by Leah Konen
Jake’s eyes flit from Katie to me, me to Katie.
“And someone you’ve never met,” I add.
It’s a major no-no in screenwriting, revealing through dialogue like that, but right now, I have no choice.
Katie smiles. “Yes, of course, you just caught me off guard. It’s so good to meet you. I’m not used to people calling me Carrie.” She shoots me a glance, all, I got this, Olivia. “Carrie’s my middle name, so I don’t normally answer to it.”
Jake’s eyes narrow slightly. “Your middle name?”
“Right?” I say loudly. “Isn’t it hilarious that it’s both your middle name and your favorite movie?”
A flash of fear in Katie’s eyes, but she recovers quickly; just like when she flubbed up her line in the spring production of Romeo and Juliet. It was supposed to be “Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?” Only she said it way too fast—“Where fart thou, Romeo”—and she acted like nothing of the sort would dare come out of Juliet Capulet’s mouth, like we were all wrong for thinking it had. That’s when I knew she was truly a pro.
“It’s funny,” Katie goes on. “I watched Carrie for the first time because the main character had my middle name. I never expected to become obsessed with it like I have.”
“That’s amazing,” Jake says, rocking back and forth on his heels, pure excitement. “You never told me it’s your middle name, too.”
Katie winks. “Got to keep some secrets, I suppose. Especially from an internet stranger.”
Jake bursts into laughter.
All right, Katie, I think. Dial it down a notch.
Jake turns to me then, as if only now remembering I’m still here. “So you’re friends with Carrie? I mean, Katie. Katie Carrie.” He glances to Katie. “That’s a funny name combination.”
She shrugs. “Yep, Katherine Carrie. My parents are nuts.”
Jake laughs hysterically again, then glances back to me. “So you guys know each other from Brooklyn?”
I nod. “Known each other for years. What a small world!”
Jake crosses his arms, gaze ping-ponging between us. “I know this sounds weird, but if I saw it in a movie, I wouldn’t believe it.” His face scrunches up, and he turns back to Katie. “Wait a second, I thought you were at NYU?”
Katie opens her mouth as if to correct him, but I butt in. “Yeah, I thought the screenwriting program was supposed to go on longer.”
Katie stares at me a minute, all, What have you done now, Olivia?, then composes her face. She shrugs. “It was nothing like I expected, honestly. I ended up leaving early. Not a good environment for writing at all.”
“But didn’t you just finish your screenplay there?” Jake asks.
She freezes, deer in the headlights. Shit.
I clear my throat, and they both turn to me. Katie’s eyebrows shoot up. You finished?!? her gaze seems to ask.
“Didn’t you write the best parts after you left the program?” I ask Katie.
She nods slowly. Very, very slowly. “Yeah . . . yeah, I left last week because it was pretty lame, and then I made some major progress on the end.”
Jake tilts his head to the side. “Really? But you were so excited.”
Katie shrugs him off.
“Whatever works, I guess,” Jake says. “I’m glad you’re here!”
“Yes, me too!” I say, but it comes out all wrong.
Jake’s eyes catch mine. “If you’re down, Katie should come to dinner with us.”
“Of course,” I say, my heart racing. “The three of us together . . . how exciting!”
The Changeling
“We’ll meet you there,” I call out to Jake as I follow Katie to my parents’ car.
As soon as the doors close, like a director calling action and cueing the next scene:
“What in the hell was that about?” Katie asks. “I mean, I love a good challenging role as much as the next girl, but really, Olivia, even a true artist needs some warning.”
I shake my head, ignoring her question. “I don’t understand. What are you doing here?”
“You invited me,” Katie says. “Duh.”
“But your program.”
She shrugs. “It wasn’t a good fit. Totally not on my level.”
“But you were so—”
Katie interrupts me, raising a hand in the air. “Forget about the program for a second. I thought this would be a nice surprise since you practically begged me to come save you from your summer. Now can you please tell me what in the world I just witnessed slash participated in?”
I watch as Jake’s car pulls out of the lot. “Just drive,” I say. “I’ll explain.”
Katie nods. “I’ll drive. You spill.”
