My Invisible Boyfriend

FOR TINA, ABSURDLY BRILLIANT SISTER AND LOCATOR OF THE CARROT CAKE

—SD

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Recipe for a Heidi

Recipe for an Imaginary Boyfriend

Recipe for a Non-Imaginary Boyfriend

Recipe for Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

Recipe for Twelfth Night: The Musical! by Phil Venables, with help from Mr. W. S.

Recipe for Magnificent Detective Activity

Recipe for a Spectacularly Scarilicious Halloween

Recipe for a Tragic Breakup

Recipe for Disaster

Recipe for The End of the World

Recipe for a Brand-new Heidi

Recipe for Love

Also by Susie Day:

Copyright

You know your life is not exactly normal when you’re sitting on the steps on the first day of school, sugar-high giddy from knowing they’re about to unlock the doors.

But then no one at the Finch is normal. They only send you here when you’ve been kicked out of every other boarding school on the planet—if your parents can afford it. Unless you’re me, when it’s the Mothership and Dad Man who can’t seem to stay still. I’ve usually just about figured out where the girls’ toilets are by the time the Mothership decides that, 300 miles away, there are
other
girls with wobbly thighs who absolutely need her to be the one making them run round and round a hockey pitch in the rain. And then we’re off. Dad Man gets a new old van full of paint pots to drive around some new old school buildings. I get a new old bedroom, in the bit of an ex-chemistry lab that’s now Staff Housing. Everything else stays the same.

At least it did until we ended up here at the Finch. I mean, I started out like always: the period I like to think of as the Never-ending Era of Pathetic Noobishness, where I eat lunch on my own, and sit in class on my own, and discover that someone has stapled a dissected frog to my backpack so I’m going to be known as Frog Girl till we leave on my own. And then one day, I was sitting on the end of the balance beam that pokes out of the PE stores by the garages, waiting for the Mothership to drive us back down Heart Attack Hill (no Staff Housing for us this time, not when there are so many “dubious influences” around), and Fili came to say hello. Not that she actually said hello, obviously. Fili doesn’t
do that sort of conversation. She just perched on the beam, and swung her boots, and lent me one earbud so we could listen to some noise. Same thing the next day. We sat together in French, because she’s really good at French. And then I met Ludo and Big Dai, and Heidi the Frog Girl was gone forever.

It’s funny how you don’t know how much you want something till you get it, sometimes. It’s like Mycroft Christie says in episode 1.7, “The Pinocchio Man”:
Deep down, Jori, we all simply want to
belong.

Mycroft Christie, in case you live under some kind of rock, is the most brilliant person in the universe, and totally my boyfriend. Sort of. Technically, he’s not real. Technically, he’s the debonair twenty-third-century time-traveling hero of the best! TV show! ever!
Mycroft Christie Investigates
is not actually going to turn up on my doorstep anytime soon to whisk me away to fangirl heaven. Mostly because he’s time-trapped in present-day London pretending to be a detective for complicated plot reasons. And because he’s obviously in crazypants love with his foxy arse-kicking sidekick Jori Song (with whom he fights crime and has Unresolved Sexual Tension). And also because they canceled the show after three seasons, so now he only really exists inside my DVD player. But he’s dashing, and charming, and conveniently available at the flick of a remote control, which is the sort of thing a girl finds handy when she’s stuck with the Mothership and Dad Man’s board-game obsession for company all summer.

Downside of not being Frog Girl: Once you have some, you really miss your friends when they aren’t around.

The holidays haven’t been a total disaster. I mean, sure, everyone else has been off to exotic locations courtesy of Guilty Parent Airlines, while I’ve been slinging scones at tourists in the Little Leaf café. Fili’s been visiting the ancient grandmother in Senegal, Ludo’s been on Daddy’s yacht, and Big Dai went on safari with his sister’s family. Me, I got to wear sunglasses once all summer, and that was only because I lost a bet with Betsy and she made me dress up as Nighttime Roller Disco Harry Potter for a whole afternoon. (Betsy is my boss. She’s not very sensible. The scones are yummy, though. As is her son, Teddy, who makes them. Sometimes he “accidentally” makes a whole extra batch at the end of the day, so I have to take some home—though that mostly happens when The Lovely Safak is around. That’s his very tall, very beautiful girlfriend, who is also very nice so I can’t even hate her. Sigh.)

