Page 63 of Save Us
We haven’t had much time to ourselves in the last two weeks. Ruby’s parents aren’t strict, but the thought that they might walk in on us at any minute has made me keep a certain distance from her. I really don’t want to disrespect the Bells. After all, I’m grateful to them for giving me a roof over my head.
I find Ruby by the bonfire. She’s standing next to Lexie as he gives his closing speech and thanks everyone for coming. She’s bathed in the glow of the fire, so that she looks almost like an avenging angel.
I keep my eyes fixed on her as I pull my phone out of my pocket, open the camera, and click. I shiver pleasantly as I see the photo.
I’m about to slip the phone back into my jeans when a notification flashes up. My hackles rise as I see that it’s from Dad. After I ignored his first email, he wrote again last week to say that he was disappointed in me but would give me one more chance to come to my senses. I still didn’t reply, hoping that he’d finally leave me in peace.
But when I open his message, I can see that I was wrong. As far as Dad’s concerned, this isn’t over. It’s only just beginning.
Fine. You asked for it.
16
James
I haven’t told Ruby about Dad’s message.
I know that’s wrong. We swore not to have secrets from each other anymore and to talk about all our worries. But I can’t bring myself to burden her with more of my problems. She’s got enough on her plate right now—A levels are coming up fast, and the deadline for finance applications is coming up even faster. I don’t want to add to that, especially as I don’t even know yet what Dad’s cryptic email meant.
He was probably just trying to intimidate me, but it’s had the exact opposite effect. I’ve never been so certain that I’ve made the right decision. And I’ve never been more motivated to finally act on the plans I’ve been thinking about for weeks now.
On Saturday evening, I wait for Ruby to vanish into the bathroom to get ready for Wren’s party, then head to Ember’s room. I take a deep breath, then knock on the door, which is slightly ajar.
“Yeah?” Ember calls from inside. She’s sitting at her desk with her laptop open in front of her and a mug of tea in her hand. She raises her eyebrows at the sight of me.
“Have you got a minute?” I ask.
Ember nods. “Sure, come in. What’s Ruby up to?”
“She’s FaceTiming Lydia while she gets ready.”
“Oh, OK.” I come to stand by her desk, and she tilts her head up at me. “What’s up?”
I point at her laptop. “I’ve got a few questions about your blog. And also about blogging in general.”
Ember eyes me for a second or two, then nods briefly. If I’ve surprised her, she’s not letting on. Instead, she pulls a little wooden stool out from under her desk. “No problem. Have a seat.”
I sit down beside her and run my hand through my hair. Then I exhale audibly. “I’ve been trying to get my head around WordPress for the last couple of days, and I thought you might be able to explain things better than any of the guides I’ve found online.”
“Oh, yeah, totally. I wish I’d had someone to show me what to do when I was starting out,” she says. She turns her laptop around so that we can both see her screen. Then she opens the browser and types in a URL. A log-in screen pops up. She opensBellbirdin another tab.
“So: Everything you can see here on the blog is also here”—she switches back to the first tab—“in the dashboard, where you can control everything. I recommend starting by getting the hang of it here, because it’s where you run your whole site.” She clicks, and a gray-black page comes up.
“OK. How did you set up your blog? Have you got a web designer?”
“You need a web-hosting company. If you do that through WordPress, there are lots of ready-made themes you can buy. Here, I’ll show you where I found mine.”
She opens another page, where there are all kinds of themes for sale.
“First you need to think about what you want to do with your blog. Like, this is a really nice design, but it wouldn’t work for my stuff at all.”
I nod. “What were your top priorities when you picked a design?”
“It needed to be responsive and work as well on mobile as on desktop. Apart from that, I focused on the home page, oh, and the sidebar. There are so many hosting sites, and they have great themes in the shops. So I bookmarked the ones I liked best, and spent a week going through them all before I made up my mind.”
“Wow, how’s anyone supposed to know all this stuff?”
“You learn over time.”
