All The Lonely People Read online

  And Kat’s face, deftly superimposed over the woman’s own so you could hardly see the join.

  Around the room, people began to gasp and laugh.

  *

  Wesley couldn’t keep his legs from dancing as they waited for her to react. She stared at her screen, body rigid, before she lowered it from view and spun to look around the room.

  All three of them turned away just in time, Luke stifling a laugh in his thick palm. Wesley stared hard at the assortment of paper spread over his desk.

  ‘She’s going to lose it,’ whispered Luke.

  It seemed that everybody had opened the email now, those at the centre tables gravitating to the nearest screen to see what the fuss was about. Most looked shocked, glancing uncertainly at Kat, while others laughed and whistled.

  ‘Wahey, Waldgrave!’ cheered one of the boys.

  Mr Buttercliff looked up from his phone. ‘What’s all this noise about?’

  Wesley risked glancing back. Kat was staring at her screen, paralysed, as the noise around her continued to grow. He felt a stab of panic that she might have figured it out, that she would point the finger at him and this would all come crashing down on his head.

  It was only when she finally moved to log in to her website that he wilted with relief.

  They had won.

  Kat’s whole body seemed to vibrate and her skin felt white hot. The images were doctored, fakes designed to mess with her head. Still, seeing herself like that, everybody seeing her like that, made her body feel as if it might disintegrate, and she would let it so that everybody would stop looking.

  Behind her, Buttercliff heaved himself up from the desk and began walking towards the nearest PC. There was only one thing she could do to stop it. If the trolls were willing to do this, there was no way she could beat them.

  Kat took a final look at the website she had built herself: her name in custom pixel art for the banner, animated sprites of Backwash characters dancing underneath, the developer diaries and blog posts, random videos and memes she had shared. It was supposed to be a sanctuary for her personality, her true self squeezed into a glass bottle and entrusted to the departing tide.

  She wanted to scream, stand tall in front of them all and demand to know who had done this. Instead, she opened her website options and navigated to the delete menu.

  Here, at the end, was nothing but defeat.

  Are you sure? it asked.

  There was no other choice. She pressed the button.

  Luke refreshed the tab. Her website was gone.

  ‘Fucking yes, mate!’ he hissed.

  Across the room, Kat had closed her MacBook and pressed her forehead into the edge of the desk. The adrenaline that had surged through Wesley moments before was quickly ebbing, his triumph eaten away by a growing nausea.

  Buttercliff was leaning into a screen, demanding to be shown what had caused the commotion, but the girls there refused to relent.

  ‘I’ll show you, sir!’ shouted one of the boys.

  Looking back, Wesley saw Kat grip the edge of her desk as if trying to tear chunks of it loose. Her whole body shook, too violently to be caused only by tears.

  Melodrama, Wesley told himself. TrumourPixel had warned them about this; girls like her always played the victim, even when they got exactly what they deserved.

  Luke and Justin were already collecting their things. Ten minutes remained of the period but there was no obligation to stay. Buttercliff wouldn’t stop them. They had their victory, and now they were fleeing the scene of the crime.

  ‘Where you guys heading now?’ asked Wesley.

  ‘We’ll report this to Tru and catch you later,’ said Luke, shouldering his bag. ‘Drop us a message when you’re finished at your new job or whatever.’

  ‘We could—’

  They turned their backs on him and left, as if Wesley had ceased to exist.

  At the back of the room, Kat’s convulsions had turned violent, her breathing sharpened into high-pitched rasps. Other people in the room could no longer pretend they didn’t notice, tearing their eyes away from the photograph preserved on their screens to watch the real thing.

  ‘Live demonstration!’ crowed one of the boys.

  Buttercliff saw what was on their screen and gasped, fumbling for the mouse to close it.

  Finally, Kat’s head jerked up, and she stared at her hands gripping the desk, like she didn’t recognise them. Her knuckles had bleached so white it was almost as if Wesley could see right through them.

