“The fake resume you wrote . . . all that stuff about modeling and braiding my hair. Is that what you think of me?” I chew on my lip while I wait for his answer.
“It was a bad joke. I promise I’ve never thought that about you.”
“Okay. Well, good, I guess.”
He leans closer and touches his forehead to mine, closing his eyes. Mine shut automatically.
This is it. The romantic-comedy moment I’ve been waiting for.
“Do you want to know what I think about you, Just Claire?”
My heart stops. My mouth doesn’t. “You know that’s not my name, right?”
Moment officially killed. People this awkward shouldn’t be allowed in the outside world, interacting with other humans. I slowly open my eyes and cringe.
He leans back and studies me with a frown. If I wasn’t sitting on my hands, I’d reach out and smooth it away. I doubt that would fix the moment, but it would be something. And sitting here with him in the dark, I can’t seem to make my body or my mouth do anything I want them to. If only I could figure out the right thing to do, or say, or not say.
My phone beeps. I don’t even stop to consider whether I should ignore it before pulling it out of my pocket.
“It’s just my mom checking in.” I look up at him.
Rafael takes a step back and crosses his hands behind his head. Something in the gesture feels final. “If I tell you something, do you promise not to get mad?”
“I promise.”
“I’m so jealous of you.”
Promise rescinded. “How can you say that after the conversation we just had?” A painful lump rises in the back of my throat. I feel stupid for confiding in him and more than a little betrayed.
“I’m not jealous of your internet fame or whatever. I’m jealous of how much your mom loves you.”
“She loves how much money I make for her.”
He shakes his head. “Have you ever read the Twin Tuesday posts? They’re a love letter to you and your sister.”
“Right. A love letter sponsored by Allegra Esposito.”
“Why do you hate fame so much?” He looks genuinely curious.
“You mean besides the annoying photo shoots, the embarrassing blog posts, and the total lack of privacy?”
“Yeah, besides that.”
“Poppy’s better at it than I am.” I shrug. It sounds so trivial, but it’s true. “When we started our vlog, we had the same goals. Followers and money and fame. Influence. Somewhere along the way, I realized it was better to change my goals than spend a lifetime in second place.”
“If it weren’t for Poppy, you’d want the fame?”
“No. Living for internet clicks is a one-way ticket to misery.”
He gives me a hard look, but whatever he’s thinking, he doesn’t say it. His face clears and he pulls his keys out of his pocket. “I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but you’re one of the lucky ones. I should go home. I’ll drop you off.”
I want to take him up on the offer, but after dodging his kiss multiple times, I’m too embarrassed to be in an enclosed space with him. I’ll just screw things up worse than I already have. “It’s just down the street. I’ll walk.”
He swings his keys once around his fingers before saying “Thanks for meeting me. Good night.” I watch him walk all the way to his car.
As I’m lying in bed that night, his words echo in my head. You’re one of the lucky ones. I know a lot of people would agree with him, but I don’t. Nothing about my life feels particularly lucky right now.
Incoming Texts from Poppy
Poppy
We need to talk about which of the new sponsorship offers we’re interested in.
Me
Are you serious?
Poppy
Not the mouthwash. Duh.
We don’t want our brand to be “bird breath.”
Me
Gee thanks.
Poppy
But those Sun + Sky shirts are pretty cute.
Me
Molly used way too many exclamation points in her email.
Poppy
So?
Me
She! Sounded! Like! She! Was! On! Drugs!
Poppy
You’re on drugs. I’m taking the free shirts.
Me
Fine.
I like the gray.
Poppy
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“Good morning, sunshine,” Poppy says through a mouthful of cereal as I walk into the kitchen. “You’re looking very ‘racoon goals’ today.” She gestures to the mascara smudges circling my eyes. “Last night didn’t go well?” She tilts her head sympathetically.
“Why do you say that?”
“Your face. Your mood. Your refusal to talk to me when you got home last night.” She ticks off the reasons on her fingers, but then her voice softens. “Did he see the video?”
“Yep. And read way too many Twin Tuesday posts.” I pour milk over my cereal and swirl it around with a spoon.
“Ouch.”
“No kidding.”
I spent most of the night lying awake, thinking about Rafael and what it would have been like if he had kissed me, and why did I have to keep babbling when he was obviously trying to kiss me?
When I wasn’t thinking about Rafael, I was thinking about the blog.
And Instagram.
And our YouTube channel.
Holy crap, how are people not sick of us yet?
I have to quit. That’s all there is to it. The plan was always to quit next fall when I go to college, but everything that has happened over the last few weeks has made it painfully obvious that I can’t wait that long. I feel bad bailing on Poppy, but I’ll lose my mind if I have to keep pretending I’m obsessed with clothes and splashing my life across the internet for everyone to see.
“Eat,” Poppy commands. “You’re going to need your strength. Mom wants us to pull the Halloween boxes out of storage.”
