I run up the stairs and shut my bedroom door behind me. I need a distraction, so I sit on my bed and flip open the screen of my laptop, a sturdy Sony Vaio that I've had for 3 years now. I want to check Facebook, but I don't know if I want to see other people's lives going on happily while mine seems to sit in ruins. I decide to go on anyway, I can talk to Anna, my best friend and ignore the newsfeed as much as possible. I haven't been on Facebook since father passed, so when I log on I have 21 notifications and 3 messages. No new friend requests or upcoming events, though. I look through my notifications and notice that I have wall posts. Then I realise that these wall posts are people offering their condolences.

Leah Michelle wrote:

Heyy, I've just heard about your dad and I'm so sorry! hope your all right xx

I've only ever been in one class with her, Art. We didn't talk much because most of us listened to music whilst we painted, sculpted or sketched. And she misspelt 'you're'.

Shuzhe Fang wrote:

Sad 4 u man, condolences!

He's in my year group, yes, but I don't think we've ever had a conversation that went passed a brief greeting.

Andrew Chibueze wrote:

This must be such a hard time rite now, goodluck and im sorry for your loss :((

He invited me to his birthday party, two years ago. We haven't spoken much since then.

I'm not popular. How do these people even know what happened?

I scroll through and read more of these posts, these posts sent good-heartedly, intended to make me feel better, but instead I drown in these words; these useless words. They didn't even know my dad. It's not right, it's just not right. I feel racked with guilt, these people only mean to be kind, but I just can't handle this meaningless pity, not now, not ever.

I see Anna Green on the sidebar with a round green dot next to it, and start a chat.

19:46 Hey anna

19:46 Hey! You're on FB

19:47 Yeah, I know, finally.

19:47 You sure got a lot of wall posts Audrey, you gonna reply? :P

I consider this for a while.

19:48 I don't know what to say.

19:48 I understand.

19:48 I'm coming to school tomorrow.

19:48 I'm glad! Me and Celia miss you when you're off. BTW there's a new boy at school. Doesn't talk much, keeps to himself most of the time.

19:48 Whats his name?

I'm not really interested about this new guy but I ask conversationally. An international school like mine gets new people all the time, and people leave frequently.

19:49 Uhmm I think Seth. Anyway, Gtg, cya tomorrow xx

19:50 Bye xx

I close my laptop and let myself drift off to sleep, thinking of my Dad when he was happy, then when he was diagnosed, then when he was told he had 2 months left, then when he was sick and weak and frail, and then finally, his still lifeless body in the hospital sheets, before the nurse covered him up and told mum and I that everything would be okay. I feel the tears pool behind my eyelids but I don't let them fall, closing my eyes tightly.


It's a struggle to wake up, but I do it because I can't afford to miss more school. I wear jeans and a pink jumper that is starting to hug me a little. I really need to go shopping.

I get there half an hour early, which surprises me and also irritates me because I don't want to wait around and try to pretend I'm not noticing the fact that people don't know how to be around me. Thankfully no one's here this early apart from two girls I can just about make out that are all the way down the corridor on the ground flour, in the cafeteria. My locker's on the second floor so I decide to wait up there, because all the early birds hang out in the cafeteria.

When I get to the second floor and sit down by my locker, I discover I'm wrong. A boy comes in and saunters down the corridor. He has a dangerous look about him: He has a hood up, black baggy clothing and narrowed eyes, and a tattoo poking up out of his t-shirt on his neck, but I can tell he's one of those pretty boys underneath all of that with long dark curled eyelashes, electric blue eyes and red lips. The kind of guy girls go crazy about and I couldn't care less about. But the way he dresses and holds himself, he seems to disguise his good looks completely. He looks average, easily overlooked. Somehow, though, I can see through the invisible layer he hides behind.

I wish I could get up and walk away, but it's too late. It would seem rude. So instead I get out my phone and lean against the locker trying to seem anti-social and nonchalant.

He slows down as he gets near to me. I curse under my breath, so quietly he cannot hear. It's just my luck that his locker should be near to mine. He stops in front of me, which confuses me because the locker above mine is taken by Anna, and so are the one's on the right and left of me. The only free ones are 2 spaces away from mine.

"You're not texting."

