all the time was that, even against my will, I did end up learning quite a lot, so that when I chatted to Alex on
Topfriendz, I really did sound like I knew what I was talking about. At the end of the day, it’s a game of two halves (that’s an in-joke). I can now, fairly convincingly, I believe,
tell anyone who asks everything they never wanted to know about a four-four-two formation, a corner kick, and an indirect free kick. I really hope I won’t have to.
I knew learning about football would help me grow closer to Alex; that was the idea. What I hadn’t expected was that it would also bring Jack closer to me. Now that he believed he could
share his love of football, he wanted to see me more often. He even seemed more affectionate (except during matches). It didn’t take a genius to work out that he liked me more just because he
thought I liked football. At first, that made me feel guiltier than ever, but then it irritated me. It made me see that he’d been holding a part of himself back from me. It also helped me to
understand why he had fallen for Alex in such a big way; they were football clones – they even used the same phrases sometimes. I felt jealous that they’d genuinely shared something,
when I was just pretending. And that made me even more determined to find out why they’d split up and what else Jack was hiding.
Chapter 8
One February afternoon, about five weeks after I’d first made contact with Alex, I arrived home from school to find an unexpected message waiting in Laura’s
Topfriendz inbox. This is what it said:
Hi Laura
How do you fancy meeting up? My dad has tickets for the Arsenal game on Saturday, and my uncle can’t make it, so there’s one going spare. Would you like to come instead? Dad says
you don’t have to pay and he’ll drop us off somewhere so we can have a coffee afterwards. No worries if you’re busy or if you don’t want to come along, but it would be great
to see you. Let me know if you can make it.
Love Alex xxxxx
‘Oh my God!’ I said aloud, my voice high with panic. ‘She wants to meet me.’ And then I thought, Of course she does, because that’s what normal
people who have become friends online do. Because Alex doesn’t know this isn’t a normal friendship. I know I must sound seriously dense, but of all the scenarios I’d imagined, the
possibility of meeting Alex in the flesh was not one of them; it hadn’t crossed my mind. Obviously, I hadn’t thought things through at all.
Meeting Alex face to face presented an entirely new set of problems. It would mean taking Laura out of the safety of my bedroom, where she was confined to a computer screen, and presenting her
to the world as a real flesh and blood human being. It would mean being her for a whole afternoon, not just for a few minutes at a time. It would mean selling myself as someone else, not only to
Alex, but to her dad. What if I slipped up? What if I bumped into someone I knew and they called me by my real name? What if Alex met me and decided she didn’t like me after all? All my work
would have been wasted. And what on earth would I say to Jack? I’d have to make up a story about where I was going, pretend I was with someone else, somewhere else. I’d be taking my
betrayal to another level altogether, no longer just omitting to tell him something, but actively telling him a huge, whopping, dirty lie because he could never, ever find out the truth: that I was
meeting his ex-girlfriend behind his back.
I laughed, one of those nervous, off-key laughs that isn’t about anything being funny. The idea was ridiculous. I couldn’t go to the match with Alex. It was too risky. But what
possible reason could Laura have for not wanting to meet Alex, when they were getting on so well? Wouldn’t she be squealing with excitement at the prospect of going to see her favourite
football team play? My football knowledge might have been limited, but I did know that football tickets
Topfriendz, I really did sound like I knew what I was talking about. At the end of the day, it’s a game of two halves (that’s an in-joke). I can now, fairly convincingly, I believe,
tell anyone who asks everything they never wanted to know about a four-four-two formation, a corner kick, and an indirect free kick. I really hope I won’t have to.
I knew learning about football would help me grow closer to Alex; that was the idea. What I hadn’t expected was that it would also bring Jack closer to me. Now that he believed he could
share his love of football, he wanted to see me more often. He even seemed more affectionate (except during matches). It didn’t take a genius to work out that he liked me more just because he
thought I liked football. At first, that made me feel guiltier than ever, but then it irritated me. It made me see that he’d been holding a part of himself back from me. It also helped me to
understand why he had fallen for Alex in such a big way; they were football clones – they even used the same phrases sometimes. I felt jealous that they’d genuinely shared something,
when I was just pretending. And that made me even more determined to find out why they’d split up and what else Jack was hiding.
Chapter 8
One February afternoon, about five weeks after I’d first made contact with Alex, I arrived home from school to find an unexpected message waiting in Laura’s
Topfriendz inbox. This is what it said:
Hi Laura
How do you fancy meeting up? My dad has tickets for the Arsenal game on Saturday, and my uncle can’t make it, so there’s one going spare. Would you like to come instead? Dad says
you don’t have to pay and he’ll drop us off somewhere so we can have a coffee afterwards. No worries if you’re busy or if you don’t want to come along, but it would be great
to see you. Let me know if you can make it.
Love Alex xxxxx
‘Oh my God!’ I said aloud, my voice high with panic. ‘She wants to meet me.’ And then I thought, Of course she does, because that’s what normal
people who have become friends online do. Because Alex doesn’t know this isn’t a normal friendship. I know I must sound seriously dense, but of all the scenarios I’d imagined, the
possibility of meeting Alex in the flesh was not one of them; it hadn’t crossed my mind. Obviously, I hadn’t thought things through at all.
Meeting Alex face to face presented an entirely new set of problems. It would mean taking Laura out of the safety of my bedroom, where she was confined to a computer screen, and presenting her
to the world as a real flesh and blood human being. It would mean being her for a whole afternoon, not just for a few minutes at a time. It would mean selling myself as someone else, not only to
Alex, but to her dad. What if I slipped up? What if I bumped into someone I knew and they called me by my real name? What if Alex met me and decided she didn’t like me after all? All my work
would have been wasted. And what on earth would I say to Jack? I’d have to make up a story about where I was going, pretend I was with someone else, somewhere else. I’d be taking my
betrayal to another level altogether, no longer just omitting to tell him something, but actively telling him a huge, whopping, dirty lie because he could never, ever find out the truth: that I was
meeting his ex-girlfriend behind his back.
I laughed, one of those nervous, off-key laughs that isn’t about anything being funny. The idea was ridiculous. I couldn’t go to the match with Alex. It was too risky. But what
possible reason could Laura have for not wanting to meet Alex, when they were getting on so well? Wouldn’t she be squealing with excitement at the prospect of going to see her favourite
football team play? My football knowledge might have been limited, but I did know that football tickets
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