by Rae Earl
I don’t know what a paternoster is, but I get his point, and it’s a bit of a revelation. I hadn’t really thought about it in quite that way before.
“You know what, Bradley,” I say. “I AM going to be real. I’m going to have fun but be real. Talk about real stuff. Talk about what it’s REALLY like. Tell the TRUTH and look REAL and … natural. I’m not going to wear lots of makeup, either. But there’s only one problem: If I go completely natural and real, I will be trolled into a coma.”
Bradley laughs softly. “Millie. You’ll get trolled anyway. I can’t pretend you won’t. Just do it. People will always find fault with you. Do you think it’s easy loving lifts? It’s not. I’m a lift-loving cosplayer. We are basically a very-easy-to-laugh-at minority group. But who cares? Now, I’ve got to go and see if I can get some footage of the inner workings. It’s been … really … quite okay speaking to you. Just go and do it. Yeah, just … be you.”
And with that, Bradley quickly gets up and dashes up the stairs that are there for people who are terrified of lifts.
I stand there feeling like I’ve been with one of the wisest, sweetest, weirdest people on the planet. He shouldn’t live under coats. He should spread all that brain everywhere and not just on escalators. Also, he said very lovely things about me, which makes me feel … odd.
I need to get back to Lauren before I forget all the good advice he’s given me. I think we are ready to start #Help.
#DictatorHair
I get the bus from the mall to Lauren’s house. The whole time, I’m thinking about Bradley.
When Lauren lets me in, she seems really confused. “I’m reading something that someone shared. They want hair like a young Joseph Stalin, but they don’t want to show a photo of Stalin to the hairdresser.”
I am very used to Lauren being a bit “out there,” but this is seriously random, even for her.
“And…?” I ask.
Lauren stares at me. “What’s so wrong with Stalin?”
Where to start? I spend the next five minutes explaining that Stalin killed everyone who didn’t agree with him, that millions starved when he was in control, and that, generally, he was completely horrible with a really bad mustache.
Lauren listens to all this and then holds up her phone and shows me a photo. “But, to be fair, he was really cute when he was younger. Look! He could be in a boy band.”
There is absolutely no doubt that Stalin, when he was younger, was quite attractive, but it all comes back to what Bradley says. How much stuff should we let people get away with in real life because they are cute and take a good photo? I’m feeling quite—what word does Mum use?—militant about this.
Lauren interrupts my thoughts. “Anyway. What did the escalator-geekathon say?”
“Don’t call him that!” My reaction takes me by surprise. I feel a bit protective of Bradley now.
Lauren looks at me. “Millie. I would be amazed if Bradley Sanderson didn’t seriously fancy you! I mean, how many NON-dates do you think he goes on?”
“Lauren!” I snap. “It was NOT a date, and he does NOT fancy me. We’re just friends. He has a girlfriend. He can help me, and we can both … have a good time.”
Lauren drops her phone and shrieks, “YOU fancy Bradley Sanderson!”
“No!” And I really don’t. “But he knows his stuff, Lozza. He says planning is the key. And he thinks that the vlog should be REALLY honest and talk about stuff that properly affects people. And”—I sort of say this really quickly—“I shouldn’t wear too much makeup.”
Lauren is startled. “Everybody wears makeup in vlogs and in life, Millie. It’s one of the world’s lovely things.”
Lauren has gone pale. I can see it even through her foundation.
“Lauren, I don’t think that no makeup is a bad idea. In one of the vlogs, I want to talk about how you don’t want to go online because of how you look. I won’t say your name! I’ll just talk about how to be more confident and what to do if people call you names. And just by me not wearing makeup, it makes the point that it’s real and I believe what I say.”
Lauren has gone even paler. There is now probably not even a shade of foundation in existence that matches her skin tone.
“Millie, I’m worried about you.” Lauren puts her arm around me. “This is basically an invite to every troll in the world. It’s like walking up to Mr. Style Shame and saying, ‘Come into my bedroom and call me a dork.’”
