Fake

by Donna Cooner

  He doesn’t ask why or how. And that’s exactly why I’m talking to him.

  “So how do I fix it?” I ask.

  “You can’t fix it,” Dad says, putting an arm around me and pulling me toward his side. I put my head on his shoulder with a sigh. “You just have to live through it.”

  I can’t sleep, of course. I can’t stop thinking about what Dad said. Or Claire’s reaction to my apology. Just saying I was sorry didn’t make everything magically go away. There are so many other people I need to face, and they are probably going to be just as angry as Claire. Dad is right. I have to live through it.

  I sit up in bed. The first step is to go back to the way it all started. Online. I set up my computer on my desk and sit down in front of it, plain-faced and somber. The camera waits, unblinking, for me to hit record, and suddenly it’s my face and my voice on the screen. No filters and no strange angles to hide behind. I start to talk, slowly at first, my words stilted and formal.

  “I’m sorry for hurting people by pretending to be someone else. It was wrong. I shouldn’t have lied, and for that I truly apologize. From now on, I only want to be honest. I want to be myself. This is the best way I can show you my true self, and that comes with lots of thorns and ugliness. None of us can create perfection. We are flawed in different ways, but we are all flawed.”

  I take a deep, shaky breath, thinking for a moment about Dezirea and Jesse, and then continue. “I also learned something else. Sometimes the things we hide are wonderful talents and kind hearts that go unnoticed by the rest of the world.”

  My eyes fill up with tears, but I blink them away.

  “I want to share something with you all. Something very real to me and incredibly personal—my drawings. I hope all the Froot Loops in the world will understand. You know who you are.”

  I turn off the camera and just sit for a moment, breathing in and breathing out. Everything inside me feels shaky and fragile, but before I can chicken out, I upload the video to ChitChat. Then I post all my strips—ones with regular people, and ones with dragons and Labrador retrievers and wolves and monsters. None of them are sophisticated and stylish. They are raw and visceral. The frames around each strip are uneven and torn.

  When it is done, I reach for the lamp on my nightstand, but then I change my mind and leave it on. I don’t want to be in the dark anymore.

  On Monday morning, I throw on some jeans and a white T-shirt, adding a long black cardigan over the top. Nothing colorful today. No mixed prints or bright, cheerful shades. I pull my hair back into a low pony and grab a clip off the top of my dresser. It’s time to face the music. It’s the least I can do.

  Owen has a dentist appointment early this morning, so I don’t need to pick him up. I drive to school alone, then park in the student lot, waiting. I watch from my car as kids stream toward the school. The sun is peeking above the foothills, casting long golden rays of light across the sky. I sit in the driver’s seat, windows cracked. My fingers tap restlessly on the steering wheel. Ten more minutes, I tell myself.

  When I finally step out of the car, Grace is suddenly there beside me. I look at her and force a smile. All I can think of is how grateful I am to see her. She knows how horrible I’ve been, but she still looks me in the eye. When she smiles at me, my eyes fill up with tears. I never knew how much kindness can mean when I least expect it. When I least deserve it. Somehow, some way, I vow to pass on this compassion.

  “I thought you might need some company,” she says.

  How could I have ever doubted that Grace is perfect for Owen?

  “Thank you,” I whisper. Grace grabs my hand. I don’t pull away. Together we walk into the school. Heads turn to look at me. Eyes glare.

  I walk with Grace down the hall to my locker, drowning in the hatred and whispered comments surrounding us. I wrap my black cardigan tighter around my body. Every step is difficult. It feels like I’m breathing water into my lungs instead of air. All I have to do is survive this moment to get through to the next. I fight for every breath, feeling the poisoned looks close over my head and the current sucking me under.

  I look over at Grace and her eyes say, Swim.

  I know she is trying to help, but I have to face the consequences of my deception alone. I deserve the looks and more. The fact that everyone is judging me for what I did feels awful, but that isn’t what makes my heart break apart. That will come soon, when I walk into class and see Jesse again.

