Monday 1 August

I get up as quietly as I can but Iris opens her eyes before I leave. I give her a hesitant smile, and she waves – a signal she really has forgiven me.

At the pool I set up my computer in the deep end, tune my cello, close my eyes and put myself back into the darkness of the club. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I felt my future in that place.

‘Your future?’ Iris said Saturday at breakfast, carrying on the quiet fight we’d started the night before. ‘You want to be on stage, is that it? With everyone watching?’

I stopped talking then, stopped trying to explain that it wasn’t about being on the stage or about impressing Oliver. It’s about playing old notes and making new sounds. Using the computer. Doing something I love.

‘You love science. You want to be a doctor,’ Iris said.

That would be a perfectly fine future, a bearable one. But the other possible future is brilliantly lit.

The girl on stage at the club – Juliette – played sounds that made every part of me want. She was confident enough to be playful. She’s studied for years, I’m sure of it.

Late Sunday night, after a day of polite and angry quiet, Iris sat on my bed. ‘Okay,’ she said, her voice switched to practical mode. Motioning for my notebook, she turned to a blank page and wrote a list in her careful handwriting.

Where will you get a music teacher?

How will you afford a music teacher?

Will you tell your parents? Or will you lie to them, and say you still want to be a doctor?

Will they think extra experimental lessons are a waste of money that could go towards your expenses next year? Because you’re already in the orchestra and they’re paying for that.

I try to force all other thoughts out of my head and play, but thoughts are stubborn, so I give up and call Ben. I tell him I’m feeling stupid and defeated.

‘It’s Monday,’ he says. ‘People all across the country are feeling stupid and defeated.’

‘Usually I love Mondays.’

‘I do, too,’ he says. ‘All normal people across the country are feeling stupid and defeated.’

‘Still no luck making a friend?’ I ask.

‘I’ll assume that’s a rhetorical question. What’s the core of your defeat?’

I tell him about the weekend, Oliver, the money problem, about needing a teacher I can’t afford. ‘You need a cello study partner,’ he says. ‘You can’t ask the Oliver guy?’

‘She’s too stubborn to ask the Oliver guy.’

‘Is that the Oliver guy?’ Ben asks.

‘It is the Oliver guy. Who are you?’ Oliver asks.

‘I’m Ben.’

‘Nice to meet you, Ben. What’s your relationship to Kate?’

‘None of your business, actually,’ I tell him.

‘Best friend,’ Ben says. ‘And you? Why do you keep turning up?’

‘Today, I brought Kate a CD that I thought might help.’

‘I don’t need help,’ I say.

‘You just said you did,’ both of them say.

‘Well, I’m taking it back.’ I don’t know why, but I find it impossible to accept help from Oliver. I can’t quite look at him now. I feel like he’s been wearing a mask since I met him, and now he’s taken it off I can see the guy in the t-shirt on stage, playing in a band.

His hand is still out, and Ben is still listening, so I take the CD and turn it over. The back cover is blank. ‘Who is it?’

‘Someone you need to hear,’ Oliver says.

‘Is it you?’

‘Let me know what you think after you’ve listened to it,’ he says, and walks off.

‘Is he gone?’ Ben asks.

‘You need to start living your life and stop living mine vicariously,’ I tell him, and hang up.

I’m on my way out of the pool, the CD in my blazer pocket, when Joseph turns off his leaf blower and walks over. ‘Tell your friend he can’t come here anymore. I’ve ignored him so far, but I’m supposed to report it if I see a boy on the grounds.’

‘He’s here for orchestra,’ I say.

‘Not at seven-thirty he’s not. Lately he’s even earlier. Lately, he’s here from the second you start playing.’

I drink my coffee, stare at the blank back of the CD, think of Oliver and feel strange. He’s been watching me from the second I started playing? Meaning, six am? What’s he doing on school grounds at six am?

When I walk into orchestra, he’s already tuning. I’m about to tell him what the groundsman said, and accuse him of stalking me, but he looks up and gives me a small smile, which is unexpected and actually nice. I find myself giving a small smile back.

‘Thanks for the CD,’ I say.

Iris walks in and ends the conversation before it starts. ‘I need to talk to you,’ she says in a breathy whisper that smells of cornflakes. ‘It’s about PSST.’

‘I’m tuning,’ I tell her, and point at Mrs Davies, who’s already here.