But none of that matters now. Finchworld is starting again. Sneaking up to the dorm rooms (where Nonresident Students, i.e., me, aren’t supposed to be allowed), to lie on Fili’s bed, IMing gossip from one side of the room to the other (in a very intellectual, non–Scheherezade Adams-y kind of way). Watching
Mycroft Christie Investigates
for the bajillionth time, with me and Dai doing our special carpet-slapping dance to the theme song. Searching for kittens on YouTube and eating toast. And, you know, math tests and stuff. But I
don’t care about those bits. I can ignore those bits. The rest is going to be spectacular.

SPECK.

TACK.

YOU.

LA.

(You’re allowed “LA” in Scrabble. According to Dad Man anyway. I think he might be a CHEATER—seven-letter word, fifty extra points.)

I hear a scrape behind me, and Dad Man’s face appears, scrunching as he drags back the huge oak doors of the Manor house. I look down the long driveway as the first of a line of Mercedes eases through the gates at the bottom of the hill.

“You coming in, then, love?” says Dad Man, yawning because he’s been up here since this morning, dragging luggage about. “There’s a few been here since lunchtime, had early flights.”

I’m already skipping up the wide stone steps of the posh for-the-parents entrance with its funny square hedges on spikes, because the details of those with early flights may just possibly have been written on my calendar, and in my phone, and on the back of my hand in red felt pen, just in case.

“Try the common room,” he shouts after me as I skid along the polished floor of the hall, past the notice boards and empty offices.

And there she is, sitting on the squishy blue sofa in front of the plasma screen, eating an orange. Filicia Mathilde Diouf, the world’s blackest Goth, all silver rings and eyeliner and that one sarky raised eyebrow that says “hi” and “I missed you, too,” and “now stop standing in the doorway like a dork” all on its own.

I grin and flop down on the sofa beside her.

She offers me a piece of orange, then looks me up and down. “Nice coat.”

“Detective,” I explain.

The Coat is my Thing right now. It’s a raincoat: one of those belted beige ones that old pervs wear in parks to flash people. I found it in a cardboard box in the Finch garages, after an afternoon’s dust’n’spider battling with Dad Man. I’ve decided it was left there by some ancient teacher, who figured out the only way to escape the Goldfinch was to flee secretly in the nighttime, leaving all his possessions behind. Old Stinky Mancoat sounds disgusting, I know, but I kind of like the way it skims the ground. It flaps out behind me when I’m on the Bike o’ Doom, in a not uncapelike, vaguely superheroic manner. It makes me feel very detect-y. I kind of love it.

The fact that Mycroft Christie also wears one is totally a coincidence.

Fili nods. Eats more orange. Flicks pips away with a flash of silver rings.

With anyone else, the silence would be awkward. With Fili, it’s just proof that she likes you. And anyway, there’s a
shriek from outside, echoing off the walls of the corridor, announcing the arrival of our resident noisemaker.

“HEIDIIII!”

A human cannonball with invisible jet-pack attachment flies through the door and flings its skinny arms around me. Also hair. Lots of hair, all glossy and dark and a bit more in my mouth than is pleasant. I miss a few sentences while trying to escape. These little details do not worry Ludo.

“…and the traffic was, like, AWFUL and I was totally UNPLEASED, because I wasn’t even going to GET here, and there’s, like, THE party tonight, and I have SO much to tell you before we even get to that, only you will SO not believe OH MY GOD, FILI! You’re here! I didn’t even KNOW you were here!”

Fili receives the hair-in-face treatment, too. Ludo keeps talking. Fili rolls her eyes, and shoves a wet chunk of orange in Ludo’s mouth. It slows her down to a mumble for all of five seconds.

“OH MY GOD, I’ve missed you SO much!”

She hugs us together again, and I find myself grinning like a loony. This is what I’ve been waiting for, for months. All we need now is Big Dai and we’ll be set: Team Finch, Finch Force Four, the Leftover Squad, reunited for another term of thrilling adventures. The credits are about to roll, introducing Ludo, sexy-beautiful wild child; Fili, enigmatic tech witch; Dai, the big guy with the heart of gold; and me, Heidi, the fledgling detective whose geekiness is actually
strangely attractive. Together we’ll fight crime and/or homework, guided by our mentor, Betsy, who’ll supply us with our undercover missions via coded messages hidden in cupcakes. We’ll have our own theme tune. And costumes. We’ll be magnificent.