Still sitting down, I look up at him directly in front of me, taken completely by surprise, so I just say "What?" dumbly.

"I said, you're not texting," he repeats, his voice low, muddy and raspy.

"So?"

He smirks a little, "You're not even doing anything. You're just staring at your home screen."

Is he trying to make me look stupid? Or feel embarrassed? I couldn't care less what he thinks of me.

"Why do you care?" I ask rhetorically, rudely.

His smirk widens a little, and he says nothing in response. I look back at my screen and open up a random app, tilting the screen away from him, hoping he'll get bored and leave.

"I can't help but feel that you're trying to get rid of me by pretending to look at your phone."

I have no idea what to say because he's just understood my intentions exactly, it seems.

"No I'm just-" I tilt the screen at him to show that I have an app open.

"No I'm just-" I hear a little high-pitched cat's voice repeat. To my dismay, I realise the random app I opened is Talking Tom, a tiny cat that repeats everything you say. I don't even remember downloading it, but now it's obvious that what he said is true. It's blatant I just opened a random application to try and get him to leave me be. No one would ever open up Talking Tom in a silent corridor by himself or herself.

I curse and quickly hit the home button and tilt the screen away from him. I can feel myself going red, and instead of trying to fight it, I just laugh. He laughs too, quite a lot.

"I get it. It's first thing in the morning and you clearly don't want company, or you'd be in the cafeteria. Am I right?"

I nod. "It's not you, it's just-"

"Yeah. I know."

Now that he understands, I don't see the point in pretending, so I just put my phone away.

"Change of heart?" he asks me.

"What?"

"You put your phone away. So I guess you don't mind company now. Can I sit with you?"

He sits down next to me before I respond, and I sigh inwardly. Oh well. I don't recognize him, which means that he's not in my year group, so at least he doesn't know about my dad.

"I'm Seth."

"Oh! Seth!" I say, before I can stop myself.

He wears the widest smirk I've seen so far, "So you've heard about me?"

"Only that you're the new kid and you keep to yourself. But you clearly don't keep to yourself, so I suppose I'm misinformed."

My head starts to ache, so I unwind my long brunette ponytail and let it hang loose over my shoulders. Father always tells me to do that when I feel a headache coming on, and it does help. Father always told me, I mean.

He pulls his hood down, "It's true," he says, suddenly serious; "I've been to many international schools so I try not to get too attached. But my dad said yesterday that this will be a long job so I better make friends."

"So you want me to be your new friend?" I ask dryly.

He laughs again. I guess I just made a joke. I haven't told a joke in forever. This makes me smile to myself.

"You're funny," he tells me, and then he gets up, pulling his rucksack on, and walks around the corner to find his locker, I suppose.


I sit with Celia in the cafeteria at lunch. My classes were dull and uneventful, but I have Philosophy and Ethics next, my extra, so hopefully things will look up.

"Dee, you're back!" Sam says cheerily, and comes to hug me from behind through the back of my chair. I put my hands on his arms to show my gratitude at this excited greeting.

"Greeting your friend before your girlfriend, oooh watch it Sam!" Celia teases as Sam makes his way round the table to come and sit next to her. He leans in and kisses her then.

"Don't make me throw up," I say, with a straight face for effect.

"We wouldn't want that now, would we?" says a voice I recognise. I can practically hear the smirk in it.

"Hey Seth, come chill with us!" Sam says, pointing at the space on the bench next to me. So I guess Seth's new goal to make friends is becoming increasingly successful, now that Sam's one of his new friends.

I stand up, "Actually, I'm going to go and find Anna. I haven't seen her all day."

"No need!" Celia cuts in, "She's at basketball practice. It's a Wednesday, remember?"

I know it's Wednesday, and I know she's at basketball practice. But I just don't really want to sit here whilst Sam and Celia canoodle, although normally I wouldn't mind, but today that will be an unwanted opening for awkward, forced conversation with Seth.

"Oh yeah, I completely forgot." I sit back down and Seth slides into the seat next to me, too close.

"I never got your name."

I turn to face him, hoping that he'll move back a little so that our faces aren't too close together, but he doesn't.

