Solitaire. Alice Oseman

and I caught a reflection of myself in a Waterstones window and I realised then that most of my face was covered up and who in the name of God would want to talk to me like that and I started to feel all of this hair on my forehead and my cheeks and how it plastered my shoulders and back and I felt it creeping around me like worms, choking me to death. I began to breathe very fast, so I went straight into the nearest hairdresser’s and had it all cut to my shoulders and out of my face. The hairdresser didn’t want to do it, but I was very insistent. I spent my school bag money on a haircut.

      “I just wanted it shorter,” I say.

      He steps closer. I shuffle backwards.

      “You,” he says, “do not say anything you mean, do you?”

      I laugh again. It’s a pathetic sort of expulsion of air, but for me that qualifies as a laugh. “Who are you?”

      He freezes, leans back, opens out his arms as if he’s the Second Coming of Christ and announces in a deep and echoing voice: “My name is Michael Holden.”

      Michael Holden.

      “And who are you, Victoria Spring?”

      I can’t think of anything to say because that is what my answer would be really. Nothing. I am a vacuum. I am a void. I am nothing.

      Mr Kent’s voice blares abruptly from the tannoy. I turn round and look up at the speaker as his voice resonates down.

      “All sixth-formers should make their way to the common room for a short sixth-form meeting.”

      When I turn back round, the room is empty. I’m glued to the carpet. I open my hand and find the SOLITAIRE.CO.UK Post-it inside it. I don’t know at what point the Post-it made its way from Michael Holden’s hand to my own, but there it is.

      And this, I suppose, is it.

      This is probably how it starts.

       TWO

      THE LARGE MAJORITY of teenagers who attend Higgs are soulless, conformist idiots. I have successfully integrated myself into a small group of girls who I consider to be ‘good people’, but sometimes I still feel that I might be the only person with a consciousness, like a video-game protagonist, and the rest are computer-generated extras who have only a select few actions, such as ‘initiate meaningless conversation’ and ‘hug’.

      The other thing about Higgs teenagers, and maybe most teenagers, is that they put very little effort into ninety per cent of everything. I don’t think that this is a bad thing because there’ll be lots of time for ‘effort’ later in our lives, and trying too hard at this point is a waste of energy which might otherwise be spent on lovely things such as sleeping and eating and illegally downloading music. I don’t really try hard to do anything. Neither do many other people. Walking into the common room and being greeted by a hundred teenagers slumped over chairs, desks and the floor is not an unusual occurrence. It’s like everyone’s been gassed.

      Kent hasn’t arrived yet. I head over to Becky and Our Lot in the computer corner; they seem to be having a conversation about whether Michael Cera is actually attractive or not.

      “Tori. Tori. Tori.” Becky taps me repeatedly on the arm. “You can back me up on this. You’ve seen Juno, yeah? You think he’s cute, right?” She slaps her hands against her cheeks and her eyes kind of roll backwards. “Awkward boys are the hottest, aren’t they?”

      I place my hands on her shoulders. “Stay calm, Rebecca. Not everyone loves the Cera like you do.”

      She starts to babble on about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but I’m not really listening. Michael Cera is not the Michael I’m thinking about.

      I somehow excuse myself from this discussion and begin to patrol the common room.

      Yes. That’s right. I’m looking for Michael Holden.

      At this point, I’m not really sure why I am looking for him. As I’ve probably already implied, I do not get interested in very many things, particularly not people, but it irritates me when someone thinks that they can start a conversation and then just get up and leave.

      It’s rude, you know?

      I pass all the common-room cliques. Cliques are a very High School Musical concept, but the reason they are so clichéd is because they really do exist. In a predominantly all-girls’ school, you can pretty much expect each year to be divided into three main categories:

      1 Loud, experienced girls who use fake IDs to get into clubs, wear a lot of things that they see on blogging sites, frequently pretend to starve themselves, enjoy a good bit of orange tan, socially or addictively smoke, are open to drugs, know a lot about the world. I very much disapprove of these people.

      2 Strange girls who appear to have no real concept of dressing well or controlling their freakish behaviour, examples being drawing on each other with whiteboard pens and being physically unable to wash their hair; girls who somehow end up with boyfriends who are just as terrifying as they are; girls who on average have a mental age at least three years younger than their physical age. These girls sadden me greatly because often I feel that they could be very normal if they put in some effort.

      3 So-called ‘normal’ girls. Approximately half of these have steady, average boyfriends. Are aware of fashion trends and popular culture. Usually pleasant, some quiet, some loud, enjoy being with friends, enjoy a good party, enjoy shopping and movies, enjoy life.

      I’m not saying that everyone fits into one of these groups. I love that there are exceptions because I hate that these groups exist. I mean, I don’t know where I’d go. I suppose I’d be group 3 because that’s definitely what Our Lot are. Then again, I don’t feel very similar to anyone from Our Lot. I don’t feel very similar to anyone at all.

      I circle the room three or four times before concluding that he’s not here. Whatever. Maybe I just imagined Michael Holden. It’s not like I care anyway. I go back to Our Lot’s corner, slump on to the floor at Becky’s feet and close my eyes.

      *

      The common-room door swings open as Mr Kent, Deputy Head, strides into the crowd, followed by his usual posse: Miss Strasser, who is too young and too pretty to be any kind of teacher, and our Head Girl, Zelda Okoro (I’m not even joking – her name really is that fantastic). Kent is a sharply-angled sort of man most often noted for his startling resemblance to Alan Rickman, and is probably the only teacher in this school to hold true intelligence. He is also my English teacher, and has been for over five years, so we actually know each other fairly well. That’s probably a bit weird. We do have a Headmistress, Mrs Lemaire, who is widely rumoured to be a member of the French government, explaining why she never appears to be present in her own school.

      “I want some quiet,” says Kent, standing in front of an interactive whiteboard, which hangs on the wall just below our school motto: Confortamini in Domino et in potentia virtutis eius. The sea of grey uniforms turns to face him. For a few moments, Kent says nothing. He does this a lot.

      Becky and I grin at each other and start counting the seconds. This is a game we play. I can’t remember when it started, but every single time we’re in assembly or a sixth-form meeting or whatever, we count the length of his silences. Our record is seventy-nine seconds. No joke.

      When we hit twelve and Kent opens his mouth to speak—

      Music begins to play out of the tannoy.

      It’s the Darth Vader theme from Star Wars.

      An instant uneasiness soars over the sixth form. People turn their heads wildly from side to side, whispering, wondering why Kent would play music through the tannoy, and why Star Wars. Perhaps he’s going to start lecturing us on communicating with clarity, or persistence, or empathy and understanding, or skills of interdependence, which are what most of the sixth-form meetings