By then, it was before dawn o’clock New York time, so when his parents couldn’t get hold of Michael, they went on the internet and somehow found this alleged picture.
I pulled out my phone and went on Twitter myself to see this famous photo and when a blurry image of me alongside Michael’s nostril and pouty mouth showed up, the events of last night slowly came back to me. Well, some of them did.
‘I was drunk! Look! I couldn’t even spell Gansevoort properly and you said it was OK to post the picture. Oh! Oh! Some moron retweeted it. Why would they even do that?’
‘I don’t know!’ Michael ground out. ‘Why do you have to tweet every single last thing that happens to you?’
I ignored him as I clicked to see who’d retweeted it. It was a follower of mine called @winsomedimsum.
winsomedimsum is yum
My girl & my left nostril RT @adork_able NYC, baby! At the Gansevort with ML. Peachy Lychees all round!
It took me all of five seconds to make the connection. @winsomedimsum had an encyclopaedic knowledge of Chinese cakes, overidentified with Jean-Paul Sartre’s imaginary harping, bossy mother and always knew when I was down, even if I kept my tweets upbeat, and sent me links to dogs doing extreme sports.
Winsome-bloody-dimsum was Michael and I was going to end him.
‘You! This is you!’ I spluttered, as I waved my phone in his face. ‘Have you enjoyed fucking with my head, have you?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Michael grabbed my wrist to still it so he could see what I was thrusting at him. ‘Oh.’
‘Don’t even try to deny it.’ I wrenched my hand and my phone free. ‘You said that you weren’t even on Twitter!’
Michael shifted uncomfortably. ‘Well, what I actually said was that I didn’t get Twitter.’
‘I think you got it just fine. Was it funny to completely play me? Did you tell all your friends so you could have a good laugh at how you duped me? How you took me down a few pegs?’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Michael protested. His face was flushed and he pulled at the collar of his shirt like it was choking him. I wished it was. ‘I hardly knew you when we first started talking to each other on Twitter—’
‘You knew me enough to keep pestering me at school about Barney and Scarlett and you knew me well enough when you were having sex with me, but you didn’t think to mention it when we were tweeting each other,’ I spat at him. ‘It’s a total invasion of my privacy.’
‘It’s not. It’s a public forum and anyway, it was the internet. It wasn’t real. You’re not the same person on the internet as you are in real life and—’
‘Yes, I am! I’m like the most optimum version of me. And, like, the internet is my happy place. I take a leap of faith that the people I interact with are as honest as I am—’
‘That’s ridiculous! We’ve been through this before. Everyone pretends to be someone they’re not online. They have, like, an internet persona.’
‘So who are you, then? The person I tweeted who was actually a great fat liar—’
‘None of the stuff I tweeted was a lie—’
‘Or are you Michael Lee, creepy cyber stalker, who used all the information I posted online for his own evil ends?’ I asked, and I wasn’t even being needlessly dramatic. For once. I hated the thought that Michael had pored over my tweets, looking for clues, trying to sniff out my weaknesses and maybe if he’d revealed himself sooner, it wouldn’t have made any difference to the things we’d tweeted each other, the tweets that I’d thrown out into the ether, but now I’d never know. He hadn’t given me that choice.
‘You shouldn’t put stuff up on the internet if you don’t want people to find it,’ Michael insisted doggedly, instead of apologising profusely, dropping to his knees and begging for my forgiveness. ‘You uploaded it for people to see, so I don’t get what the problem is. OK, maybe I should have come clean, but—’
‘There’s no maybe about it! It’s not just about you tweeting me under false pretences. I’ve told you things that I would never put on the internet, I confided in you, I trusted you …’ I had to break off because my voice was thick with tears even though I was determined I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t going to be one of those girls and I wasn’t going to cry over a boy. ‘And all that time, you were being completely deceitful.’
