Katie Cox Goes Viral Read online

  “For the record, I am not pleased. I am horrified. And humiliated.” I picked at the loose skin around my thumb. “Sorry, did you really say two hundred thousand?”

  “Last time I checked. It’s probably gone up since then.”

  “When did you check?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe half an hour ago?”

  “So it probably has gone up…”

  “Can I help you?”

  A bored-looking guy came ambling across the shop. He didn’t look like he wanted to help me. He didn’t look like he wanted to help anyone.

  “Er, yes. My phone’s broken. I need a replacement.” I gave him my name and address.

  He scrolled up and down on his computer until he found it. “Got you. Replacement phone, yes?”

  “Yes, please.” From the corner of my eye, I could see Jaz doing something awful to a rack of leaflets.

  “That’ll cost 180.” He said it in this bored way, clearly not noticing that his words meant misery and doom.

  “It’s 180?”

  “Yeah.”

  Cold sweat came trickling out from wherever cold sweat comes from. “I don’t have 180. I’ve got fifteen.” I mentally added on my emergency ten and a few days’ worth of lunch money. Lacey would share her sandwiches. “Maybe forty. At most.”

  “Then you can have this,” said the man, and he pulled out the worst, most useless, brick-iest phone anyone has ever seen.

  “Does it have Internet?”

  “Nope.”

  “Apps?”

  “You can use it to make calls,” said Mr. I Really Don’t Care. “And text. Oh, and we’re giving away Karamel’s new single as a free download with every purchase. But you won’t be able to play it on that.”

  “Okay,” I said, cursing inside that I wasn’t old enough to have a job and earn money and instead had to depend on Christmas and birthday presents to meet my technology requirements. “Thank you.” And I went to the register and handed over my cash.

  Jaz was waiting by the door. “Got it?”

  “Yeah, but it’s pretty much useless.” I showed her the box. “Did you check? How many?”

  “Three hundred forty thousand, two hundred and thirty-three. This could change your life. You could…” Jaz stopped walking for a second, clearly trying to think of some things that could happen. “You could get a decent phone. One made of gold like Savannah’s.”

  I wouldn’t normally go to Jaz to predict the future—also, silver looks better with my skin tone—but I did begin to think that maybe she might just have a point. Maybe somehow this could change my life. I wasn’t quite sure how, but—

  “If you want me to take it down, I will,” said Jaz. She had her phone out, her thumb hovering over the screen. “I can do it right now.”

  For a moment I hesitated.

  Because I had promised Lacey.

  Because having the whole entire world look into my bedroom was spooky. No, scratch that. The bedroom thing wasn’t nearly as weird as the fact that I’d sort of shown the whole entire world the contents of my head.

  But on the other hand, wasn’t it sort of great that they’d seen it? That they were watching because they liked it?

  And then all at once, I knew I just couldn’t ask Jaz to take it down—not when it was by a million miles the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I’d have had to be insane to have put the brakes on at that moment.

  “Maybe leave it,” I said, trying to sound casual. “For now. Might as well see how far it goes.”

  “All right,” said Jaz, swinging off toward the bus station, her bag hanging heavy and low with body lotion and goodness knows what else.

  I’d just tell Lacey that Jaz had refused. It was believable enough.

  And it wouldn’t be a lie, exactly—or at least, it would be only a very small one.

  It was, I told my stomach, definitely the right decision.

  Song for a Broken Phone

  I loved your camera

  I loved your apps

  I loved your GPS and your maps

  I loved your screen

  I loved your charger

  I loved the way you made pictures larger

  But your screen is smashed

  And your case is broken

  Messages gone

  Voice mail unspoken

  He threw it as a joke

  But it wasn’t very funny

  And I can’t upgrade you

  ’Cuz I haven’t got the money

  Adrian came home that night as happy as anything with a great big bag of ham and pineapple frozen pizzas.

  “On sale! Love some pineapple on my pizza.”

  And then he started asking Mom about her day while simultaneously nibbling at her earlobe.

  “Mainly,” said Mom, who for once seemed to be finding Adrian’s attentions as annoying as I did, “I spent the day talking to people who’d come to tell me they’d seen you all on the Internet. Perhaps next time you could tell me before you decide to become famous?”

  I sat up a little straighter. “You saw it! What did you think?”

  “Whoa there, horsey,” said Adrian before Mom could tell me how proud she was and how terrific I’d sounded and stuff like that. “We’re online?”

  “Jaz put it up,” I told him. “I didn’t ask her to, but she did. And it’s doing really well.”

  “Nice one,” said Adrian.

  “Well…”

  As I spoke, I found that I hadn’t thought how I’d tell them all. And half of me wanted to pretend that it wasn’t a particularly big deal, that stuff like this happened to me all the time, that Adrian’s stupid jam session hadn’t been an event or anything, and that I was basically totally chill about it.

  That half of me was almost immediately overwhelmed by the other half, which was hugely excited and couldn’t keep its mouth shut.

