Girl Online(5)

I hear the doorbell go and Mum and Elliot talking. Elliot will love the wedding dress. Elliot loves Mum. And Mum loves Elliot—my whole family does. He’s practically been adopted by us, to be honest. Elliot’s parents are both lawyers. They both work super-hard and even when they’re home they’re usually researching some case or other. Elliot’s convinced he was switched at birth and sent home with the wrong parents. They just don’t get him at all. When he came out to them, his dad actually said, “Don’t worry, son, I’m sure it’s just a phase.” Like being gay is something you can grow out of!

I hear Elliot’s feet pounding up the stairs and the door flies open. “Lady Penelope!” he cries. He’s wearing a vintage pin-striped suit and braces and a bright red pair of Converse—this is him dressing down.

“Lord Elliot!” I cry back. (We spent most of last weekend watching Downton Abbey box sets.)

Elliot stares at me through his black-rimmed glasses. “OK, what’s up?”

I shake my head and laugh. Sometimes I swear he can read my mind. “What do you mean?”

“You look really pale. And you’re wearing that hideous onesie. You only wear that when you’re feeling depressed. Or you have physics homework.”

“Same thing,” I say with a laugh, and sit down on the bed. Elliot sits next to me, looking concerned.

“I—I had one of those weird panic things again.”

Elliot puts his wiry arm around my shoulders. “No way. When? Where?”

“JB’s.”

Elliot gives a sarcastic snort. “Huh, I’m not surprised. The decor in there is vile! Seriously, though, what happened?”

I explain, feeling more embarrassed with every word. It all sounds so trivial and silly now.

“I don’t know why you hang out with Megan and Ollie,” Elliot says, when I reach the end of my tale of woe.

“They’re not that bad,” I say lamely. “It’s me. Why do I keep getting so stressed about stuff? I mean, I could get it the first time, but today . . .”

Elliot tilts his head to one side the way he always does when he’s thinking. “Maybe you should blog about it.”

Elliot’s the only person who knows about my blog. I told him right from the start because (a) I can trust him with anything, and (b) he’s the one person I can totally be myself with, so there’s nothing on the blog that he wouldn’t already know about.

I frown at him. “Do you think? Wouldn’t it be a bit heavy?”

Elliot shakes his head. “Not at all. It might make you feel better to write about it. It might help you make sense of it. And you never know—maybe some of your followers have gone through the same thing. Remember that time you posted about your clumsiness?”

I nod. About six months ago I blogged about falling head-first into the wheelie bin and my followers went up from 202 to just under 1,000 in a week. I’ve never had so many shares. Or comments. It turns out I’m definitely not the only teenage girl born with a clumsy gene. “I suppose so . . .”

Elliot looks at me and grins. “Lady Penelope, I know so.”





15 December


Help!!

Hey, guys!

Thanks so much for all of your lovely comments about my pics from Snooper’s Paradise—I’m glad you love its quirkiness as much as I do.

This week’s post is really difficult to write because it’s about something really scary that’s happened to me—is happening to me. When I first started this blog, I said I was always going to be completely honest here, but back then I had no idea Girl Online would take off the way it has. I can’t believe I now have 5,432 followers—thanks so much! Although the thought of opening up to you all about this is terrifying, Wiki reckons it might make me feel better, so here goes.

Some time ago, I was in a car crash. It’s OK—no one died or anything. But it was still one of the worst experiences of my life.

My parents and I were driving back home and it was one of those rainy nights when the water seems to be coming straight at you like a wave. Even when my dad had the windscreen wipers going at about 100 miles per hour it didn’t seem to make any difference. It was like driving through a tsunami. We’d just gotten onto a dual carriageway when a car cut right in front of us. I’m not exactly sure what happened next—I think Dad tried to brake and swerve—but the road was so wet and slippery we skidded into the central reservation. And then our car actually spun over!

I don’t know about you, but I’ve only ever seen this happen in movies. And in the movies, right after the car turns over, it usually blows up or a lorry plows into it or something, so all I could think was: We’re going to die. I kept calling out to Mum and Dad, not knowing if they were OK, and they kept calling out to me, but I wasn’t able to get to them. I was trapped, on my own, upside down, in the back.

Thankfully, we didn’t die. A really nice man saw what happened and stopped his car to help us. Then, when the emergency services got there, they were really lovely too. We were driven home in a police car and sat up drinking sugary tea under duvets on the sofa until the sun came up. And now everything is pretty much back to normal. My parents don’t really talk about the accident anymore, and we have a brand-new non-mangled car sitting in the driveway. Everyone keeps saying to me, “You’re so lucky you didn’t get hurt.” And I am. I know that. But the thing is, even though I didn’t get any cuts and bruises on the outside, it feels as if something inside of me has broken.