Solitaire. Alice Oseman
Kent’s face Photoshopped into Yoda’s. Then it’s Kent as Jabba the Hutt.
Then it’s Princess Kent in a golden bikini.
The entire sixth form bursts into uncontrollable laughter.
The real Kent, stern-faced but keeping his cool, marches out of the room. As soon as Strasser similarly disappears, people begin to tear from group to group, reliving the look in Kent’s eyes when his face appeared on Natalie Portman’s, complete with white Photoshop face paint and an extravagant hairdo. I have to admit, it’s kind of funny.
After Kent/Darth Maul leaves the screen, and as the orchestral masterpiece reaches its climax through the speakers above our heads, the interactive whiteboard displays the following words:
SOLITAIRE.CO.UK
Becky brings the site up on a computer and Our Lot cluster round to have a good look. The troll blog has one post now, uploaded two minutes ago – a photo of Kent staring in passive anger at the board.
We all start talking. Well, everyone else does. I just sit there.
“Some kids probably thought it was clever,” snorts Becky. “They probably came up with it on their blogs and thought they’d take pictures and prove to their hipster friends how hilarious and rebellious they are.”
“Well, yeah, it is clever,” says Evelyn, her long-established superiority complex making its regular appearance. “It’s sticking it to the man.”
I shake my head, because nothing is clever about it apart from the skill of the person who managed to morph Kent’s face into Yoda’s. That is Photoshop Talent.
Lauren is grinning widely. Lauren Romilly is a social smoker and has a mouth slightly too large for her face. “I can see the Facebook statuses already. This has probably broken my Twitter feed.”
“I need a photo of this on my blog,” continues Evelyn. “I could do with a couple of thousand more followers.”
“Go away, Evelyn,” snorts Lauren. “You’re already Internet famous.”
This makes me laugh. “Just post another photo of your legs, Evelyn,” I say quietly. “They already get reblogged, like, twenty thousand times.”
Only Becky hears me. She grins at me, and I grin back, which is sort of nice because I rarely think of funny things to say.
And that’s it. That’s pretty much all we say about it.
Ten minutes and it’s forgotten.
To tell you the truth though, this prank has made me feel kind of weird. The fact of the matter is that Star Wars was actually a major obsession of mine when I was a kid. I guess I haven’t watched any of the films for a few years now, but hearing that music brings back something. I don’t know what. Some feeling in my chest.
Ugh, I’m getting sentimental.
I bet whoever did this is really pleased with themselves. It kind of makes me hate them.
Five minutes later, I’ve just about dozed off, my head on the computer desk and my arms barricading my face from all forms of social interaction, when somebody pats me on the shoulder.
I jerk upwards and gaze blearily in the direction of the pat. Becky’s looking at me oddly, purple strands cascading around her. She blinks.
“What?” I ask.
She points behind her, so I look.
A guy is standing there. Nervous. Face in a sort of grinning grimace. I realise what’s going on, but my brain doesn’t quite accept that this is possible, so I open my mouth and close it three times before coming up with:
“Jesus Christ.”
The guy steps towards me.
“V-Victoria?”
Excluding my new acquaintance Michael Holden, only two people in my life have ever called me Victoria. One is Charlie. And the other is:
“Lucas Ryan,” I say.
I once knew a boy named Lucas Ryan. He cried a lot, but liked Pokémon just as much as I did so I guess that made us friends. He once told me he would like to live inside a giant bubble when he grew up because you could fly everywhere and see everything, and I told him that would make a terrible house because bubbles are always empty inside. He gave me a Batman keyring for my eighth birthday, a How to Draw Manga book for my ninth birthday, Pokémon cards for my tenth birthday and a T-shirt with a tiger on it for my eleventh.
I sort of have to do a double take because his face is now an entirely different shape. He’d always been smaller than me, but now he’s at least a whole head taller and his voice, obviously, has broken. I start to look for things that are the same as eleven-year-old Lucas Ryan, but all I’ve got to go on is his greyish hair, skinny limbs and awkward expression.
Also, he is the ‘blond guy in skinny trousers’.
“Jesus Christ,” I repeat. “Hi.”
He smiles and laughs. I remember the laugh. It’s all in the chest. A chest laugh.
“Hi!” he says and smiles some more. A nice smile. A calm smile.
I dramatically leap to my feet and look him up and down. It’s actually him.
“It’s actually you,” I say and have to physically restrain myself from reaching out and patting him on the shoulders. Just to check he’s really there and all.
He laughs. His eyes go all squinty. “It’s actually me!”
“Wh-ho-why?”
He starts to look kind of embarrassed. I remember him being like that. “I left Truham at the end of last term,” he says. “I knew you went here, so …” He fiddles with his collar. He used to do that too. “Erm … I thought I’d try to find you. Seeing as I don’t have any friends here. So, erm, yes. Hello.”
I think you should be aware that I have never been very good at making friends, and primary school was no different. I acquired only the one friend during those seven years of mortifying social rejection. Yet while my primary school days are not days which I would choose to relive, there was one good thing that probably kept me going, and that was the quiet friendship of Lucas Ryan.
“Wow.” Becky, unable to keep away from potential gossip, intervenes. “How do you two know each other?”
Now I am a fairly awkward person, but Lucas really takes the biscuit. He turns to Becky and goes red again and I almost feel embarrassed for him.
“Primary school,” I say. “We were best friends.”
Becky’s shaped eyebrows soar. “No waaay.” She looks at both of us once more, before focusing on Lucas. “Well, I guess I’m your replacement. I’m Becky.” She gestures around her. “Welcome to the Land of Oppression.”
Lucas, in a mouse voice, manages: “I’m Lucas.”
He turns back to me. “We should catch up,” he says.
Is this what friendship reborn feels like?
“Yes …” I say. The shock is draining my vocabulary. “Yes.”
People have started to give up on the sixth-form meeting as it’s the start of Period 1 and no teachers have returned.
Lucas nods at me. “Erm, I don’t really want to be late to my first lesson or anything – this whole day is going to be kind of embarrassing as it is – but I’ll talk to you some time soon, yeah? I’ll find you on Facebook.”
Becky stares in relatively severe disbelief as Lucas wanders away, and grabs me firmly by the shoulder. “Tori just talked to a boy. No – Tori just held a conversation by herself. I think I’m going to cry.”
“There,