CHAPTER 21

It’s a stables day. Tally somehow managed to stagger through the final two days of school last week but all the masking and pretending means that she’s spent almost the entire weekend either in bed or watching her programmes on the iPad and dreading the week ahead. Tally isn’t sure that there is any feeling in the world as awful as the one she gets on a Sunday afternoon, when the clock starts to speed up and every minute is bringing her closer to Monday morning.

So it is definitely a stables day but despite the relief of not having to go to school, Tally still feels awful inside. She has her lesson with Ginny, who can tell that something isn’t right and lets her ride around the paddock on Nigel without saying a word. Then Ginny takes her into the stables and tasks her with rubbing down the horse while she sorts out the tack nearby – close enough for Tally to feel safe but not so close that she can hear Tally’s whispered conversation with Nigel.

“School is horrible,” she tells him, brushing his body with firm strokes. “There’s never any time to breathe properly, you know? It’s not like out here, where you can take big, deep lungfuls of air and feel good about everything. I’m too busy running from one room to another and trying to remember what each teacher wants cos they’re all different and they all run their classes in completely different ways. Like, Miss Perkins expects you to answer a question the instant that she asks it but Mrs Jarman doesn’t mind if you take a moment to think about what you want to say. And Mr Simpson wants his class to be silent but Mrs Sheridan says that we have to talk or we’re not learning.”

She sighs and leans her head gently against his flank. “It’s exhausting – and that’s just the teachers.”

Nigel pushes his nose into her hand and snorts.

Tally nods. “You’re right. The teachers aren’t the biggest problem. At least they know who they are. I don’t think I even recognize myself any more.”

She lowers her voice even further, only trusting Nigel with her next words. “I don’t like me very much either, right now. But if I don’t do what Lucy and the others want then I’m going to have nothing. Layla won’t reply to my messages and being friends with the girls has got to be better than being a nobody, hasn’t it?”

“I think that depends on how much it’s costing you to be with those friends,” says a voice, and for a wild moment Tally thinks that it’s Nigel before realizing that a) horses can’t speak and b) if Nigel could talk then he wouldn’t have the voice of a middle-aged woman.

She spins round and sees Ginny leaning on the wooden wall of the stall.

“You were listening!” she accuses.

Ginny shakes her head. “I could hear you, but I wasn’t listening,” she says. “You might want to work on your quiet voice if you don’t want to be heard.”

Tally swallows. She does want to be heard. That’s all she wants.

“I came over to tell you that your mum is here to collect you,” says Ginny, opening the stall door. “I’ll see you next week, OK?”

Tally gives Nigel one final pat on the nose and nods at Ginny.

“Remember what I said,” the stable owner calls, as Tally reaches the main doors. “It sounds like being friends with these kids is coming at a bit of a cost – so just be sure that it’s worth it. The best things in life should be free, that’s what I’ve always thought.”

Tally steps out into the sunlight. What Ginny is saying makes no sense. Everything comes at a cost, that’s just the way it is. Ginny is great and she might understand what it’s like to be an autistic girl but she’s not in year eight, is she? She doesn’t know what it’s like to balance on a tightrope so thin that you could tumble off at any moment, the jeering of the crowd the last thing you hear before you hit the ground.

By teatime, Tally is exhausted and she only wants one thing: to be on her own, eat some pizza and go on her phone. She definitely doesn’t want to sit around the kitchen table listening to Nell moan about how stressed she is while Mum and Dad have chirpy conversations about how lucky Tally was to go to the stables and how school tomorrow is going to be so wonderful and great.

“I need to eat in my room,” she tells Mum.

“I thought we agreed we’d eat together as a family on school nights?” says Mum, as she puts the pizza on to a plate and hands it to Tally.

“It has been a long day,” says Dad. “Maybe we should just try to get through one mealtime without any issues?”

“Well, if Tally isn’t eating at the table, can I take mine upstairs too?” asks Nell. “Rosa is struggling with her history coursework and I said I’d help her.”

Dad frowns. “Well, I suppose the same rule should apply to you too. Otherwise it isn’t exactly fair…”

Tally rolls her eyes. Nell isn’t going to talk to Rosa about history, she’s quite sure of that. Unless it’s the history between her and that boy she’s constantly posting photos of on Instagram, his arm draped around her shoulders like a floppy old scarf. And Nell doesn’t have the same challenges as Tally so she doesn’t need to have the same rules. Fair should be about everyone getting what’s right for them, not all having the exact same thing.

