Fake

by Donna Cooner

  “It may not show up in pictures, but I’m not always the smartest person in the room,” Claire says quietly. Then she looks away.

  I blink. Then blink again. Her words sink in. Perfect Sienna—Claire—isn’t so perfect.

  “People can be mean to you because of things they can see and because of things they can’t, but it feels bad either way.”

  I take a deep breath and put my phone down on the desk. “You’re right, Claire. I’m sorry.”

  When Claire’s mom calls up the stairs that it’s time to leave, I walk Claire downstairs.

  “Did Claire tell you we might be moving?” her mom asks.

  Claire makes a face. “But probably not.”

  “She’s not that crazy about the idea. Maybe if she visited your school she’d see it wasn’t so bad?” Beth asks me.

  My stomach falls.

  “I think that’s a great idea,” my mom says.

  No. Absolutely not. There is NO WAY that can happen.

  Then it just gets worse. “We have a couple of days off next week for teacher conferences,” Beth goes on. “Maybe we can come back to Fort Collins and you can show Claire around?” she asks me brightly.

  I want to turn around and run away. Then I realize it’s better I try to control the situation than just let Claire show up.

  “Sure,” I mumble. “Probably after school would be best,” I add.

  When no one is around.

  “Great.” Her mom beams at me. “We’ll text you.”

  After Claire and her mom leave, I sit on my bed and stare out the window, still in shock from what happened today.

  There is a storm brewing. The kind where the thunder rumbles across the sky almost continuously, though there is no sign of actual lightning yet. But I know it’s there.

  The clouds are visibly angry—rippled and darker around the edges. They march slowly across the sky: pale gray falling off into dark black ridges. Another loud crash of thunder is followed by more slow rumbles.

  Wind pounds at the sides of the house and rattles the windows with a roar. It’s not unusual this time of the year here in Fort Collins. We get these random windstorms that blow in off the Rocky Mountains, down the foothills, and tear into the town. The gusts usually foretell a major change in temperature, but their power always surprises me. It can rip at trees and scatter patio furniture like a toddler tearing down a tower of blocks in a playroom.

  Today the wind mirrors my brain, racing wildly. And it’s not just wind to me. It makes me feel restless. Worried. Like the world is blowing with a power I can’t control. Did Claire really just come into my life? What if she does come back to Fort Collins? What if she moves here? I am in no way prepared for this. How could I have seen it coming?

  A monster is raging outside and it is oh so close to breaking its way into my life. It will tear me apart in a roar of satisfaction and I’ll scatter about just like the patio cushions and trash cans. Just the sound of it, banging and pounding against my windows, raises my anxiety.

  It’s too much to deal with. I pull down my shades, try to ignore the wind, and scroll through the photos I took of Claire. At least I can make the best out of the situation.

  I pause on a photo of Claire laughing at some strip she just read on my wall. Her head is thrown back, her smile wide and contagious. Which one looks most like Sienna? The phone seeps cold into my hand. If guilt was a color, it would be a sludgy purple stain that spreads up my fingers.

  I feel guilty. Just not guilty enough to stop.

  I post a couple of the new photos we took this afternoon and one of the videos. Watching Claire throwing leaves up in the air on endless repeat, I suddenly feel a flood of paranoia. What if Claire somehow discovers Sienna online? It would never happen … It’s too long a shot, I tell myself. And yet, maybe not. Quickly, I find Claire’s profile and block her—first as Sienna and then as Maisie. This way she’ll never be able to find me or Sienna on ChitChat.

  Breathing a little easier, I create a couple of new fake friends—using pictures culled from the internet and other random ChitChat profiles—and link them to Sienna’s account. I’ve been adding a few such new friends every time I log in, so by now Sienna has gained almost twenty imaginary friends. If I think about it too much I realize each of those friends need friends and so on and so on, but where will that end? It’s an endless black hole of deception. I log in and out from my various fake accounts, liking and commenting on Sienna’s posts, photos, and videos to make it look like she has tons of friends.

  EVERY PIC OF YOU LOOKS FLAWLESS.

  ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS. YOU’RE A GODDESS.

  I WISH MORE PEOPLE WERE LIKE YOU.

  Every time I write a new comment, I roll my eyes. Do people really have friends who write this kind of idiotic stuff? Does it work?

  Then a new ChitChat message pops up. It’s from Dezirea, and I realize I’ve forgotten all about what happened at the mall.