“Take a right up here,” I say, already dreading what I have to tell her. “You’ll stay on this road for a few miles.”
“Good,” she says. “That means we have time for a full rundown of what in god’s name just happened.”
We pull up to a stoplight, the shops of Hunter’s main street on one side, the mountains on the other. I tear at a broken bit of nail.
“I did something bad,” I say finally.
Katie taps her fingers on the wheel, and the light turns green. The car jerks ahead. “Like, you buried a body bad? Some girl named Carrie who looks like me and inexplicably spends every day on Reddit? I mean, I know you love Reddit and all, but you have to know that’s not me at all.”
I clear my throat. “I know that. It’s me.”
Katie shakes her head. “Je ne comprends pas.” I don’t understand.
“I’m the one who’s been spending every day on Reddit for months. Me.”
“Duh,” she says. “In true nerd fashion. But what does that have to do with my likeness? What is this whole mystery girl thing?”
“No, I mean, Carrie is me. I’m Carrie.”
Katie tilts her head to the side, and I go on.
“Back in February, right as I was starting to work on my screenplay, I started messaging in this horror community on there. And then Elm and I started chatting on our own. A lot.”
“Elm?” Katie asks.
“Jake,” I say. “But that’s his handle. Like on the threads, you know.”
Katie sighs, as if her brain only has enough space for one nerdy handle at a time, as we follow the road along the edge of a meadow.
“Okay. Great. He’s a cutie, and you obviously like him. But what in the world does that have to do with me? What the hell happened back there?”
I sigh. “I do like him. I like him a lot, actually.” It feels good to say it out loud, even though it doesn’t change what I know must follow. “But the thing is, I never expected to meet him in real life. He was just an online friend. This is crazy, but when I came up to work here, the first day at Hunter Mountain, I saw him. Turn here,” I say, pointing to where Jake has just turned.
She does, but her jaw hangs there, agape. “Wait, you didn’t know he was going to be here? It wasn’t, like, a community for horror nerds that also live in the Catskills?”
“No,” I say. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Hey,” Katie says. “You’re the one who’s woven this twisted web. I’m only trying to make sense of it. That’s nuts, though.”
“I know. And it’s even more nuts, because he’s from North Carolina. He only came up here because he’s staying with his aunt for the summer.”
The road curves into downtown Woodstock. Hippie shops. Organic eateries. Bluestone sidewalks. “You can park in the lot right here,” I say.
Katie turns in and finds a spot. She puts the car in park. “So he’s here. So that’s crazy. Fine. Why didn’t you just tell him it was you he was chatting to? How did you even—”
“I recognized him from his picture. He’d sent it to me before.”
Katie’s face scrunches up. “I still don’t get it.” Then her eyes widen. “Oh,” she says. “You told him you were at the NYU program that you didn’t get into. You let him believe that lit
tle lie because there was no harm in it, right? You were never going to meet him. But then you did.”
I look down at my hands. She’s got half of it right, but it’s so much worse than that.
“Wait,” Katie says. “But then why did he think I was you?”
I fiddle with the ends of my hair. “It’s embarrassing.”
“Just spit it out, Olivia.”
“Because of the photo,” I say.
“Huh?”
I sigh. “When Jake asked me for a photo, I sent him one of you.”
“Of me?” Katie asks. “But why in the world—”
Jake appears then, seemingly out of nowhere, knocking on the window. (A total horror movie cliché.)
Katie’s lips are formed into a thin line, but quickly, she turns away, opening the door. “Easy there, slugger. We were having a girl chat.”
Jake takes a quick step back and shuffles his feet. “Oh,” he says. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Katie laughs, then shoots me a confused look before turning back to him and plastering on a smile. “Don’t worry. We’ll make an exception for you, I suppose.”
I get out of the car, and the three of us walk through the public parking lot, down to the center of town, where Mill Hill Road meets Tinker Street. Jake walks by my side, hands shoved into his pockets as if he doesn’t know what to do with them with Katie right here beside us.
Part of me wants to reach out, take his hand in mine, get us back to where I thought we were not that long ago. But with her here, a physical embodiment of my lie, I don’t have the guts.
Besides, what if he likes Carrie, or who he thinks of as Carrie, as much as he likes me?
