All The Lonely People - David Owen

1

A Cure for Empathy

The photos transferred in a handful of seconds, morsels of naked flesh flickering across the progress bar as the three boys shielded the screen with their bodies. Every tab open in the browser was a weapon, armed, the images their ammunition. Target locked.

It seemed funny, that exposure could wipe somebody out of existence.

Wesley Graham couldn’t stop jiggling his legs – nerves, excitement, he didn’t know – as he glanced around at the half-empty study room, squinting against the early autumn sunshine that glowed in the scratches and finger-smears on the windows. Most of the school PCs were occupied, screens of half-finished essays or YouTube videos. Others in their class, apparently taking the final year of school seriously, had ranged their burden of early coursework across the tables in the centre of the room. Mr Buttercliff, charged with supervising, was much more invested in Clash of Clans on his phone.

‘Can you please stop that?’ said Luke, punching Wesley’s leg.

The dull pain did little to help him hold it still. Although Wesley had been around during the last trolling campaign, one undoubtedly larger than this, he had been little more than a spectator. This time he was on the front line. They had somebody to impress, so this had to go off without a hitch. He willed his restless leg to stop betraying his gut full of nerves.

In the far corner of the room, hunched over her MacBook, was Kat Waldgrave. It was the first time they’d seen her in school for a few days, and her usual ponytail had gained a strand of plasticky pink that curled into the light brown skin of her neck. The sunlight conspired to hide her screen from Wesley’s gaze, but he was sure her website would be open in a tab somewhere, just as it was on their screen.

‘Imagine if she actually looked like this,’ said Justin, sandwiched between them in front of the computer.

Luke plucked a USB stick from the PC and grinned. ‘We’ll always have Photoshop.’

Scrolling through the images, Justin sighed under his breath. ‘I wish any actual girl looked like this.’

‘Sounds like somebody’s struggling with NoFap,’ said Wesley.

The joke was a risk. They hadn’t been friends for long, and sometimes it took a while to earn the right to take the piss.

‘No way!’ said Justin, apparently not offended despite his protest. ‘It’s been three weeks and I swear my mind is clearer than it’s—’

‘Please don’t start with that again.’ Luke brought up the login window for Kat’s site and typed in the password that had been stolen for them.

‘How long’s it going to take?’ said Wesley, pressing his fists into his knees to keep them from bouncing. The Photoshopped pornography had been his idea, and he had felt elated when it was accepted. That had been tempered a little since by the reality of doing it, the fear of getting caught, but he still couldn’t wait to deal this final blow. People like Kat deserved everything they got – that’s what TrumourPixel said.

‘Not long,’ said Luke, clicking to edit the home page. ‘Let’s give our snowflake something worth crying about.’

Kat Waldgrave was only at school because of the email she’d received complaining that she rarely went to school. It was an injustice, as far as she was concerned, that a mandatory attendance meeting should be allowed to upset her regular schedule of pretending to revise while actually watching Tinker videos and Doctor Backwash bloopers on YouTube. As if she hadn’t seen them all a million times before.

She tabbed to one of her favourites, putting in her earphones and angling the screen away from the window glare. Tinker showing off her new hairstyle, a neat bob dyed electric pink, dusky eye shadow applied to match. God damn, she was beautiful. Kat fiddled with the pink extension she had added to her own hair yesterday. It was supposed to be a tribute to Tinker, borrowing a little of her boldness, but now it just felt pathetic.

The meeting had not gone well. Despite her being head of sixth form, Miss Jalloh’s office was the size of a bus shelter, and smelled even worse. Kat would gladly have not attended her attendance meeting, except the email had threatened to get in touch with her dad. A phone call from school would certainly contravene their unspoken accord to keep their lives as separate as possible.

‘Your attendance is nowhere near acceptable,’ had been Miss Jalloh’s opening line, peering over her half-moon glasses.

The word attendance had begun