She won’t give up, though. ‘Have you seen it this morning?’

‘No, because it’s misogynist crap. I’ve told you before, it has nothing to do with me.’

‘You need to read it,’ she says, holding out her phone. I’m about to tell her it’s none of her or my or anyone’s business when Oliver says quietly and seriously, ‘Forewarned is forearmed.’

Other people are walking in, setting up. They all glance at me as they sit down, which is new. I pull out my phone, ignoring Iris’s. If I’m about to read shit about myself, which is clearly what’s about to happen, then I’ll read it on my own device, thanks very much.

As soon as I look, I wish I could un-look. The topic is ‘Rate the Boarders’, and there’s a list of ten names with descriptions. I’m number ten.

Kate Turner – weird mute, but if yr desperate at least she won’t talk back. and it’s the quiet ones that really go off

I read through the offensive comments (so unbelievably offensive) and stop when I get to a comment that mentions Oliver’s name.

olivers on that anyway

I look over at him. ‘What have you been saying?’

‘Nothing, I swear.’

Mrs Davies taps her stand.

I play with fury.

‘Kate!’ Oliver calls as I leave practice. I walk faster so he has to jog to keep up. I wish I could just start running, but I don’t want Oliver thinking I’m crying over this and it’s impossible to run with a cello.

‘KATE!’ Oliver yells again, and sprints towards me. For a studious guy, he’s amazingly athletic. He moves ahead of me, turns around and runs backward.

‘You’ll fall.’

‘I’m aware I’m taking a risk,’ he says.

‘I do not want to talk to you or any male at this point.’

I actually don’t want to talk to anyone. I’ve gone from fury to rage to humiliation and back to rage. Who do those people think they are? Commenting on me, on Jinx, on all of those girls? Imagine them typing away, thinking they have the right. ‘Who the fuck do they think they are?’ I ask Oliver.

He holds up his hands in surrender. ‘Whoever they are, they’re idiots. And I need you to know that I have never, at any stage, made any suggestion to anyone that we are together or having sex.’

‘Is that why you were at the pool this morning? To tell me?’

‘I came to help –’

‘I don’t need your help. I don’t want you listening to me at the pool, invading my privacy. If Joseph sees you again, he will kick your arse onto the street.’

‘Who’s Joseph?’

‘Stop talking to me!’

Like I said, it’s hard to run with a cello, but I get pretty close to it. Oliver gives up jogging in front of me. I keep walking and leave him behind. I feel ridiculous: a huge, stumbling turtle.

‘Kate goes wild,’ some girl yells on my way past, but I don’t see who. I keep moving till I get to the music room, where I roll my cello into a music locker and fight the urge to roll myself in with it.

I think through the full version of my morning and everything has a humiliating tint to it. Oliver listening as I try to write music at the pool, giving me the CD out of pity because I’m a mute geek and I’m trying to be something else, which he thinks is impossible. Because the only time I could possibly be loud is when I have sex?!

This is not true. One, I haven’t had sex. Two, I don’t think I’d be loud. But if I was loud, whose business would it be but mine and possibly the person I was being loud with?

No one’s.

In Wellness, the talk before Dr Malik arrives is about the PSST post and who’s doing it and if people agree with the ratings. Lola’s thinking aloud in a bored voice that it’s a good thing. ‘I mean, at least someone’s noticing the boarders.’

Jinx puts her hand on my shoulder as she passes and says, ‘If I was having sex I’d be loud as hell,’ and Angela says she wishes she was, ‘But what’s there to yell about?’

Whether people are being nice to me or not, it just makes me angrier. They’ve messed with the wrong tech-head. Because now it’s on my list to find the losers and expose them. Find the fuckers, I scribble in my journal, feeling guilty because I should have scribbled that the first time anything was posted.

‘Prepare to be well,’ Clem says, as Dr Malik walks in.

He hands out a survey that’s designed to help us measure our self-esteem. I don’t need a survey to measure mine. It’s zero and plummeting.

I don’t bother completing it.

I spend the class thinking about the Haskins quote. What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. What lies within me is rage at the moment. And humiliation. Everyone’s looking for the cracks in people to expose them. What’s the point?

I stare out the window, pondering that question until the bell goes.

On her way out, Ady walks past my desk. She drops her folded-up survey in front of me. I open it. Scrawled across the top is: Don’t let them inside your head.

I fold it back up, so I can carry it with me all day.