  DEZIREA: WHERE WERE YOU TODAY?

  SIENNA: I WAS AT THE MALL, WHERE WERE YOU?

  DEZIREA: DIDN’T SEE YOU!

  SIENNA: YOU CAME? WHAT TIME? I MUST HAVE JUST MISSED YOU! I’M SOOOOOO SORRY! GOT TIED UP AT FOREVER 21 BUYING THIS HEATHERED LONGLINE COAT.

  DEZIREA: DID YOU SEE MY CHITCHAT MESSAGES?

  SIENNA: NO. PHONE HAS BEEN GLITCHY LATELY. BATTERY WAS TOTALLY DEAD.

  DEZIREA: UGH. THAT’S ANNOYING.

  Time to change the subject.

  SIENNA: WE CAN STILL GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER BETTER. PICK A SUPERPOWER. INVISIBILITY OR FLIGHT?

  DEZIREA: DANCE.

  SIENNA: LOL. THAT WASN’T A CHOICE.

  DEZIREA: IT FEELS LIKE FLYING TO ME SOMETIMES.

  SIENNA: WHY?

  DEZIREA: EVERYONE IS ABLE TO MOVE TO MUSIC, BUT NOT EVERYONE WILL ACTUALLY PUT THE TIME IN TO DO IT UNTIL THEY’RE REALLY GOOD AT IT. BUT WHEN YOU’RE REALLY GOOD AT IT, IT IS BETTER THAN FLYING.

  SIENNA: WOW. YOU MUST BE AN AMAZING DANCER.

  DEZIREA: NOT MANY BALLET DANCERS LOOK LIKE ME.

  SIENNA: DOESN’T MEAN YOU CAN’T DO IT.

  DEZIREA: JUST FEEL LIKE SOMETHING DIED WHEN I STOPPED BEING ABLE TO TAKE CLASSES. SORRY YOU DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS.

  SIENNA: IT’S OK. WE ALL FEEL THAT WAY SOMETIMES. IF YOU EVER NEED TO RANT, I’M YOUR GIRL. DON’T HOLD IT ALL IN.

  DEZIREA: HOW ABOUT YOU? WHAT DO YOU WANT?

  What does Sienna want? I never thought about it before. In this crazy alternative universe I’ve created, Sienna is me. I am Sienna. So she wants what I want, right?

  SIENNA: I WANT TO LOVE MYSELF IN MY OWN SKIN.

  DEZIREA: DON’T WE ALL?

  CHITCHAT DIRECT MESSAGE

  JESSE: ME AGAIN. WEARING OUT MY WELCOME YET?

  SIENNA: HEY U. GOOD DAY?

  JESSE: PRETTY GOOD.

  JESSE: I TALKED TO A GIRL AT SCHOOL ABOUT YOU. AND OH THE QUESTIONS THAT CAME RAINING DOWN!

  SIENNA: WHAT DID YOU SAY? TELL MEEEEEEE!

  JESSE: I MOSTLY MADE UP A BUNCH OF STUFF ALL GLAMOROUS, OF COURSE!

  SIENNA: OF COURSE!

  JESSE: SHE’S DYING TO VISIT YOUR CHALET IN THE ALPS.

  SIENNA: SRSLY??

  JESSE: TOLD HER I THINK ABOUT YOU AND REALLY LIKE TALKING TO YOU.

  JESSE: MORE THAN LIKE.

  JESSE: YOUR MESSAGES ARE THE FIRST THINGS I LOOK FOR WHEN I OPEN CHITCHAT.

  SIENNA: IF I WERE WITH YOU RIGHT NOW, I’D BE GIVING YOU A HUG YOU COULDN’T ESCAPE FROM.

  JESSE: WOW. I LIKE THE WAY THAT SOUNDS.

  On Sunday afternoon, Jesse is already at the library table by the window with books and papers spread out in front of him.

  “You’re late,” he says.

  “Sorry.” I don’t give any excuses. Outside the window, the first snow of the year is covering cars and tables. The same tables where a few days ago people sat in shorts and sandals, with dark glasses at the ready for the bright high-altitude sunshine. Yawning, I pull out my chemistry notebook from my bag.

  He gives a sideways
grin and says, “You wild woman. Partying until dawn every night is going to catch up to you.”

  Talking on the computer to you every night is going to catch up to me.

