Zac and Mia by A.J. Betts Read Free Book Online

stretch: schoolfriends, ex-schoolfriends and guys from the footy and cricket teams. But now, I have ‘friends’ from everywhere: distant relatives, patients and their families from hospital, and members of various teen cancer networks I was coerced to join, who clutter my profile page with jokes, borderline-spiritual quotes, and acronyms I can’t always translate.
    ‘Online communication is essential,’ Patrick told me, ‘to survive the isolation of your Isolation.’ But I have a feeling my ‘friends’ benefit more than I do.
    The most entertaining thing about Facebook has been rejecting Mum’s persistent friend requests.
    ‘You’re with me every hour of the day, Mum. Whydo we need to Facebook each other too?’
    ‘I just want to see what you’re up to.’
    ‘You do see what I’m up to. You see everything. In real time.’
    ‘But I only have fourteen friends,’ she says, as if pity could break me.
    ‘Then you need to get out more. Go talk to real friends, or visit Aunty Trish. She only lives three suburbs away. Or better still, go
home.’
    ‘I’ll go when you go, in seven days,’ she reminds me, as if I’ve managed to forget. As if.
    I reject Mum’s friend request again, then open the second one.
    I’d expected it to be from Cam.
    Friend request: Mia Phillips
    0 mutual friends
    It’s a name I don’t recognise, with a face I think I’ve seen. I stare into the photo to be sure. She has a low-cut singlet and a necklace with half a silver heart. Her arms are draped around the shoulders of other girls. Is it her?
    I look up at my round window. She’s not there, of course. There’s just the white wall and two-thirds of the hygiene sign, now framed with festive red and green tinsel. But it’s the newbie’s face on the screen; it has to be. The girl with the tap to my knock.
    She’s asking me to be her friend and it’s caught me mid-breath, mid-whinge, mid-everything.
    My finger hovers over ‘Confirm’, but I’m confused. How does she know who I am?
    ‘Mum? Has Cam gone home?’
    ‘No. They shifted him to Room Six.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘While you were sleeping.’
    I lower my volume and my voice falls an octave. ‘Then who’s in Room Two?’
    Mum shrugs as if it’s none of her business all of a sudden, then offers me a marshmallow. She knows exactly who’s in Room 2.
    The screen gives me two options:
    Confirm Not Now
    ‘She wasn’t due back till Tuesday. Isn’t that what Nina said?’ I thought she was on a cycle of five days on and five days off.
    ‘I can’t remember. What’s a seven-letter word for “moccasin”?’
    I don’t need another Facebook friend, especially one who burns me dodgy CDs and peels off glow-in-the-dark stars for no reason. A girl who gets my messages all wrong. Who’s so full of fight.
    But she’s alone, after all …
    My finger overrides my brain and presses the screen.
    Confirm
    I brace myself but there are no seismic shifts or deafening alarms. This hasn’t changed anything. She’s just become one more fake friend on my profile page.
    Then
tap
.
    Was it the cleaner next door? Or a girl’s knuckle?
    Tap
.
    I catch Mum glaring at the wall.
    ‘Was that you?’ she asks, and I shake my head.
    ‘Maybe there’s a mouse.’
    Tap
, the wall insists.
Tap tap
.
    Holy crap! In the space of two hours, the new girl’s moved in next door, Facebook-friended me
and
tapped me? This is happening at warp speed.
    I scramble to her page to see her life exposed in comments and photos and emoticons.
    Rotto this w’end Mia. You in?
    Why werent you at Georgies? Best. Night. EVER!
    I see her latest update, posted three weeks ago:
    So over this dumbass ankle
    The comments that follow are way off target:
    Too much dancing!!!?
    Didn’t you get antibiotics or something?
    Mamma mia u unco spaz;)
    I skim down the page looking for more.
    I see older updates about shoes and dresses for the year 11 dinner dance a month ago. There’s a photo of splayed hands with ten different shades