She’d been standing with me in the corridor outside the stage entrance.
My mum always loved parents evening, mostly because she loves the brief, confused stares people make when she introduces herself as my mother. These occur because I’m mixed-race and she’s white, and for some reason most people think I’m Spanish because I did Spanish GCSE last year with a private tutor.
She also loved listening to teachers telling her over and over again what an excellent person I was.
I waved the club flyer at her. “Excuse me. I’m extremely prepared.”
Mum plucked it out of my hand and scanned it. “There are literally three bullet points on this. One of them says ‘mention the Internet’.”
“That’s all I need. I’m well-practised in the art of bullshitting.”
“Oh, I know you are.” Mum handed me back the flyer and leaned against the wall. “We could just do without another incident where you spend three minutes talking about Game of Thrones.”
“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”
“No.”
I shrugged. “I’ve got all the main points covered. I’m clever, I’m going to university, blah blah blah grades success happiness. I’m fine.”
Sometimes I felt like that was all I ever talked about. Being clever was, after all, my primary source of self-esteem. I’m a very sad person, in all senses of the word, but at least I was going to get into university.
Mum raised an eyebrow at me. “You’re making me nervous.”
I tried to stop thinking about it and instead thought about my evening plans.
That evening I was going to get home and I was going to make a coffee and have a slice of cake and then I was going to go upstairs and sit on my bed and listen to the latest episode of Universe City. Universe City was a YouTube podcast show about a suit-wearing student detective looking for a way to escape a sci-fi, monster-infested university. Nobody knew who made the podcast, but it was the voice of the narrator that got me addicted to the show – it has a kind of softness. It makes you want to fall asleep. In the least weird way possible, it’s a bit like someone stroking your hair.
That was what I was going to do when I got home.
“You sure you’re going to be okay?” Mum asked, looking down at me. She always asked me that before I had to do public speaking, which was frequently.
“I’m going to be okay.”
She untwisted my blazer collar and tapped my silver head girl badge with one finger.
She asked me, “Remind me why you wanted to be head girl?”
And I said, “Because I’m great at it,” but I was thinking, because universities love it.
I said my piece and got off stage and checked my phone, because I hadn’t checked it all afternoon. And that’s when I saw it. I saw the Twitter message that was about to change my life, possibly forever.
I made a startled coughing noise, sank into a plastic chair, and grabbed Head Boy Daniel Jun’s arm so hard that he hissed, “Ow! What?”
“Something monumental has happened to me on Twitter.”
Daniel, who had seemed vaguely interested until I said the word ‘Twitter’, frowned and wrenched his arm back. He wrinkled his nose and looked away like I’d done something extremely embarrassing.
The main thing that you need to know about Daniel Jun is that he probably would have killed himself if he thought it’d get him better grades. To most people, we were exactly the same person. We were both smart and we were both going for Cambridge and that was all anybody saw: two shining gods of academia flying high above the school building.
The difference between us was that I found our ‘rivalry’ absolutely hilarious, whereas Daniel acted as if we were engaged in a war of who could be the biggest nerd.
Anyway.
Two monumental things had happened, actually. The first was this:
@UniverseCity is now following you
And the second was a direct message addressed to ‘Toulouse’, my online alias:
Direct Messages > with Radio
hi toulouse! this might sound really weird but i’ve seen some of the Universe City fan art you’ve posted and i love them so much
i wondered whether you’d be interested in working with the show to create visuals for the Universe City episodes?
i’ve been trying to find someone with the right style for the show and i really love yours.
Universe City is non-profit so i can’t exactly pay you so i totally understand if you want to say no, but you seem like you really love
the show and i wondered if you’d be interested. you’d get full credit obviously. i honestly wish i could pay you but i don’t have any money
(i’m a student). yeah. let me know if you’re interested at all. if not, i still love your drawings. like, a lot. ok.
radio x
“Go on then,” said Daniel, with an eye-roll. “What’s happened?”
“Something monumental,” I whispered.
“Yes, I got that.”
It struck me suddenly that there was absolutely no way I could tell anybody about this. They probably didn’t even know what Universe City was and fan art was a weird hobby anyway and they might think that I was secretly drawing porn or something and they’d all hunt down my Tumblr and read all my personal posts on there and everything would be awful. School Brainiac and Head Girl Frances Janvier Exposed as Fandom Freak.
I cleared my throat. “Erm … you wouldn’t be interested. Don’t worry.”
“Fine then.” Daniel shook his head and turned away.
Universe City. Had chosen. Me. To be. Their artist.
I felt like dying, but in a good way.
“Frances?” said a very quiet voice. “Are you okay?”
I looked up to find myself face to face with Aled Last, Daniel’s best friend.
Aled Last always looked a little like a child who’d lost their mum in a supermarket. This was possibly something to do with how young he looked, how round his eyes were, and how his hair was soft like baby hair. He never seemed to be comfortable in any of the clothes that he wore.
He didn’t go to our school – he went to an all-boys’ grammar school on the other side of town, and though he was only three months older than me, he was in the school year above. Most people knew who he was because of Daniel. I knew who he was because he lived opposite me and I used to be friends with his twin sister and we took the same train to school, even though we sat in different carriages and didn’t talk to each other.
Aled Last was standing next to Daniel, gazing down at where I was still sitting, hyperventilating, in the chair. He cringed a little and followed up with, “Er, sorry, erm, I mean, you just looked like you were about to be sick or something.”
I attempted to say a sentence without bursting into hysterical laughter.
“I am fine,” I said, but I