  “Actually, it’s better than that,” I said. “I’ve… We’ve… It’s gone really big. Thousands of people have watched it. Hundreds of thousands.”

  “What the—”

  Mom stood up just as Amanda spilled her juice all over the table, which Adrian was drumming with his hands. “Katie, this is huge.”

  And Amanda said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you were at work,” I said. “And anyway, it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Of course it means something,” said Amanda. “Of course it does!”

  “It’s just one of those things that goes around. Like Savannah’s butt. Which I don’t think was even Savannah’s, honestly, because it was so incredibly perfect and—”

  “Can I see it?” said Adrian.

  “What? No! Oh, you mean the video.” I set my face to the full I told you so. “If we just had broadband like I’d said—”

  Amanda held her phone out so we could see she’d pulled it up.

  “There,” I said. “More than four hundred thousand views!”

  “That’s nearly half a million people,” said Mom, and I saw that she was shaking. “Good grief, Katie.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be. It’s not… This is…” She rubbed her eyes. “I can’t get my mind around it.”

  “Me neither.”

  We all huddled around the screen, and for a second, I thought about how, in the olden days, everyone used to huddle around the fireplace and whether modern times were a good thing or a bad thing, but then I gave up on my historical musings because there I was on the video, singing, and that was much more interesting.

  Without a bunch of people talking and clattering up and down the hallway, I could hear the sound clearly and all the words. And yeah, it was sort of amateurish, and there were parts where we weren’t quite together. But in a way, that made it better. It gave it credibility.
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  “That girl’s got a face like a rainy weekend,” said Mom. “Oh, hold on. That’s Lacey.”

  “She was really sulking,” I said.

  “And who’s that on the drums? In all the black, floppy stuff? She looks like a bat.”

  “Mad Jaz.”

  “And that’s you, Amanda?” said Mom. Honestly, she was looking at everyone except me.

  “That’s my foot,” said Amanda, looking at me rather sourly, even though it wasn’t my fault she’d been cut off. Nicole had been the one holding the phone, not me.

  The on-screen Katie was just getting into “I’m the big bad apple on the family tree,” and for once, it sounded as good as it had in my head.

  “We weren’t quite together there, were we?” said Adrian. “You came in a bit sooner than we were expecting, Katie.”

  “I dropped a beat,” said Amanda.

  “That’s Katie’s timing,” said Adrian. “Don’t worry. We can work on that.”

  “Oh, can we?”

  “Absolutely. That and your breath control. See how you run out of air on the ends of lines?”

  “That was on purpose.”

  “You need to be thinking about your diaphragm. Breathe from your stomach, not your chest. Nice finger work there, Amanda.”

  “Thank you. Although I’m surprised you can hear it. The drumming’s insane.”

  “I like the drumming,” I said, even though she was right—it was insane. “I think the drumming’s the best thing about it. And I’m okay… Aren’t I?”

  “What you need to do, Katie, is push the air out from under your rib cage. Put your hand on my stomach while I sing, and you’ll feel.”

  There was literally no way I was going to put my hand on Adrian’s stomach, which was currently bulging away beneath an ancient red T-shirt with Oasis printed across his chest.

  “Go on.”

  “I’m all right, thanks.”

  “Just put your hand there.”

  “Maybe another time.”

  “Just here.”

  “It’s fine, really.”

  “Katie, put your hand on my stomach.”

  I put out my fingers, the very tips and nothing more, onto the T-shirt and pressed. I’d expected it to be squidgy, but he felt completely solid.

  “Baaaaaaaaah. Can you feel what I mean?”

  My hand was on the part of him that had pressed up against Mom when she and him… Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. Anything to make this stop. “Yes, I can.”

  “Then there’s your diction. If you’re going to sell the song, then you need to be thinking about—”

  And just like that, I’d had enough. “You know what? Why can’t you just say you like it?”

  “We do like it,” said Mom.

  “Instead of being all ‘Katie, this’ and ‘Katie, that’ and ‘Katie, you can’t breathe’ and ‘Katie, your timing’s off,’ why can’t you just say good job?”

  “Constructive criticism,” said Adrian. “No one’s perfect.”

  “Four hundred thousand people seem to like it,” I said. “Four hundred thousand people seem to think my breathing is excellent.”

  “You have to remember that Adrian was in a band,” said Amanda. “He knows what he’s talking about.”

  “Maybe we should be listening to his stuff, then,” I said. “Maybe we should turn off your phone and spend the rest of the evening enjoying Adrian’s clear diction and excellent timing.”

  I meant it sarcastically.

  So you can imagine how I felt when that is exactly what we did.

  Adrian’s band was called Vox Popular, and, as he told us—a lot—“It was in that lull between eighties synth and Brit pop, like an electro Blur but pre-Blur.”

  Not my kind of thing at all.

