When I eventually find Bradley Sanderson in the shopping mall, he is standing inside a lift with his phone pointed at the control panel. It’s lunchtime on a Saturday. The place is busy. A mum is trying to wheel her stroller in, but Bradley doesn’t notice her. It’s like he’s totally in a world of his own.
He eventually sees me waiting outside the lift and says, “The first thing you need for successful vlogging, Millie, is focus. Focus. Ignore everyone else around you. They are irrelevant to your key mission.”
“That’s all very well,” says the lady with the stroller, “but Oliver and I need to get to the florist’s on the first floor.”
Bradley scowls at her, presses a button, and whips out through the doors just before they close.
“People who use these lifts don’t understand the beauty of them—the thought that has gone into all the engineering. They just use them to go up or down. It makes me cross. Anyway, YOU. I’ve been thinking about your vlog. Shall we go and have a coffee?”
This is really sweet. Bradley has been thinking about me and actually wants to talk to me properly. I get the feeling that he doesn’t think about people in general very much. I feel a bit … honored.
“Planning, Millie Porter!” Bradley continues once we’ve got a chai latte (me) and a green tea (Bradley). I insist on paying. It’s the twenty-first century, and this is NOT a date. “You want to bring something to your audience that they need to hear or haven’t heard before. Something different. Don’t assume that you are the only one that feels something. I used to be embarrassed about liking lifts, but then I found out that all over the world there were lift lovers like me. And if it’s not hurting anyone, then it’s FINE. What advice exactly do YOU want to give?”
“I want to help people. I want to put this boring brain of mine to good use for a change but not be boring with it. But. Yeah. I do. I want to help people who feel … BAD. I’ve been finding it a bit hard with my mum’s new boyfriend and my best friend is having all sorts of trouble with her parents.”
I feel stupid saying all this, especially to a nerdy boy in ninth grade, but it’s true.
Bradley seems to speak more softly. It’s like he’s starting to care … a bit.
“Well, you need to THINK about what you are going to say, then. You have to find a way to be different. To stand out.”
“What about how it looks?” I ask.
Bradley stares at me through his glasses. “Shock! Horror!” he says. “That doesn’t matter as much as what you say.”
“It does to girls.” I feel dreadful saying this, but I have a terrible feeling that it might be true.
“I don’t know about girls. Not many women are into lifts.”
“Don’t be sexist, Bradley.” I snap at him a bit.
“It’s not sexist, Millie. It’s actual fact. And anyway, you just said girls are basically only interested in how things look! That’s definitely sexist.”
There’s a bit of a pause. I fiddle with my sugar wrapper.
Then Bradley rather casually says, “I actually think Hashtag Help is an okay idea. I’m not too keen on the name. It’s a bit … try-hard cute. I don’t do cute. But I reckon you could find an audience if you keep it down-to-earth. To be honest, there are times when I would watch a vlog like that.”
I’m surprised Bradley is admitting this. “I didn’t ever think you would need something like that.” This is rather a massive lie. Sometimes massive lies are good.
Bradley knows I’m just being nice. “It’s not easy being me. I might have thousands of subscribers and my own channel, but it can’t have escaped your notice, Millie, that I don’t really fit in at school.”
I don’t know what to say here. It’s very true, and I can’t pretend it’s not.
An “Um. Well…” is all I can manage.
“It’s like my vlogs: I edit out all the people calling me ‘weirdo’ and ‘geek’ and ‘lift lover’ and the bits when I get pushed out of the way.”
Bradley looks really sad at this point. I start to feel a bit bad for the number of times Lauren and I have laughed at him.
I don’t really know what to say, but Bradley saves me by talking about my vlog again.
“Your vlog could be useful. It would be good to be able to ask someone who is a real person AND who is the same age and not get a massive lecture about what I should and shouldn’t do. Anonymously, naturally. I don’t want to be talked about. Or talked about in the bad way.” He’s smiling at me as he says this.
The bad way, of course, is people saying you aren’t a hottie or that you’re weird or a freak. If I’m going to be honest, I doubt anyone talks much about Bradley at all, and if they do, I doubt it’s in a good way. Which is bad really, because when you spend time with him, you realize he’s actually … sort of … kind, I suppose. I’m dreading asking the next question, but I know I have to.
“Did you see the cat vlog Lauren and I did?”
“Yeah.” Bradley scrunches his face up.
“Thoughts?”
“It was fun,” Bradley says. His face is still scrunched up.
“And…?” I ask.
“Okay, Millie. I’m going to be straight with you.” He unscrunches his face a tiny bit. “It was fun … and that’s it. It was a laugh. But everybody is sort of over that, Millie. Cats were big about three years ago. And anyway, that kind of content isn’t real life. It’s like a perfect edited piece of it. Cats are just dull most of the time, but if you believed what you saw online, you would think everyone had a perfect, ugly, trampolining pet. Did you know some really popular vloggers and Instagrammers are quitting because it’s got too fake? You can start living your life to fit the vlog. Everything becomes about online. And really good life and lifts can pass you by. I ignored a paternoster once because I didn’t think people on the vlog would be interested. I regret it now.”
I don’t know what a paternoster is, but I get his point, and it’s a bit of a revelation. I hadn’t really thought about it in quite that way before.
“You know what, Bradley,” I say. “I AM going to be real. I’m going to have fun but be real. Talk about real stuff. Talk about what it’s REALLY like. Tell the TRUTH and look REAL and … natural. I’m not going to wear lots of makeup, either. But there’s only one problem: If I go completely natural and real, I will be trolled into a coma.”
Bradley laughs softly. “Millie. You’ll get trolled anyway. I can’t pretend you won’t. Just do it. People will always find fault with you. Do you think it’s easy loving lifts? It’s not. I’m a lift-loving cosplayer. We are basically a very-easy-to-laugh-at minority group. But who cares? Now, I’ve got to go and see if I can get some footage of the inner workings. It’s been … really … quite okay speaking to you. Just go and do it. Yeah, just … be you.”
And with that, Bradley quickly gets up and dashes up the stairs that are there for people who are terrified of lifts.
I stand there feeling like I’ve been with one of the wisest, sweetest, weirdest people on the planet. He shouldn’t live under coats. He should spread all that brain everywhere and not just on escalators. Also, he said very lovely things about me, which makes me feel … odd.
I need to get back to Lauren before I forget all the good advice he’s given me. I think we are ready to start #Help.