Alice Oseman

Radio Silence

raia – inactive

Sometimes I felt like that was all I ever talked about. Being clever was, after all, my primary source of self-esteem. I’m a very sad person, in all senses of the word, but at least I was going to get into university.

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.

Because it hit me then what he'd done for me. He'd got up in the middle of the night, in his pyjamas, climbed out of the window of his bedroom to come and help me with one topic of a maths exam.

Aled slowly took the sketchbook out of my hands. He gazed at it for a moment, and then said, "Your art is so beautiful."

"You are. And I'm platonically in love with you."

After a moment I could hear Aled running too, and I glanced behind me and stretched out my arm to him and cried, "Come along!" and he did; he reached out and took my hand and we ran like that through the countryside in the rain, and then he laughed, and it reminded me of a child's laugh and I wished people could always laugh and run like that.

In the end I'm only ever looking where you've looked, I'm only ever walking where you've walked, I'm in your dark blue shadow and you never seem to turn around to find me there.

I cared about him. And he cared about me.

I watched Aled, or Radio, or whoever that guy was, grasp the microphone and open his mouth, I whispered the words into the air while he roared them into the crowd.

"Hello, I hope somebody is listening ..."

Helena-Elisabeth 

I blinked, not quite understanding the question. "Erm, yes, obviously?"

I blinked again. “Oh. Er, I haven't thought about it." 

And realised that I didn't like him in that way at all. 

"No, I don't think so," I said. "That's a bit irrelevant, isn't it?" 

Mum frowned a little. "Irrelevant to what?" 

"I don't know, just irrelevant" I stepped past her and started trudging upstairs, saying, "What a random question."

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