  A lump caught in his throat, and he made to stand up. It was different, seeing a victim in real life and not inside a computer screen. Before he could move, Kat swept everything off the desk into her bag and stood up sharply enough for her chair to clatter over.

  ‘Who is responsible for this?’ shouted Buttercliff.

  Kat ignored him, everyone, and rushed for the door. As she passed Wesley, something about her changed that sent goosebumps skittering across his skin. The light from the windows seemed to consume her entirely, shining through her body as if it was made of glass. By the time he had blinked, trying to blot the illusion, she was out of the door and out of sight.

  The room fell quiet around him. Buttercliff glanced around in bewilderment, and then returned to his seat at the front of the class to resume his game. Everybody at a computer closed the website, the email, and returned to whatever they had been doing before as if nothing had happened at all.

  2

  Nothing and Nobody

  The world spun around Kat’s head as she fell to her knees in the toilets. Every atom in her body seemed to be in open rebellion, trying to shake loose its bonds. The smell of bleach scorched her nose, stinging eyes already raw with tears. The contents of her bag had spilled across the grimy tiles.

  ‘Stop crying,’ she whispered, forcing herself back onto her feet.

  Before she could catch sight of herself in the mirror above the sinks she clenched her eyes shut. For a bizarre moment back in the classroom she had thought herself to be disappearing. She was sure she had seen through her hands, through skin and flesh and bone, and had gripped the desk in a last-ditch attempt to anchor herself to the world. A trick of the light, surely, caused by tears blurring her vision.

  So why was she so frightened to face herself now?

  Kat wiped her face with trembling fingers, and she could feel them, solid matter against her skin. It gave her the courage she needed to open her eyes.

  A ghost looked back. Her reflection was exactly where it should be, but it was spectral; a sunblind afterimage. Her body had faded, just a little. Haltingly, she turned her head side-to-side, and the reflection mimicked her as it should. Through herself she could see the toilet stalls behind and the crinkled cleaning notices fixed on their doors, but she retained enough substance to render their words indecipherable.

  The panic caged inside her chest was a feral creature, and now it threw its body against the bars. Whenever it tried to claw its way out Kat tried to imagine her breathing as a moustachioed tamer jabbing at it with a kitchen chair. Now the beast caught it in its jaws and splintered the wood into matchsticks.

  Irrationally, she spun around, expecting to find her body splayed on the tiles. She had died and become a wayward spirit. It was the only rational – ha! – explanation. But there was nothing there.

  ‘That was Backwash season one, episode five,’ she told herself, trying to keep calm. ‘“Zenon’s Temporary Demise”.’

  A sob split her open. Despair and horror poured out in a scream, long and dreadful, resounding around the toilet walls.

  It only stopped when a boy pushed through the door.

  Wesley tried to stay in his seat. If something was wrong, if she was upset, he wasn’t supposed to care. Everybody else in the room had seen it too. Let them play the white knight.

  Except they continued with their work, Buttercliff his game, the session continuing as if it had all been the most natural thing in the world. They had seen the picture
. They had looked right at her as she turned transparent, like a chameleon excusing itself from a threat. The period would be over in minutes, but he couldn’t wait. He needed to debunk what his eyes had told him – that was the only reason he was going. It wasn’t because he cared. He swore under his breath and hurried out.

  Wesley followed the corridor, peering into classrooms, sure she would have looked for somewhere to hide. Every vacant room on the floor was dark and empty. It was only when he reached the stairs that he heard the scream from the girls’ toilet. He rushed to the door, hesitating to cross the boundary. The agonising cry, its seemingly endless keening, pulled him inside.

  ‘Is everything o—?’

  He cut himself off mid-sentence.

  Nobody was there.

  At the sight of him, Kat tried to tear herself into three: one to gather up her laptop and bag, one to stand straight, wipe the snot from her face and smile as if everything was okay, and one to hide, hide, hide.

