I stop chewing and turn to him. It’s so obvious he’s been waiting to say these words to me for a while. I’m guessing he’s speaking for Lauren, too.
“No,” I say, trying to stay calm, “I didn’t. I’m the same exact person.”
“Uh, no, you’re not. You’re talking to people you used to make fun of. Everybody’s freaking staring at you all the time.” He glares at two passing freshmen who are, indeed, staring—but what am I supposed to do about that? “You’re the one who was unhappy with your life, with how things were, and you wished them to be different. Well, now they are.”
I’m stunned. Four days into my transformation and I’m fighting with my best friend. Okay, not fighting with him yet, but I will be in about two seconds. “Did you ever stop to think about what I’m going through?” I ask. “I have zero control over any of this.”
“Oh yeah, like it’s so tough becoming the most attractive dude at school. Plus, you wished for it.”
“It’s a big change. It’s not all peaches and cream.”
“You wished to be hot, Konrad. I mean, how messed up is that?”
I try to keep my breathing under control. Alan rips a bite out of his sandwich and chews hard. He’s only pretending to be busy tapping his phone screen, because he says, “You were our best friend. This is a big change for us, too, you know.
Even though Alan’s not looking, my hand flies into the air, traffic cop style. I get to my feet. “Excuse me? I was your best friend? Past-fucking-tense?”
Alan’s face twists in annoyance. “You know that was just a slip of the tongue.”
“I don’t think it was.” I don’t want to listen to any more of this bullshit. “You know what, Alan? Fuck you,” I say. “And tell Lauren that Pretty Boy is sending her the same message.”
Stomping away with my half-eaten hamburger in hand, I ignore a hi from Ashley Solomon and head around the gym to the sidewalk out front. I need to get off school grounds and I need to do it now.
Five minutes later, I’m sitting on the curb on one of the quiet residential streets nearby. My burger’s cold, but I shove the whole thing in my mouth anyway.
What’s Alan’s problem? He and Lauren are the victims here? Please! They’re supposed to be happy for me. They’re supposed to be supportive. What the fuck was that “this is a big change for us, too” bullshit? Not only do I have to deal with my own parents glancing at me through a film of suspicion like they never really knew me during dinner at home, I need to keep defending myself to my so-called friends when I’m at school, too.
Since when is being insecure in your appearance and wishing to be good-looking such an evil thing? Everybody’s guilty of that. Everybody.
Fuck Alan. And fuck Lauren. If they don’t want to be friends with me anymore, I’m fine with that. I’m the king now, and the student body is my dinner table. I mean, Becca Lipowska wants to get into my pants tomorrow night. Enough said.
I’m so angry, I don’t notice Ashley Solomon approaching until she’s almost in front of me. My head snaps her way.
Disclaimer: Ashley’s really cute. I had a mini-crush on her back in seventh grade. I still think she’s great, but I’m not feeling very friendly right now.
“Did you follow me?”
Ashley’s long brown legs take a couple of reluctant steps forward. “Yeah.” She looks very serious, which is odd. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t see Ashley Solomon smiling. She even managed to remain positive after that party video everyone at school saw of her making out with Lance Dietrick while she was dating Mike Rogers the Douchebag.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“Can you talk for a second?”
“About what?”
“About something huge. So huge I need you to promise not to tell anyone else.”
“Fine,” I mumble. The sooner I let her spill, the sooner she’ll leave me alone.
“Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
She sits on the curb a couple of feet away. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
Huh. Interesting. I never considered her the type. “Go for it.”
Ashley offers me a cigarette. After I decline, she lights one up, both hands shaking. I watch her take a long drag. “You know Camilla Hadi, right?” she asks.
“Not really. Why?”
“Have you noticed that she hasn’t been coming to school?”
“Um. No. Have you noticed that I have a lot going on lately?”
Ashley nods to herself. She aims her gaze at a yellow-brick bungalow across the street and puffs out another cloud of smoke. “Camilla had an Inexplicable Development happen to her, too.”
