Girl Online(19)

I fetch my camera from my bag and take my seat in the wings. It’ll be fine, I tell myself. After all, it’s not as if I have to remember any lines. All I have to do is go onstage, take a picture, and come off again. What’s the worst that can happen . . . ?





Chapter Ten

The play runs without a hitch. Everyone remembers their lines and says them in exactly the right places, and even Ollie’s accent doesn’t sound too bad. By the time it reaches the scene where Juliet dies, I can actually hear members of the audience crying.

As Mr. Beaconsfield bounds backstage for the curtain call, he looks at me and grins. “Wasn’t it amazing? Weren’t they great?” he gushes.

I grin back at him. “They were brilliant.”

“Don’t take the picture until the whole cast has lined up for their final bow—including me,” he whispers.

I nod and turn my camera on.

As the actors come out from the other side of the stage to take their bows, the applause builds, until it reaches a roar for Megan and Ollie. And even though Megan has made me want to punch, smother, and kick stones at her recently, I can’t help getting swept up in the excitement of the moment. I’m really proud of her.

The applause is so loud now I can feel it vibrating through my body. As the cast line up, Megan gestures at Mr. Beaconsfield to join—a scene they had carefully rehearsed earlier, despite Mr. Beaconsfield throwing his hands up and faking embarrassed surprise. I wait for him to reach the center of the line and then I make my way onto the stage. And even though I’ve been dreading this moment, it isn’t that bad at all. The audience is so busy cheering the actors, I actually feel invisible.

Until I take a final step toward the center of the stage and the whole world seems to tilt on its axis. Only it isn’t the world that’s tilting—it’s me, as I trip on the lace of my Converse and go staggering forward.

I can tell immediately that this isn’t going to be one of those falls that I’ll be able to style out. I’m falling too fast and at too sharp an angle and all I can think of is the camera in my hand. I mustn’t break it. I can’t let it smash on the floor. So I land about as awkwardly as possible, on my elbows, face-first. With my bum in the air pointing at the audience.

A shocked gasp, multiplied by about three hundred, echoes around the hall. The awful silence that follows is filled only by my inner voice asking, Why does my bum feel so cold? I glance over my shoulder and see that—to my horror—my skirt has flown up over my waist. A chorus of new whys fills my mind. Why did I wear the skater skirt? Why did I take off my opaque tights backstage when I got too hot? Why, oh why, out of all the underwear that I possess, did I choose today to wear the most faded and frayed ones, covered in unicorns?

I stay on all fours—paralyzed by a skin-crawling mixture of shock and horror. And then the audience starts to cheer again—but these cheers aren’t like the ones before. These cheers are mocking and interspersed with wolf whistles and shrieks of laughter. I look up and see Megan glaring down at me. I see a hand reaching out to me. It’s Ollie’s. This makes me burn with embarrassment even more. I have to get out of there. I have to get off the stage. But instead of standing up and running, I make another terrible decision—I stay on all fours and crawl off. In slow motion. Or at least it feels like it. By the time I make it back into the wings, the hall is echoing with laughter. I stumble to my feet, grab my bag, and start to run.

? ? ?

I don’t stop running until I get back home. I stagger into the hall, gasping for breath. I race up to my bedroom, avoiding all human contact inside the house, and collapse on my bed. I am so embarrassed—SO EMBARRASSED—that I can’t even bring myself to tell Elliot. Instead, I’m just going to lie here and hope that eventually I will become so hot and flustered that I actually melt and never have to face anyone ever again.

But I will have to face people again. How am I going to face people again? What am I going to do? I reach into my bag for my phone. I squint at the screen, hardly daring to look, in case there are loads of mocking texts, but thankfully there are no new messages. I open the Internet browser. In the absence of being able to ask Elliot what I should do, I’m going to do the next best thing and ask Google.

How do you get over dire humiliation? I type into the search engine. Forty-four million results come up. OK, good, surely somewhere among all of them I will find my answer. I click on the first link. It sends me to a website called Positively Positive.

“Search for the lesson in your humiliation,” the article advises. “Things always seem better when we can attach a reason or meaning to them.” Hmm . . .

Lessons from what happened tonight:

Lesson 1: When going up onstage in front of three hundred people, always make sure that your shoelaces are tied.

Lesson 2: Untied shoelaces are a total health hazard—if tripped on, they can cause you to fall over so hard your skirt will actually fly up over your bum.

Lesson 3: If you are wearing a skirt short enough to fly up over your bum, should you trip on your shoelace on a stage in front of three hundred people, make sure you are wearing your least embarrassing underwear.

Lesson 4: Never, ever, under any circumstances, wear multicolored unicorn knickers.

Lesson 5: Never, ever, under any circumstances, wear multicolored unicorn knickers that are so old they’ve FADED and FRAYED AT THE EDGES—no matter how comfy they might be.