I remember what Bradley said about everybody getting trolled, whatever they do.
“I can handle it,” I say.
At that point, an odd sound starts downstairs. It sounds like a thunderstorm.
Lauren notices that I’m a bit concerned.
“Don’t worry, Mills. When my dad gets really cross with my mum, he does a drum solo on the radiators with forks. Their marriage counselor said it was a good way to ease the tension.”
I hear Lauren’s dad shout, “I’m only here because of her!”
Lauren sighs. “He also does that. A lot.”
I don’t know what to say. Which is every shade of useless.
Lauren must sense this, because she hugs me and says, “Let’s get together in the shed tomorrow. Let’s do it. I’m there for you every step of the way—as long as I can be off-screen with defined brows and a decent lippy.”
“I love you, Lauren. You’re brilliant. Just please don’t marry a Russian dictator.”
Rubbish jokes are all I can manage sometimes. She smiles, and I leave. Her parents don’t notice. Her dad is playing the kitchen cabinets and her mum has turned the TV up to a volume level that even Granddad could hear.
#Help is happening. Lauren is ready. I’m ready. I think.
I think I am. Can I handle it, though? Can I handle people calling me stuff?
I hope I can delete it from my head.
When I get back to Granddad’s, I start to plan what I’m going to say. I write down a few notes. I’d like to talk to Dad about it, but he’s not here. To be honest with you, he’s hardly ever here. He’s mainly somewhere else arranging something else. When I lived with Mum, she was there even when she wasn’t. If I needed her, she would usually magically appear. I miss that.…
Okay, yes! I miss HER.
Anyway. I can’t think about all that now. I have to be clear in my head about what I want to say and where I want things to go. I need to keep focusing forward. Moving up like a … lift.
No. You can stop thinking that, too. I do NOT fancy Bradley. I do, however, love someone who is just proud to be who they are and gets on with it. Hurrah for escalators …
In a way.
#RealVlogOne
Lauren and I are in the Shed of Vlog. It’s Sunday morning, and Granddad has taken down his calendar. This is a small but sweet act of loveliness on his part. Now everyone will know we have nothing to do with wading birds.
Lauren moves a spade out of the way and looks at me. “Are you ready, Mills?”
I tell her yes. I’ve been practicing all night in the mirror. I think I’ve got it. I’ve planned my advice, and I’ve planned how to say it. I’ve nicked a bit of it from stuff I’ve seen in magazines, but I think I can get away with it.
Lauren counts me in like a proper film director. “Three. Two. One. ACTION!”
“Hello. I’m Millie, and welcome to the very first Hashtag Help vlog! You can see that I’m doing this without any makeup on. Extreme close-up please, Lauren.”
(And Lauren zooms the phone RIGHT in so you can basically dive into my pores.)
“And the truth is, I’m really scared, because no makeup means—”
(At this point, we hear a very loud, odd version of “Humpty Dumpty Sat on a Wall.”)
“Ignore that! That’s my aunty Teresa. She bought an ice-cream van and just got the siren thingy going. She hasn’t got any freezers, but she’s working on that.
“Um, where was I? Okay, I just want to explain why I’m doing this without any contouring or stuff. I love makeup, bu
t there are things that are more important than eyeliner. I didn’t want to be all shallow and for my vlog to just be about how I look.
“Anyway, today I want to talk to you about parents. ‘Hashtag Help Me Cope With Crazy Adults In My Life.’ We are always told that anyone over the age of eighteen should know what they’re doing. The fact is, they don’t. As you can hear, my aunty Teresa has bought a mobile dessert truck. I wish I could say this was the first time she’s done something random like this, but it’s not. And I don’t think she’s going to change. In fact, as long as the adults in your life are not actually hurting you, you kind of have to accept that they are very unlikely to change. If they are the sort of people who are convinced that they invented synchronized swimming in a kiddie pool at the age of four, then they’re probably going to be the same at forty-four.
