Andre's Showcase. Kimberly Wyatt

pants?

      ‘Andre!’ Miss Murphy stared at him across the table. ‘What has gotten into you?’

      ‘Nothing – I . . .’ Andre picked up a forkful of courgette spaghetti.

      ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ His mum’s voice was gentle again, her eyes wide with concern.

      ‘Yeah, I’m fine. Just having a couple of issues with my blog.’

      ‘Hmm.’ Miss Murphy frowned. ‘Do you really have time to be blogging right now what with all your school work? Maybe you should put the blog on hold for a while.’

      Andre looked at her, horrified. Was she crazy? How could she even suggest such a thing? He bet his hero Dr Dre never had to put up with this kind of negative talk when he was his age. ‘No! Of course I have time.’ He took a deep breath and began speaking slowly and calmly, as though addressing an untrained puppy. ‘It’s all good, Mum. I just had an issue with my last post, that’s all. Let’s eat.’ He took a mouthful of spaghetti. ‘Mmm, this is really good.’ The truth was Andre was far too stressed to even notice what he was eating – it was as if dread had destroyed his taste buds – but he couldn’t let his mum stop him blogging. That would be the biggest disaster since the death of Tupac.

      ‘Thank you. I have to say I’m really enjoying cooking vegan.’ Miss Murphy laughed. ‘If your dad could see us now . . .’

      Andre stiffened, the way he always did at the mention of his dad. ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘Eating vegan food. You know how much he loves a steak.’

      ‘Yeah, the flesh-eating monster. Oh well, I guess it would give him yet another reason to hate on me.’

      Miss Murphy’s brow furrowed again. ‘Your father doesn’t hate you.’

      ‘Oh, really?’ Andre sighed. He didn’t want to have to think about his Neanderthal, steak-loving dad right now – he had way more important things to be worrying about. He wondered if anyone else had unsubscribed from Spotted since he’d last checked, or if he’d got any more likes. His phone buzzed with a notification and he grabbed it.

      ‘Andre. Please.’

      He pretended he hadn’t heard her. He had received a new email. Someone called @fashattack had commented on the blog post. Please, please, please let it be something good, he silently pleaded as he clicked the email open.

      I never did get the whole harem pant thing – they make people look like they’re wearing giant nappies! Lol ☺

      Andre’s heart sank. Now people were openly mocking his post. The whole thing was a total disaster. He was in Harem-Pant Hell!

      ‘Andre, for the last time, will you please put down your phone?’

      ‘Sorry, Mum. I thought it might have been an emergency.’ He put the phone back on the table.

      ‘A fashion emergency?’

      ‘Yes . . . I mean, no. But you never know, do you, when an emergency might strike. It’s always better to be, like, prepared.’

      Miss Murphy looked at him like he was the crazy one. And maybe he was – he was certainly starting to feel it.

      ‘Mmm, so delicious,’ Andre muttered, shoving half a plateful of spaghetti into his mouth in one go. He needed to get out of his mum’s apartment and back to his dorm room where he could figure out how to put things right on Spotted in peace.

      Fifteen minutes later, and with painful indigestion from eating so quickly, Andre was back in his room. He opened his laptop and logged on to Spotted. He’d got a handful more likes since he’d last checked but the number was way lower than he normally received. And there was still only one comment – the snarky one about the nappies. Maybe he should delete it. No, if he did that it would be even more embarrassing. It would look like he couldn’t take criticism. And he, Andre Murphy, was brave enough to take criticism. He looked at his reflection in the wardrobe mirror and pulled himself upright into what he called his Statue of Liberty pose. He pursed his lips as he gazed admiringly at his fuchsia-pink vest top and ripped skinny jeans and at the way the gold trim on his high-tops perfectly matched the gold flecks in his hoodie. His look was f-e-t-c-h. It always was. He wasn’t going to let one snarky comment get to him. He couldn’t afford to. There were so many other things he had to think about – like his dance classes at WEDA and what to do with Il Bello next and his academic work and his History homework . . .

      Oh shoot! My History homework! He stared at the heap of harem pants on top of his desk. Somewhere buried beneath them was an assignment that had to be done by tomorrow.

      Andre made his way over to his desk, stepping over the tangled piles of clothes and hats and scarves and other random accessories that littered the floor – his half of the floor anyway. As usual, his room-mate MJ’s side was immaculate. Andre itched to be able to invade MJ’s floor and wall space – their bareness seemed such a waste, especially when there were so many fun things he could be filling them with. He flung the harem pants on to the floor and retrieved the piece of paper detailing his History assignment. Andre really didn’t see the point in history. It was over and done with; been there, done that. All Andre was interested in was the future. Because the future was the place where your dreams came true. He didn’t have time to be harking back to some pre-historic king who liked killing his wives or whatever. How was that ever going to help him achieve his dance and fashion dreams?

      He returned to his laptop to make a start on the assignment but couldn’t resist having one more check of Spotted first. His heart sank. Three people had liked the nappy comment! What the hell? His blog wasn’t supposed to be for people to come and have a laugh. It wasn’t a comedy site. It was supposed to be for serious fashionistas. He bet other fashion sites didn’t get this kind of disrespect. He clicked on to one of his favourite fashion blogs and started randomly checking the comments. They were all positive. There wasn’t a single joke. He clicked on to another fashion site, one that had 475,820 subscribers. Andre sighed. How was he ever going to get that many people to subscribe to Spotted? He clicked back on to his own blog. He had 357 subscribers. And instead of growing, that list had shrunk by two today. All because of those stupid harem pants. He went over to the offending pile of trousers and grabbed some scissors from his desk. He started slashing at one of the pairs. They were bright green with silver sequins sewn into the waistband. Tilly had found them in a charity shop. At the time, the trousers had passed the tingle test – anything they featured on the blog had to make their skin tingle with excitement – but it turned out that the tingle test itself had failed. Andre started ripping the harem pants apart with his hands. ‘Die, stupid trousers, die! What was I even thinking?’

      The door to the dorm room opened and MJ walked in, followed closely by Tilly.

      ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she asked, staring at him in shock.

      ‘I’m killing the harem pants,’ Andre replied, with yet another satisfying rip.

      ‘You can’t kill an inanimate object,’ MJ said drily, dumping his overnight bag on his bed.

      ‘Just watch me,’ Andre responded.

      ‘But why?’ Tilly asked, playing with the ends of her peacock green hair, the way she always did when she was confused or stressed.

      ‘Because they’re a laughing stock,’ Andre replied, sinking down on to his bed. ‘Have you seen the comment, Tillz?’

      ‘What comment?’ She came and sat down beside him.

      ‘Nice eye-liner by the way,’ Andre added. Even in the grips of a crisis he was still able to acknowledge a cosmetics win when he saw one.

      ‘Thank you. Now what on earth’s going on?’

      Andre passed her the laptop. ‘Look. The harem-pant post has got way fewer likes than normal, plus one snidey comment and two people have unsubscribed. It’s a catastrophe!’

      ‘Hmm, tell that to the people of