  In chemistry, my heels tap against the tiled floor as I trudge toward the front of the room. I squeeze my way through the tables toward the empty stool. The snickers and whispers start up as everyone monitors my progress. They spread across the room and grow louder the closer I get to my seat. Everyone watches, conversations stopping.

  Jesse’s stool is empty. I look over my shoulder and see him now sitting beside Casey Austin. Evidently he had a private conversation with Mr. Vance persuasive enough to move him to a new lab partner. I don’t want to think about what he said, but I can’t help but wonder.

  “Can I sit here?” Owen slides onto the empty stool beside me. He places his familiar, beat-up green backpack on the floor between us, next to his meticulously white sneakers. I’ve never been so happy to see someone in my life. I nod, not able to trust my voice to respond.

  He pushes something across the desk toward me. I look down to see a small white candle in a blue jar. I raise my eyebrows in question.

  “Candles are an essential element in hygge. In Danish they are called levende lys, which means living light. You really can’t have a hyggelig night without them.”

  “Thank you,” I say. I smile then—the first real one all day. “I’ll be sure and burn it tonight.”

  “Smell,” he says, and I lift it up to my nose, inhaling the magical scent deeply.

  “Aromatherapy. It’s lavender and frankincense to calm the chatter in your head.”

  “I hope it works,” I say, thinking the chatter in my head sounds more like screaming right now, but maybe hygge will work its magic.

  Somehow, I manage to make it through class. I sit stone-faced and silent. That is okay with me. I don’t want to talk to anyone. Especially not Jesse Santos.

  When the bell rings, Jesse is off the stool and into the aisle before I can even put away my notebook. Dezirea and Camila are there instantly, smiling and taking his arm to escort him out of the room and back into society, where he belongs. I watch him walk down the hall, his long legs keeping in time with Dezirea’s high-heeled boots. He looks at her and she laughs up into his face. My stomach crawls.

  Outside, I part ways with Owen, and then I lean against the lockers, my hand on my pounding chest. It hurts. Not like when you fall down and skin your knee. It’s more like a huge, sucking emptiness that makes you wish you could bleed so people would recognize the hurt. If I was bleeding, nurses would run out of the ER yelling out for a transfusion stat. But this kind of hurt is different.

  I have to get out of here before I lose it in front of the whole school. I pick up my backpack and head for the girls’ bathroom, blinking rapidly.

  They will not see me cry. They will not see me cry.

  I turn on the water in the sink and let it run. The mirror is cracked from side to side, fracturing my face into tiny, ripped shreds. My eyes are wide and devastated, and I can’t see myself beyond them. I have no one but myself to blame. No one made me change into someone else but me.

  The bathroom door opens and I think it will be Grace, but instead I see Dezirea in the mirror. She flops a bag on the countertop and pulls out a lipstick. I lower my eyes and pump some soap onto my hands.

  Out of the corner of my eye I see her applying a thick coat of gloss on her lips, then fluffing her hair. She glances my way, and I look around frantically for the paper towels.

  “You okay?” she asks.

  At first I’m not sure she’s talking to me, but there’s no one else here. I savagely yank out a paper towel.

  My eyes fill up with tears
, making me even angrier. I wipe frantically at my eyes. “I’m fine,” I say, throwing the towel in the trash and turning to leave.

  “Wait,” she says.

  I turn around slowly. She looks at me. Really looks.

  She leans back against the green tiled wall. Cross-legged, her bag in between her legs, she says, “Lock the door.”

  I stop, hand on the door. Instead of opening it, I lock it. I turn around slowly.

  She puts her hands on her hips and stares at me from under her long eyelashes. “I should be mad at you.”

  Dezirea is speaking. To. Me. My heart thumps in my chest.

  “I know,” I say. “But you’re not?”

  “Your drawings are cool.” I honestly can’t believe what I’m hearing.

  Her voice is quiet as she continues. “Sometimes I think I’m only powerful because of the way I look. Your drawings made me feel powerful. Like I could do anything.”

  “Is that a compliment?” I ask.

  She lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Yeah.”