“Accept them, and, if you can, try to help them. For example, my aunty Teresa has said that she’s going to make an avocado-and-chili-ripple ice cream for her van, and I’ve very gently steered her to peanut butter and caramel. You can make a difference to people’s lives … and people’s desserts.
“Now, coping with random adults is less difficult than coping with parents. Parents expect more of you, so they are basically a different species. I have lovely parents, but my mum is currently going out with a man who thinks that a vacuum cleaner’s feelings are worth more than mine. So I’m living with my dad. He is great, but he’s not around that much.
“Generally with parents, I think that the following FOUR things are good to do:
1. Tell them where you are going. If you just disappear somewhere, they get really upset. If your parents watch a lot of crime shows, like CSI, this will definitely be the case, as they think really clever murderers live in mailboxes on every street.
2. Occasionally—and I know it’s hard—start a conversation with them about school. This makes them stupidly happy and they’ll stop asking you all those questions about your day, so it’s a massive win-win situation thing.
3. Ask them about what they were like as teenagers. They might be weird about this to start with, BUT you could see a really surprising, human side of them. They may have had snogging issues or have been dumped horrifically. Remember, most of them didn’t have a mobile phone till they were twenty-something, so their stories could be unbelievable. My mum once waited in a park for over an hour when her friend was meant to be meeting her. Her friend had actually been in a nasty homemade-Rollerblade accident in her own garden and couldn’t walk. She wasn’t horribly injured or anything, but no one could tell Mum. Her friend had a hedge and a wheel on her head, and Mum was completely in the dark, sitting in a park eating chips. Our parents had it really tough. You’ve got to give them a bit of love for that.
4. Okay, this step is harder. I have a friend whose parents argue loads but are staying together because of her. We all know that is just the worst idea ever. It would be far better for them to just call it a day and … Anyway … if you’re living with adults who yell a lot, just—I know this is hard, like, the HARDEST—but try to remember that this is not your fault. And I KNOW they always say that on TV and in books and in serious chats at school. But it’s TRUE. Your parents are just tools. A good thing is to take them aside and say, ‘Look—your arguing is really getting to me and making me feel awful.’ If you tell them how you feel, it might just work. It might not. It could make it worse, but honesty’s worth a try.
“So that’s me, Millie, with ‘Hashtag Help Me Cope With Crazy Adults In My Life.’ Please leave your comments, and, um … until next time…”
I try to make a hashtag with my hands. I’m not sure it works.
“Hashtag Help me to help you!”
Lauren presses STOP.
“What do you think?!” I ask her immediately.
Lauren pulls the sleeves of her shirt over her hands.
“How you say I should handle my parents in real life is different from what you’ve said there.”
This is true. It is.
“I know,” I say. “But I’m trying to be more general with things so it can help more people. Do you know what I mean?”
Lauren looks down at her hands. “Yeah,” she sighs. “They are pretty unique. In a pretty bad way.”
I try to get off the subject and cheer her up. “What did you think of the whole vlog?”
Lauren thinks hard. “Er. Good. For a first go. I think. Not, er, too preachy,” Lauren says. “Are you going to upload that?”
She seems unsure. I stare at her.
“You know what, Lauren. I think I’m going to just think about it for a while. I think that’s…”
And we both say it together:
“Sensible.”
#Upload
I sit in my room for hours. I tidy everything about four times. I look underneath the bed and discover a box of My Little Ponies. I go on eBay to see how much they are worth. I find out they are worth nothing because Teresa has cut off their manes and written Teresa is the best jockey ever all over them. I brush Dave and then try to tie a small bow on her head. She attempts to eat it.
After all this, I still can’t decide whether I should upload the vlog or not.
Eventually, I decide I need some advice about my actual advice vlog.
I track down Granddad. He’s in his shed. He’s put his calendar back up, and he’s sawing a piece of wood. He does this a lot. You never get to see where the wood goes or what it does.
