Lola Offline

by Nicola Doherty

  ‘So what’ve you been up to lately, Lola?’ Kiyoshi asked.

  ‘Not much. Just studying. I might be taking up Baby Greek.’

  ‘What the hell is Baby Greek?’ said Kiyoshi. ‘Is that what Greek babies talk?’

  Laughing, I explained, and the conversation moved on to our weekends. I decided not to mention the shopping expedition with Tariq and Fletcher.

  As if she was reading my mind, Priya said, ‘I heard you’re on the Entertainment Committee, Lola. How’s that going?’

  ‘Oh, it’s going fine …’ I said, wondering if I had LIAR on my forehead.

  ‘Do you have a title yet?’ Vee said. ‘Like, Officer, or Secretary-General?’

  ‘No,’ I said uncomfortably. ‘I’m just helping out.’

  ‘Do you salute each other?’ she said slyly. ‘I bet you do. Or you march around saying “Action that!”’

  I laughed uneasily. To take the focus off myself, I told them about the ‘Come as your name’ debacle, and how the theme ended up being changed.

  ‘It was really awful,’ I added. ‘We were discussing the possible themes and Rose suggested a Chinese theme. With … geishas.’

  I felt a bit bad for throwing Rose under that bus, but the other two just rolled their eyes and laughed. Vee, though, looked furious.

  ‘Are you going to report her?’ she said.

  ‘For what – being racist?’ I said uneasily. ‘Well, no. I mean, it was never going to happen. Mr Gerardo dealt with it and explained to her why it was a bad idea.’

  ‘There you go. She’s here to learn stuff, Vee,’ Kiyoshi said. ‘Isn’t that what we go to school for?’

  ‘Rose just isn’t very bright,’ Priya said. ‘She once wrote a History essay where she said the Afghan war was fought with Kardashian rifles.’

  ‘But still,’ said Vee. ‘She has no business being on the committee if she thinks that’s OK.’

  I shivered inside. Vee could so easily be talking about me.

  ‘Vee. Priya and I are the token Asians here, so we get to decide, and we think it’s not the end of the world. Honestly, I’ve heard so much worse. Right?’ Kiyoshi said to Priya, who shrugged.

  ‘I genuinely don’t care what Rose Fitzwhatever says. I’d better go though,’ she said. ‘I have dance class. Don’t ask me why I still do it. Ballerinas are all insane.’ She unfolded herself gracefully and put on her leather jacket.

  ‘I’d better go too actually,’ said Kiyoshi. ‘I have sooo much chemistry homework it isn’t even funny. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.’

  After they left, Vee fell silent. I wasn’t sure whether she was still brooding over Rose, or thinking about something else entirely. I was about to ask her if there was anything wrong, when she turned to me.

  ‘Lola. Is there anything you want to tell me?’ she said.

  My heart jumped into my throat, and stayed beating there.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s just that I googled you.’

  I went hot and cold. ‘Oh?’ I said, as calmly as I could.

  ‘Yup. And you’re not anywhere. No mention of you. There are a couple of Lola Maxwells, but they’re not you. It’s like you don’t exist.’

  There was a long, long, awful pause. So obvious. How did I ever think I would get away with this?

  ‘Well, I’ve been trying to stay offline,’ I said. My throat was dry. I took a sip of wine.

  ‘Is Lola even your real name?’

  ‘Yes,’ I blurted out. ‘I mean, sort of. It’s a nickname. Look, Vee, I would like to tell you.’ Another lie. ‘I just can’t tell you yet.’

  ‘But don’t you trust me?’ she said. ‘I thought we were friends.’ She looked more upset than angry.

  ‘I do! I do trust you …’

  ‘It’s just, what with this, and the committee …’

  ‘But I told you about the committee!’

  Vee said solemnly, ‘I can’t be friends with someone who doesn’t tell me the truth. I don’t think anyone could.’

  I nodded miserably. As we started packing up the picnic things, I thought: she was right about that, at least.

