“Penny, come and have some dinner,” Mum calls up the stairs.
I groan. I think about saying I’m not hungry but then that will only make them worry. So I drag myself downstairs, my head buzzing with thoughts of Elliot. I must have really hurt him to make him do what he’s done. To make him end our friendship in this way. I go into the kitchen and sit down at the table.
“Are you OK?” Mum asks the question, but she, Dad, and Tom are all staring at me, concerned.
“Yes. Yes, I’m fine.”
“I’ve been asked to do another job in New York,” Mum says, sitting down next to me. “A Valentine’s Ball.” She looks at me excitedly. “I’ve been trying to get through to Sadie Lee to see if she’ll do the catering but she’s not picking up.”
“I bet she’s not,” Tom mutters.
I frown at him and shake my head.
“What?” Mum looks at him questioningly.
Tom looks down at his plate. “Nothing.”
Mum looks back at me. “It’s great news, isn’t it? We can all go over there again.”
No, it’s not! I want to yell. It’s actually the worst news you could possibly tell me. If I set foot in America right now I’ll probably be lynched! But I somehow force myself to nod.
As Mum and Dad talk excitedly about how these American jobs have really turned the business around, I focus on making myself eat some lasagna without having a choking fit. It’s so weird to think that when Megan posted that video of me, imagining the whole school seeing my underwear felt like the worst thing ever. But now the whole world’s seeing it. Now, thanks to Elliot, I truly have gone viral. Just like the Black Death. Or smallpox. Great.
I manage to eat half of my dinner before the need to get back to my bedroom becomes overwhelming. Thankfully, Mum and Dad are still engrossed in a chat about Valentine’s Day themes so they don’t notice the food left on my plate. As soon as I get back to my room, I go straight to my phone to see if I’ve had a reply from Elliot but there’s nothing.
“Fine!” I say to the wall crossly.
But then that weird self-destruct urge kicks in again and I start scrolling through the photos on my camera. When I get to the one of Noah, my finger hovers over delete. But for some weird reason I can’t bring myself to do it. I keep on scrolling through until I get to the photos of my room in the Waldorf Astoria. At first it feels as if it was all a dream; that I never even stayed there. But then little details start catching my eye. The blanket on the chair. The orange moon. Princess Autumn on top of my pillow. These things did happen. They were real. Even if Noah was lying, I wasn’t. I was in that room. And I sat in that chair. And I felt for the first time, that my life was my own.
Then I have an idea. I remove the memory card from my camera and slot it into my laptop, removing the pictures of the hotel room and sending them to the printer. Then I stick them around the edge of my dressing-table mirror like a frame.
I look at each of the photos in turn. The way I felt back in that hotel room was only partly down to Noah. But most of it was down to me. I chose to face my fear and fly to New York. I chose to believe in myself. I chose to trust Noah and fall in love. I am a good person. It doesn’t matter what anyone says about me online. I know the truth because this is my life story, not theirs. And OK, so it hasn’t turned out to be the perfect love story, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t have one, one day. My life can be anything I want it to be—as long as I keep on remembering that it’s mine. Not theirs.
I catch my reflection in the mirror. I look really, really tired and my eyes are bloodshot from crying. But I take my hair down and shake it out. I still love that it’s red. That love is still there, even if Noah’s kind words about it were all lies. I turn off my laptop and phone and I get into bed.
Chapter Forty-One
The first thing I do when I get up the next morning is go and sit at my dressing table and stare at the photos again, absorbing the positive memories like a battery recharging. After about ten minutes, I feel ready to go downstairs. Tom is already up and sitting at the table.
“I’m going to give you a lift to school,” he says as soon as he sees me. “And I’m going to wait outside in the car all day, in case you need me.”
“What? You can’t do that!”
“Oh, yes I can.”
“But won’t you die of boredom?”
Tom grins. “Probably. I’m going to bring my laptop and finish off my uni assignment.”
I smile back at him. “Thank you.”
Tom puts his arm around me. “You can do this, you know.”
• • •
As I walk into school, I keep reciting his words like a mantra. I can do this. I can do this. I feel like I have a neon sign above my head saying SILENCE because everyone I walk past stops chatting within seconds. But I don’t mind silence. Anything’s better than the abuse I was getting yesterday. Even when people nudge each other and stare at me, I don’t mind too much. It’s really weird because I’ve spent most of my school years feeling invisible, living in the shadow of Megan’s spotlight. But not anymore. Now, everywhere I go, people seem to notice me. Even kids in other years seem to know who I am. As I walk down the corridor to my form room I think of Tom, parked outside school in Dad’s car. I’m so glad I didn’t persuade him to go home.
As soon as I walk into my form room, everyone stops talking and stares at me. But that’s OK. It’s like the walk through the school was a warm-up for this moment. And at least I won’t have to face Megan and Ollie until drama, as they’re in different form groups. I go to the table next to Kira and Amara. They’re both looking at me like I’ve grown another head.