  I turned the record over, and there were two guys on the sleeve. One had dark hair and a stonewashed denim jacket and eyes that were sort of sleepy. And the other one was Adrian, who was about a million years younger, with all this hair on his head, wearing a leather jacket, but a much smaller one, cut tight around the top of his jeans. I caught myself for about a microsecond thinking that he’d been pretty good-looking.

  Yikes. Katie, you need to wash your brain out with soap and water. And maybe some fire just to be on the safe side.

  “You can really play,” said Amanda, the big suck-up.

  “And you can really sing,” said Mom in a way that made me cringe so hard I was genuinely in danger of bursting a kidney.

  “Well,” said Adrian, lifting up the needle so we could listen to it all over again, “I dunno about that. God, I haven’t played this in years.”

  Interesting then, I thought, that in a house of complete chaos, he knew exactly where to find it. It was suspiciously undusty too.

  I noticed there was a moment of a silence. Clearly, I was supposed to say something pleasant.

  “How many did you sell?” I asked.

  “Altogether?”

  “Altogether.”

  He fiddled with an invisible piece of something off the table. “We…we didn’t. We cut the single, but before it came out, we split up. Creative differences.”

  “So you didn’t sell one? Not a single single?”

  “Never had the chance,” said Adrian.

  “And I’ve had four hundred thousand people listen to my song.”

  “Katie!”

  “I’m just saying.”

  Mom and Amanda both started talking at once, presumably in some kind of race to see who could tell me to shut up first, but before they could, Adrian held up a meaty hand.

  “She’s right, she’s right. Tell you what, K. Want me to put in a call to Tony?” He pointed down at Sleepy Eyes. “He’s still in the industry, got his own label now. Top Music.”

  That Adrian knew anyone in the music business was doubtful. That the dude in the denim had his own label was incredibly unlikely. And that this man would have any interest in me seemed beyond impossible.

  I opened my mouth, but Mom was ahead of me.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “But—”

  “Katie is not going to follow in her father’s footsteps,” said my mother, and I hadn’t seen her so upset in a long time. “I don’t mind this as a…hobby. But that’s all.”

  “It’s just a video,” I said.

  “And that’s fine. That’s terrific. But don’t start getting ideas.”

  If someone tells you not to get ideas, it’s a guaranteed way to start getting ideas. Really. They should stick it at the top of our creative writing papers in English.

  “But if Adrian can—”

  “Nope,” said Mom.

  “Can we at least watch it again?” I asked.

  And so we did.

  “Lacey?”

  It was first break, which I always think is a really bad name for what is basically a massive dash to hit the bathroom, the vending machine, and the lockers, all in fifteen minutes. Hardly a break. Even basketball is more relaxing.

  I’d sacrificed my morning Mars Bar in pursuit of my best friend, who’d burst out the door the second the bell rang. She tore off down the stairs through this huge, scary crowd of senior boys, and even though I was a little afraid my hair would get caught in a clump of bad stubble, I had to follow. It was like one of those films where someone’s chasing their true love through an airport, only instead of customs officials and passport control, there were backpacks and a boatload of Axe body spray.

  I cornered her in the stairwell, small and pale and angry, like when our old next-door neighbor’s rabbit got trapped behind the dryer in our garage.

  “What?” she spat.

  “I just…” Next time, I thought as Lacey stood there glaring at me, I will definitely decide what I am going to say before I start running. Thinking ahead—I�
�d never truly appreciated its importance until that moment. The good thing, at least, is that I was going to take something from this, to learn, to really grow as a person—

  “What?”

  “I just thought we could have a talk. About everything.”

  She folded her arms. “Okay. Let’s have a talk.”

  The sight of Lacey standing there with a white face and a stance that can only be described as confrontational gave me complete conversation paralysis. Even her elbows were giving me evil looks.

  “Um,” I said.

  “I’ve got mad beats! I’ve got mad mooooooves!” This was being sung by a teeny-weeny girl I recognized as the school chess champion. And I did not want to get down on her. Being chess champion, she clearly had enough problems already, but this just wasn’t helpful.

  I grinned in a way I hoped would shut her up. Instead, she saw Lacey and started bashing an imaginary tambourine.

  “This is what my life is like now,” said Lacey, and she did not seem happy about it.

  And that was too bad, really, because the chess champions of this world must have it pretty tough. It was probably nice for her to feel like there was someone even lower down the pecking order to laugh at, to give her a taste of what it’s like not to be at the bottom of the popularity pile.

  I explained this to Lacey.

  “So you’re saying that you think it’s okay for that little idiot to basically bully me?”

  “No. Yes. But it’s not bullying exactly—not really.”

  “Last night we went to the gas station,” said Lacey, her elbows angrier than ever, “and the man behind the counter started singing it.”

  “At the gas station?” I said, trying to decide whether I was pleased at the idea that now completely random people were watching. “Which one?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “The one on the main road? The one by the co-op? Or that one up past the church? Or the one by the fish and chips shop—”

  “Stop listing gas stations!”

  “Sorry. I just want to know what he said.”