Solitaire

by Alice Oseman

I have been reliably informed that post-Christmas blues are entirely normal and that we should expect to feel somewhat numb after the “happiest” time of the year, but I don’t feel so different now to how I felt on Christmas Eve, or on Christmas Day, or on any other day since the Christmas holidays started. I’m back now and it’s another year. Nothing is going to happen.

I think you should know that I make up a lot of stuff in my head and then get sad about it. I like to sleep and I like to blog. I am going to die someday.

Sometimes I hate people. This is probably very bad for my mental health.

thinking or talking too much about “boy issues” makes me want to shoot myself in the face.

He steps closer. I shuffle backwards. “You,” he says, “do not say anything you mean, do you?” I laugh again. It’s a pathetic sort of expulsion of air, but for me that qualifies as a laugh. “Who are you?” He freezes, leans back, opens out his arms as if he’s the Second Coming of Christ, and announces in a deep and echoing voice: “My name is Michael Holden.”

“And who are you, Victoria Spring?” I can’t think of anything to say because that is what my answer would be really. Nothing. I am a vacuum. I am a void. I am nothing.

And this, I suppose, is it. This is probably how it starts.

brother Charles Spring is fifteen years old and a Year 11 at Truham Grammar. In my opinion, he is the nicest person in the history of the universe, and I know that nice is kind of a meaningless word, but that’s what makes it so powerful. It’s very hard to simply be a “nice” person because there are a lot of things that can get in the way.

I can’t really remember when Nick and Charlie became Nick-and-Charlie, but Nick has stuck with Charlie through all the hardest parts of his mental illness, so, in my book, he’s definitely all right.

All the people are chatting and laughing and smiling and it sort of makes me feel a bit sad, like I’m watching them through a dirty window.

There’s a boy sitting next to Lauren, talking to the girls at the opposite end of the table. His name is Ben Hope. Ben Hope is the guy at Higgs. And by the guy, I mean that one boy in the sixth form that every single girl in the entire school has a crush on. There’s always one.

“You’re gay though, aren’t you?” says Lauren, forever unafraid to say what other people are thinking. “Like, I heard that you’re gay.” “Oooh, you’ve heard about me?” He leans in. “Intriguing.

Michael smiles. “I guess you could say I’m not too fussy about gender.” Then he grins and points a finger at Lucas. “You never know, it might be you I’m in love with.”

Michael sighs. “Everyone’s attractive, to be honest, even if it’s just something small, like some people have really beautiful hands. I don’t know. I’m a little bit in love with everyone I meet.” “So … bisexual?” Nick’s bisexual, but he doesn’t fancy everyone he meets. He’s a bit Charlie obsessed, to be honest.

“There’s a time and a place for being normal. For most people, normal is their default setting. But for some, like you and me, normal is something we have to bring out, like putting on a suit for a posh dinner.”

“Why did you need to tell me this? Why did you need to track me down? Why was it that important?” He shrugs again. “It wasn’t, I guess. But I wanted you to know. And when I want to do something I usually do it.”

I don’t think my mum likes me very much. That doesn’t matter, because I don’t really like her either.

I open my eyes and wander around the internet to take my mind off it all, and, once I feel relatively okay again, I fall asleep with the glare of my blog home page warming my face and the hum of my laptop soothing my mind like crickets at a campsite.

I’ve been considering the possibility that Michael Holden is a figment of my imagination. This is probably because I fail to understand how someone with a personality like his could survive in this shitty world and also because I fail to understand why someone with a personality like his would take any interest in a misanthropic, pessimistic asshole like myself.

“It’s important to make lots of discoveries every day.” He stands back up. “That’s what makes one day different from the next.”

In the swirly wallpaper of my room, stooped yellow figures creep back and forth and back and forth until I’m hypnotized.

“Yes, Michael Holden. Tear that fucking paper.” He drops everything, spins round, and points directly at me. The anger softens into sadness. “Tori,” he says, but I don’t hear it, I only see his mouth form the words.

“I’m always angry,” he says. Pause. “Usually, other things override it, but I’m always angry. And sometimes …” His eyes drift vaguely to the right. “Sometimes …

I don’t want people to be worried about me. There’s nothing to worry about. I don’t want people to try and understand why I’m the way I am, because I should be the first person to understand that. And I don’t understand yet.

He smiles. A proper smile. Then he laughs. “You really cannot accept that people care!” I don’t say anything. He’s right. But I don’t say anything.

As I open the door, he murmurs: “Nothing’s going to change until you decide you want it to change.” I shut the door behind me, wondering if I just imagined this entire conversation.

“I’ve been looking for you,” I say. I cannot feel most of my body. For some reason, he puts his hands on either side of my face and leans forward and says, “Tori Spring, I have been looking for you forever.”

I feel that as long as I stay here there might be some kind of tiny chance that there is something remotely good in this world and the last thing I think before I pass out from the cold is that if I were to die, I would rather be a ghost than go to heaven.

“Did you know,” I say at some point, for some inexplicable reason, “that most suicides happen in the springtime?” Then I look at him. “Didn’t you say you had news?”

I drift for a while, a Ghost of Christmas Past.

I’m at the edge and I look down. It’s far. It’s calling me. A hope of something better. A third option. It’s so hot. I take my coat and gloves off. It hits me then. I haven’t ever known what I wanted out of life. Until now. I sort of want to be dead.

I think about my brother Charlie Spring, and Nick Nelson. Sometimes paradise isn’t what people think it should be.

“Do you want to kill yourself?” he asks, and the question sounds unreal because you never hear anyone ever asking that question in real life. “I don’t want you to do that,” he says. “I can’t let you do that. You can’t leave me here alone.” His voice breaks. “You need to be here,” he says.

I pause. Suddenly understanding everything. This boy. This person. How has it taken me this long to understand? He needed me as much as I needed him, because he was angry, and he has always been angry.

Just because someone smiles doesn’t mean that they’re happy.

“Some people aren’t meant for school,” says Michael. “That doesn’t mean they aren’t meant for life.”

“One person can change everything,” he says. “And you have changed everything for me.”

He makes me believe that there are good people in this world. I don’t know how this has happened, but what I do know is that this feeling has been there from the very start. When I met Michael Holden, I knew, deep down, that he was the best person you could possibly hope to be—so perfect that he was unreal. And it made me sort of hate him. However, rather than slowly learning more and more good things about him, I have come across flaw after flaw after flaw. And you know what? That’s what makes me like him now. That’s why he is a real perfect person. Because he is a real person.

I mean, I’m still not 100 percent sure that I really want to wake up tomorrow. I’m not fixed, just because Michael’s here.

I can’t say that I feel happy. I’m not even sure if I would know if I was. But all those people down there look so funny and it makes me want to laugh and cry and dance and sing and not take a flying, dramatic, spectacular leap off this building. Really. It’s funny because it’s true.

“I noticed,” he says. “But I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything.” I have begun to cry. “I love you anyway,”

All I know is that I’m here. And I’m alive. And I’m not alone.