Solitaire
: Part 2 – Chapter 7

LAST PERIOD IS a free period, so I sit in the common room. I keep looking at Becky, who’s working at another table, but she doesn’t look at me. Evelyn is also there. She stays on her phone for the entire hour.

I check my blog and there’s a message:

Anonymous: Thought for the day: Why do people believe in God?

I check the Solitaire blog, and the top post at the moment is a GIF of a little boy blowing bubbles out of one of those plastic pots. A barrage of bubbles burst into the air and up into the sky, and the camera looks up at them and sunlight shines through, lighting them up pink and orange and green and blue. Then the GIF repeats, and you see the little boy again, blowing the bubbles into the sky, the boy, the bubbles, the sky, the boy, bubbles, sky.

When I get home, even Mum notices that something’s changed, and she tries halfheartedly to get it out of me, but I just end up back in my room. I walk around for a little bit and then lie down. Charlie comes into my room and asks me what’s wrong. Just as I’m about to tell him, I start crying and it’s not even silent tears this time, it’s proper bawling, and I hate myself so much for it that it makes me literally barricade my face from the air with my arms and cry so hard that I stop breathing properly.

“I’ve got to do something,” I keep saying. “I’ve got to do something.”

“Do something about what?” asks Charlie, clutching his knees to his chest.

“Just—I don’t know—everyone—everything’s gone crazy. Everyone’s gone crazy. I’ve ruined everything with Becky and I keep ruining everything with Michael and I don’t even know who Lucas is, not really. My life was so normal before. I used to hate being so bored, but I want that back. I didn’t care about anything before. But then—on Saturday—all those people, like, no one gave a single shit about it. They didn’t care that Ben Hope could have been kicked to death. And I know he wasn’t. But like, I don’t—I can’t be like that anymore. I know it doesn’t make any sense. I know I’m probably just stressing about nothing. I know I’m shit, I’m a ridiculous excuse for a human being. But before Solitaire, everything was fine. I was fine. I used to be fine.”

Charlie just nods. “All right.”

He sits with me while I’m raving and crying, and when I calm down I pretend I need to sleep, so he goes away. I lie with my eyes open and think about everything that has happened in my entire life, and it doesn’t take me very long to get to where I am now. I decide sleeping is impossible, so I start searching through my room for nothing in particular. I replace my box of special things in my desk drawer—a box of keepsakes, I guess—and on the top is a diary that I kept in the summer of Year 7. I read the first page:

Sunday, 24 August

Up at the crack of 10:30 a.m. Becky et moi went to the cinema today and saw Pirates of the Carribean (is that how you spell it???) 2 and OMG it was SO GOOD. Becky thinks Orlando Bloom is the fittest, but I like Johnny Depp best. He is hilarious and brilliant. Then we went to get pizza in the high street. She had Hawaiian but obviously mine was plain cheese. YUM! She’s coming round next week for a sleepover too, which is going to be so, so fun. She says she needs to tell me about a boy that she likes!! And we’re going to eat so much food and stay up all night and watch films!!!!!

I put the diary back into the bottom of the drawer and sit calmly for several minutes. Then I get it out again and replace a pair of scissors and start shredding it, cutting up the pages and the hard cover, slashing and ripping, until there is just a confetti-like pile of paper shavings in my lap.

Also in the treasure box is an empty bubbles pot. Becky gave it to me for my birthday a long time ago. I used to love bubbles, even if I could never let go of the fact that they are always empty inside. And then I remember the GIF on the Solitaire blog. That’s another thing, then. Another thing to add to the list; the violin video and Star Wars, all that bullshit. I look at the bubbles pot, feeling nothing. Or everything. I don’t know.

No. I do know.

Michael was right. He’s been right this whole time. Solitaire. Solitaire is . . . Solitaire is talking to me. Michael was right.

It doesn’t make any sense, but I know it’s me. It’s all been about me.

I run into the bathroom and throw up.

When I return, I shove away the box, shut the drawer, and open another. This one is full of stationery. I test out all my pens with wild squiggles on the pieces of paper and chuck those that don’t work under my bed, which is most of them. I’m humming loudly to cover up the sounds I’m hearing from the window, because I know that I’m making them up. My eyes keep tearing up, then calming down, then tearing up again, and I keep rubbing them so hard that I see sparkles even when they’re open. I grab the scissors again and spend at least half an hour sitting in front of my mirror and trimming my split ends obsessively. Then I replace a big black marker and I get this sudden urge to write something. So on my own arm, in the big black marker, I write “I AM VICTORIA ANNABEL SPRING,” partly because I can’t think of anything else to write, and partly because I’m feeling as if I need to remind myself that I actually have a middle name.

Solitaire is talking to me. Maybe deliberately, maybe not. But I’ve decided it’s on me, now, to do something about it. It’s all on me.

I move to my bedside table. I take out a few old pens and a few books I haven’t read and my makeup wipes and my current diary, which I do not write in anymore. I open it up, read a few of the entries, and close it again. It’s very sad. Very cliché teenager. I disgust myself. I close my eyes and hold my breath for as long as possible (forty-six seconds). I cry, consistently and pathetically, for a full twenty-three minutes. I turn on my laptop and scroll through my favorite blogs. I don’t post anything on my own blog. I can’t remember the last time I did that.