  Chapter Thirty

  I was meant to be doing maths homework, but instead I was pacing around my room like a rat in a trap.

  What if it was starting again?

  I didn’t think I could survive it a second time.

  Suddenly I wasn’t in Paris any more. I was back in my room at home, the evening it happened, looking at my Twitter feed.

  Normally I was thrilled to see a notification, but not this time. I had thousands of notifications, hundreds of new followers, and none of them were saying anything good. I scrabbled around until I found the original tweet that was being retweeted around the world.

  In a panic, I deleted it. Then I wrote ‘That tweet was meant to be ironic! I was joking!’ But it came out as ‘That tweek was meant to be ironic’. The first reply I saw said, ‘She’s a racist AND she can’t spell.’

  That was one of the nicer comments. I skimmed over the rest, hardly daring to look, but I caught some: Should be burned. Should be kicked out of her school. Not a human being.

  That last one caught me off guard. Not a human being? Did they really think I was not a human being?

  I ran out of the room, almost knocking down Lenny who was practising a handstand in the hall.

  ‘Mum!’ I yelled. ‘I don’t know what to do. Everyone’s – it’s all—’

  I couldn’t even get the words out. Mum and Dad came and looked at my laptop.

  Dad swore under his breath. ‘She’s trending on Twitter,’ he said, glancing at Mum.

  ‘I’m sure it’s not properly trending,’ I said, my voice shaking. ‘I’m sure it’s just trending among people I follow—’ Not that that would be better, but I was clutching at straws.

  Dad leaned forward to see, and said nothing.

  ‘It’s – I’m trending globally?’ I said.

  At that moment the phone rang – the landline. We all jumped and looked at each other.

  ‘Isn’t anyone going to answer that?’ said Lenny, putting his head around the door.

  ‘Lenny, go to your room!’ Mum barked. Looking amazed, he shuffled off, and the phone stopped ringing. Mum got up to unplug it.

  ‘I’ve disabled your account,’ said Dad after a minute. ‘So … it should all go away, I hope.’

  But it didn’t.

  I can’t actually remember much about the next few days, or weeks. I managed one day at school, then I came home and refused to go again. My friends all texted me, or so I was told – Mum and Dad had taken away my phone. I didn’t reply; I couldn’t. After a few days they stopped texting.

  School was out of the question. I could barely eat or sleep; it was all I could do to stay alive. The GP prescribed beta blockers. I saw a counsellor. I stayed off the internet.

  At least, I was supposed to. But it turned out that not knowing was the worst thing of all. One morning, around five a.m., I woke up after a few hours’ doze, unable to bear it any more. I had to see what was happening, whether it had died down, whether there was anything new.

  I went to Lenny’s room, woke him up and begged him to lend me his phone – his first ever smart phone.

  ‘Don’t tell Mum and Dad,’ he said blearily, handing it over.

  It was like going down a whirlpool full of filthy, rubbish-strewn water. Almost the worst things were the people who agreed with me. Some terrifying figures were coming out of the woodwork, saying the most disgusting racist things, all in support of me – all anonymous of course. Lots of them could barely spell, but lots could, and sounded highly educated, which was almost scarier; they sounded like the kind of people I might even know. But strangely the comment I remember most, that hurt me most of all, was short. It just said SHES UGLY.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  ‘Is everything OK between you and Vee?’ Kiyoshi said.

  I looked up at him, panicked. We were in a corner of the libra
ry, where he had offered to help me with my maths. I was already distracted after a long text exchange with Mum about my poor destroyed bedroom. Apparently Lenny did not have permission from Mum to paint the wall black, but Dad had agreed to it without paying attention – typical.

  ‘How do you mean?’ I said nervously.

  ‘I don’t know. It just seems there’s some weirdness between you. Is it about the committee?’

  ‘No! It’s … it’s hard to explain,’ I said, doodling on my pad.

  Kiyoshi sighed. ‘The thing you have to remember about Vee,’ he said, ‘is that she was basically raised by wolves.’