"I hate my name," I tell him, because it's the truth. My grandfather on my dad's side is Italian, but my mother is English and my dad is half american, which is how I got my slightly tanned skin and semi-dark hair. Although we don't know much about our heritage, my sister was lucky enough to get a beautiful Italian name, Isabella. My mother chose my name.

I turn back to face my plate and start stuffing French fries into my mouth so that I don't have to talk.

"Jesus!"

"I know I look a lot like him, and I can see the resemblance, but no, I'm not Jesus," I say sarcastically, my mouth still half full of chewed fries.

He laughs again, and I realise I've made another joke without necessarily meaning too. "How do you have such a good figure if these are your eating habits?"

"Excuse me, but I don't think there's anything wrong with eating large quantities of fries if it pleases me." I say stubbornly.

I hear Celia laughing to my left; "Audrey's trying to make herself fat to stop her from getting male attention."

It is true that I don't exactly love male attention, unless it's friendship-Ama and Celia always tease me about it- but since when am I trying to make myself fat? And it's not like I get much male attention anyway…

"Since when?" I say angrily, but everyone's too busy laughing to notice.

"So you're asexual. That makes so much sense." Seth says in-between bursts of laughter.

"I wish. But I'm not."

"Then why do you dislike male attention?" he fires back, eyes flashing, smirk wide.

"Because all the guys I know are absolute jerks."

"Hey!" Sam says, jokingly.

"Apart from you, Sam, of course."

I turn to face Seth, and notice he's not laughing. He looks like he's trying to figure out an extremely difficult or frustrating puzzle.

He looks up and meets my eyes.

"You're not laughing." I say.

"What?"

"I said, you're not laughing," I repeat.

"You're not texting," he replies, and then we both laugh, hard.

I guess I don't mind Seth's new place in my friend group that much; he's not as irritating as he seemed when we first met.

He smiles down at me, because he's quite a bit taller than me, and says, "I like you, Audrey."

I look away and sip my water.

"Did the last boyfriend you had hurt you?" he asks, quietly, so only I can hear.

Angelo did hurt me, but he was never my boyfriend.

"I've never had a boyfriend," I say carefully.

"Who was he then?"

"Who?"

"Who hurt you?"

I take a deep breath and just decide to be honest, because I have no energy to lie at the moment. "A friend. We had a thing. And then suddenly he got a girlfriend out of nowhere, some girl from another school. That was all. I guess technically he did nothing wrong." I'm careful not to mention Angelo's name, because he's still in my year group and we're still friends. He even flirts with me sometimes, and I have to remind myself what he did to me in order not to respond to it.

"No, he did. He led you on and then hurt you, and that is wrong. That's why you don't like male attention, isn't it? But we're not all jerks."

Seth's too perceptive, and it makes me uncomfortable. I try to just laugh it off.

"Maybe," I say, "But some of you are."

"Hey, you can just get your older brother to beat them up."

"I don't have one."

"Then your Dad."

I start to laugh, and then I remember that my father could never do that for me, not anymore, not ever. Although he wouldn't do this even if he were alive, it makes me sad. A silence settles on the table, because Celia, Sam and I know something Seth doesn't.

Seth clears his throat, "I'm sorry, did I do something?"

"No, don't worry about it," I say, and try to smile.

Seth seems to relax a little, and Celia and Sam get back to their conversation. I quickly find a new topic to discuss.

"Can I see your tattoo?" I ask, reaching to tug at his neckline but hesitating to wait for him to say yes.

"Go on," he smiles, and tilts his head to the right so it's easier for me to pull his t-shirt down a little. When I move his t-shirt, I see that his tattoo is of a skateboard. It's a lot smaller than I thought when I first saw it poking up out of his shirt. It's pictured from the bottom so you can see the wheels, and it's black with patches without ink where his skin shows through, and it has swirling artwork along the base of the board. It's beautiful. I trace my fingers over it and exhale slowly.

"You like it?" he says, casually.

I smile so he understands that I do.

"You skate, so you got a skateboard tattoo." I say, stating the obvious.

"It's more than that. Skating's a part of me. It's helped me get through bad times, you know?"

Bad times. Yes, I know. I nod, and then realise my hand's been lightly pressed to his neck for too long, so I stand up and say that I have to go. He moves out of the way for me and as I walk away, I just about here him say, "I'm not a jerk." So softly, I wonder if I've imagined it.