All The Lonely People - David Owen Page 0,19

maths genius respectively. Whatever Tru was planning couldn’t be bigger than #SelloutSelena. They had to be exaggerating to impress him. If they weren’t—

The classroom door flew open and thudded into the wall loudly enough to make him jump. Nobody else did the same, or even looked up from their work. Peering across, there was nobody outside. A gust of wind, maybe.

The equation refused to give up its secret. Wesley growled in frustration under his breath. Most important now was finding Kat Waldgrave and proving that she hadn’t mysteriously disappeared. He could worry about Luke and Justin later.

‘How did you feel, when it happened?’ asked Safa as they strolled away from the maths classrooms.

‘Scared,’ said Kat, as if that did it justice. ‘Like I was coming apart.’

‘After everything that happened I thought you might be relieved.’

‘It’s hard to explain. It’s not like it’s the first time I’ve had abuse online – I was a girl in geek communities, for god’s sake.’ Kat didn’t quite manage to smile. ‘It’s always awful, but you only see how awful when you’re the target. You can’t ignore it when people are saying they want to punch you, kill you, rape you, even when it’s mostly coming from anonymous accounts you know don’t really mean it.’

‘That’s disgusting.’

‘I thought it would be bad for a while and then just fade—’ She pulled herself up at the poor choice of language. ‘Instead it followed me everywhere, even onto the Doctor Backwash forums. I guess my mistake was talking back, expecting other people to defend me. Like, some did, but these communities really just want to pretend everything is okay, that nothing like this happens on their platform. As soon as anything kicks off the good people go quiet so they won’t become targets too, while all the trolls are trying to one-up each other by getting nastier and nastier.’

They had reached the stairs now, their leisurely pace slowly taking them down towards the ground floor.

‘You’re not exactly selling the online experience,’ said Safa.

‘That’s the thing: a lot of the time it was brilliant,’ said Kat, finding it strange to talk in the past tense when only a day had passed since giving up her last online account. So much had changed. ‘I made real friends there, found people in these communities who were like me – who liked me – and I could actually be myself without worrying I was being judged for it. Well, I thought so, anyway. Now I’m not so sure any of it was real.’

‘It sounds like a lot to worry about,’ said Safa. ‘You can see why I asked if you were relieved when the fade started.’

‘Like this isn’t something to worry about,’ said Kat, holding up her hazy hands.

‘It doesn’t have to be.’ Safa had the mischievous grin of somebody used to causing trouble and getting away with it. They had reached the ground floor now, and Kat realised they had stopped outside Miss Jalloh’s office. Safa raised a fist to the door, ready to knock.

Kat froze. ‘You’re about to make a poor life decision.’

‘That’s never stopped me before.’ Safa rapped her knuckles against the foggy glass. From inside they heard Miss Jalloh grunt as she got to her feet. As the teacher’s silhouette filled the window, Kat tried to duck away. Safa caught her sleeve and bundled her into the room as the door opened. Behind them, Miss Jalloh peered blankly into the corridor, before cursing under her breath and shutting them all inside. As she returned to her desk she glowered at them both, and then went back to her paperwork.

‘Keep absolutely still,’ whispered Kat. ‘Her vision is based on movement.’

‘It’s okay, she can’t hear us,’ Safa said significantly louder than was necessary. ‘Can you, Miss Jalloh?’

The teacher pushed her glasses up her nose and began to hum, as if she was trying to drown them out.

‘Two years ago she gave me detention for talking in class when it wasn’t me,’ said Safa. ‘I swore I would have my revenge.’

Kat swallowed hard, remembering she hardly knew this girl or what she was capable of. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Something petty yet satisfying, of course.’

She snatched up a thick set of keys from the desk and threw them to the floor beside Miss Jalloh’s chair. The teacher eyed them accusingly before she bent to retrieve them, coming back up just in time to watch her pen roll off the desk where Safa had batted it like an impish cat.

‘This whole