‘You’re overreacting about this, Jeane,’ Michael said, and he was sounding all clenched and long-suffering about it, like it wasn’t important when it so was and actually I was reacting just the right amount. ‘And I don’t really need you yelling at me right now. Kind of in a pretty bad situation in case you hadn’t noticed.’
I stamped my foot then. ‘You are not in a pretty bad situation, Michael,’ I hissed. ‘The worst that will happen is that your parents might stop your allowance and ban you from going to New York for three years. You’re a fricking legally responsible adult, why don’t you start acting like one? And when you’re done with that, maybe we can go back to talking about me.’
Michael didn’t even get angry. He just looked bemused, as if my pain and suffering hadn’t even registered. ‘We do nothing but talk about you.’
‘Oh, excuse me for being excited about being in The New York Times. I’m sorry if that cramps your style. God, you just can’t handle the fact that I’m not happy to simply study for my A-levels and work on my university applications like all the other boring teenagers that you hang out with. You can’t even be pleased that I’m in The New York Times!’
‘Of course I’m pleased for you but this is about the fiftieth time that you’ve mentioned it and it’s getting a little boring.’ Michael sighed, completely interrupting my flow even though I’d barely warmed up. ‘Anyway, I don’t get what the big deal is. You’re always in the papers. You’re their go-to girl whenever they need a gobby teenager with a hell of a lot to say for herself.’
I stamped my foot again and flailed my arms for good measure. ‘I am so much more than that. You wait. I can do TV if I want to. I’ve got three production companies begging me to take meetings and a publisher who wants me to write a book. And why shouldn’t I have my own column in a newspaper? I’ve got plenty to say and I’m going to say it on behalf of the dorks and the geeks and the nerds and the disenfranchised, because we don’t want to be co-opted by the mainstream. We want it on our terms and nothing and no one, not even—’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Jeane, will you just shut up?’ Michael suddenly shouted. Really shouted. Up until then, I’d been doing all the shouting. ‘What you’re doing doesn’t really matter. Yeah, it’s cool that you’re getting to do all this stuff, but you have got A-levels coming up and pretty soon you won’t want to dress the way you do and you’ll realise that you need to tone everything down because you’re not going to get into university or find a job or proper friends unless you stop with this whole stupid dork business.’
I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t make my mouth work and words come out of it. I’d shown Michael parts of my life that I’d never shown anyone else and not only had he betrayed me by violating my Twitter feed with a fake identity but he’d thrown it all back in my face like I’d given him a grubby pair of pants for his birthday that I’d found under my bed. It wasn’t at all like what had happened with Barney. Yeah, I’d taken him to roller derby and made him listen to Kitty, Daisy and Lewis, but I hadn’t ever let Barney see the dark heart of my dorkiness.
‘It’s not stupid,’ I said tightly, shivering as the wind whipped around me. ‘It’s what I am. Nothing else matters. Not A-levels or going to university or getting a job. This is my job, this is what defines me. If I died tomorrow then at least I’d have done something with my life. Left something behind so people would know that I’d existed. Adorkable is all I’ve got.’
‘No, it’s not all you’ve got,’ Michael said, taking the three steps that placed him right in front of me. He was trying to do this piercing thing with his eyes, like he was all perceptive and shit. ‘Look, we’ve both b
ehaved like twats and said things we shouldn’t have, but you’ve still got me. I’m not going anywhere.’
God, he just didn’t get it. He didn’t get me and I was stupid to think that he ever had. ‘I haven’t got you. I don’t want you, not after what you’ve done. And I don’t need a boyfriend to validate my existence because I can validate myself.’
‘If you just cut all this out, things wouldn’t be so hard,’ Michael said forcefully, as if he’d given the matter a lot of thought. ‘And maybe if you didn’t try so hard to be different and not fit in then I wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen with you. I could make life easier for you.’
‘What a load of hetero-normative crap!’
‘What does that even mean?’
‘It means that I’m not going to give up my dreams just so I can be a B-list character in your movie. You want to know what your problem is? For once in your life you don’t get to be the centre of attention and you can’t stand it, can you?’
