Forever Geek

  And I can’t help wondering – for just a second – if somebody else I know is watching this sunset.

  Whether they’re facing the same way too.

  “Nat,” I say, finally tearing my eyes away. “Aren’t we lucky? Isn’t this the most magical view you’ve ever s—”

  My best friend’s head is lowered and her eyes are glued to her phone.

  “Nat? Are you OK?”

  “Harriet,” she says, glancing up. “What on earth have you been writing under these photos?”

  I blink. “All the relevant information, just like you told me.”

  “I meant fabrics, cuts and inspirations,” she says in exasperation. “Fashion stuff. Not ‘one in eight people living in Sydney is over sixty-five years old’!”

  Oh.

  Oooohhhh.

  “You should always keep your social media fresh and entertaining,” I say defensively. “It said so in the guidelines.”

  “Well, I’ve got two followers,” she says bluntly, holding up the screen to me. “One of them is a colon detox centre and the other has posted eight times, offering me a job earning five thousand dollars a week from home.”

  “See?!” I exclaim in delight. “That’s so much money, Nat!”

  “It’s not a job offer, Harriet,” Nat sighs. “It’s spam. We’ve been working our socks off all day, you’ve uploaded twenty-six photos and the only people we’re talking to are poo and junk.”

  I stare at her as she flicks through each account and holds them up to me, dismay growing.

  She’s right: there’s no activity at all.

  Not a single heart or star or favourite: not a comment, not a mention. Other than Did you know that a Sydney cafe broke the record for the world’s biggest burger and it was 95.5kg? by @TobyAwesomePilgrim, it’s an electronic wasteland.

  With the exception of her blog, where somebody has written “ugly dont like her carot hare bad nose gross” under one of the photos of me. Which is a) written by someone who can’t spell carrot or hair and b) aimed at my looks and not Nat’s designs, so we should try to stay positive.

  But even with the soft pink glow of an Australian sunset on her face, my best friend still looks crushed.

  And a sharp twist of guilt corkscrews my stomach.

  This was my big idea.

  Nat would never have put her creations on the internet so hastily without my masterminding. Which means any failure she feels is down to me too.

  Not a consequence I’d considered before literally this precise moment.

  I need to start thinking plans through to the end.

  “It’s early days,” I say brightly, patting her shoulder. “And I’ve got lots more social media tricks up my sleeve, don’t worry. This is just Stage One.”

  Her eyebrows lift hopefully. “Really?”

  “Absolutely,” I say confidently, trying to think back through the nine hours of research.

  “OK,” Nat says, taking a deep breath and putting the phone in her pocket. “It’s your plan, so it’s your call.”

  “Yup,” I nod. “It’s my plan so it’s—”

  We each get a new stomach lining every three or four days, and I think I just physically felt my old one peeling off and dropping to the floor.

  It’s my call.

  Ah, bat poop.

  I totally forgot about Jasper.

  K, forgot is the wrong word.

  I pretermitted to hear the alarm I set in time for our call this evening, which is a fifteenth-century word from the Latin origin praetermittere, meaning to neglect or let pass and is therefore a totally different thing.

  And not at all a synonym for the same verb.

  “Sugar cookies,” I mutter, grabbing my phone out of my satchel. “Sugar cookies, bat poop, frog bum.”

  I hate saying I told you so – especially to myself – but this is exactly why itineraries, schedules and timetables are so important.

  Otherwise fun just completely takes over.

  “Whoa,” Nat laughs as I start waving my glossy mobile frantically like a maraca. “Frog bum? Language, dude.”

  “They’ve recently discovered that when red-eyed tree frogs fight each other they shake their bums,” I tell her, turning my phone upside down. “It’s actually a deceptively violent statement.”

  Finally, a Wi-Fi signal appears.

  Within seconds, a plethora of messages have popped up in a flurry of little beeps.