  I actually laughed at this. ‘Literally wolves?’

  ‘No, not literally wolves – her parents are just terrible people.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘In every way. They’re really, really rich and they pay her no attention at all except to yell at her. The first time I went to her house her mother barely said hello to me, just started chewing her out for leaving her window open in the rain. But not like, Hey, that was dumb. She shouted at her for five minutes straight. While I was standing there. It was so embarrassing and awkward, I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Oh.’ I thought about my mum, who never scolded me in front of other people. Once they were gone, yes, but never in front of them.

  ‘And they’re just horrible people, basically. I stayed for dinner and all her mother could talk about was how lucky Vee was to be getting such a good education, and how much she could have achieved in her career if she didn’t have a kid.’

  ‘Seriously?’ I gulped. ‘Yikes. What about her dad?’

  ‘Oh, he played on his iPad the whole time. At the table. While her mum got drunk. It was a horror show. I’ve never been back – I have to make up excuses.’ He started to grin. ‘Don’t tell anyone this, obviously. But in my head, I call her mum Cruella.’

  I started to laugh.

  ‘Anyway, Vee is having a really hard time with them right now. Which might explain why she’s being weird. I know she seems confident, but she’s very insecure. I mean she’s the most loyal friend in the world, but if she thinks people don’t like her any more, she tends to panic and lash out at them.’

  ‘But I do like her! It’s just that she wants me to tell her something. And I can’t.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ he said. ‘Well, that could be it as well. She’s so open, she hates it when other people aren’t. I think her parents have kept a lot of secrets from her and she’s still really angry at them about that.’

  Great. This was just sounding better and better.

  ‘Kiyoshi, you don’t hate me for being on the committee, do you? I mean, you don’t think I’m – selling out or something?’

  He laughed. ‘Of course not! I don’t think they’re monsters, either. And nor does Vee, no matter what she says. I like Tariq, for instance. Although …’

  ‘What?’

  Kiyoshi looked stricken, and refused to say anything at first. Then he said, ‘I’m pretty sure that he’s gay. And it’s a pity that he won’t come out – especially if he’s running for Student President. It’s annoying, really.’

  ‘But he can’t be! He’s going out with Priscilla, long-distance.’

  Kiyoshi raised an eyebrow. ‘A long-distance girlfriend is basically an imaginary girlfriend. AKA a gay boy’s best friend.’

  ‘But what makes you think he’s gay?’

  ‘It’s just a feeling I get from him – the way he acts, the way he looks at boys sometimes. Little things. He always seems like he has a lot to prove. And it doesn’t seem like he misses Priscilla all that much. Not that I was ever convinced by them as a couple.’

  ‘That’s such a pity,’ I said. ‘For him, I mean.’

  Kiyoshi looked worried. ‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s a terrible thing to out someone. Definitely don’t tell Vee, she’s so indiscreet.’

  ‘But she wouldn’t tell anyone, would she?’

  ‘Not intentionally, but she can’t help it – it would be all over Twitter by lunchtime. Promise you won’t tell her?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, my heart plummeting even further. Just what I needed; another secret to keep.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  After I had said goodbye to Kiyoshi, I realised what I had to do.

  I had to find Vee, and tell her the truth. I had no idea what she would say, but anything was better than living in suspense. As I paced around the school looking for her, I actually began to feel relieved at the idea of having things out in the open. Whatever she said to me, it couldn’t be worse than what people had said already.

  I found her in her usual spot in the courtyard, having a loud discussion with Priya, under the sign that said THIS IS A QUIET STUDY AREA.

  ‘I’m not rich! It’s my parents who are rich!’ she was saying.

  I went up to them.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt. Can I talk to you, Vee?’ I said. ‘Like – outside? Alone? Can we go for a walk? Just up to the Panthéon, maybe?’

  ‘OK.’ She put her shoes on reluctantly. Now that the weather was getting better she took her shoes off every chance she got. She referred to them as ‘foot prisons’ and said her feet needed to be free.