Once she’s safely upstairs and inside her room, she can breathe properly. She’s slipped Rupert up here too, which she’s pretty sure Dad saw but pretended not to notice, and once he’s snuggled up on her bed she turns on her fairy lights and the lamp that Nell bought for her birthday last year, the one with the pretend jellyfish floating around. Then she flops down next to him, grabs a slice of pizza with one hand and her phone with the other and starts to scroll through her messages. Gory and Jade have both tried to contact her several times since they fought in the group chat, but she hasn’t replied. She misses them and their honest, funny conversations, but they’re the only people she can actually be real with and the idea of telling them about how she’s been behaving is truly awful. She’s sure they’d never want to be friends with her ever again. Surely it’s better not to talk to them than risk that?

Tally takes another bite of pizza and goes on Instagram, where she can see straight away that she has a message. Ignoring the fact that Nell has just posted a new photo, which means that she is absolutely not helping Rosa with her history coursework, Tally clicks on the message. It’s from someone very unexpected and her heart starts to pound as she stares at Luke’s profile picture.

The message is short.

Not sure if you’ve seen this or if I should even tell you but I’d want to know if it was me. Look at Lucy’s latest post. Tally, they are NOT your friends.

With slightly shaking hands, Tally clicks on the link that Luke has sent her.

And there it is.

There she is.

She stares at her phone, trying to make sense of what she’s seeing. She knows instantly when this was recorded – it’s obviously from the day that she first met Annie, when someone dropped a tray in the canteen and it made a loud crashing sound that startled her. What she can’t understand is how this video of her in the school canteen, humming and stimming and putting her hands over her ears can possibly be here, on Lucy’s Instagram page. But then she remembers Lucy and Ayesha, huddled over Lucy’s phone and giggling. They filmed her. They filmed her and now she’s online. The clip itself is quite short but it’s playing on a loop – an endless repeat of Tally, Tally, Tally.

And then she sees the comments and her already-churning stomach threatens to revolt. She scrolls down, seeing names and profile photos of people she knows. She sits next to these kids in maths. She walks beside them in the corridors. They breathe the same air as her and yet none of those shared experiences matter because alongside the pictures of their faces are their cutting, hurtful words.

Nut job.

Loser.

More laughing emojis than she can count, which are almost harder to handle than the words because being laughed at is the worst feeling in the world.

They aren’t even trying to hide. They aren’t ashamed of who they are.

Tally’s fingers are trembling and it takes her several attempts to type out a private message to Lucy:

Please take down that video.

She can see that Lucy has received the message and navigates back to the offending post, wanting to see that it has gone with her own eyes. But nothing happens, other than yet more people are eagerly contributing their thoughts on Tally.

Why is she so weird?

Get a life already!

Tally swipes back and messages Lucy again and the next five minutes are a horrific cycle of messages sent into the wilderness, the only response being even more comments in the video.

Please, Lucy. I hate this. Take it down.

If I was like that then I’d never go out in public.

She’s crazy!

Why are you doing this? Stop it, now.

Why is she allowed to go to our school?

What’s with the flapping?

I’m begging you, Lucy, just stop it.

God – I wish she’d just do the world a favour and disappear.

And now she can’t type any more messages because she’s crying so hard that she can’t see her phone properly. All she can do is sit on the floor and watch it play out – watch the kids she has to spend hours of every day alongside assassinate her with words that scorch themselves so deeply into her mind she knows they’ll never truly fade.

The comments finally stop after two relentless hours when Lucy posts a link to her latest YouTube video and everyone flocks to comment on that instead, but Tally doesn’t move from the bedroom floor. She can’t. She isn’t sure that she’ll ever be able to speak or move again. It’s as if she only exists in the comments that everyone wrote, and all she can do is stay very still, watching the words dance in front of her, taunt her, silence her even further.

This is the worst thing that has ever happened to her and she has no clue what she’s supposed to do now.

One thing about social media . . .

Social media helps me to connect with my friends and feel less isolated, but it can also have some real negatives. All that fakery can make girls feel uncomfortable in their own skin, and it’s programmed to be addictive – the constant ding it uses makes you want to pick it up – so it’s hard to stay away.

At first it seems like social media is this fun-loving and social world, but there are lots of things hidden behind the smiles and the people who look perfect.

Someone’s life could be destroyed in one cruel minute – all it takes is a hateful comment or a mocking video that spreads like wildfire, and breaks someone into pieces in the process.