You Don't Know Me

by Sophia Bennett

  ‘Is it horrendous? Is it Abba?’

  We shake our heads. Jodie holds her phone out still further so everyone can see.

  What’s strange is that someone would use ‘Sunglasses’ of all things to try and humiliate us. Why not, as Rose said, Abba? Or the ‘seminal’ leotard moment? Costumes aside, this one is relatively normal. In fact, of all the songs we did, it’s my favourite, and it actually sounds quite good.

  Am I the problem? Is that why they chose it? It’s the only thing I can think of. The others have all got beautiful voices. I still love singing more than anything, but in Year 8 I was told in choir that my voice sounded like ‘a truckful of gravel being poured down a hole’. Plus the whole skipping thing.

  ‘Is it me?’ I ask.

  Jodie looks doubtful. ‘Could be. Look at that wiggle you did there.’

  ‘Was it terrible? Should I have just stood there?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Rose disagrees, peering at the screen curiously.

  I still don’t get it.

  ‘What?’ I’m almost wailing by now.

  ‘Look,’ Nell says, pointing to the titles above the video. I hadn’t even noticed there were any. I was too busy checking out my legs for previously unknown deformities, or my dance style for embarrassing dad-at-a-disco moves I didn’t know I had.

  But now I see it more clearly. Whoever uploaded this video only did it this morning. And whoever they were, they decided to enter it into a competition. Not just any competition, but Killer Act – the battle of the bands on Interface. It’s the biggest online music competition in the country and it feels like half the school has already entered.

  Oh help. And there I go, bouncing around my bedroom in a feather boa and half my pyjamas.

  I drag my eyes away from myself and look where the others are looking: at the information underneath. So far there have been, surprisingly, zero mean comments about us. And 24 votes.

  We have 24 votes.

  Call of Duty – who go to Castle College, and are the best band in the area by miles – have been on Killer Act for weeks and they only had about 300 votes the last time I looked. We have nearly a tenth of that in a few hours.

  There are two comments but they’re both OK.

  The blonde in the glitter shorts is awesome.

  Loving those dance moves! lol

  ‘I don’t get it,’ I say, sinking into the beanbag, confused.

  Nell, bright pink after that comment about her shorts, stares at the screen hard, as if daring it to change. It does. 25 votes. 26.

  ‘I think it’s OK,’ she whispers in wonderment. ‘I think people like it.’

  But then I remind myself: Nell is a cute, fluffy kitten in human form. I look to Jodie for a second opinion. Was that comment about my dance moves ironic, or not?

  ‘It’s possible . . .’ Jodie announces, sounding as if she can’t quite believe what she’s saying, ‘. . . that we don’t totally suck on video.’

  Moody Blue

  On Saturday morning, Mum drives me to Living Vintage, the shop next to her café on the market square in Castle Bigelow. I took the job there last year, partly to help pay my phone bills – an irony that isn’t exactly lost on me now.

  In the car, Mum can tell I’m quieter than usual. She turns to me and in the bright sunlight streaming through the windscreen, I notice strands of grey in the brown frizz of her hair, which otherwise matches mine.

  ‘Still no luck, then?’ she asks, referring to the phone.

  The worst of her anger is over by now. I think she even feels a tiny bit sorry for me. She knows how much that phone meant to me.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Not yet.’

  I’m certainly not going to tell her about the whole ‘I was hacked and now my bedroom is online, plus me in my pyjamas’ thing. Mum struggles with the café. It’s hard running a business in a little country town these days. Two shops closed last month, and another two the month before. But Mum tries to spare me her worries, and I try to spare her mine. Besides – is it really a worry, having fifty votes on Killer Act, which is what we’re up to now? If I only knew why, I think I could feel quite happy about it.

  We park up behind the market square. Castle Bigelow is an old Somerset town, with a high street leading up the hill to the grand gates of Castle College at the top. Market Square is at the bottom: a collection of old Georgian buildings painted in cheerful colours, housing the café, the vintage shop, a pet shop, a bookshop and two antique shops. It looks quaint and old-fashioned – like something out of an Agatha Christie mystery. All the modern chains are up the other end.