For a second, my heart seems to stop. Then it picks up again, beating faster. “Huh?”
“You’re not the only one. She went through an ID, too.”
I let Ashley’s words sink in. “Really?”
“Really.”
Swallowing, I look down at the ground. “What was it?”
“The opposite of you.”
I turn to her, my brain stuck in a fuzzy limbo. “What do you mean?”
Ashley sighs. “She woke up less attractive.”
“What?”
She closes her eyes. “She woke up ugly.”
“When?”
“Same day as you.”
I examine her expression, searching for a hint, anything to say Ashley’s fucking with me. I don’t find it. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
Ripping a few blades from someone’s perfectly cut lawn, I throw them into the nonexistent wind. “That’s messed up.”
We sit in silence for a while. Finally, Ashley says, “So, did you have anything to do with it?”
My shoulders lock. “With what?”
“With what happened to Camilla.”
“Of course not!”
“What did you wish for exactly?”
I puff out my cheeks. This question. Again. “Lots of things,” I say, annoyed. “I wished I could self-heal like Wolverine. I wished I could swim better. I wished I could read people’s minds. And yeah, I wished I was better looking.” I pause. “Honestly, I don’t even think wishing has anything to do with it. I just got really lucky.”
“And what? Camilla was really unlucky?”
I take a moment to answer. “I guess.”
“You don’t think it’s strange that Camilla’s ID happened on the same day as yours?”
“I do, but what do you want me to say? I don’t know how to fix her, if that’s what you’re after.”
“Would you fix her?”
“If I could, sure.”
I can feel Ashley willing me to look her way, so I do. As soon as our eyes meet, she asks, “Really? You’d undo what happened to you to help her?”
Alan and Lauren’s faces flash into my mind. I hear Alan’s words: Lauren and I haven’t changed. You have.
But then I think about all the attention I’ve been getting. And Becca’s breasts, which I’ll get to see bouncing around au naturale tomorrow night.
I stand up, brushing the stray hamburger crumbs from my pants. “I didn’t say that.” Without another word, I start back to school.
CHAPTER 8
CAMILLA
EVERY MORNING, BEFORE THE SUN is even up, I run. And every time afterward, I aim the hot stream of the showerhead at my face. I imagine it cleansing me of my new flaws. Washing them away to reveal the old me underneath.
It never helps, no matter how hot the water gets.
Every morning, I stand in front of the mirror and try to push my features back into place. Mold them into something less grotesque.
So far, that hasn’t worked either.
I keep telling myself if I run enough, I’ll be able to get my body back in shape. Just because I’m ugly doesn’t mean I have to be unhealthy, too. I can still finish this race, even if I know there’s no gold medal waiting for me at the end.
Down in the kitchen, I make an egg-and-avocado salad, eat my sha
re, and wrap the rest up for Mom. It’s one of her rare Saturdays off, but I’m letting her sleep in. There’s only so much of a mother’s worry a person can take.
Last night, I ordered Jodie and Ashley to take the day off. My life might be over, but they still have theirs. It’s time I face this thing head-on. On my own.
First thing I do when I return to the Lair of the Forsaken is collect all my photos. I stare at the one framed on my desk: Jodie, Ashley, and me at Six Flags, three years ago, all gums and teeth. My skin is glowing. Every feature so right, so me. Of course, at the time, I wouldn’t have agreed. How petty and ungrateful of me to have had insecurities back then. I wish I loved myself more when I still had the chance.
My eyes fill with tears. Dropping the photo in an old shoebox, I reach for another picture—the one from my fourteenth birthday where my arms are tight around my dad’s neck, a time when I was naive enough to believe he’d never be dumb enough to drink and drive.
I throw the photo on top of the pile in the box, put the lid on, and stow it deep in the back of my closet. It isn’t easy. This is me in these pictures. This is my story. But how can I move on if my old self keeps staring back at me everywhere I look?