I perk up in my chair and resolve to tell Poppy the truth another day. Halloween Decorating Day is my favorite family tradition, and I don’t want to ruin it. I’ve spent seventeen years in the Dixon family circus, pulling out can wait one more day. We celebrate Halloween the way some families celebrate Christmas. Our entire house gets decked out from top to bottom. The setup is different every year, but we never skimp on the creepy sound effects or fake blood. I’ve never loved being scared, but I can’t deny it’s fun to be the one scaring people.
“Where is she?”
“Some top secret conference call. She locked me out.”
After breakfast, we navigate our way through the dark closet under the stairs and pull out dozens of boxes. The light in the closet is burned out, so I can only hope we got the right ones. As I’m setting down the last box, Mom finally emerges from her office.
“What was that about?” I ask. She smiles and mimes zipping her lips. Sometimes there are not enough eyerolls for this woman.
We spend the morning listening to our Halloween playlist, snacking on candy corn, and admiring each other’s work. Mom takes down all the normal décor. She pulls picture frames off the wall and boxes up candles and other random knickknacks that litter our shelves and side tables. Poppy follows behind her with an arsenal of skulls, pumpkins, and potion bottles.
I grab the spiderwebs and spend the better part of an hour stringing them along our front porch until they look creepy, not cheesy. After that, I finish the yard with headstones and skeletons. When I’m done, I stand across the street and admire my work with a smile. I’m sticky with sweat, but the house looks great.
“It might be your best work yet.” Mom puts her arm around me and squeezes.
“Thanks!” I lean my head on her shoulder before I remember that I’m mad at her and shrug away from the embrace. “I’m going to take a picture.” I run inside, grab my phone, and snap a few shots from different angles.
>
Poppy glances at my phone. “You should send one to Rafael.”
“Not possible. He doesn’t have a phone.”
“Still?” She collapses onto the couch.
Part of me wants to defend him, but the other part agrees with her.
“His grandma has a phone, right? Call him.”
Ugh. I never should have shared that information.
“Call who?” Mom walks into the room.
“Her boyfriend.”
Mom turns to me with an expression of genuine shock.
How flattering.
“You have a boyfriend?”
“NO!” I say, too forcefully. “I mean, no. It’s just a boy from school.”
“Do you like him?”
“No,” I say at the same time Poppy says “Yes.”
“Do you want to invite him over for movie night?”
I’m about to say no again, but I stop myself. Do I want to invite him over? Maybe. I definitely want to see him again, at least so I can smooth things over after last night. Movie night is a safe, platonic way to do that. I spin my phone in my fingers and sink into the couch while I think about it. My thumb hovers over the call button, when my gaze catches the grim reaper leering at me from the wall. It feels like an omen.
“Oh my gosh, enough with the angsty indecision.” Poppy snatches my phone from my hand, presses the call button, and holds it to her ear. I could try to stop her, but the truth this, I don’t want to. I want to talk to him. Not tomorrow, or Monday at school, but right now.
“It’s not ringing. It’s beeping. Why’s it beeping?”
“Busy signal,” Mom says.
Poppy tosses it back to me. “Lucky you. Saved by the busy signal.”
Mom and Poppy resume their normal activities (setting up the perfect Insta shot) while I call every ten minutes for the next hour. I groan at the now-familiar sound of the busy signal and end another call. Disappointment spreads through my body like a viral video. It’s quick and visceral. But unlike the infamous bird video, I can stop this.
“What are you doing?” Poppy calls after me as I pick up my car keys and bag. I don’t bother to explain myself. The instant I stop to examine this decision is the instant I chicken out.
I find Rafael’s address on the resume in my email inbox. Google Maps directs me to his abuela’s house on the other side of Gilbert. As I make the fifteen-minute drive, my heart pounds. First, with excitement. Then, with nervous anticipation. And finally, as I pull up to the curb in front of the small single-story house, with dread.
What spirit possessed me and brought me here? It must have been the grim reaper. It’s the only explanation.
“This is so stupid,” I say out loud as I approach the front steps, but I’m not sure what I’m talking about. The fact that I’m here? That I’m so nervous? Or that Rafael insists on living in the nineties and now I have to make a fool out of myself just to say hi?
The front door opens. An old woman with wrinkled skin frowns at me. “Can I help you?”
I open and close my mouth wordlessly, like a puppet.
She raises an eyebrow, reminding me so much of Rafael. “Your phone was busy,” I say lamely.
She smiles, and it lights her entire face. “You’re here for Rafael?”
I nod mutely and she ushers me into the sunny house. She directs me to a school-bus-yellow kitchen table and sets a tall glass of something icy and red in front of me. It’s fruity and delicious.
“Rafael!” His name is followed by a long string of words that my Intro to Spanish class has not equipped me to understand. A minute later Rafael appears in shorts and a T-shirt, his hair scruffy and un-styled. My palms begin to sweat.
“This young lady’s been trying to call you, mijo.” Her tone is gently scolding. She turns to me. “I told him to get a phone.”
“You did?”
“¡Claro! What’s he going to do if he’s in a car accident?”
“Exactly!”
She shakes her head with a wry smile. They exchange a few sentences in Spanish before she disappears down the hall off the side of the kitchen.