  At Living Vintage, Mrs Venning, the owner, greets me with her usual wide-armed hug. She greets everyone this way, including visiting tourists. They usually depart with at least a costume jewellery brooch, if not a hat and a jacket. She narrows her eyes and casts a critical eye over me.

  ‘Jeans, dull; jumper, hideous. I wish you’d let me dress you, darling.’

  Mrs Venning is wearing wide black wool trousers, a peacock velvet tunic and a little sequinned cocktail hat over her bright auburn hair.

  ‘One day, Mrs V,’ I promise. When nobody I know is ever going to see me, I add silently to myself. She looks amazing, but I’d never dare go out like that in public.

  ‘You should copy your friend, you know,’ she adds. ‘She’s got a real eye.’

  ‘I know,’ I nod.

  She means Rose. Rose has the brave, individual look that Mrs Venning likes to go for.

  ‘Upstairs, today, if you don’t mind,’ she adds. ‘Lots of new bags in. Michael’s been trawling the Midlands. There will be some gems but most of it will be absolutely dire. The usual story, darling: charity shop, recycling, pearls and maybes. You are an angel.’

  I climb the narrow staircase to the attic. It’s one of my favourite places: whitewashed walls and sloping ceilings, plain floorboards and rails and rails of unusual clothes. These are the ones that Mrs Venning has rescued in the past. Her husband travels around vintage markets, charity shops and recycling centres, looking for bargains. My job is to go through the three large cardboard boxes lined up in the middle of the floor and sort out the very worst of the things he’s picked up from the very best. Some things are old, filthy, falling apart and frankly disgusting. Others are worth giving to Oxfam, but not selling here. Mrs Venning makes her money by spotting the occasional original Chanel handbag or perfect sixties shift. These are her ‘pearls’.

  Normally, while I sort through the piles, I play the latest chart tunes on my headphones, but today I can’t. I’ve lost my flippin’ iPhone, with all my music on it, and Mrs Venning’s little portable radio is out of batteries. I end up singing ‘Sunglasses’ to myself, to keep myself amused.

  After an hour of sorting, I pick out a bead necklace and an old fake-fur shrug I think Rose might love. One of the perks of my job is that I get to take things away that Mrs Venning doesn’t think she can sell. Rose gets half her wardrobe this way. I’m checking myself out in the mirror in the necklace and shrug, imagining them on her, when I could swear I see her ghostly face hovering behind me.

  ‘Ahh!’ I leap half a metre in the air.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Rose asks, coming over, and very much real.

  ‘No. Not exactly. You scared the hell out of me.’

  ‘Well, serves you right for prancing about in front of the mirror like Lady Gaga. Nice shrug, by the way.’

  ‘It’s for you. Well, it was. Well, it would be, if Mrs V said it was OK. And if you hadn’t scared me witless.’

  Rose rolls her eyes. ‘I was only trying to be helpful. Gran made me come into town with her. I thought I’d come and find you. I can do some sorting with you, if you like. Found any pearls yet?’

  ‘No. I found these, though.’ I point to the things I’ve chosen for her.

  She tries the shrug on and looks fabulous, as I expected. Suddenly, the day is fun. Rose quite often pops in like this, to keep me company. At first, I offered to share my wages with her, but she
refused. She gets a generous allowance from her granny. Besides, Rose doesn’t actually work very much when she’s here. She gets too distracted by the clothes and jewellery, and imagining what the people who wore them thought and did and said.

  She wanders around, acting out little playlets for me, while I gradually sort out the piles. ‘“Oh, Harold! Harold! Will you never come back to me? How could you leave me at the altar, when we swore we’d be true for all eternity? And me in my best lace veil, and fourteen strands of emeralds . . .”’

  ‘Take that veil off!’ I instruct her, crossly. ‘You’ll ruin it. And be careful with those necklaces. They could be pearls.’

  ‘They’re glass beads!’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Oh all right. Spoilsport . . . Hey, look at these round glasses. “Imagine all the PE-puuuul.”’

  ‘Are you trying to be John Lennon?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You look more like Ozzy Osborne. Put them down.’

  ‘You could use them if we sing “Sunglasses” again,’ she says, holding them out.

