All The Lonely People - David Owen Page 0,1

to lose all meaning. ‘I still did fine in my exams,’ Kat pointed out. It was true too – nothing below a B grade in her mocks.

‘That’s hardly the point!’ The bangles on Miss Jalloh’s wrists rattled as she slapped her hands on the desk, living up to her reputation for being expressive. ‘Everybody knows you’re a bright girl.’

That was funny; as far as Kat could tell everybody hardly knew she existed.

Tinker had started out recording make-up tutorials – perfectly shaped eyebrows were her trademark – before moving on to discuss topics such as sexuality and feminism. She identified as pansexual, and was so open about everything it meant for her, posting regular videos on the impact it had on her dating and sex life. These were all mysteries to Kat, abstract ideas, and it was easy enough to pretend Tinker’s life was her own. Pretend these regular updates fleshed her out with experience. In between those personal videos she still posted about make-up, Doctor Backwash, books . . . a video almost every day made it feel like having a one-way conversation with a best friend. The friend Kat had always wanted, had always missed despite never having nor losing them.

‘If anything is going on to keep you away from school, I want to know about it,’ Miss Jalloh had said.

Kat had kept her gaze on the dusty desk surface, wondering if there was any way the teacher would understand: the threatening emails, attacks on social media, blurry photos of her sitting alone in the canteen or going into the toilets at break, even walking up the path to her house, always taken around corners or zoomed in from a distance. It was all part of a world the teachers couldn’t comprehend. Reporting it would be futile, and only risked making it worse.

Instead, she’d set about deleting her online presence. If she wasn’t there, they couldn’t attack her.

She reached out to type a comment on the video, before remembering that she had deleted her profile a week ago. It shouldn’t have made her feel so disconnected – it’s not like Tinker had ever replied.

‘It’s nothing,’ Kat had said, finally lifting her head. She had left the teacher’s office having barely heard the threats of phone calls home or possible suspension. It would never come to that.

It was pretty obvious who was responsible for this campaign against her. Luke and Justin sat across the room from her now. Everybody knew they had played a big part in what happened to Selena Jensen last year, and they had never been caught. The problem was proving it; if it was them, they were good at hiding it.

On her desktop was an unsent letter she had written to them, titled Please Stop. Into it she had poured everything she really felt about these attacks against her, everything she had nobody in her life to tell. She was so angry. Every blow they struck made her want to scream. But who would listen? Even if there was someone, she would have to convince them of the truth, prove she wasn’t overreacting. The thought of it made anxiety wring her chest like a wet washcloth. It was better not to bother anybody else and handle it herself.

She let the cursor hover over the letter and wondered if she had ever really intended to send it, or if simply typing it had convinced her she wielded some kind of power.

The video finished. Kat set the next one playing and turned the volume up.

Wesley had to admire the fact that it had taken over a month for them to force Kat into closing down her Twitter profile, suspending her Facebook, deleting her YouTube channel and abandoning Instagram. At first she had fought back, retweeting and mocking them to try and get some support. All it really did was attract more trolls, enough to shut down anybody who came to her defence.

The hardest part had been getting her banned from the official Doctor Backwash fan forums. Wesley had never seen the web series, but all of his favourite YouTubers considered it worse than cancer. In the end, they had targeted a few major players on the forum until they identified Kat as the common denominator and cut her loose.

The only part of her online presence left standing was her personal website, and they’d made the photographs so that they could nuke this last outpost from orbit.

‘Almost ready,’ said Luke, dragging an image into place.

She brought it on herself.