“Hey.” He runs a hand self-consciously through his hair. It’s the first time I’ve seen him anything but confident, and it relaxes me. We can be awkward together.
“First of all, you have to get a phone.”
He wrinkles his nose. “If I had a phone, you wouldn’t be sitting in my kitchen right now, which would be a real shame.”
I bite back a smile. “This is my last house call. Next time your phone is busy, I’m moving on to the next guy.”
I expect him to call me out on this outrageous lie, but he doesn’t. Obviously. He’s way too nice. He leans a hip against the kitchen counter and folds his arms over his chest. We lock eyes, and I’m determined not to look away, no matter how loaded this silence gets.
“I want to be able to text you.”
“Why?” His shoulders lean toward me, but his feet stay planted. He gazes at me as if the answer is vital. My palms sweat and my heart thumps violently in my chest.
I want to ask if this is how all his friendships go, but I don’t want him to know how thoroughly I’ve been charmed by his presence in my life. It’s imperative to remember that this is his plan. Move to town. Make people like him. He never said anything about returning those feelings.
“Because that’s what friends do.”
His shoulders slump. It was clearly not the right thing to say.
“Because how else am I supposed to invite you over tonight?”
He silently points to the old telephone sitting on the counter. It has a spirally cord and everything.
“It was busy.”
He nudges the phone, knocking it securely in its cradle. It was off the hook the whole time. “What time should I come over?”
“Pizza and a movie at six. Bring a phone.”
He shakes his head with a laugh as I show myself out the front door.
I’m high on my own courage when I get back home. I can’t even suppress my smile when Mom and Poppy try to rope me into organizing boxes of clothes. We’re sent so many things from sponsors that it’s impossible to wear them all, let alone fit them in our closets. I offer to put away the Halloween boxes while they sort through the newest offerings, deciding what to keep, what to donate, and what to feature on the vlog.
“Rafael’s coming over tonight,” I announce casually as I pick up the first box.
Poppy’s jaw drops. “I’m impressed.”
I struggle to suppress a smile. To be perfectly honest, I am too.
The empty boxes slide easily into the closet, and as I work, my mind wanders to my latest coding project. I finished the 15-puzzle and moved on to creating a Sierpinski triangle. By the time I get to the last box, I’m itching to get back to my room and get to work. I shove the box and am surprised by its resistance. Unlike the others, it’s still taped down. I peel back the tape and open the top flap. Inside is a stack of books with blank covers. I pick up the one off the top and flip through it. The pages are filled with small, neat handwriting that looks familiar. It’s obviously a journal, but whose is it? My heart stutters as I realize it may have belonged to my dad.
My hands tremble as I turn to the first page.
I’m not pregnant.
Well. I think it’s safe to say my dad didn’t write this, and if Poppy harbored any secrets about a possible pregnancy, there’s no way she would use such a crappy hiding place. This must have been written by Mom. The yellow tinted pages are evidence of its age.
I didn’t realize she ever kept a physical journal. What could she possibly write in here that isn’t already in the blog? Judging by the dates scrawled on the corner of the pages, it’s from the year that Poppy and I were born. She was already blogging then, but she didn’t have nearly as large an audience as she does now. The way she tells it, her readers were mostly her family and women she knew from high school and coll
ege. I scan through the stack of books below this one and see more journals dating back to her high school years.
Footsteps thump down the stairs. I close the box and shove it in the closet, keeping the most recent journal with me.
Poppy walks around the corner. “Wow. That was fast. What, are you trying to impress a hot guy or something?”
I hold the journal behind my back as she walks past me into the kitchen. When she’s out of sight, I run up the stairs and hide the journal under my pillow. Mom’s been sharing my secrets with the world for seventeen years. It’s time to find out some of hers.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: you suck
i can’t believe anyone cares about you. you literally contribute nothing to society.
Block this email address
Future messages from [email protected] will be marked as Spam.
“I’m excited to meet Rafael. Poppy won’t tell me much about him, except that Emily, Erica, and Olivia all think he’s ‘hot.’” Mom smiles from her usual spot in front of her computer, happy to play the part of a “cool mom.”
I can’t help but laugh, even though she’s so devastatingly embarrassing at times like this. “About that.” I sit down next to her and brace myself for this conversation. “We need to talk.”
She frowns and closes her laptop. “What’s going on?”
“No pictures of Rafael. No mention of tonight on the blog. As far as the internet is concerned, Rafael doesn’t exist.” I can hear the waver in my voice, but I try to sound assertive. Just because Rafael knows about the business doesn’t mean he should have to be caught up in it. I don’t want him to be a pawn in Mom’s online game. He deserves better than that.
“Okay.”
“Really?” This was not at all the response I expected.
“Sure. Is that what you looked so stressed about?” She laughs. “I don’t blog or Instagram every person I meet.”
I’m so shocked, I don’t know what to say. In the weeks leading up to prom, she followed Jackson and me around with her camera like she was doing an anthropological study. Now that it’s obvious Jackson and I aren’t together, I thought she would jump at the chance to feature a new pseudo-boyfriend.
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