The Blissfully Dead by Mark Edwards, Louise Voss Page A

knew about it. Lucy would laugh her socks off if she saw what Wendy was doing now: signing up to the official OnT forum. She had chosen a picture of Shawn looking dreamy as her profile picture, with an animated GIF of the band on stage as her signature, and she decided on the username ShawnsCupcake .
    As well as signing up to the forums she had also set up a new Twitter account, and had joined Tumblr and StoryPad. She didn’t bother with Facebook because OnT fans didn’t congregate on there, mainly because Facebook was seen by teenagers as a place for mums and grans.
    Then she had spent an hour catching up with the latest OnT news and gossip, searching for the OnT hashtag on Twitter and seeing what the fans were talking about at the moment. Predictably, the deaths of MissTargetHeart and YOLOSWAG were hot topics, but so was Blake’s new tattoo and rumours that Zubin was seeing Trixie from Love Bomb. There was a disturbing amount of vitriol aimed at Trixie, which reminded Wendy of how much she’d hated any girl who was linked with Lee from Blue. For two years she had been convinced she was going to grow up to marry Lee, had longingly stroked the posters of him on her wall, sketched his face a thousand times, though his nose always came out wonky and his lips not quite kissable. She closed her eyes and remembered how that had felt – the rushing hormones, the deluded certainty that if the object of her rampant affections met her, he would see she was special. That she was The One. She recalled, too, the pain she’d experienced when Mandy Briggs told her she didn’t like Blue anymore and was switching her allegiance to McFly.
    She plugged her headphones into her PC and opened Spotify, streaming the latest OnT album. She stared at photos of the band, trying to convince herself that they were not just fanciable but godlike . It crossed her mind that maybe she should pretend Shawn looked like DI Lennon, instantly chiding herself. She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and entered the zone. She was an OnTarget fan now. She loved them more than she loved her parents, her dog, her friends. They were her Everything.
    It was time to join the fray.
    She soon noticed that there were half a dozen ‘super users’ on the forum, girls – she assumed they were female, anyway – whose threads got the most views and comments, and who responded to nearly every thread started by another user. It was ridiculously cliquey. These half-dozen fans dominated discussions and opinion, with a second, larger group of acolytes who agreed with their opinions and acted as cheerleaders. Anyone who dared voice a different opinion, who wrote anything deemed to be in any way negative or stupid or ‘sad’, was instantly shot down. Sometimes arguments broke out between new users and the forum elite, page after page of passionate back and forth, which went on until the new user surrendered or a moderator stepped in. It was an intimidating place.
    Wendy realised that her best bet was to ingratiate herself with these super users. If, as it seemed, they spent their entire waking lives on here, they would surely know Jess and Rose, if not in real life – or ‘meatspace’ as it was called – then online.
    The most fanatical user of all, the queen of this microcosmic world, called herself, quite simply, Jade. Her real name, or a reference to the gemstone? There was a line in one of OnT’s songs, Wendy remembered – something about a girl with jade-green eyes. This was the kind of fact she needed to know, so she looked it up. Yes, it was from ‘Green, Green Eyes’, their song about a jealous girlfriend.
    Anyway, this Jade had the most powerful voice on the forum and anyone who dared question her or voice an opinion that deviated from hers in the slightest was throwing themselves into a pit of flame. Jade had just started a thread headed ‘WHY SHAWN MAKES ME FEEL LIKE CHOCOLATE!!!’
     
    Just watched the ‘You’re So Amazing’ video for like the