The Timeline

5.

April 10th, 2013:

Claire's following on Instagram wasn't large: out of all the people she knew, not everyone had an account. Her best friends, Jacopo, David and Fabian did have an account each; her sister, Anna, did (mainly, she used Instagram for business, but she also posted personal pictures); Richard had an account as well, although he posted once a month, perhaps; Claire's niece, Alyssa, had one, and posted on it way more than any other person Claire knew, combined. Apart from them, Claire didn't follow many people - apart from celebrities she wanted to keep herself updated on (Taylor Swift being the first) - maybe some people from school. Her brother Steven had an account, and he posted like your typical heterosexual man. Claire sometimes wished she could unfollow him just because she did not care about the fishes he fished or the beers he drank out with his lads.

Claire's parents, of course, did not have an Instagram account: Philip, in particular, had an aversion against all types of social media (although he did have a Facebook account, just like Jane did). To Philip, social media were just a more elaborate way to waste one's time and feed into narcissism problems. Claire's other siblings didn't have Instagram accounts, preferring to use Facebook to share updates on their lives. Fannie didn't have an Instagram account, for she didn't like to be on social media at all, choosing to not even have a Facebook account.

Claire's ratio to following from followers was, therefore, pretty dim, for the only people that didn't follow her back were the celebrities she followed; the rest were all close people, or people she knew.

And then there was him. The only celebrity that followed her back: Harry Styles. In the days following the concert, Claire had opened Instagram a couple of times to check that he was really following her and she hadn't made the whole thing up. Whenever she saw that his name was still there, Claire would nod once then lock her phone, washed over by a wave of feelings she didn't know how to properly process. It all felt so weird still, and Claire had to find a way to balance the two Harry she knew: the one that spoke to her on WhatsApp, a 19 year old guy she could've found outside her college in Dartford; the one whose life was so big it swallowed down her, their conversations and himself, in favor of stardom.

She had waited - now - five full days to do as he had suggested her to do and post the picture on her Instagram. Posting on Instagram was, for Claire, somewhat of a struggle. Whatever she posted did not seem like enough: unlike her friends, who posted everything they wanted and more, without thinking too much, Claire found herself second-guessing whatever she wanted to post. If she posted something, it didn't last more than a day. And more than anything, she hated the thought of people she didn't know prying on her and watching her pictures, maybe even judging her. She kept her profile private for a reason.

Harry had been right, for after he had followed her, more than 50 people had sent her a request to follow her. She had refused every single one, losing perhaps 2 hours of her day to do so. The more persistent ones had sent the request again. Claire had decided to ignore them, but now the Instagram application showed a little red thing that indicated a notification she hadn't visualized and the thing irked her to no end.

Her friends had already posted their pictures from the concert, so she had already missed that bandwagon, but it was time - she thought - that she posted something, and maybe kept it up for more than 24 hours. Amongst them, David and Jacopo were the only ones with a public profile, and their picture with Harry had already been reposted on the Twitter and Instagram update accounts, but thankfully, Claire had been cut out, due to the square rule on Instagram. For some reason, the knowledge of that fact, made her sigh with relief. She really did not want to end up on strangers' profiles, eliciting theories and whatnot.

Telling herself to get over it and just post the damn picture - that would've been seen by literally 19 people - Claire grabbed her phone and opened the Instagram application. She selected the picture, made it black and white with one of the hideous Instagram filters and then sat for more than 5 minutes trying to come up with a clever caption. She decided to go with the text Harry had sent her attached to the picture. She tagged him and all of her friends and then posted it.