‘And your problem is that you can’t bear to act normal, because when you take away your ugly clothes and all the long words and all the wacky shit that you think makes you different, you’re actually left with not much – just a girl with a serious personality disorder.’
The hipsters and the cool mums and dads with their little offspring called stupid names like Demeter and Minnesota queuing in the freezing cold to get a table for brunch all stared at us as we shouted at each other and I really felt like nothing special then. I was just a stupid girl wearing stupid, mismatched clothes, yelling at a boy who I didn’t match with either.
That was all Michael Lee was – just a boy – and I had to take away any power that he thought he had over me. Bring him down to size so he felt as small as I did.
‘Why don’t you just piss off back to your mum and dad so they can take away your TV privileges and send you to bed without any supper?’
‘And why don’t you piss off back to your festering pit of a flat and eat yourself to death, you absurd media creation?’ Michael shot back and it killed me, literally killed me to let him have the last word, but there was a cab with its light on and the only way to flag it down was to run across the road and, again, literally kill myself in an effort to get it to stop.
Much as I would have liked to have never ever seen his face again, by the time I was back at the Gansevoort, I realised that I couldn’t abandon him. I wasn’t sure he even had the subway fare and I had our plane tickets so I was forced to text him to tell him to meet me at JFK.
He was there waiting by the premium economy check-in when I turned up, dragging a luggage trolley behind me. I hated him, I did, I did, but my heart gave this happy little skip because it wasn’t used to hating him yet. My head was made of much stronger stuff.
He looked at me sheepishly as he took his bag off the trolley.
‘Hey, Jeane … I know I should have told you about Twitter, but the longer I left it, the harder it was …’ he began, but I ignored him and marched to the check-in counter. I knew that I had to keep being strong. I was going places and you travelled faster if you travelled alone.
‘We absolutely don’t want to sit with each other,’ I told the check-in attendant. ‘I’ll pay to upgrade my ticket if I have to.’
‘Unbelievable,’ Michael hissed, but he couldn’t cause a scene because it was an airport and he’d be carted off on suspicion of being a total terrorist.
So I was whisked off to the safety of the business class lounge and, though our eyes briefly met as I boarded the plane first, soon I was tucked away in my own suite with a big table so I could switch on my laptop and start making lists and plans. Adorkable was getting a major upgrade and I wasn’t going to let the haters stand in my way.
30
♥ Michael Lee has changed his relationship status from It’s Complicated to Single.
adork_able Jeane Smith Taking a Twitter break to sort out several things made of awesome. Feel free to TwitPic me cute puppy shots though.
Dear Michael
As discussed, this is your schedule for the next month. We will revisit this topic when you break up for Christmas and after you’ve had time to reflect on the poor choices and decisions you’ve been making.
Mum and Dad
Monday to Friday
7.30: Feed cat. Help with breakfast, clean up from breakfast.
8.30 – 4.45: You will go directly to school, you will stay at school. If you have a free period, you will go to the library to study. After school you will come straight home.*
5.00: Help Melly and Alice with their homework, start on dinner, feed cat.
7.00: Load dishwasher, then you will study at the kitchen table. As we agreed, you will not have access to TV, games console, iPod, and we have removed the AirPort card from your laptop.
If you don’t have any school work, there is plenty of admin work you can be doing for Dad.
10.30: Lights out!
Monday – school council
Tuesday – football practice
Wednesday – debating society
Friday – football practice
* Have thought long and hard about allowing you your extra-curricular activities but for the sake of your university applications have decided to let them stand.
Saturday
7.30: Feed cat. Help with breakfast, clean up from breakfast.
9.00 – 12.00: Studying.
12.00 – 1.00: Lunch.
2.00 – 5.00: Football match.
6.00 – 7.00: Dinner. Clean up after dinner.
7.00 – 10.00: You can either watch a family-orientated DVD with us or read a book. Your choice.