They don’t actually know any of this yet, obviously. That’s how undercover we are.

A couple of hours later, once I can’t see the TV for bodies, I realize I’m at the McCartney Party.

At the start of each term, there’s a blowout. The Upper School kids have to use up all the contraband hidden in their suitcases before it gets confiscated, but the real prize is to get kicked out before school even begins—all in loving memory of S
TUART
A. M
C
C
ARTNEY
, 1979. McCartney is a legend. No one knows exactly what he did to get the boot. The story probably changes every year. But his name’s on the Student of the Year board, carved into wood, painted gold, and hung in the entrance hall where he stays, inspiration to all. The McCartney Party’s not exactly invite-only: You just need to know where it is, and you’ll only know that if you’re the inviteable type. Usually it’s in one of the Upper houses (the sixteen-to-eighteen-year-olds: Stables for the girls, Lake for the guys): whoever got lucky enough to bag one of the bigger double bedrooms and has a roomie who doesn’t mind people being sick in their bed. It’s the thing
everyone will be talking about tomorrow. It’s the gossip textbook for the whole term.

And I’m at it. We’re at it.

UM.

WOT?

This is not standard Heidi protocol. The Finch isn’t exactly your average school, but it has its cliques, its little groups. The druggie kids in bands, the alky kids in bands, the Ana girls, the We Hate Everything crowd. Our cheerleaders are cutters with credit cards and police cautions, but it’s no different from any other school once you slice past the extra cash. Same rules everywhere. And the rules say that weirdass Leftover Squad Lower Schoolies do not get to play with the grown-up toys. Maybe Ludo might have sneaked in last year, back when she hung with the Pill Popettes. Maybe even goomy loomy Fili, when she was an emo. But never Big Dai, the fat gay kid in the corner. And definitely never me, the faculty brat, that freak with the braids, the girl who only ever hears about this stuff the next morning, after the Mothership’s driven me back up the hill.

Maybe I’ve been watching too much
Mycroft Christie Investigates
lately, but it’s possible there’s a hole in the fabric of time and space, responsible for our being here.

The room is filling up now, starting to get crowded and stuffy. Bottles and cans of Coke get passed to the corner by the window, where, under cover of an armchair, Brendan Wilson tops them up from a glass bottle. Packets of Doritos
fly overhead. Jo-Jo Bemelmans brings in a stack of pizza boxes, and the smell of cheese and garlic takes over from the icky mix of perfume and hairspray. Scheherezade Adams swans in, all bounce and straps and brand-new nose.

I think about sneaking out, but Ludo’s squeaking next to me, eyes big, reeling off a list of names under her breath like a butler at some fancy soiree. She’s got her hand wrapped round my wrist, squeezing whenever someone especially significant goes by. It’s not so bad, I suppose. I’m out of the habit of being squished in with so many other people, but really it’s not that different from watching TV, in smell-o-vision. And I’m in the perfect location to play detective. I’ll observe the Finch species in its natural habitat: monitor behavioral patterns, take notes.

Timo Januscz is drinking alone.

Flick Henshall has reportedly locked herself in the second floor loo in Stables. (Are these two facts related?)

Honey Prentiss has broken her arm, which may prevent her from playing the oboe all term. (Scheherezade looks quite pleased.)

Miyu Sugawara wants Oliver Bass to know that someone is a bitch, very loudly, just at one of those moments when the room falls oddly quiet. (Note: Anna-Louise Darbyshire’s ULife photo page has been an impressive array of kissy-face snog photos all summer, none of them featuring Oliver.)

And there are the newbies to check out, too: the ones who were just pretty or booze-equipped enough to get the McCartney Party auto-approval. A new Ana girl. Some guy
with peroxide hair, a military greatcoat, and piercings on his piercings, trying to eat pizza without snagging mozzarella on his spikes. A skinny boy all in black Fili’s gone to talk to by the window, as if Goth radar is yanking them together, though actually he looks sort of familiar.

There’s another new girl I almost miss, from the crowd around her, then from how almost invisible she is in person. She’s pale and gaunt and angular, arms and legs folded up and sticking out like some sort of insect, and wearing the sort of makeup that looks like it isn’t makeup. I hear someone say “model.” It computes.

“OH MY GOD,” breathes Ludo. “Yuliya Kusnetsova? She’s, like, EVERYWHERE. She did, like,
Vogue Italia
two months ago? She’s HUGE.”