  ‘I’m never singing “Sunglasses” again.’ I shiver once more at the thought of me in the pyjamas and kilt on the internet.

  Ignoring me, Rose hums the tune to herself. We end up singing it side by side, in front of the mirror, with me in the John Lennon glasses and her in a white-rimmed sixties pair, and a battered straw hat for good measure. It’s always like this when she comes round. She slows me down hopelessly. But she knows I love it really, whatever I say.

  When I’m finally done with sorting, Mrs Venning kindly puts the shrug and beads in a bag for us, and we head for the bus that takes us out of town. It winds down the station road to where the houses run out and the fields begin. This is where Rose’s grandparents have their farm, with Mum’s cottage a few houses further along.

  ‘D’you want to come in for a bit?’ she asks.

  ‘Nah. I’m busy. Things to do. People to see.’

  She knows I’m joking. We always end up at each other’s houses over the weekend, and often on weekdays too. Rose and I are a soulmate thing.

  You know how sometimes a new person comes to school who’s good at everything you’re good at – and mostly better than you? Well that was Rose, two years ago. Everyone assumed we’d hate each other, and that maybe I’d be her worst enemy, but that’s not what happened.

  Rose was the first girl I’d met who loved all the same things as me. We were both into drawing, music, makeup ideas, books and films that made us cry. We shared a longing for sunny beaches and round-the-world travel. We clicked instantly. She could quote from Stevie Smith, my favourite poet, and like me, she kept a scrapbook full of pictures of far-off places she wanted to see one day.

  Sure, she came from London, and had seen more of life than me. She had more interesting dress sense, and preferred sophisticated jazz to Abba and Beyoncé. She played classical guitar, while I played Fruit Ninja, and her room was nicer. But she was never grand about it: in fact, she was the opposite – humble and sweet. We never got bored hanging out together. I used to miss her when Nell and Jodie came over to do the Powerpuffs, so soon she came too. She thought we were crazy, but she joined in anyway. The idea of not hanging out with her when I could is just . . . odd.

  The back door to the farmhouse is always open in the daytime. We let ourselves in and go up to her room.

  ‘Did you want to share my notes on Frankenstein?’ Rose asks, referring to an English homework I haven’t quite finished. OK, haven’t quite started. The whole phone thing really messed up my homework timetable.

  ‘Oh God, yes. Thank you.’

  I sit at her ancient computer while she goes to the record player to put on some jazz from her mum’s old vinyl collection. The room fills with the sound of piano and strings, then the warm, mellow voice of Ella Fitzgerald. I don’t even need to check the album cover: it’s the Cole Porter Songbook. It was recorded in the 1950s, and was one of Rose’s mother’s favourite albums. Their record collection was one of the few things she inherited from her parents when they died. The Songbook is utterly seminal (‘highly influential in an original way’ – I checked in the dictionary) and we both know every note of every song.

  As Ella sings, I mouth the words of ‘Every Time We Say Goodbye’. Rose stares silently out of the window. I sense that her blue mood is suddenly on her again. It hasn’t really left her since the end of the holidays, and it’s so unlike Rose to be down for long. I wonder if she’s totally forgiven me for going off to see Dad somewhere exotic and abandoning her all holidays. Or else it might be a side-effect of jazz that hasn’t rubbed off on me yet.

  ‘Rose . . . it’s not Vegas, is it?’ I ask, just to be sure.

  ‘What?’ she asks, looking round, distracted.

  ‘The whole . . . whatever it is that’s bothering you.’

  ‘No,’ she sighs. ‘It’s not Vegas. Believe me, you can keep Vegas. Did you find my notes?’

  ‘Yup. Got them. Sent them to myself. I’ll work on them later. You’re a lifesaver.’

  She smiles modestly. It’s good to see a smile on her face; at least that blue mood hasn’t taken her over completely. She goes back to looking out of the window, though. Meanwhile, with the computer in front of me, I can’t resist a quick look on Interface. I go straight to our entry on Killer Act.

  62 votes. 63. Who is doing it? Is it all the same person, madly clicking ‘Vote here’? I try out a vote myself, to see what happens. When I click ‘Refresh’, the vote button disappears. As I suspected, you only get one go.

