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That was what I was going to do when I got home.
“You sure you’re going to be okay?” Mum asked, looking down at me. She always asked me that before I had to do public speaking, which was frequently.
“I’m going to be okay.”
She untwisted my blazer collar and tapped my silver head girl badge with one finger.
She asked me, “Remind me why you wanted to be head girl?”
And I said, “Because I’m great at it,” but I was thinking, because universities love it.
DYING, BUT IN A GOOD WAY (#ulink_c6afb231-0ea8-5906-a221-f31bf8666fe9)
I said my piece and got off stage and checked my phone, because I hadn’t checked it all afternoon. And that’s when I saw it. I saw the Twitter message that was about to change my life, possibly forever.
I made a startled coughing noise, sank into a plastic chair, and grabbed Head Boy Daniel Jun’s arm so hard that he hissed, “Ow! What?”
“Something monumental has happened to me on Twitter.”
Daniel, who had seemed vaguely interested until I said the word ‘Twitter’, frowned and wrenched his arm back. He wrinkled his nose and looked away like I’d done something extremely embarrassing.
The main thing that you need to know about Daniel Jun is that he probably would have killed himself if he thought it’d get him better grades. To most people, we were exactly the same person. We were both smart and we were both going for Cambridge and that was all anybody saw: two shining gods of academia flying high above the school building.
The difference between us was that I found our ‘rivalry’ absolutely hilarious, whereas Daniel acted as if we were engaged in a war of who could be the biggest nerd.
Anyway.
Two monumental things had happened, actually. The first was this:
@UniverseCity is now following you
And the second was a direct message addressed to ‘Toulouse’, my online alias:
Direct Messages > with Radio
hi toulouse! this might sound really weird but i’ve seen some of the Universe City fan art you’ve posted and i love them so much
i wondered whether you’d be interested in working with the show to create visuals for the Universe City episodes?
i’ve been trying to find someone with the right style for the show and i really love yours.
Universe City is non-profit so i can’t exactly pay you so i totally understand if you want to say no, but you seem like you really love
the show and i wondered if you’d be interested. you’d get full credit obviously. i honestly wish i could pay you but i don’t have any money
(i’m a student). yeah. let me know if you’re interested at all. if not, i still love your drawings. like, a lot. ok.
radio x
“Go on then,” said Daniel, with an eye-roll. “What’s happened?”
“Something monumental,” I whispered.
“Yes, I got that.”
It struck me suddenly that there was absolutely no way I could tell anybody about this. They probably didn’t even know what Universe City was and fan art was a weird hobby anyway and they might think that I was secretly drawing porn or something and they’d all hunt down my Tumblr and read all my personal posts on there and everything would be awful. School Brainiac and Head Girl Frances Janvier Exposed as Fandom Freak.
I cleared my throat. “Erm … you wouldn’t be interested. Don’t worry.”
“Fine then.” Daniel shook his head and turned away.
Universe City. Had chosen. Me. To be. Their artist.
I felt like dying, but in a good way.
“Frances?” said a very quiet voice. “Are you okay?”
I looked up to find myself face to face with Aled Last, Daniel’s best friend.
Aled Last always looked a little like a child who’d lost their mum in a supermarket. This was possibly something to do with how young he looked, how round his eyes were, and how his hair was soft like baby hair. He never seemed to be comfortable in any of the clothes that he wore.
He didn’t go to our school – he went to an all-boys’ grammar school on the other side of town, and though he was only three months older than me, he was in the school year above. Most people knew who he was because of Daniel. I knew who he was because he lived opposite me and I used to be friends with his twin sister and we took the same train to school, even though we sat in different carriages and didn’t talk to each other.
Aled Last was standing next to Daniel, gazing down at where I was still sitting, hyperventilating, in the chair. He cringed a little and followed up with, “Er, sorry, erm, I mean, you just looked like you were about to be sick or something.”
I attempted to say a sentence without bursting into hysterical laughter.
“I am fine,” I said, but I was grinning and probably looked like I was about to murder someone. “Why are you here? Daniel Support?”
According to rumour, Aled and Daniel had been inseparable their whole lives, despite the fact that Daniel was an uppity, opinionated dickhead and Aled spoke maybe fifty words per day.
“Er, no,” he said, his voice almost too quiet to hear, as usual. He looked terrified. “Dr Afolayan wanted me to give a speech. About university.”
I stared at him. “But you don’t even go to our school.”
“Er, no.”
“So what’s up with that?”
“It was Mr Shannon’s idea.” Mr Shannon was the head teacher of Aled’s school. “Something about camaraderie between our schools. One of my friends was supposed to be doing this actually … he was head boy last year … but he’s busy so … he asked if I’d do it … yeah.”
Aled’s voice got gradually quieter as he was speaking, almost like he didn’t think I was listening to him, despite the fact that I was looking right at him.
“And you said yes?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Aled just laughed.
He was visibly quaking.
“Because he’s a turnip,” said Daniel, folding his arms.
“Yes,” Aled murmured, but he was smiling.
“You don’t have to do it,” I said. “I could just tell them you’re sick and everything will be fine.”
“I sort of have to do it,” he said.
“You don’t really have to do anything you don’t want to,” I said, but I knew that wasn’t true, and so did Aled, because he just laughed at me and shook his head.
We didn’t say anything else.
