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Chloe’s face drops. Owen stares, but there’s something in his eyes – embarrassment?Amusement?– and all I can think to say is, ‘It’s Marshal. He needs help!’ as if Marshal has just fallen down a well, before I turn and run back down the steps.
*
Text message from Millie:I WANT TO DIE. KILL ME.
Text message from Millie:Chloe is here. As well as Owen!
Text message from Millie:And I just walked in on them fighting in a truck!?!??!!?!?!? About the engagement ring (I think!?) and I’m going to have to die, or go into witness protection.
Text message from Cate:Oh my God, are you shitting me?
Text message from Cate:Hold your head up high, baby. You’ve done nothing wrong remember. They’re the ones arguing at work. Unprofesh.
Text message from Millie:Yeah well, I went running off to Petra who has sequestered me away in a tiny studio and now I have to ERECT A SET THING!? Alone. I have no idea what I’m doing. So, I’m certainly not winning either!
Text message from Cate:Come home.
Text message from Cate:You shouldn’t have to be doing this shit anyway. #FreeMillie
Text message from Millie:I WISH!!!!
Text message from Millie:Just tell me it’ll be OK.
Text message from Cate:Of course it will! You are amazing, brave and a ball of beautiful energy. They’re lucky to have you. You have GOT THIS!!!
Chapter Thirteen
I have absolutely not got this. In no way, shape or form. Not in the slightest.
Despite Petra being a kind and lovely friend and tucking me away in a quiet, hidden-away room as big as my bedroom, with the ‘simple’ (apparently) objective of erecting a screen of sponsorship logos, that players will be interviewing in front of, I still wish I was anywhere else. I’d even take being in the truck, with Owen and Chloe. I’d even take being in stocks being pelted with old turnips over this.
Because I can’t do it.
‘It just unravels, like a giant scroll!’ Petra had explained, all ease and just-that-simple smiles, mere moments ago. ‘And you then affix the corners at the bottom, and voila! Job done!’
But I keep doing exactly that and it keepsunravellingback up to the top, like a scroll in sodding reverse, like a cartoon blind where the little cartoon character gets gathered up in it too. My hands are completely scratched up, too, from the sharp metal corners and it is sohotin here. A vent in the ceiling is relentlessly puffing hot air into the room and I can’t find a way to turn it off. I could cry actually. Right now, I could sob, stamp my feet, knock my fists against the carpet like a toddler in front of the one screen Petra completed as a demo, emblazoned with the words, ‘BELIEVE YOU CAN.’ Thousands of people will be watching this match. Millions, maybe. And yet, the biggest stars of the game will be interviewed in front of a sheet of plastic a pretender like me is in charge of erecting. You’d think that given all the glitz and glamour of TV, this would be a fancy LED screen or something. At the very least, a glossy, ready-made screen. But then I remember Owen and I watching football on TV one afternoon, when we were together, him pointing to a screen behind a pundit’s desk and saying, ‘there’ll be some poor knackered crew member eating his sandwich behind that right now.’
I take a breath. OK. I can do this. Of course I can.
Unravel like giant scroll. OK, done. Affix the edge to— ‘Fuck!’ The scroll re-ravels back up, a mad flapping sound, like a crazed bird’s wings. I slump to the floor. ‘See!’ I shout to nobody. This is impossible. Itallfeels impossible. Everything. Me, trying to be a member of bloody crew on my weekends, to appease – who? Is anyone even watching? Does anyone even care? Owen and Chloe are still arguing in production trucks. Mum is still lying to Dad. Alexis is still ignoring me. Nothing seems to have actually helped. So, maybe it’s pointless. Maybe it’s all just fucked and fucked is how it justis, and that’s that.
I gaze up at the one panel Petra did practically with her eyes closed, not a single hair out of place. Sweat beads at the back of my neck.BELIEVE YOU CAN!
I scoff, to nobody, to an empty room.
‘Believe I can what?’ I mutter. ‘Because I believe, little shitty panel with a mind of its own, thatI can’tactually.’
I pull the scroll down a little more.
‘So, what do you say to that, eh? What if I say to you,scroll, that Idon’tbelieve I can do much at all—’
‘All right, Mills?’
I jump – a whole miniature leapfrog. And the scroll goes scrolling on off to the top, because of course it does.
‘Sorry, sorry! Shit, did I make you jump?’ Owen stands in the doorway with two bottles of water, casually lengthways, in his hands. He weighs them up in his palms. I really hope he didn’t hear me talking to myself. (Well, talking to a motivational poster, which I think is somehow worse.)
‘Er. Just a bit,’ I say, getting back to a crouch.