“Granddad, would you do something even if you thought people would laugh at you for it?”
Granddad stops sawing and sits down. “I married your grandma.”
I hate it when he does this. Rubbish, ancient anti-women jokes. You need him to be helpful, and he just goes silly.
“Granddad! I’m serious!” I yell.
“So am I,” he sighs. “You’re old enough now, so I’ll tell you something, but keep it to yourself. Your grandma was pregnant with Teresa when I met her.”
My brain takes a second or two to process this. This is a major revelation. I had NO IDEA. “What?” I yelp. “So she isn’t yours?!”
“She’s mine,” Granddad says firmly. “Blood isn’t always thicker than love. Your grandma was seen as damaged goods years ago. People said, ‘Don’t marry her.’ But she was lovely. She’d made a mistake. A man told her he loved her, and he didn’t. I did. So I married her, and I didn’t have a miserable day or a sandwich for dinner for thirty-five years. You’ve got to do what you think is right, Millie. Common sense—that’s what you’ve got. Teresa hasn’t got any, but at least she follows her heart. That’s something. If YOU think that what you’ve got to say is worth hearing, then who cares what other people think? If it could help one person feel better, SHARE IT! But, Millie…”
And Granddad grabs my hand. “You HAVE to look after yourself. That’s important. Now, get lost. I need to cut some wood.”
Granddad may be harsh, but sometimes he gets it right.
That’s it. I’m going to do it.
I call Lauren as soon as I close the shed door behind me.
“I’m with you,” Lauren says, and that’s JUST what I want to hear. “Can I come over? I’d quite like to get out of the house, and anyway, we are doing this together.”
When Lauren arrives at the house, she’s carrying a jar of celebratory chocolate-hazelnut dip. “Let’s toast to our success with sweet grissini!” she shouts before shoving one in my mouth and laughing. It’s a great friend that helps you AND brings you random sugar.
Just as we are about to press UPLOAD, my stomach suddenly goes into a panicked flutter. All the questions that have been rushing around my head all day suddenly seem all too real. What am I doing? What will Danny—or Bradley—think about it? What if Mum or Erin see it?
Dave chooses this moment to jump onto my laptop keyboard and attempt to steal a grissino.
She also presses UPLOAD.
Lauren looks at me. “Well, Mills, it’s gone. Decisio
n made. It’s up. Hashtag it on ALL your accounts with hashtag real, hashtag vlog, hashtag makeup, hashtag feminism, hashtag advice, hashtag life, and anything else that is trending now, and let’s see what happens!”
I agree with her but tell her that we should leave it for twenty-four hours before we even check the views. Otherwise, we’ll just get down about it. New vlogs take time to build an audience. I read that in an article.
Lauren just puts her hugely serious face on and says, “This is history, Millie. This is gorgeous Stalin when he could be in a boy band. This is…”
At this point, Aunty Teresa bursts in, shouting, “Have you started a proper vlog, Mills?! Granddad mentioned you were doing something involving videos that everyone in the world can see. Brilliant! And perhaps, if it goes viral, you can ever so subtly put an advert in for my ice-cream van, too!”
Lauren catches my eye. We don’t want to tell Teresa exactly what we’ve said about her.
“Let’s see how it goes,” I say.
I think I say this to Aunty Teresa quite a lot.
Aunty Teresa skips off to work on more ludicrous flavors of ice cream.
Lauren says to me very seriously, “How are you going to even sleep tonight now that it is out THERE?”
My tummy does a backflip. Perhaps I should give my phone to Lauren so I’m not checking it all night, but then … I know that I can just look at Dad’s iPad. It will be impossible not to check. Impossible not to see how people react. Impossible not to … “Loz, it will be impossible.”
“Millie!” Lauren shouts. “You’re not a celebrity. Nothing will happen for hours. DON’T WORRY. This is a really fun thing we are doing. Don’t spoil it!”