Afolayan was on stage again. “And now I’d like to welcome Aled Last, one of the boys’ school’s wonderful Year 13s, who will be setting off to one of the UK’s most prestigious universities in September. Well, if his A levels go to plan, anyway!”
All the parents laughed at this. Daniel and Aled and I did not.
Afolayan and the parents started to clap as Aled walked on to the stage. He approached the microphone. I’d done it a thousand times and I always got that little stomach flip beforehand, but watching Aled do it then was somehow three billion times worse.
I hadn’t really spoken to Aled properly before. He caught the same train to school as me, but he sat in a different carriage. I knew next to nothing about him.
“Er, hi, yeah,” he said. His voice sounded like he’d just stopped crying.
“I didn’t realise he was this shy,” I whispered at Daniel, but Daniel didn’t say anything.
“So, last year I, er, had an interview …”
Daniel and I watched him struggle through his speech. Daniel, a practised public speaker like myself, occasionally shook his head. At one point he said, “He should have said no, for fuck’s sake.” I didn’t really like watching so I sat back in the chair for the second half of it and read the Twitter message fifty times over. I tried to switch my mind off and focus on Universe City and the messages. Radio had liked my art. Stupid little sketches of the characters, weird line drawings, 3am doodles in my 99p sketchbook instead of finishing my history essay. Nothing like this had happened to me, ever.
When Aled walked off stage and joined us again I said, “Well done, that was really good!” even though we both knew I was lying again.
He met my eyes. His had dark blue circles under them. Maybe he was a night owl like me.
“Thanks,” he said, and then he walked away, and I thought that’d probably be the last time I ever saw him.
DO WHAT YOU WANT (#ulink_cd189919-46cb-571d-a88c-1cff5e16186d)
Mum barely had time to say “nice speech” once I met her at our car, before I was telling her all about Universe City. I once tried to get Mum into Universe City by forcing her to listen to the first five episodes on our way to a Cornwall holiday, but Mum’s conclusion was, “I don’t really get it. Is it supposed to be funny or scary? Wait, is Radio Silence a girl or a boy or neither? Why do they never go to their university lectures?” I thought that was fair enough. At least she still watched Glee with me.
“Are you sure this isn’t some sort of giant scam?” said Mum with a frown as we drove away from the Academy. I lifted my feet up on to the seat. “It sounds a bit like they’re trying to steal your art if they’re not even going to pay you.”
“It was their official Twitter. They’re verified,” I said, but this didn’t quite have the same effect on Mum as it did on me. “They liked my art so much that they’re actually asking me to join their team!”
Mum said nothing. She raised her eyebrows.
“Please be happy for me,” I said, rolling my head towards her.
“It’s really good! It’s brilliant! I just don’t want people to steal your sketches. You love that stuff.”
“I don’t think it’s stealing! They’d give me all the credit.”
“Have you signed a contract?”
“Mum!”I groaned exasperatedly. There wasn’t much point trying to explain this to her. “It doesn’t matter, I’m gonna have to say no anyway.”
“Wait, what? What d’you mean?”
I shrugged. “I’m just not gonna have time. I’ll be in Year 13 in a few months, like, I’ve got so much work all the time, and Cambridge interview prep on top of that … there’s no way I’d have time to draw something for every single weekly episode.”
Mum frowned. “I don’t understand. I thought you were really excited about this.”
“I am, like, it’s so amazing that they messaged me and thought my art was good, but … I have to be realistic—”
“You know, opportunities like this don’t come around very often,” Mum said. “And you clearly want to do it.”
“Well, yeah, but … I get so much homework every day, and coursework and revision will only get more intense—”
“I think you should do it.” Mum stared straight ahead and spun the steering wheel. “I think you work yourself too hard for school anyway and you should take an opportunity for once and do what you want.”
And what I wanted to do was this:
Direct Messages > with Radio
Hey!! Wow … thank you so much, I can’t believe you liked my art! I’d be absolutely honoured to get involved!
My email is touloser@gmail.com (mailto:touloser@gmail.com) if it’s easier to talk there. Can’t wait to hear more about what you’re thinking in terms of design!
Honestly, Universe City is my favourite series of all time. I can’t thank you enough for thinking of me!!
Hope I don’t sound too much like a crazy fan haha! xx
I ALWAYS WISHED I HAD A HOBBY (#ulink_df9397fb-f569-5a08-a5a3-abe97c0fd83b)
I had work to do when I got home. I almost always had work to do when I got home. I almost always did work when I got home because whenever I wasn’t doing schoolwork I felt like I was wasting my time. I know this is kind of sad, and I always wished I had a hobby like football or playing the piano or ice-skating, but the fact of the matter was that the only thing I was good at was passing exams. Which was fine. I wasn’t ungrateful. It’d be worse if it were the other way around.
That day, the day I got a Twitter message from the creator of Universe City, I didn’t do any work when I got home.
I collapsed on to my bed and turned my laptop on and went straight on to my Tumblr, where I posted all of my art. I scrolled down the page. What exactly had the Creator seen in these? They were all crap. Doodles I did to turn my brain off, so I could fall asleep and forget about history essays and art coursework and head girl speeches for five minutes.
I switched over to Twitter to see if the Creator had replied, but they hadn’t. I checked my email to see if they’d emailed me, but they hadn’t.
I loved Universe City.
Maybe that was my hobby. Drawing Universe City.
It didn’t feel like a hobby. It felt like a dirty secret.