  He looks good as always, with his dark, spiky hair and thick eyebrows. The sleeves of his faded blue Nike T-shirt stretch tightly across his biceps as he reaches for the lab write-up directions. It feels surreal to sit here across from him as though nothing has happened between us.

  But nothing has. Not really.

  I remember the day I first laid eyes on Jesse Santos. He looked different then. I guess we both did. At twelve, I was already getting smaller inside and bigger on the outside. I wasn’t so sharply drawn anymore. I spoke up less and not so loudly. I was already slipping away off the page. My image had started to blur around the edges.

  It was a perfect day for hanging out at the pool, but I remember being self-conscious for the first time. I slumped into the lounge chair, hoping the plastic would hold my weight and that I could eventually pull myself out without drawing any attention.

  Dezirea lazed on the chair beside me in a hot pink bikini, soaking up the sun like a lazy cat finding a patch of light on the carpet. I pushed my sunglasses up the bridge of my nose and pulled my floppy sun hat down a little lower on my face. Last year’s bathing suit was way too small, and I didn’t like the way the shiny blue one-piece stretched over my new curves.

  I wore a loose T-shirt over the swimsuit, and I couldn’t imagine pulling it off in front of the crowd even though the cool blue water looked so enticing. There were at least fifteen kids there when my dad let me out and waved good-bye and there were more now. One of the boys from our school, Michael Garcia, was chasing two screaming girls along the side of the pool until the lifeguard whistle stopped him in his tracks. Two other kids were yelling “Marco Polo” in the deeper water, and a girl I recognized from choir was splashing around in the shallow water with a couple of smaller kids.

  Before this summer, swimming pools were refreshing escapes, where I could float away with all my thoughts. But now everyone looked older. Everywhere I looked I saw two-piece bathing suits and no T-shirts.

  The longer we lay there, the hotter and sweatier I felt. In the middle of the pool, one big boy tumbled backward into the water and off the shoulders of some other blond brick of a boy. Then there was a lot of splashing and laughing. Everything about it looked fun. I wanted it so bad. And it was so close.

  We were at City Park Pool to celebrate the first days of summer. In only a few months, the dynamics of our world would change forever.

  We would go to middle school. Dezirea was growing up. I didn’t want to yet.

  Soon all the kids from three different elementary schools would converge into one middle school. New friends would be made, and old ones would be lost. It was inevitable. We just didn’t realize it at the time.

  “Hey. My name is Jesse.” The boy standing beside our chairs was brown-skinned and dark-haired. He had braces on his teeth and the confidence to not care about wearing a shirt to cover up his pudgy tummy. He’d stopped in front of us and for a minute I thought he might actually sit down right on the end of my lounge chair. My throat felt suddenly pinched. Now I really didn’t want to take my shirt off.

  Dezirea looked up at him and raised one eyebrow, assessing the newcomer. “I’m Dezirea and this is Maisie,” she finally said, but her eyes focused past him and on the group of boys playing chicken in the pool.

  “So guess what I just learned,” Jesse said, settling on to the ground beside me. There was a thin film of sweat across his forehead. “They just invented a special dye to put in the water that turns it green anytime someone pees.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s an urban legend. It’s the most common pool myth of all time.”

  “No, I swear.” Jesse peered out at me from underneath a thick lock of dark hair. “Besides, a lot of technological advances have happened recently. It could be true now. Do you want to take the risk?”

  Does he think I’m going to pee in the pool?

  “Shut up,” I said, but I was smiling.

  “How about it? Are you going in?” Jesse nodded toward the pool.

  Say yes.

  He stood up and extended his hand. I thought about taking off my cover-up. It was a long walk to the steps on the other side of the pool—one that led right past a giggling gaggle of older girls watching the group roughhousing in the water. Those girls never intended to get their perfect bathing suits wet, even though they were at a swimming pool. Instead, they squealed and dodged every time one of the boys came close to getting them wet. It was a gauntlet I wasn’t willing to brave.

  “Maybe later,” I said, hating the way I cared.

  “I’ll go,” Dezirea said. She stood and stalked off toward the pool in one fluid motion, not even glancing back once.

  Jesse paused a beat, looked at me as though he was almost disappointed, then said, “Okay.”

  They walked, side by side, around the edge of the pool. Dezirea moved with a dancer’s grace, her back straight and her chin held high. Nothing bounced. Nothing wiggled. Nothing squeezed out around the edges of that bikini. Jesse trailed along behind, clumsy and too big for his skin.

