Radio Silence

I ALWAYS WISHED I HAD A HOBBY

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. I know this is kind of sad, and I always wished I had a hobby like football or playing the piano or ice-skating, but the fact of the matter was that the only thing I was good at was passing exams. Which was fine. I wasn’t ungrateful. It’d be worse if it were the other way around.

That day, the day I got a Twitter message from the creator of Universe City, I didn’t do any work when I got home.

I collapsed on to my bed and turned my laptop on and went straight on to my Tumblr, where I posted all of my art. I scrolled down the page. What exactly had the Creator seen in these? They were all crap. Doodles I did to turn my brain off, so I could fall asleep and forget about history essays and art coursework and head girl speeches for five minutes.

I switched over to Twitter to see if the Creator had replied, but they hadn’t. I checked my email to see if they’d emailed me, but they hadn’t.

I loved Universe City.

Maybe that was my hobby. Drawing Universe City.

It didn’t feel like a hobby. It felt like a dirty secret.

And my drawings were all pointless anyway. It wasn’t like I could sell them. It wasn’t like I could share them with my friends. It wasn’t like they’d get me into Cambridge.

I continued scrolling down the page, back months and months and into last year and the year before, scrolling through time. I’d drawn everything. I’d drawn the characters – the narrator Radio Silence, and Radio’s various sidekicks. I’d drawn the setting – the dark and dusty sci-fi university, Universe City. I’d drawn the villains and the weapons and the monsters, Radio’s lunar bike and Radio’s suits, I’d drawn the Dark Blue Building and the Lonely Road and even February Friday. I’d drawn everything, really.

Why did I do this?

Why am I like this?

It was the only thing I enjoyed, really. The only thing I had apart from my grades.

No – wait. That would be really sad. And weird.

It just helped me sleep.

Maybe.

I don’t know.

I shut my laptop and went downstairs to get some food and tried to stop thinking about it.

A NORMAL TEENAGE GIRL

“Right then,” I said, as the car drew up outside Wetherspoon’s at 9pm several days later. “I’m off to drink the alcohols, do lots of the drugs and have lots of the sex.”

“Oh,” Mum said, with her half-smile. “Well, then. My daughter’s gone wild.”

“Actually this is my one hundred per cent real personality.” I opened the car door and skipped out on to the pavement with a cry of, “Don’t worry about me dying!”

“Don’t miss the last train!”

It was the last day of school before study leave and I was supposed to be going to this club in town, Johnny Richard’s, with my friends. It was the first time I’d ever been to a club and I was essentially terrified, but I was on the verge of being so uninvolved with our friendship group that if I hadn’t gone, I thought they might stop considering me a ‘main friend’, and things would get too awkward for me to deal with on a daily basis. I couldn’t imagine what awaited me besides drunk guys in pastel-coloured shirts, and Maya and Raine trying to make me awkwardly dance to Skrillex.

Mum drove away.

I crossed the street and peered through the door into Spoons. I could see my friends sitting in the far corner, drinking and laughing. They were all lovely people, but they made me nervous. They weren’t mean to me or anything, they just saw me in a very particular way – School Frances, head girl, boring, nerdy, study machine. It’s not like they were completely wrong, I guess.

I went to the bar and asked for a double vodka and lemonade. The bartender didn’t ask for ID, even though I had a fake one just in case, which was surprising because most of the time I look approximately thirteen years old.

Then I walked towards my friends, barging through the packs of lads and pre-drinkers – more things that make me nervous.

Honestly, I need to stop being scared of being a normal teenage girl.

“What? Blowjobs?” Lorraine Sengupta, known to all as Raine, was sitting next to me. “Not even worth it, mate. Boys are weak. They don’t even want to kiss you afterwards.”

Maya, the loudest person of the group and therefore the leader, had her elbows on the table and three empty glasses in front of her. “Oh, come on, they’re not all gonna be like that.”

“But a lot of them are, so I literally can’t be arsed. Not even worth the effort, tbh.”

Raine literally said the letters ‘tbh’. She didn’t seem to do it ironically and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.

This conversation was so irrelevant to my life that I had been pretending to text for the past ten minutes.

Radio hadn’t yet replied to my Twitter message or emailed me. It had been four days.

“Nah, I don’t believe in couples falling asleep in each other’s arms,” said Raine. They were talking about something else now. “I think it’s a mass-media lie.”

“Oh, hey, Daniel!”

Maya’s voice drew my attention away from my phone. Daniel Jun and Aled Last were walking past our table. Daniel was wearing a plain grey T-shirt and plain blue jeans. I’d never seen him wear anything patterned in the year I’d known him. Aled looked just as plain, like Daniel had picked out his clothes.

Daniel glanced down and saw us and momentarily caught my eye before replying to Maya, “Hi, you all right?”

They struck up a conversation. Aled was silent, standing behind Daniel, and was hunched over, as if he were trying to make himself less visible. I caught his eye too, but he quickly looked away.

Raine leaned towards me while Daniel and the others were talking. “Who’s that white boy?” she murmured.

“Aled Last? He goes to the boys’ school.”