My online presence is next. I glue myself to my laptop and delete every single photo I’d ever uploaded with me in it and I untag myself from all others where possible. Once that’s done, I click on the most liked photo in my feed—Becca Lipowska and Konrad Wolnik sitting together at lunch. I swear, if she could scoot any closer, she’d be inside him.
Anger rises within me. It’s not fair.
The clank of dishes in the kitchen snaps me back to reality. Since this means Mom is up, I blast “We’re Never Gonna Disappear” by the Leaky Lizards and continue my crazed clicking from one post to the next. The selfish, shallow life-ruiner is everywhere I look. He’s like a spreading virus. Minutes pass. When a hand touches my shoulder, I startle.
“GOD! You scared me,” I gasp, slamming my laptop shut.
“Sorry,” Mom says, standing over me. “Morning.”
I heave a breath of relief. “Morning.”
Mom’s lips twist to one side and I tense right back up. She’s about to say something I’m not going to like. “What?” I ask.
“You have a visitor.”
I throw my head back and sigh at the ceiling. My guess is it’s Jodie. She’s more the type to ignore everything I say. “Why didn’t you let her up?”
A small grin forms on Mom’s face. “It’s not a her.”
I blink. “Huh?”
“It’s a boy.”
My heart jumps, nudging my throat. “You’re kidding, right?”
She shakes her head.
“What boy?”
She lowers her chin. “He’s really handsome, by the way.”
I jerk my shoulder from under her hand. “What boy, Mom!”
“His name is Konrad. He says he needs to talk to you. Did I mention he’s really handsome?”
Suddenly, I’m having trouble breathing.
“I think you should talk to him,” Mom goes on. “It’ll do you good.”
At first, I can’t even bring myself to speak. My mind is blowing up with questions. Ashley must’ve talked to him. And she must’ve said too much.
“Jesus, Mom. You let him into OUR HOUSE?”
“Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”
“What’s WRONG with you?” I’m screaming. “Do you seriously want me to end up in a MENTAL INSTITUTION?”
Her eyes fill up with confusion and pain and I immediately regret my outburst. She has no idea who Konrad Wolnik is or why he’s here. But does she actually believe that a boy would just swing by to say hi, especially in my current state?
“Sorry,” I mumble. “It’s just …”
“Camilla,” Mom interrupts before I can make something up. “Sooner or later, you’re going to have to deal with people. Just talk to him. Please.” She flashes me a hopeful smile. “Can I let him up?”
My jaw drops. She wants him up here? Unless you count my cousins and playdates from kindergarten, no boy’s ever been over to my house. Let alone been in my room. No way is Konrad Wolnik, the vile human responsible for my ID, going to be the first.
And yet, I don’t say no. I’m too curious to see what he wants.
“Okay, fine. You can let him up.”
Mom’s beaming, but I push her into the hall before she can say anything else. What she doesn’t know is that just because I agreed to let him up, doesn’t mean I have to let him in.
Once she’s gone, I shut the door, flip the lock, and dart toward my desk where Jodie’s sunglasses are sitting. I have no intention of showing myself, but I slip them on anyway. Pressing my back to the door, I wait. My heart’s pounding a million times a minute.
When I hear the creak of the stairs, I hold my breath.
The creaking stops.
“Camilla?”
The only words Konrad Wolnik has ever said to me were, “Can I borrow your pencil?” in physics last year. Maybe there had been a thanks after that, but that’s it. I know of him, and he knows of me, but we’re practically strangers.
My voice comes out a lot weaker than I want it to. “Yeah?”
“It’s Konrad. Konrad Wolnik.”
I clear my throat. “How do you know where I live?”
“I got your address from Ashley Solomon.”
Oh, Ashley. You’re so dead to me.
“What do you want?”