  7:29pm

  Yo! I’m here! Found a quiet spot in the kitchen cupboard – should be able to talk uninterrupted! Jasper xx

  7:43pm

  Are you there? Did I get the times wrong? Maybe I needed that chart after all haha. ;) J xx

  8:01pm

  Sorry I couldn’t say goodbye properly yesterday – it was awkward in front of the others and with Dad yelling. You’re not mad, right? Jxx

  8:28pm

  Ok, guess you’re either mad or you’ve been held up with THE FASHION. Got to work now but speak tomorrow. Jx

  With a flush of guilt, I look at the time stamps.

  An hour. Jasper was sitting in a damp cupboard surrounded by smelly cloths, detergent and mops for nearly an entire hour, waiting to talk to me.

  And yes, climbing into furniture may be something I historically do more often than I probably should, but it’s not behaviour I want to force on others.

  I ring back but it’s too late: it goes straight to voicemail.

  “Bat bat bat poop,” I mutter, slamming my phone back in my sachel and scowling at the beautiful view. The sun went down a while ago and the lights of the Sydney sky are clear and bright, but I’m feeling far too guilty to count them properly.

  “It’s only one call,” Nat reminds me, turning me round by the shoulders and leading me towards the lift. “Jasper will understand that we were busy.”

  “I told you I needed my satchel on me at all times,” I say crossly. “But you just had to take it off me because it wasn’t fashionable enough for your shots.”

  “No, it was because it still has the word GEEK written on it in red marker pen,” Nat laughs, pointing at the scratched-up front pocket. “Or C-E-H, which must be a new insult developed since I left school.”

  The corner of my mouth reluctantly twitches. “It actually stands for Certified Elephant Herder, Natalie, so you wish.”

  “Or maybe Crazy Ewok Hoarder.”

  “Casual Egghead Hooligan.”

  “Fits you perfectly,” Nat snorts in agreement. “I love you, Harriet Manners, but you’re such a total and utter CEH.”

  We laugh as the lift starts dropping down towards Sydney.

  Nat’s right: there’s no point getting worked up about one missed phone call. I can ring Jasper in the morning when he’s finished work.

  As long as the cafe shuts before ten am, obviously, or I’ll be fast asleep.

  This rotating Earth thing is a real spanner in the works.

  The metal doors open and – at the very moment they ping – my phone starts vibrating again. Feeling a jolt of relief I lean down to grab it while Nat steps out and then get promptly hit on the bottom by the lift doors. I slam forward a few steps and drop my brand-new phone hard on the unforgiving stone floor.

  There’s a loud crack.

  No.

  No no no. No no no no no no no NO NO.

  There’s a crack all the way across the screen, the light’s off and spider-web-shatters are covering the middle. Apparently one in three phones will break within their first ten weeks, and mine is now officially included in that statistic.

  On the upside, at least it’s still ringing.

  “Hello?” I blurt desperately, stabbing a finger at bits until something connects. “Jasper, are you there? I’m sorry. Again. I’m such an idiot.”

  There’s a loud crackle.

  “We – crackle – always – crackle crackle,” a voice says faintly with a distant fizz. “Crackle you’re in Oz crackle crackle.”

  “Hello?” I say again, shaking the
phone in growing confusion. Jasper always refers to Australia as Down Under. “Can you hear me?”

  “Can’t crackle crackle crackle I missed you crackle.”

  And my stomach abruptly plunges as if I’m in the lift again: plummeting seventeen floors (or one thousand feet, or twelve thousand inches) towards the pavement.

  Because it’s a male voice but it’s not my nearly-boyfriend and I have literally no idea who I’m talking to.

  All I know for certain is they missed me.

  pparently, it would take 1.2 million mosquitos, each sucking once, to completely drain the average human of blood. Maybe they were really quiet ones, because I don’t seem to have any blood left now.

  Panic is starting to rise like a flood.

  “What … crackle crackle if you crackle crackle come and crackle crackle crackle in Sydney.”

  It’s definitely not Dad, because he’s been banned from making personal calls at his new job. Or Toby, because he would never, ever tell me he misses me in case it gives me “the wrong idea” and makes me “try to French kiss him again”.