  She held her breath as the boy stared in bafflement. Kat searched her mind for an excuse, a reasonable answer to his unfinished question.

  ‘I don’t know what’s happened,’ she said, the only truth she knew.

  The boy didn’t answer, instead peering around the room as if there might be somebody else hiding there.

  The parts of Kat’s mind scattered by panic began to draw back together. She knew this boy – Wesley, from her year. They had met before, seen each other around school. He must have seen the photo along with everybody else. She swallowed her shame. Regardless of why he was here now, she needed help.

  ‘I have to get home,’ she said.

  Wesley stepped closer and she flinched away, only for him to move past her and check the stalls. Why didn’t he say anything? She reached for his arm, craving its fixedness and desperate despite everything for his attention. The sight of her translucent hand, like paper held to light, made her snatch it away before she could make contact.

  When he finally turned back they were close enough to waltz, but no sooner had his eyes found Kat than they grew large and unfocused, sliding away to look somewhere else. Anywhere else.

  Although her reflection showed she had faded but a little, he was unable to see her at all.

  The scream had come from inside the toilets. There was nowhere else. It had cut off sharply as if disturbed when Wesley opened the door. And there was her bag, discarded, MacBook and make-up scattered.

  It felt like a trick, as if somebody was watching and recording his reaction. Twice when he turned his head he thought somebody stood at the edges of his vision, only to vanish if he tried to focus. He was sure he could feel another person in the room. Something like vertigo, a sense that the rules of the universe were unravelling, lurched inside him.

  Quickly, before anybody could catch him there, Wesley scooped the contents of her bag back inside and gathered it up. It was a lifeline, an excuse to find her again. A chance, perhaps, to sate the guilt that was beginning to gnaw at his heart.

  Kat followed a few paces behind as he returned to the corridor, only dimly aware that he had taken her bag. Keeping up with Wesley as he hurried down the stairs offered a linear future, one she didn’t need to decide for herself, if only for a few minutes. Long enough to get out of there.

  At the bottom floor, Wesley turned a corner and came to a halt. Kat huddled against the wall as a familiar imperious voice rang along the corridor.

  ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were heading for the exit.’

  Kat peeked around the corner. The way out was blocked by Miss Jalloh, hands on her abundant hips, hunkered low in a way that suggested she was perfectly willing to tackle him bodily if necessary.

  ‘I was, uh . . .’ Wesley stammered, and Kat saw him push her bag out of sight behind his back.

  ‘Mr Graham, you realise there’s no excuse I’ll accept from you right now?’

  ‘I do now, miss.’

  ‘You know that I know you don’t have final period free today, so there’s no reason in the world you should be heading outside right now.’

  ‘I know, miss, but I was just looking for—’

  Miss Jalloh held up a hand to silence him, fingers splayed, before counting them off one by one. Kat had seen her perform this trick before: the moment she folded her little finger into her palm the bell rang, electronic pips repeating throughout the building.

  ‘How do you do that?’ said Wesley.

  Miss Jalloh smiled sweetly and answered by pointing him back along the corridor. ‘To final period, if you please.’

  The school had stirred to life, chairs scraping and voices tumbling over each other, the shouts of teachers’ final instructions competing with the excited babble of their students. Kat fought the urge to run. Stepping out from the wall, Miss Jalloh’s all-seeing eyes flicked to her, and Kat braced herself for punishment or fright. Neither came – almost at once the teacher’s attention reverted to Wesley.

  ‘Sorry, miss,’ he said, and turned around to pass Kat without so much as a glance.

  The classrooms behind her boiled over into the corridor. Kat waited for somebody to notice. She would almost have welcomed a gasp or scream, anything but the vacant tide that broke around her, as if she were a boulder in the flow of a river, unworthy of attention. Smothering her rising panic, she hurried past the unseeing Miss Jalloh and out of the building.