He doesn’t reply right away. I press myself harder against the door in case he tries to open it or something. Eventually, he says, “Were you just listening to the Leaky Lizards? They’re pretty badass, aren’t they?”
It’s as if the words turn off a boiling kettle in my stomach. Random, I think. But also unfortunate. Because if he heard that, he definitely heard me screaming about mental institutions.
Heat spreads through my cheeks. I don’t want him to think I’m on the verge of insanity. Worse, I don’t want him to think I’m weak.
“What do you want, Konrad?”
“Can I come in?”
“No.”
“Look,” he says, hesitating, “I heard about what happened.”
I swallow, imagining his face, the one I’ve been staring at on my computer screen for the past hour. That flawless, beguiling face.
“I was thinking about it all day yesterday,” he continues, “and I just wanted to come and let you know I had nothing to do with what happened to you.”
I remain quiet, unsure how to respond, even though that’s pretty much exactly what I expected him to say.
“It sucks, I know. I mean, I know it’s not the same thing or anything, but I understand.”
Rage floods my body. He’s got to be kidding me. This kid is even more self-centered than I ever imagined. “Oh, do you now?” I snarl.
I hear him sigh on the other side of the door. “What happened to me might sound glamorous or whatever, but it’s not as great as you’d think. People look at me differently. My family’s acting like I’m an impostor in my own home. My friends are being assholes about it. Like I’m a complete stranger, you know? All of it, it’s just … this whole thing is just so weird.”
That’s the last straw. Your life is weird? You’re the victim? You? With your perfect new appearance and newfound popularity? How dare he come into my house and tell me his life is tough? After what his selfish act did to mine?
“Anyway,” he says when I don’t reply. “I’m here if you want to talk.”
My whole head is throbbing with angry heat. “LEAVE!”
“Do you want my number?”
“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”
For a couple of beats, he’s completely silent. I brace myself, expecting him to say more, but then I hear the creak of the stairs. Relieved, I wait at the door, my ears pricked, until Mom’s muffled voice travels up to me and the front door closes with a thud.
Konrad’s gone.
Next thing I know, I’m at my window, p
eeking from behind the curtain at the street below. Konrad marches to his car like he’s in a hurry. He looks even better in person than he does in pictures. Before he dips behind the wheel, he glances up.
I let the curtain go, my heart rate spiraling out of control. I stand there, my teeth shredding my nails, unsure whether he saw me or not. But then, I realize, I don’t really care. In fact, I’m kind of hoping he did. He should see me. Hell, everyone should see me. Everyone should know what Konrad’s perfect new life has done to mine. Everyone should know what an awful human being he is.
I make up my mind. Monday, I’m going back to school.
CHAPTER 9
KONRAD
SATURDAY AFTERNOON, MY FOLLOWER COUNT hits 1,200. Prior to my ID, it was 418, which means it’s almost tripled. I don’t know half of these new people.
Twelve new notifications call my name, but before I check what they’re all about, I type the name Camilla Hadi into as many search bars as I can.
Her social media accounts are all there, but all her photos and videos are gone. When I try googling, a couple of local articles pop up about track meets and high school athletics.
I don’t want to think about her, but I can’t stop myself. It’s like I have this new, amazing skin, right? But ever since I learned about Camilla’s ID from Ashley, it kind of feels like I discovered a tumor on it.
Yes, it’s odd that whatever happened to Camilla Hadi happened on the same day as whatever happened to me. And yes, it’s odd that her ID, like mine, was related to her appearance. I know how it looks from the outside. I’m not an idiot. That’s why I went over to her house. I wanted her to know I had nothing to do with it.
Because I didn’t.
I can understand why she kicked me out. Why she’s angry with me. Why she and Jodie Mathews, and who knows who else, might even blame me. And it’s only going to get worse. If people didn’t think I was selfish for wishing to be hot before, they definitely will after word spreads about Camilla. Next to her, I’m going to look like an asshole.
But why do I feel like I’m blaming me, too? I did nothing wrong.
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