  A new comment has appeared. I check it out.

  The fat girl’s good at guitar.

  Whoa! What? The fat girl?

  Instinctively, I shift around so Rose can’t see the screen. It’s true, she has a larger frame than average, but so what? Rose is gorgeous. She’s ‘eclectic’ (her word) and unique. I hate it when people are just plain rude on the internet. I bet nobody would dare say that to her face. They certainly wouldn’t if I was around.

  I check the page. Is there some way of deleting comments? I can’t see one. Or reporting them? No, not that either. Without thinking, I start typing.

  Who do you think you are?

  But then I do think. You don’t want to get in an argument online. They can be nastier than the face-to-face ones and just make things worse. However, another thought occurs to me. Whoever uploaded this video may be reading the comments. Maybe that’s why she did it, or he did. I decide to play nice. I ignore the comment about Rose – with great difficulty – and write one of my own.

  Ha ha. Please may I have it back now?

  My username is SashaB: not too difficult to work out it’s me, or what I want. Which I do, desperately. I need that phone!

  Now all I can do is wait.

  A Million Reasons Why

  On Monday, back at school, we’re all on the lookout for the Mystery Uploader. Jodie and Nell are in one form room, Rose and I in another. Jodie holds a conference in the locker rooms before we go our separate ways.

  ‘It’ll be somebody shifty,’ she says, ‘who gives us strange looks or a smug smile. He’ll definitely be watching us, to see if we’ve noticed. Before he enacts part two of his plan.’

  ‘What part two?’ Nell asks nervously.

  She shrugs. ‘I couldn’t say. Who knows what he could be capable of?’

  ‘Maybe he did see that video of you in the leotard and he’s nefariously entered you for Strictly Come Dancing,’ Rose says, smiling at me.

  ‘Oh, fabulous,’ I sigh. ‘This is still funny for you. It wouldn’t be so funny if you’d been the one in the kilt, shimmying your little butt off.’

  Rose laughs. She sounded great on guitar, and looked it too, in her full-length dress. Sitting down. She has no idea.

  We scan the crowd in the corridors and our form rooms, and, frankly, if Jodie’s right, the Mystery Uploader could be anybody. Everyone at St Christopher’s seems to give us either strange looks o
r smug smiles or both. By lunchtime, Jodie’s pretty convinced that at least half our year are in on it. Nell’s a nervous wreck and I’m pretty close myself. Rose has to take notes for me in History, because I just can’t concentrate.

  Then, back in our classroom, I’m rootling around in my school bag for a biro and suddenly there it is: my beautiful iPhone, still in its sparkly turquoise cover, nestling in its little pocket as if it has always been there. Is it a mirage? Is it a joke? Did he or she read my comment last night? Is this the reply?

  I turn it over and over, checking for signs of damage, but there are none that I can see. Rose, seeing me holding it, rushes over to me with a shriek of delight. When I turn it on, my emails are still intact. So are my messages and my Interface page. Nothing has changed. Nothing embarrassing seems to have been sent, done or used, apart from that one video.

  Still only that one mean comment about Rose, which was half nice anyway: it did say she was good at guitar, after all.

  Plus one saying:

  The fit bird in the skirt has great legs.

  And one saying:

  Hotlegs is Sasha Bayley, Year 11.

  75 votes. 76. 77.

  This is what it says on the home page of Killer Act on Interface:

  Do you have the talent? Are you a future star?

  Now in it’s 3rd year, the most exciting competition for teen talent is back – sponsored by Interface, the fastest-growing social network in the world.

  You can be any kind of musical act – singer, dancer, band, rapper. You just have to be 18 or under, still in full-time education, and unsigned.

  Upload your video and get your friends and fans to vote.

  The 100 acts with the most votes will get the chance to audition for the LIVE TV FINALS!!!!!!

  In March, the top 9 acts, as chosen by our team of internationally successful star judges, will compete ON LIVE TV IN THE UK AND STREAMED LIVE WORLDWIDE, for the prize of a contract to advertise Interface for a year, worth

  £100,000!!!!!!!

  Want to be the face of Interface?

  Then upload your video now.