‘Yes,’ I say. I don’t say: You are correct, there is the Internet, it is indeed a thing that now exists. I don’t want this conversation going apocalyptic.
‘It’s really ridiculously expensive, Laura. So, from now on you’re allowed to use it at weekends only, when it’s cheap, and even then, only for an hour.’
‘An hour?’ The room goes silent, like a TV that’s been muted, because he doesn’t get it; he doesn’t get what that is to me, not right now. He keeps talking even though I’m not hearing him. No tears, I tell myself, because it would be so stupid to cry over something like this; but I have to bite them back. Under the table, jelly legs.
‘Can I go?’ I ask, even while he’s talking, and my mother nods and does this dismissive little wave thing with her hand, not even really looking at me; and she obviously knew how this was going to go, because they’d already spoken about it. Even the way I’d leave the conversation. In advance, like: Just let her go.
I run upstairs, actually run, feet thumping into the wood underneath the carpets, and I go to my computer and I open up AOL, and I wait. I’ve wrapped the modem in a jumper already to mute the noise of it. It’s so whiny and stuttering. It sounds like hesitancy, and I always think: How come this thing that’s so amazing sounds so desperate and choked and sickly when it’s actually working?
I remember my father – my real father – bringing home a computer when I was really young. A Spectrum, with a tape deck. And you’d put the tapes in to load a game, and while they loaded, they made a noise like the modems now do, only screechier, more in pain. Oh God this hurts this hurts, and then suddenly there’s Rainbow Islands on your screen.
‘Come on, come on,’ I catch myself saying. Jittering. Like anticipation mixed with anxiety, a ball of tension in my gut and a pain in my head and every part of me slightly tingling. Every time the same, and I don’t know how bad it’s going to be until I reach the point where necessity means I’m dealing with it. I open the drawer I stuffed the bill into, take it out and put it into my rucksack, inside a geography textbook that nobody’s ever going to look inside. Then, I’ll walk through the park on the way to school, and I’ll go behind the big tree that fell over in the hurricane of ’87, and I’ll burn it. It’ll be as if it never existed.
I take out a mixtape I made for myself – or, that I made for Nadine, but hers was a copy of mine, really, because the songs degrade each time you copy them over, and I wanted the perfect version to listen to, the original, or as close to it as you can get – and I put it on. A mixtape is like a piece of art in itself. Making something where the tracks play off each other, the flow and the pace and the narrative; because they all have a narrative. While the first song is playing – You’ve got a gift, I can tell by looking; and I half-shout the words along with the song, under my breath – I pull out the box of matches that I keep at the back of my tape drawer, behind the cassettes that don’t even have boxes. Like unloved pets, waiting for new homes, for me to put Sellotape over the holes on the top of them and record over them. I pluck one of the matches out. Safety matches, the box says. Not the way I use them. I strike it, use it to light one of the joss sticks that I got from this shop in Ealing Broadway called Hippie Heaven – the smell is called Black Love, but it’s the same title as this album I love, and I don’t even know what it is, but it’s sweet and sour all at the same time – and when that’s burning, I hold the match between the fingers of my left hand and I roll my sleeve up with the right, up as far as it can go; and then I turn my arm, so that the hard bit of skin on my elbow is visible, and I carefully take the match and lay it down onto the folds and creases there. There’s a sizzle as some of the hairs, so thin and blonde I can’t even see them, burn themselves away; and then my skin, pink to black in just a moment, the bone of the match collapsing and crumbling so that you don’t know if it’s the burn or the char from the head of the wood that’s made my skin that colour.
I used to grit my teeth when I did this much more than I do now.
Afterwards, I don’t use Germolene or anything. Nadine cuts herself, I know, because she’s told me about it. She showed me her scars as if she wanted me to admire them. Hers are slick snicks along her skin, gone glossy as they’ve healed. They shine, reflect, almost. Mine – just the one, the same patch of skin – is more like a grimly depressing puddle. A scab that never quite properly heals, which passes for eczema or something if people ever notice it, and which has taken on this weird property where it almost always hurts me unless I’m actually burning it. As if that’s going to let the pain out.
‘You’ve got mail,’ my computer blurts out. Stupid tinny American accent. I was going to get some work done on Organon. Install another feature, maybe some more questions and reactions, before I go to the computer lab at school tomorrow. But the email is from Shawn. I know it’ll be a constant distraction until I’ve dealt with it.
Hey U, the subject line says. That’s how he pretty much always starts his emails. His message is nice. He writes about what he’s been up to over the last few days. This vague thing of: it’s not like we’re ever going to actually be able to meet, probably, but we’re going to make plans as if we will. Sometimes I send photographs that I’ve scanned in on Paul’s scanner. Always ones with my friends in as well, because I want to make it clear I’ve got them. There’s no way of proving otherwise.
I won’t be around for a while, I write. Parentals being assholes. I spell the word like he does, because I worry that arse just looks too strong; too defiantly British. They’re only letting me use the Internet at the weekend. Didn’t want you thinking I was ignoring you, because I’m totally not. I’ll miss you! Sometimes I write the words like they speak in Wayne’s World, because I want him to think I’m cool, and not the sort of British person that they take the piss out of in films. I read my email a hundred, two hundred times. Is it casual enough? Do I sound too eager?
Then, eventually, when I’ve worried about it so much that I’ve bitten a bit of my nail by the corner and made it bleed, I click send. A whooshing from the speakers, to indicate it’s been sent. A physical sound, the sound of travel, of movement, to reassure those people who are too used to trudging down to the Post Office. I don’t think anything’s ever whooshed with speed from the Post Office. The world’s had the Internet a couple of years now, and already it feels like sending something through the post should be dead to us.
‘You’ve got mail.’ Shawn’s replied, and it’s a bit cold, a bit quiet. Like he’s disappointed. Sure don’t worry about it, then a sad face made out of punctuation. He’s not good at punctuation in the actual message, but he uses it to make faces, that sort of thing. A man shrugging, drawn in ASCII art underscores and brackets.
I hear voices rising from downstairs. Mum and Paul, arguing about something. ‘We told her,’ Paul says. There’s such a finality to his voice. We all know full well what he’s about to do. Disconnected flashes up on the screen. I didn’t get a chance to reply before they pulled the plug, picked up the phone from downstairs and hung up the call.
I rub at my elbow, at the burn. The raw skin is so pink, and new, and sore to the touch.
There’s a knock on my door. ‘I wanted to say goodnight,’ my mother tells me, pushing open the door a little; so little that I can’t quite see her face, but I can still feel her presence through the gap.
‘Fine. Night.’ That’s it, get out now. I’m working. I’m at my desk, tinkering with Organon. I’m having to work offline, which is a pain in the backside. Organon is stubborn at the best of times, and I don’t even have my usual message boards to get any help.
‘I don’t want you to be upset with me,’ she says. I don’t say: And yet somehow you always seem to manage it. I’ve learned, over the years, to hold my tongue. The easiest