“Oh, Carys Last’s twin brother?”

“Yeah.”

“Weren’t you friends with her back in the day?”

“Er …”

I tried to figure out what to say.

“Sort of,” I said. “We chatted on the train. Sometimes.”

Raine was probably the person I talked to the most out of the group. She didn’t tease me for being a massive nerd like everyone else did. If I’d acted more like myself, I think we’d have been pretty good friends, since we had a similar sense of humour. But she could pull off being cool and weird because she wasn’t head girl, and she had the right side of her hair shaved so no one was very surprised when she did something unusual.

Raine nodded. “Fair enough.”

I watched as Aled took a sip of the drink he was holding and looked shiftily round the pub. He appeared to be deeply uncomfortable.

“Frances, are you ready for Johnny R’s?” one of my friends was leaning over the table and looking at me with a shark-like grin.

As I said, my friends weren’t horrible to me, but they did treat me like I’d had next to no major life experiences and was generally a massive study nerd.

Which was true, so fair enough.

“Er, yeah, I guess so,” I said.

A pair of guys walked up to Aled and started talking to him. They were both tall and had an air of power about them, and I realised then that it was because the guy on the right – olive-skinned and a checked shirt – had been head boy for most of last year at the boys’ school, and the guy on the left – stocky physique and an undercut – used to be the boys’ school rugby captain. I’d seen them both give presentations when I attended a sixth-form open day at their school.

Aled smiled at them both – I hoped Aled had other friends apart from Daniel. I tried to catch threads of their conversation: Aled said, “Yeah, Dan managed to persuade me this time!” and the head boy said, “Don’t feel like you have to stick around for Johnny’s if you don’t want to. I think we’re going home before then,” and he looked at the rugby captain who nodded in agreement and said, “Yeah, let us know if you need a lift, mate! I’ve got my car,” and to be honest I wished I could do the same, just go home when I wanted to, but I couldn’t, because I’m too scared to do what I want.

“It’s pretty grim,” said another of my friends, dragging my attention away.

“I feel bad!” said another. “Frances is so innocent! I feel like we’re corrupting you by dragging you to clubs and making you drink.”

“She deserves a night off studying though!”

“I want to see drunk Frances.”

“D’you think you’ll be a crier?”

“No, I think she’ll be a funny drunk. I think she’s got some secret personality we don’t know about.”

I didn’t know what to say.

Raine nudged me. “Don’t worry. If any disgusting guys come up to you, I’ll just accidentally spill my drink on them.”

Someone laughed. “She actually will. She’s done it before.”

I laughed too and wished I had the guts to say something funny, but I didn’t because I wasn’t a funny person when I was around them. I was just boring.

I downed what was left of my drink and looked around and wondered where Daniel and Aled had gone.

I felt a bit weird because Raine had brought up Carys and I always felt weird when people brought up Carys because I didn’t like thinking about her.

Carys Last ran away from home when she was in Year 11 and I was in Year 10. Nobody knew why and nobody cared because she didn’t have many friends. She didn’t have any friends, really. Apart from me.

DIFFERENT CARRIAGES

I met Carys Last on the train to school when we were fifteen.

It was 7.14am and I was sitting in her seat.

She glanced down at me like a librarian looking down at someone over a tall desk. Her hair was platinum blonde and she had a full fringe so thick and long that you couldn’t quite see her eyes. The sun silhouetted her like she was a heavenly apparition.

“Oh,” she said. “All right, my little train-compadre? You’re sitting in my seat.”

That might sound like she was trying to be mean, but she genuinely wasn’t.

It was weird. Like, we’d both seen each other loads of times. We both sat at the village station every morning, plus Aled, and were the last people to leave the train every evening. We’d done this since I started secondary school. But we’d never spoken. That’s what people are like, I suppose.

Her voice was different to how I’d imagined. She had one of those posh London Made in Chelsea accents, but it was more charming than irritating, and she spoke slowly and softly as if she were slightly high. It’s also worth noting that I was significantly smaller than her at this point. She looked like a majestic elf and I looked like a gremlin.

And I suddenly realised it was true. I was sitting in her seat. I had no idea why. I normally sat in an entirely different carriage.

“Oh, God, sorry, I’ll move …”

“What? Oh, no, I didn’t mean move, wow, sorry. I must have sounded really rude.” She sat down in the seat opposite me.

Carys Last didn’t seem to smile, or feel the need to smile uncomfortably like I was doing. I was extremely impressed by this.

Aled wasn’t with her. This didn’t strike me as odd at the time. After this incident, I noticed that they sat in different carriages. That didn’t strike me as odd either. I didn’t know him, so I didn’t care.

“Don’t you normally sit in the back carriage?” she asked me in the tone of a middle-aged businessman.

“Erm, yeah.”

She raised her eyebrows at me.

“You live in the village, don’t you?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Opposite me?”

“I think so.”

Carys nodded. She kept an unnaturally straight face, which was weird because everyone I knew always tried so hard to smile at you all the time. Her composure made her look significantly older than she was and admirably classy.