  An eighth-grade popular girl stopped chatting with all her friends to pull her Gucci knockoff sunglasses down her nose and peer at the two of them. I glanced at Dezirea’s empty chair, then back toward the pool.

  The squeals from the game of chicken drowned out most of the other noise around the pool, but Dezirea was oblivious. And fearless. She headed for the deep end and did a yelling, splashy cannonball that drenched the front row of the watching girls. I smiled at the reaction of shocked admiration from the crowd. Jesse stood frozen on the edge of the pool, his mouth dropped open in amazement.

  I sat there alone huddled under my cover-up and wished it could be me. So. Hard.

  The anger built slowly and deeply over the years. Nothing about our world seemed the same for girls like me. I was left out and treated differently than the other, more normal-sized girls. And I couldn’t change the world. I couldn’t even change me.

  There is no sign of that boy at the pool sitting across from me now. Today, he is football star Jesse Santos. All those chubby rolls on Middle School Jesse morphed into a solid rectangular block of a guy that coaches dream about. The braces came off his teeth, he grew six inches, and he gave up playing the trumpet for protecting the quarterback from oncoming linemen.

  I notice Jesse watching a cute girl across the library. A hand-knitted green beanie just barely covers her thick shoulder-length bob. Wearing a short plaid miniskirt and bright yellow tights, she looks like she just walked off the page of one of Lexi’s comic books. She takes a copy of The Lord of the Rings over to a red couch in the corner. She crosses one long leg over the other and leans back against the cushions, opening the book. Jesse suddenly looks over and catches me watching her, but he just smirks.

  “Can you just concentrate?” I snap at Jesse.

  “You’re one to talk. I’m ready to go and you haven’t even looked at your notes yet.”

  Jesse gives me the handout and we start to read the material silently. Then he interrupts the peace and quiet to start reading aloud.

  “Attractions happen between opposite charges. Repulsions happen between like charges.” He looks up at me. “So it’s like everyone says, opposites attract.”

  I snort a laugh. “Yeah, right. Life is not exactly chemistry class. People like people exactly like them.”

  “Do you honestly believe that?” he asks me.

  I nod.

  “Okay.” He looks back down at the sheet in his hands. “It says here we have to support our claims using valid reasoning and sufficient evidence. So prove it.”

  “I have verified the results so many times and so many ways, you could call it a scientific fact,” I say flatly.

  “Support your claims,” he insists. He grins and taps the end of my nose with his pen.

  I pull away, roll
ing my eyes. “All right,” I say. “Here’s the procedure. Follow it closely.”

  Jesse nods and readies his pen over the paper like he’s going to take notes.

  “Me and …” I look back across the room. “… the girl over there with the green beanie sit beside each other in a room. A good-looking boy enters. He is told to interact with us for a period of time.”

  “Who tells him?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I shake my head. “That’s just the direction he’s given.”

  “By, like … a scientist?”

  “Sure. Okay. A scientist tells the boy to go in the room and talk to the girls.”

  Jesse nods, then his eyes widen intently. “Is the scientist a woman or a man?”

  Seriously? “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It might.”

  “Fine. The scientist is a woman.”

  “I thought so.” He grins at me like he just figured out the murderer in a game of Clue. “And then what happens?”

  “The boy’s gaze will linger on her face.” I nod toward the girl in the beanie.

  Jesse’s eyes narrow and his pen hovers over the blank paper.

  I continue, “He will sit next to the cute girl. He will only look at the cute girl. He will talk to her for longer. If the scientist says he has to talk to BOTH, then he will ask me shorter questions and not wait for the answer. Because he doesn’t want to know the answer. At least not from me.”

  Jesse’s hair falls onto his forehead, and he brushes it back impatiently with his forearm. “There should be a playlist for this experiment. I’d put ‘You Don’t Know Me’ on it. Maybe the Ray Charles version?” He writes that on his notepad.

  I’ve never heard that song, but I know I will probably look for it later tonight. “Do you want to hear this or not?” I ask him.

  He nods. “Keep going.”

  “Her answers to the boy’s questions will make him smile—even laugh,” I say. “At the end of the experiment, the scientist will ask the boy which girl he wants to spend more time with now.”

  Jesse’s eyes shift for just a second. He knows how this will end.