Read My Brilliant Idea (And How It Caused My Downfall) for Free Online Page B

he’s in or anything. The group of randoms he was sitting with at lunchtime looked as if they might have been in the year below mine, but I couldn’t really tell. I didn’t know any of them. So I lie on my bed for a while, amazed that I’ve managed to get myself into such an idiot situation. Then I go online and look to see if he’s got a profile. Hundreds of Drew Thorntons show up. I try narrowing them down by putting in the name of our school, but nothing shows up, so I have a look at them all one by one. I’m not even sure if I can really remember what he looks like. Elsie said something about cheeks like rose petals. Cascading hair. What does that mean? I trawl through goon after goon, morons holding up beer bottles and hiking up hills. Pictures of cartoon characters and bum cheeks. What if he has one of those avatars?
    Then I think I spot him. He looks kind of spindly, standing beside a monument or something. I click on him and feel myself getting a bit of a buzz while I wait for the page, then the buzz collapses. He’s got his page so locked up, I can’t even see his friends list. Nothing at all, just his name and the photo of him looking spindly, and a message that he might have restricted access to some of his information. Too right he has. No mutual friends show up either, which makes me think this isn’t going to be particularly easy, even in comparison with how hard I already thought it was going to be. I go back to my bed and lie down again, trying to think of a solution that doesn’t involve sending him a friend request.
    Then I decide to send him a friend request.
    I have a good look through my own profile before I send it, getting rid of anything that makes me look as if I might be a mad stalker. Or as if I might be asking to be his boyfriend. I change my picture for one I like in Sandy’s album, where it’s just me standing up against a wall. Sandy took it when we were on a school trip, and my hair is swept nicely. I think I’d just had it cut. And I’m smiling a bit but not too much. In the one I had before, I probably looked a little bit insane. With this one he’s sure to recognize me, and because I call myself the Jackdaw on there he’s sure to know who it’s from, if he knows anything about anything. I change my relationship status too. It was set to “It’s complicated,” but that was just because I wanted to write “Married to my work” and it wouldn’t let me. I change it to “In a relationship,” even though I’m not, just in case he gets the wrong idea. I leave my likes the way they are: “Having ideas, and putting them into practice.” I leave my interests, too: “Making money, not being at school, and daydreaming.” My bio says this: “I am a serial entrepreneur with a series of disasters behind me and a bright future ahead. I am destined to be a legendary ideas man. I like to dress well and I have good hair.” I remove the bit about the clothes and the hair, and then I go through my photo albums, removing the more dodgy pictures from parties that could probably be misinterpreted. After that, I decide everything is probably in order, and I fire off the request.
    I start regretting it almost straightaway.
    For the next hour I sit at my desk reading a business magazine and trying to forget all about it. But I don’t come anywhere close. Every three or four pages, I go back to the computer and look for the little red signal. I try to tell myself that nothing will come in tonight, that it could be days before anything happens, but it turns out I’m wrong. Within half an hour the red signal appears, and then I start to worry that he’s some kind of mad stalker. Maybe he’s never had a friend request before and I’m his first one. And now I’ll never be able to get rid of him. Whatever, I tell myself. At least I’m in, and that’s all I really