Solitaire. Alice Oseman

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СКАЧАТЬ points behind her, so I look.

      A guy is standing there. Nervous. Face in a sort of grinning grimace. I realise what’s going on, but my brain doesn’t quite accept that this is possible, so I open my mouth and close it three times before coming up with:

      “Jesus Christ.”

      The guy steps towards me.

      “V-Victoria?”

      Excluding my new acquaintance Michael Holden, only two people in my life have ever called me Victoria. One is Charlie. And the other is:

      “Lucas Ryan,” I say.

      I once knew a boy named Lucas Ryan. He cried a lot, but liked Pokémon just as much as I did so I guess that made us friends. He once told me he would like to live inside a giant bubble when he grew up because you could fly everywhere and see everything, and I told him that would make a terrible house because bubbles are always empty inside. He gave me a Batman keyring for my eighth birthday, a How to Draw Manga book for my ninth birthday, Pokémon cards for my tenth birthday and a T-shirt with a tiger on it for my eleventh.

      I sort of have to do a double take because his face is now an entirely different shape. He’d always been smaller than me, but now he’s at least a whole head taller and his voice, obviously, has broken. I start to look for things that are the same as eleven-year-old Lucas Ryan, but all I’ve got to go on is his greyish hair, skinny limbs and awkward expression.

      Also, he is the ‘blond guy in skinny trousers’.

      “Jesus Christ,” I repeat. “Hi.”

      He smiles and laughs. I remember the laugh. It’s all in the chest. A chest laugh.

      “Hi!” he says and smiles some more. A nice smile. A calm smile.

      I dramatically leap to my feet and look him up and down. It’s actually him.

      “It’s actually you,” I say and have to physically restrain myself from reaching out and patting him on the shoulders. Just to check he’s really there and all.

      He laughs. His eyes go all squinty. “It’s actually me!”

      “Wh-ho-why?”

      He starts to look kind of embarrassed. I remember him being like that. “I left Truham at the end of last term,” he says. “I knew you went here, so …” He fiddles with his collar. He used to do that too. “Erm … I thought I’d try to find you. Seeing as I don’t have any friends here. So, erm, yes. Hello.”

      I think you should be aware that I have never been very good at making friends, and primary school was no different. I acquired only the one friend during those seven years of mortifying social rejection. Yet while my primary school days are not days which I would choose to relive, there was one good thing that probably kept me going, and that was the quiet friendship of Lucas Ryan.

      “Wow.” Becky, unable to keep away from potential gossip, intervenes. “How do you two know each other?”

      Now I am a fairly awkward person, but Lucas really takes the biscuit. He turns to Becky and goes red again and I almost feel embarrassed for him.

      “Primary school,” I say. “We were best friends.”

      Becky’s shaped eyebrows soar. “No waaay.” She looks at both of us once more, before focusing on Lucas. “Well, I guess I’m your replacement. I’m Becky.” She gestures around her. “Welcome to the Land of Oppression.”

      Lucas, in a mouse voice, manages: “I’m Lucas.”

      He turns back to me. “We should catch up,” he says.

      Is this what friendship reborn feels like?

      “Yes …” I say. The shock is draining my vocabulary. “Yes.”

      People have started to give up on the sixth-form meeting as it’s the start of Period 1 and no teachers have returned.

      Lucas nods at me. “Erm, I don’t really want to be late to my first lesson or anything – this whole day is going to be kind of embarrassing as it is – but I’ll talk to you some time soon, yeah? I’ll find you on Facebook.”

      Becky stares in relatively severe disbelief as Lucas wanders away, and grabs me firmly by the shoulder. “Tori just talked to a boy. No – Tori just held a conversation by herself. I think I’m going to cry.”

      “There, there.” I pat her on the shoulder. “Be strong. You’ll get through this.”

      “I’m extremely proud of you. I feel like a proud mum.”

      I snort. “I can hold conversations by myself. What do you call this?”

      “I am the only exception. With everyone else, you’re about as sociable as a cardboard box.”

      “Maybe I am a cardboard box.”

      We both laugh.

      “It’s funny … because it’s true,” I say and I laugh again, on the outside at least. Ha ha ha.

       THREE

      THE FIRST THING I do when I get home from school is collapse on to my bed and turn on my laptop. This happens every single day. If I’m not at school, you can guarantee that my laptop will be somewhere within a two-metre radius of my heart. My laptop is my soulmate.

      Over the past few months, I’ve come to realise that I’m far more of a blog than an actual person. I don’t know when this blogging thing started, and I don’t know when or why I signed up to this website, but I can’t seem to remember what I did before and I don’t know what I’d do if I deleted it. I severely regret starting this blog, I really do. It’s pretty embarrassing. But it’s the only place where I ever find people who are sort of like me. People talk about themselves here in ways that people don’t in real life.

      If I delete it, I think I’ll probably be completely alone.

      I don’t blog to get more followers or whatever. I’m not Evelyn. It’s just that it’s not socially acceptable to say depressing stuff out loud in the real world because people think that you’re attention-seeking. I hate that. So what I’m saying is that it’s nice to be able to say whatever I want. Even if it is only on the Internet.

      After waiting a hundred billion years for my Internet to load, I spend a good while on my blog. There are a couple of cheesy, anonymous messages – a few of my followers get all worked up about some of the pathetic stuff I post. Then I check Facebook. Two notifications – Lucas and Michael have sent friend requests. I accept both. Then I check my email. No emails.

      And then I check the Solitaire blog again.

      It’s still got the photo of Kent looking hilariously passive, but apart from that the only addition to the blog is the title. It now reads:

       Solitaire: Patience Kills. СКАЧАТЬ