  Tears well up in my eyes, but I blink them back. I think of a lot of responses, but I just say, “Thank you.”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  Suddenly I find it hard to breathe. I stare at her, mouth open. “I never thought you were.”

  “So why did we quit talking to each other?” she asks.

  “I don’t know, but it wasn’t because I thought you were stupid,” I say. “Never that.”

  “Sometimes you look at me, and I think you hate me.”

  I frown. “I never knew you saw me. I thought I was invisible to you.”

  She laughs. “I guess we’re not the best mind readers, are we?”

  I shake my head.

  Dezirea is quiet for a moment. “At first I couldn’t believe Sienna was you,” she says. “But then I started thinking about it. And I realized that Sienna reminded me of the you I used to know. The you at sleepovers and birthday parties. The you in the mountains under a sky full of stars.”

  “You remember that?” I ask incredulously.

  “Of course I do.” She laughs. “You were always a good listener.”

  “Sienna was me … sort of.” I swallow hard and lick my lips. “She made it easier for me to talk to other people. And listen.”

  “Yeah,” Dezirea says softly.

  “I’m sorry about your parents’ divorce. I didn’t know.”

  She stretches her hands up above her head. “I don’t talk about it much,” she finally says.

  I nod. I understand that part. There’s a lot I don’t talk about. “We were true friends once, weren’t we?”

  Dezirea nods, then lets her head rest against the wall. “You shouldn’t stop.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Drawing your stories. They … say something important,” she says.

  “You keep dancing,” I tell her, giving her a small smile.

  “You keep drawing,” she says.

  I put my fist out into the space between us with my pinkie finger up. She does the same. Our little fingers entwine and we shake on it.

  Dezirea leaves the bathroom first. After she’s gone, I think about our conversation. I never really hated Dezirea. In fact, I like her. She isn’t perfect.

  I like Jesse. He isn’t perfect.

  Nobody is perfect. Least of all me.

  CHITCHAT DIRECT MESSAGE

  LEXI: HI, MAISIE.

  OMG. Lexi Singh just sent me a message. Me!!! Personally!!

  ME: HI.

  LEXI: LOVE THE NEW STUFF YOU POSTED! I WANT MORE!

  I can’t believe it. Did she really just say that?

  ME: OH WOW. THANK YOU!

  LEXI: DID YOU THINK ABOUT WHAT I SAID?

  How could I not?

  ME: YES!

  LEXI: THEN GET TO WORK! GET BETTER, IMPROVE, GROW, AND DON’T BE STOPPED BY WHAT OTHERS THINK OF YOU.

  ME: I’M TRYING.

  LEXI: MAKE THOSE CHARACTERS LEAP OFF THE PAGE.

  It is two weeks after Sienna left for good. Inspired by Lexi’s praise, I’ve joined an online comics board, and I post the Froot Loops strip regularly. The response from other artists is surprising. I never knew there were so many people out there who felt the same way I do. And that’s been amazing.

  The truth is, I can’t forget the way I felt when I created my escape: Sienna. I can’t forget the words that belonged to me, yet to someone else entirely. But Sienna left me with some of her confidence, and I’ve started to believe I can be me for real. From the inside out. Maybe it’s good to have a broken heart. Some broken things need to be broken further before they can heal. At least I feel something. And something is better than nothing. It means I cared.

  I still do.

  Things could be better, but they could be so much worse. I survive by concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other during the day, and drawing my heart out onto the page every night by the scent of my hygge candle. I remind myself, surrounded by the calming smell of lavender and frankincense, that no matter how far away I slipped with Sienna, I was still Maisie inside.

  And now I’m becoming Maisie on the outside, too. I don’t flinch away. I don’t cower in hallways, afraid to bump into people. I wear purple and pink and even yellow. Sometimes all at once. When people look at me, I stare right back. I am trying to stop beating myself up and telling myself hateful things about my body. That’s a start.

  But there is one thing I still need to do.

  On Friday morning, I wait for Jesse outside of chemistry class. He looks at me, waiting for me to move out of the way, but I don’t.