She rested her hands on the table and I noticed that they had tiny burn scars all over them.

“I like your jumper,” she said.

I was wearing a jumper that had a computer with a sad face on it underneath my school blazer.

I looked down because I’d forgotten what I was wearing. It was early January and it was freezing, which was why I was wearing an extra jumper over my school jumper. This particular jumper was one of the many items of clothing that I bought but never wore around my friends because I thought they’d laugh at me. My personal fashion choices remained at home.

“D-do you?” I stammered, wondering if I’d misheard.

Carys chuckled. “Yes?”

“Thanks,” I said, shaking my head slightly. I looked down at my hands, and then out the window. The train moved suddenly and we set off out of the village station.

“So why’d you sit in this carriage today?” she said.

I looked at her again, properly this time. Until this point she’d only ever been a girl with dyed blonde hair who sat at the other end of the village train station every morning. But now we were talking and here she was – she was wearing makeup even though she was still in lower school so it was against the Code of Conduct, she was large and soft and somehow powerful, how did she manage to be this nice but not smile at all? She looked like she could probably murder someone if she had to; she looked like she always knew exactly what she was doing. Somehow I knew this wouldn’t be the only time we would ever talk. God, I didn’t have a clue what was going to happen.

“I don’t know,” I said.

SOMEBODY IS LISTENING

Another hour passed before it was the acceptable time to move to Johnny R’s, and I was trying to stay calm and trying not to Facebook message my mum and tell her to come pick me up because that would be lame. I knew I was lame, but no one else was supposed to know that.

We all stood up to head over to Johnny R’s. I was feeling a bit light-headed and like I wasn’t really controlling my legs, but I still heard Raine say, “This is nice,” and point at my top, which was just a very plain chiffon shirt that I picked out because it looked like something Maya would wear.

I almost completely forgot about Aled, but then as we were walking down the street, my phone started to ring. I took it out of my pocket and looked at the screen. Daniel Jun was calling me.

Daniel Jun had my number only because, being head boy and girl, we ran a lot of school events together. He’d never called me, and only texted me four or five times with mundane school-event-related things such as ‘are you setting up the cake stand or am I’ and ‘you collect tickets at the door and I’ll direct people in from the school gate’. This, added to the fact that Daniel disliked me, meant that I had no idea why he was calling me.

But I was drunk. So I answered the phone.

F: Hello?

Daniel: (muffled voices and loud dubstep)

F: Hello? Daniel?

D: Hello? (laughter) shut up shut up— hello?

F: Daniel? Why are you calling me?

D: (laughter) (more dubstep)

F: Daniel?

D: (hangs up)

I looked at my phone.

“Okay,” I said, out loud, but nobody heard me.

A group of lads barged past me, and my foot slid off the kerb and I was walking in the road. I didn’t want to be here. I needed to be doing work, revising essay questions, writing up some maths notes, rereading my message from Radio, drawing some sketch ideas for the videos – I had a mountain of stuff to do and being here was, to be honest, a complete waste of my time.

My phone rang again.

F: Daniel, I swear to god––

Aled: Frances? Is this Frances?

F: Aled?

A: Franceeeeees! (dubstep)

I barely knew Aled. I’d barely spoken to him before this week.

Why …

What?

F: Er, why are you calling me?

A: Oh … Dan— Dan tried to prank call you, I think … I don’t think it worked …

F: … Okay.

A: …

F: Where are you? Is Daniel with you?

A: Oh, we’re at Johnny’s … that’s so weird I don’t even know who Johnny is … Dan’s … (laughter, muffled voices)

F: … Are you okay?

A: I’m fine … sorry … Daniel called you again and then he gave me the phone … I don’t really know what happened. I don’t know why I’m talking to you! Haha …

I walked a bit faster so I didn’t lose my friends completely.

F: Aled, if Daniel’s with you then I’m just gonna go …

A: Yeah, sorry … erm … yeah.

I felt pretty bad for him. I didn’t get why he was friends with Daniel – I wondered whether Daniel bossed him around at all. Daniel bossed a lot of people around.

F: It’s okay.

A: I don’t really like it here.

I frowned.

A: Frances?

F: Yeah?

A: I don’t really like it here.

F: … Where?

A: Do you like it here?

F: Where?

There was silence for a moment – well, silence except for the tinny dance music and the voices and laughter.

F: Aled, please just tell me whether Daniel is there so I can continue with my evening and not worry about you.

A: I don’t know where Daniel is …

F: D’you want me to come and take you home or something?

A: Hey … you know … it sounds like you’re on the radio …

My mind went instantly to Universe City and Radio Silence.

F: God, you’re so drunk.

A: (laughs) Hello. I hope somebody is listening …

He hung up. I felt my stomach drop at his final words.

“Hello. I hope somebody is listening,” I said, under my breath.

Words I’d spent the last two years listening to over and over, words I’d sketched again and again inside speech bubbles and on my bedroom wall. Words I’d heard in a male voice and a female voice, changing every few weeks, always in that classic World-War-II old-time radio accent.

The opening line of every Universe City episode:

“Hello. I hope somebody is listening.”

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