  Then she ran across the car park to swipe her pass at the gate. Ran towards home until her lungs burned and a sharp pain in her side pulled her up short. Doubled over, she tried not to see the pavement through her ankles, the thread of her jeans embroidered in her hands.

  A breeze made something rustle on her back. Kat reached under her arm to find a piece of paper stuck to her blouse with chewing gum. It was folded in half once, and inside was a scrawled, smudged message.

  I see you.

  [email protected]

  Kat clutched the message to her chest. Somebody had seen what had happened.

  Somebody had seen her.

  3

  The Peak of Human Ingenuity

  Wesley had known for a while that there was little hope for his future, but he would have thought he was at least qualified to wash cars. The one-hour tutorial before he was even allowed to hold a sponge suggested otherwise.

  ‘The second coat of wax is where it really counts,’ said Dave zealously, Mum’s latest boyfriend. ‘It might seem like overkill, but a good shine can really make up a customer’s mind.’

  Although he was there to work, Wesley had known in advance that the whole endeavour would be set up like a bonding experience. Still, Dave seemed more interested in romancing the electric lime Ford Focus at his fingertips than playing dad-in-waiting. Even though he owned the used car dealership, he’d stripped down to a T-shirt as soon as Wesley arrived and started filling buckets with water (‘power hoses damage the paintwork!’).

  While Dave dabbed on the second helping of wax, Wesley watched him closely. He was better looking than the last couple of boyfriends: head shaved to fuzz, tattoos so dark on his black skin they could have been etched there at birth. This was the first time Mum had dated anyone since they finally got away to their own place. Two months together and counting. Long enough that Wesley needed to worry.

  ‘How long have you had this one?’ he asked. The oil-stained forecourt was only big enough to hold seven or eight cars, parked in two tight rows.

  ‘A few months,’ said Dave. ‘I think the colour might put people off.’

  Usually, Wesley would refuse to do anything like this with one of Mum’s boyfriends. They always got on better without them. It had been an unspoken rule with his older brother Jordan that they would never relinquish any of their power to some new bloke on the scene. Except Jordan had betrayed all that when he left.

  If only Mum hadn’t looked so hopeful when she asked. Plus, the extra money would finally give him the chance to contribute.

  ‘All right, grab the chamois,’ said Dave.


  ‘You sure you two don’t want some alone time?’

  Dave whipped the cloth at him playfully, and they spent the next few minutes quietly buffing the wax like it might magically transform the car’s fortunes.

  ‘That’s the ticket.’ Dave beamed, showing off his wheeler-dealer silver tooth.

  The repetitive work did little to take Wesley’s mind off Kat Waldgrave. He had expected to feel in some way different when the attack was over. It should have proved that he wasn’t soft, that he could act like Tru said men were supposed to. The trolling campaign had been a success, but instead of basking in triumph alongside Luke and Justin he was still stuck here washing cars. He was still himself. Hopefully they had reported their success to TrumourPixel by now. He wasn’t sure exactly what might come next, but it had to be better than this.

  Thinking of Kat made his stomach drop, like an airlock opening. He couldn’t shake the thought that the effects of their attack had been worse than intended.

  Behind him, hanging on a hook in the dealership office, was Kat’s bag and MacBook. It would offer some answers. The more Wesley tried not to think about it, the more he needed to uncover the truth.

  Kat woke inside the sweaty cavern of the duvet pulled over her head. Somebody was knocking on her bedroom door.

  ‘Are you coming down for dinner?’ said Dad.

  The door was locked, and she knew giving no response would quickly make him give up. She couldn’t risk him seeing what had happened. Against all reason she felt embarrassed, as if she was to blame. On the way home she had kept her head down and walked quickly, determinedly not noticing if anybody was noticing.

  If there was something wrong. She was still hoping the whole affair was some kind of hallucinatory panic attack. She couldn’t bring herself to check. She had fallen asleep while watching Tinker videos to comfort herself.

  ‘You need to eat,’ said Dad.