Like Carys said, it was simple. Only, now it was all planned, it didn’t exactly feel simple.

  Maybe that’s why I tried my best on my maths homework that night. As though figuring out the hypotenuse of right-angled triangles would somehow make up for what I planned to do to their channel. I checked the time on my phone. Mum and Dad
usually went to bed around midnight, so I set my alarm for two a.m. and stuck my phone under my pillow. I let out a deep breath. Part of me felt terrified, the other part could not wait.

  When my alarm went off at two a.m., I was so confused I accidentally hit snooze. I’d almost gone back to sleep when I remembered what I was supposed to be doing. A slow, cold fear spread over my skin. I sat up, then silently crept across my room. Holding my breath, I carefully opened my bedroom door. Miss Fizzy came bounding in and almost gave me a heart attack. I put her on the warm spot on my bed, then barely dared breathe until I was all the way downstairs. I stopped and listened for a few seconds. The house was dark, apart from the tiny red lights of the dishwasher and the dull orange glow from the street lights outside.

  Once I got in their office, I took a few deep breaths. But that just made me feel dizzy. I quietly clicked the door closed, sat down and wiggled the mouse. Mum and Dad always left the computer in Sleep mode. The light from the screen felt blinding. I listened by the door for a moment then typed in their password with trembling fingers, half-expecting some kind of intruder alarm to go off. But it was just like Carys had said. I silently repeated her words to myself: Log in, open their channel, see if the password is saved. Log in, open their channel, see if the password is saved. My hands were still shaking as I clicked on the icon on their desktop. Suddenly, the music from the MEET THE ANDERSENS reel came on full blast. My heart jumped out of my chest. I quickly tapped mute and froze. No noise from upstairs. I blew out a long breath, my hand gripping the mouse. I was in.

  Hacking doesn’t feel that different to robbing a bank. Not that I’ve ever robbed a bank. But I guess the feeling is pretty much the same. Like, you get to a certain point and there’s no going back. You’ve walked through the door and turning around feels harder than carrying on. Even if you are almost paralysed with fear.

  I skimmed the cursor over the menu then clicked on Scheduled Videos. There was one due to go live in a few hours: We’re Eva’s Parents, Get us Out of Here! On the thumbnail, Mum and Dad were in army camouflage gear and the two captions said, Sweet Tween to Terror Teen and Eva Goes Rogue!!! And suddenly, I remembered why I was doing this in the first place.