Girl Online(77)

@ElliotWentworth Worst. Christmas. Ever.

I can’t check his Facebook without reactivating my account so I leave that and check his Instagram. He hasn’t posted since his last day in New York—a selfie of me and him at breakfast, grinning over a bottle of maple syrup. For a moment, I wish I could magically transport myself back to when the picture was taken so that I could stop things from going so horribly wrong. But then I feel a stab of anger. I wasn’t the one who made everything go wrong in the first place.

And then I do something really stupid. I go onto Google and do a search for Noah Flynn. Now all of the top results are to do with me. I see a new headline from the Celeb Watch site: Noah Flynn Had Breakdown Over Parents’ Death.

I click on the link with trembling fingers.

Noah Flynn must really be regretting the day he decided to play away from home with UK blogger Penny Porter aka Girl Online. Another of the revelations to come from Penny’s blog is that Noah had a breakdown after the tragic death of his parents four years ago. Could this explain his less-than-wise choices over the holidays? Is he still struggling to deal with his loss? A spokesman for the new star declined to comment. Leah Brown has also remained silent over the Internet storm surrounding the couple. Girl Online has now deleted all of her posts referring to “Brooklyn Boy” but I think it’s safe to say the damage is done.

There’s a link at the bottom of the post to another article, titled: Girl Online Reveals Noah Flynn’s Favorite NYC Hangouts. I don’t click on it. I can’t. I’m too shocked by what I’ve just read. What are they talking about? What breakdown? Can they really just make stuff up like that? Then I think back to the post I wrote about facing fears and how I talked about the exercise Noah shared with me. My face flushes red-hot. But I didn’t say that he had a breakdown. I didn’t even mention his parents. I just said he’d lost someone close to him. I stare at the screen in disbelief. How can they do this? How can they twist things like this?

I click back to my search, swinging between feelings of guilt and anger. I scan through the list of results until I see one that fills me with dread: The Girl that Noah Flynn Cheated on Leah Brown for—yes, really!

I click on the link and it goes to the YouTube video of me falling over onstage. How have they found that? But it doesn’t take a genius to work it out. A simple search for my name would have thrown it up. The sad fact is, apart from my blog, my entire Internet presence before today was that stupid video. Thousands of people have now posted comments. I tell myself to shut the laptop, to put it back in the wardrobe, but it’s like I’m on some weird kind of self-destruct and I automatically start scrolling down. “Ew, gross” and “What a state” are the nicest comments on there. The rest are so horrible I can barely believe what I’m reading. Clearly Leah Brown’s fans have embarked on a major hate campaign against me.

“Penny, come and have some dinner,” Mum calls up the stairs.

I groan. I think about saying I’m not hungry but then that will only make them worry. So I drag myself downstairs, my head buzzing with thoughts of Elliot. I must have really hurt him to make him do what he’s done. To make him end our friendship in this way. I go into the kitchen and sit down at the table.

“Are you OK?” Mum asks the question, but she, Dad, and Tom are all staring at me, concerned.

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine.”

“I’ve been asked to do another job in New York,” Mum says, sitting down next to me. “A Valentine’s Ball.” She looks at me excitedly. “I’ve been trying to get through to Sadie Lee to see if she’ll do the catering but she’s not picking up.”

“I bet she’s not,” Tom mutters.

I frown at him and shake my head.

“What?” Mum looks at him questioningly.

Tom looks down at his plate. “Nothing.”

Mum looks back at me. “It’s great news, isn’t it? We can all go over there again.”

No, it’s not! I want to yell. It’s actually the worst news you could possibly tell me. If I set foot in America right now I’ll probably be lynched! But I somehow force myself to nod.

As Mum and Dad talk excitedly about how these American jobs have really turned the business around, I focus on making myself eat some lasagna without having a choking fit. It’s so weird to think that when Megan posted that video of me, imagining the whole school seeing my underwear felt like the worst thing ever. But now the whole world’s seeing it. Now, thanks to Elliot, I truly have gone viral. Just like the Black Death. Or smallpox. Great.

I manage to eat half of my dinner before the need to get back to my bedroom becomes overwhelming. Thankfully, Mum and Dad are still engrossed in a chat about Valentine’s Day themes so they don’t notice the food left on my plate. As soon as I get back to my room, I go straight to my phone to see if I’ve had a reply from Elliot but there’s nothing.

“Fine!” I say to the wall crossly.

But then that weird self-destruct urge kicks in again and I start scrolling through the photos on my camera. When I get to the one of Noah, my finger hovers over delete. But for some weird reason I can’t bring myself to do it. I keep on scrolling through until I get to the photos of my room in the Waldorf Astoria. At first it feels as if it was all a dream; that I never even stayed there. But then little details start catching my eye. The blanket on the chair. The orange moon. Princess Autumn on top of my pillow. These things did happen. They were real. Even if Noah was lying, I wasn’t. I was in that room. And I sat in that chair. And I felt for the first time, that my life was my own.