  Soon we were walking up the rue Soufflot, which led from the Jardin du Luxembourg up towards the Panthéon. I loved the rue Soufflot. It was just a normal Parisian street, not especially beautiful, but the atmosphere always made me imagine old Paris, of the years of Sartre and de Beauvoir. The cafés there were always full of school kids and university students from the nearby Grandes Écoles – the most prestigious universities in France, where Vee was doomed to go. There was also a tempting-looking creperie, which I had noticed on my lonely weekend walks, though I’d never had the nerve to go in alone. After my last debacle, I had gone off solo dining.

  But the main thing that struck the eye was the Panthéon, which loomed at the end of it: a huge, imposing grey dome that looked like something out of the Da Vinci Code. I had assumed it was some kind of church, but in fact it was full of the tombs of famous dead French people, including Victor Hugo. I almost wished I was in there with him.

  We walked mostly in silence, until we got to the Panthéon and sat down on the steps. Tourists brushed by us on their way inside, while I tried to think of what to say. The sun had gone in, and the wind blew to remind us that it was still March.

  ‘So … you know how you were saying, you couldn’t find me online,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  I swallowed. There would be no going back after this. ‘You were right. Lola isn’t my real name. I had to change my name. Because of something that happened.’ This was even harder than I’d thought. ‘I was – being harassed online …’

  ‘Wait!’ said Vee. ‘Was it something like GamerGate?

  I was about to say no, but then I looked at her face. She looked horrified but sympathetic. If I told her the truth, the sympathy would disappear. She would be every bit as angry as everyone on the internet was. Whereas, if I was the innocent victim of a pack of online misogynists …

  ‘Sort of. I mean, I got death threats.’ That part was true anyway, wasn’t it?

  She swore under her breath. ‘And you reported it? Did the police help?’ She shook her head. ‘Of course they didn’t. That is so wrong! Why should YOU be the one who has to go into hiding?’ She grabbed me by the arms, practically hyperventilating. ‘THIS WORLD MAKES ME SO ANGRY!’

  A pair of smartly dressed French guys beside us were looking at us curiously.

  ‘Vee, it’s fine, honestly, it’s not – I mean – you know.’ I just wanted this to be over. If I had ever thought of telling Vee the truth, it was too late now.

  ‘It makes me sick! So – what’s your real name?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’d rather not say. It’s easier if I just stick to Lola.’

  ‘But you shouldn’t have to do this!’

  ‘I’d rather not talk about it,’ I
said, hoping she would take the hint.

  ‘OK.’ She hugged me, fiercely. A little voice inside was shrieking ‘STOP!’ but it was too late. Way, way too late. ‘Thanks for listening,’ I said. ‘I hope you can understand why I haven’t been, like, totally truthful.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said immediately. ‘Look – about the committee.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I was being mean about that. The thing is …’ she sighed. ‘I ran for Class Rep. Three years ago. I didn’t get it. I was really upset.’

  ‘Oh – Vee, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. It’s horrible when stuff like that happens.’ I still vividly remembered when the Young Entrepreneurs picked Jules instead of me to be their marketing manager.

  ‘So when you got onto the committee – and you’ve only been here a few weeks – I got jealous. I should have just said so earlier.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I repeated. ‘I’m really, really sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK. I’m so sorry about what happened to you, too. I’m really glad we finally talked about this.’ She smiled. ‘I feel so much better now.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said weakly. ‘Me too.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  ‘Ah, Madame, you are going down,’ said Tariq. ‘But I am going up.’

  ‘Huh?’ I said. We had just collided on the staircase in the main building. My arms were full of posters for the ball, and my mind was equally preoccupied by stressing over Vee. Plus, he’d said it in French, so it took me a minute to translate it.

  ‘It’s what the Marquise de Maintenon said to Madame de Montespan,’ Tariq explained, taking some excess posters from me. ‘When she was replacing her as the Sun King’s mistress. She got a room in a better position on the staircase at Versailles, you see. So it was a sick burn.’