  My stomach abruptly makes another even sharper dive.

  Which means …

  No. It couldn’t be. No way. He doesn’t know I’m here.

  Does he?

  “H-hello?” I say, heart lodged firmly behind my tongue. “Who is this? What did you just say?”

  “Crackle … where … crackle crackle not what crackle.”

  I glance at Nat, whose eyes are open wide. Who is it? she mouths.

  I don’t know, I mouth back. A guy.

  Oh my God, Nat whispers, taking an urgent step towards me with her hand held out protectively. I knew it.

  We stare at each other as the phone keeps crackling.

  What do I do, Nat?

  I don’t know!

  NATALIE, WHAT DO I DO?

  I DON’T KNOW.

  And – before I can even register what’s happening – Nat has grabbed the phone out of my hand and lobbed it hard against the floor.

  Smash.

  cientists have discovered that black holes are so massive that they severely warp the fabric of space-time (the three spatial dimensions and time combined in four-dimensional continuum).

  As a result, you’d essentially be trapped inside one forever.

  Apparently I’ve just fallen into one, because as Nat and I stare at my brand-new and completely smashed phone, in bits on the floor, it feels like every single second is stretching out infinitely.

  Until there’s nothing but silence and time.

  Nothing but silence, and time, and darkness, and staring at the ground forever and ever and—

  There’s a loud beep, and we both jump.

  “No way,” Nat whispers as we both bend down towards it. “How? How is it doing that?”

  “Maybe it’s haunted,” I whisper back in horror, eyes wide. “Maybe it’s alive.”

  There’s another beep, and we both squeak.

  “Oh,” Nat says, putting her hand in her bag. “Wait. That was mine.”

  She pulls her mobile out.

  Hello Mini Me. Harriet’s parents tell me that you’ve both arrived safely. Thanks for the update darling. Mum xx

  I’m being sarcastic, just in case you couldn’t tell. Mum xx

  “Whoops,” Nat says guiltily. “I totally forgot to call her. God, parents can be so passive-aggressive sometimes.”

  Then we stare at each other.

  We still don’t know who was calling me.

  “Look,” Nat says finally, putting her perfectly functional and unshattered phone back in her bag and breathing out slowly. “You know what? I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about: probably a random sales call or something. It could have been anyone, right?”

  I nod, trying to quell the queasiness in my stomach. After all, the chances of dying in a plane crash are one in eleven million, and yet eight million people get on an aeroplane every single day.

  The chance of you being you – of your specific parents meeting and combining your precise genetic material – are one in ten to the power of 2,685,000 … and yet here you are.

  And the odds of being obliterated by an asteroid are one in 1,600,000, unless it’s a really big asteroid, in which case six miles of the Earth’s crust will immediately peel away, hypersonic shock waves will destroy everything in their path, debris will blast into orbit, firestorms will obliterate all known life and dust will stop sunlight reaching the Earth and precipitate another ice age.

  But we all just walk around every day, assuming that won’t happen.

  So if a lifetime of analysis and data has taught me anything, it’s that we have to trust that statistics are on our side.

  Because otherwise, all it takes is one.

  hat doesn’t mean there aren’t other things to worry about.

  My brand-new phone is smashed to smithereens and I spent the money my parents gave me for insurance on an official Ravenclaw phone case, so everybody would know how smart I am.

  Ironically, that broke too.

  Something tells me I may not have been sorted into the right Hogwarts house after all.

  “Come again?” Dad shouts when Nat and I have returned to the Magical Kookaburra Shanty and I’ve finally found the courage to call my parents, as directly specified in our Australian Travel Without Parents Agreement. “You spent the insurance money I could have spent on funky neon trainers on what?”

  It turns out you can hook the outdoor cinema screen up to a web call and unwisely I chose this one to give it a try. Which means my father is yelling at me at three times his natural size and in high definition.