11.00: Lights out!
Sunday
7.30: Feed cat. Help with breakfast, clean up from breakfast.
9.00 – 4.00: Family outing.
5.00: Help Dad make Sunday roast.
7.00: Clean up after dinner.
8.00: Get stuff organised for school.
9.00 – 10.00: Study or read.
10.30: Lights out!
To:
[email protected] From:
[email protected] 7th December 2011
Dear Ms Smith
I’m writing to you as regards Jeane Smith. Our records show that you are your younger sister’s guardian, though I understand from Jeane’s form tutor, Ms Ferguson, that you are currently working in the States and that both your parents are also residing abroad. However, I must inform you that Jeane has been absent from school for the last three weeks and has not completed her coursework for this period either.
Every effort has been made to contact Jeane via phone and email, as her future at the school and her plans to take AS-levels next year are now in serious jeopardy. I have no other option but to contact you and ask that you make Jeane aware of the potential seriousness of her actions.
While there have been siginificant issues with Jeane’s conduct and behaviour, her academic record is excellent and I am confident that the school can offer her support and solutions so she can resume her studies. I would be more than happy to discuss matters with you over the phone, if you would like to call me.
When you do talk to your sister, can you ask her to contact either myself or Ms Ferguson so we can set up a meeting in order to resolve whatever issues are affecting Jeane?
I look forward to hearing from you and hope we can work together to reach a positive outcome on this matter. Yours truly
Jane Castillo
Deputy Headteacher
Michael! How f-ing long r u being punished 4? We miss U! Heidi x
Long boring story. Might get time off 4 gd behaviour Xmas hols. Michael
So wt went down? Ppl say U got Dorkface preggo!!!!!! That U eloped to NYC!!!! Were U C-ing her? H x
J & I were just mates. But she’s totes insane. C’mon! Dunno why ppl have to spread rumours. M
Totes! Ppl be haters! Will set things str8. But Y R U grounded? Is ridic. Ur 18.
Working on Cambridge applic & got caught drinking
. So ridic!
U don’t even hang out with us @ skool. Every1 misses U. Not just me. But espesh me!!!! Will think of sumthing spesh 2 do when ur free. H xxxxx
OK. Have 2 go. C U tmrw @ skool. M.
OK babes. Luv U. H xxxxxx
THE MOST DORKTASTIC BLOG ENTRY IN THE HISTORY OF BLOGGING, YO!!!
Hello! Hola! Buenos dias! Guten tag! Insert greeting in the language of your choice!
So, hey, how have you been?
Rumours of my untimely demise have been greatly exaggerated. I’m still alive and I’m approximately a gazillion times more dorky than I was last time we spoke because – drum roll, please, maestro – Adorkable is going multi-platform, global and coming right at you!
I mean, I could have carried on blogging and vlogging and tweeting about all the cool random stuff I love in the scant moments I have when I’m not studying for my AS-levels, but really! What’s the point of being stuck in a classroom with twenty-nine dead-eyed, soulless anti-dorks that I have nothing in common with except my age? There is no point. Not when I can be using my time and my energy to spread the message that the geeks will inherit the earth.
So, I’ve spent the last month taking so many meetings that I now break out in hives at the sight of a tray of flaky pastries or a flipchart, but it was worth it (even though I can never knowingly eat a pain au chocolat ever again).
OK, buckle up, and I’ll take you on the guided tour.
Adorkable – the TV show
Next year I’m filming a documentary series for Channel 4. I’ll be exploring what it means to be an outsider in this crazy consumerist cookie-cutter world that we’re forced to live in. I’ll be hanging out at Molly Montgomery’s (from Duckie and my all-time girl hero) Rock ’n’ Roll Camp for Girls. I’ll be going to Tokyo to hunt down a box of green tea Kit Kats and spend time with street photographer and all-round goddess Keiko Ono. Oh, the places I will go: Sweden, Brazil, America – even China if we can cut through swathes of red tape.