  “Can I talk to you?” I ask.

  “You’re talking,” he says. He is not going to make this easy on me.

  “Fine,” I say. “Look, I want to apologize for …” I don’t even know where to start. “Everything.”

  Jesse’s jaw tightens, and after a moment of silence, he speaks. “You lied to me,” he says, not meeting my eyes. “I saw you in class every day. You never once told me the truth.”

  “It was all true except for the pictures.”

  Jesse looks skeptical. “Right,” he says sarcastically. “Like how much you just love jazz.”

  “I do now,” I say.

  “But you’re not Sienna,” he says quietly. “And she’s not you.”

  “I don’t want to be her. I want to be me,” I say quietly. “Inside and outside.”

  “Good luck with that.” He says it like that settles things, then turns to walk away.

  “Wait.” I put my hand on his arm to stop him from leaving, and I can feel the warmth of his skin. I flinch away as though it burns. “Please?”

  He turns around and looks at me for a long time, his dark eyes sad.

  “Why did you do it?” he finally asks.

  There it is. The million-dollar question. The one that’s been banging around in my head like a hammer.

  Why?

  There is a tiny pause while I try out answers in my head. None of them will work.

  “I didn’t mean for it to go that far,” I say at last.

  He stares back at me blankly. We both know that’s not an answer. I take a deep breath and try again.

  “I didn’t like you very much.” The words burn in my mouth.

  “So you pretended to be someone else just to hurt me.”

  What I did to him suddenly hits me like a kick to my stomach. I press the palms of my hands to my forehead. Then I nod.

  “So I deserved it? Is that what you’re saying?” His voice is angry, his eyes narrow. “What did I do to deserve it?”

  That I can try to answer. “Think about it,” I say. “The years of teasing? The Froot-Loops-in-the-locker incident? That was bad.”

  I wait until he thinks about it. He stares at the floor. Finally, something changes in his face, and after a moment he nods again. “You’re right,” he says. “It was. And I’m really sorry.” Then he looks up, meets my eyes, and says, “Sometimes it’s easier to just go with the c
rowd.” He gives me a sad, sideways grin. “And to be honest? I did a lot of those silly things to get your attention. I was immature and stupid and I liked you.”

  I’m confused. My head is spinning. “You liked me?” I ask, my stomach doing flip-flops.

  “Yeah,” Jesse says with a sheepish smile.

  “Why?” Now it’s my turn to ask that question.

  “Because you were … are … creative and smart and funny.”

  Now I’m the one who is shocked. My heart is beating so loud, I can hardly speak. “You can’t tell me you actually liked me before Sienna?”

  “I did. Maybe not in the same way, but I liked you. I admired you. I thought you were cool.”

  Jesse Santos thought I was cool? My mouth goes dry.

  “You know,” I say. “Showing a girl you like her by being a jerk is never a good idea.”

  Jesse dips his head again. “Yeah. I know that now. I’ve grown up a lot. I mean, I hope I have. I’m trying.”

  I take a deep breath. “That’s a start. And I am really sorry for everything I did,” I tell him again. “Do you think you’ll ever forgive me?”

  He doesn’t answer right away. “I don’t know,” he says at last. “I need time.”

  “I get that,” I say.

  The bell rings, and we walk into class. I head for my desk, but then Jesse says, “I read your comics.”

  I glance at him. “Which one?”

  “All of them.”

  “Oh,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say.

  “They helped me understand some things.”

  I hold my breath, just letting him speak.

  “Not everything,” he adds. “But some things.”

  I let out a breath. “I’m glad,” I say.

  “Yeah,” Jesse says, and he gives me another small smile.

  That is a start.

  Instead of going to the cafeteria for lunch, I sit on the Thinking Bench. I pull out my old drawing of the fairy. The one I asked to make me not care. Now I know better.

  Caring is messy and painful and stupid and … worth it. Worth everything.

  I want to draw something new. I turn to a new page. The images slip off my fingers and dance across the page like a slow and sad song. The lines I sketch are rounded. The vision is clear. I know who will be in this picture.