  Technological advances are not all they’re cracked up to be.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I mumble, trying to look somewhere other than up his enormous, foot-sized nostrils. “The important thing is I’m safe. Bodily, and in my mind and soul. Let’s focus on the positives, shall we?”

  “It was a lift door, Harriet,” Annabel says calmly from where she’s seated next to my dad, now approximately ten feet tall: a bit like Galadriel. “Not a weapon of mass destruction.”

  “Did you know 266 people have been injured in elevator incidents since 2002? I think you’re massively underestimating the grand-scale danger I just escaped.”

  Then I open my arms out wide so they can appreciate how lucky they are that I’m unharmed.

  Apparently they do not.

  “Well, you’re not having a new one,” Annabel says, jogging Tabitha up and down on her knee. “They’re really expensive, Harriet, and your dad has only just got his job back. We’re not made of money.”

  Then my dad looms towards me. “We might, however, Harriet, trade you in for part-exchange and invest in another, less clumsy and more responsible teenage daughter.”

  “There’s probably a buyback system,” Annabel agrees. “Although we probably wouldn’t use it.”

  “Onwards and upwards,” Dad adds.

  I scowl at my parents, then at Nat: grinning next to me.

  “So what am I supposed to do?” I snap, folding my arms. “Ninety-two per cent of teenagers go online every day. I’m supposed to check my mobile a hundred and fifty times daily on average. How am I going to do that without a phone?”

  “Share Nat’s,” Annabel says simply. “Or do without.”

  Oh my God. It’s like they don’t understand being sixteen at all.

  “Just because when you guys were my age you bounced rolled-up parchments off the backs of dinosaurs to each other doesn’t mean that’s an option now.”

  “Sure it is,” Dad laughs. “Just don’t use a stegosaurus or they get stuck on the spikes.”

  “So annoying,” Annabel smiles. Then she gets closer to the webcam. “Harriet, where’s your grandmother? You’re not being too much trouble, are you?”

  And what exactly is that supposed to—

  OK, I’m not even going to bother finishing that sentence.

  “I’m here, darling-heart,” Bunty replies,
swaying in from the side with a tray full of home-made banana cake. “And everything is perfection. We’re living every moment to the max, aren’t we, my darlings? Squeezing out every single drop.”

  Nat and I nod fervently, grabbing two slices each.

  “Not to the max,” Annabel frowns. “And, Mum, you need to leave some drops in. Do you remember what we talked about?”

  “Yes, Bels,” my grandmother smiles. “I may or may not have signed a very long and boring legal contract I didn’t read.”

  Then she sits gently next to me and puts a small blue velvet bag on my lap with a wink.

  Curiously, I open it.

  Inside is the largest phone I’ve ever seen.

  It looks and weighs like a black brick, there are prominent buttons with numbers on the bottom half, the screen appears to be in greyscale and there’s a thick plastic antenna coming out of the top.

  The average British child makes its first mobile-phone call at the age of eight, and I’m pretty sure this is the one my grandmother used for that very occasion.

  “Cooool,” Nat says, gazing at it in admiration. “That’s so freaking retro. We should definitely use it in our future shoots.”

  Disturbed, I prod the screen. Nothing happens.

  How do you even send messages on this thing? Are they telling me I’m expected to press 7 five times just to get the letter S? I’m going to be forty-five by the time I’ve sent a basic goodnight text.

  More importantly, where is the camera?

  Then I glance up and see Bunty’s triumphant face, and – glancing a little further – I spot the fierce expressions of my oversized parents.

  Yup: they’ve seen it too.

  “I love it,” I say obediently, throwing my arms round my grandmother. “Thanks so much, Bunty. This is so helpful and so practical.”

  “You’re very welcome,” she beams. “There’s a new loaded SIM card inside, darling, and if you put cash on it it’ll work like a charm. Plus if you get bored you can play Snake!”

  I look in alarm at the monstrosity in my hand.

  Never mind play Snake; I might be able to fight and kill one with this beast. “Brilliant.”