What if he likes her even more?
The burger restaurant is tiny. A little postage stamp of a place with wood-plank walls, reclaimed lighting, and a bar that stretches across most of the room.
“Three?” the girl asks. I nod, and she leads us to the back corner. I get in first, and Katie takes a seat on the other side.
Jake hovers, eyes flitting briefly from me to her and back again, as if he’s making a decision.
Both girls. One on each side. He’s going to choose Katie. I just know he’s going to choose Katie.
A server scoots by, forcing his hand, and he sits down next to me, but as soon as he’s in the booth, his eyes lock on her, on Katie, or Carrie—on the girl he thought he was chatting to all this time. God, this has gotten messy.
We rattle off our orders quickly. Burgers all around. A basket of sweet potato fries to share, sriracha aioli on the side. Menus get taken back, and Katie announces she has to go to the bathroom; she stands up quickly, leaving us alone.
He turns to me as soon as she’s gone, his hands on the table in front of him, not even close to touching mine. “I hope it’s okay I invited her. I know you said you wanted to talk, I just—it was such a crazy coincidence seeing her like that.” He pauses, as if debating saying something else. “I don’t know, she and I have been friends for months . . . I guess it just kind of popped out of my mouth.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “I mean, I was surprised, too, but of course I wanted her to come.” My smile feels weak and unconvincing, even as I deliver it. “She’s my best friend.”
Jake nods. “I still just can’t believe that your best friend is the girl I’ve been talking to all this time. It’s like, what are the odds?”
Better than you know, I want to say. But what are the odds that she’d ditch her dream program to come up here as a surprise? That’s another story. What are the odds that you, the guy from North Carolina, would be spending a summer in the Catskills, working at my very same job? That’s another story altogether.
Jake adjusts himself against the hard wooden booth and takes a sip of water. “What did you want to talk about anyway?”
I look down at my hands, nails ripped raw. There’s no way in hell I can tell him now, not like this, not with Katie set to return any moment. In minutes, my lies have gotten so much deeper. The girl in the bathroom isn’t Carrie. The screenplay I sent is mine, not hers. I was foolish to think I could just ask him out to burgers and tell him the truth while we dipped fried sweet potatoes in freaking sriracha aioli.
“Nothing huge, I’ll tell you later,” I say; and as I do, Katie comes back out, and our next act begins.
As we wait for the burgers to arrive, it’s his eyes I notice. His questions are run-of-the-mill—how long have you been friends, how did you meet, that kind of thing—but his eyes give me pause. They’re locked on Katie, wide and eager, taking her in as she details the meet-cute that has come to define our friendship: how she tripped, spilling her LaCroix all over me our first day of freshman year. She tells the story in grand detail, hands flitting about in her Katie way, and I swear his gaze never breaks from her once.
Meanwhile, tucked in the booth, I feel smaller, more invisible than ever, like everything from the last few weeks—trying the zip line, writing my screenplay—never happened. Next to Katie, they seem suddenly like tiny, insignificant accomplishments, nothing compared to her.
When she’s done—folding her hands, all, And that’s that—Jake finally turns to me. “You’ve been friends since then, and Carrie, I mean, Katie’s, er, horror obsession never rubbed off on you at all?”
“I guess not,” I say, his eyes already returning to hers.
Katie leans in, conspiratorially. “Olivia likes to think she’s above genre films like that. She’s more of a Meryl Streep person.” She winks not so discreetly at me. Luckily, Jake doesn’t seem to notice. Or maybe not so luckily, because his eyes are still on her.
“You know what’s funny,” Jake says, “is Meryl Streep was in two campy comedy-horror movies back to back in the eighties and nineties . . .”
“She-Devil and Death Becomes Her,” they say together.
Yes, friends, they actually say it together.
Katie tosses her head back in laughter. She’s good, I have to hand it to her, a veritable shapeshifter like the ghost in The Changeling, this old eighties movie I recommended to Jake. One he now thinks she recommended to him.
As she laughs, I realize something horrible.
I liked Elm from the moment I saw his photo. Scratch that, long before that. I loved our banter, and when I saw his picture, it was like confirmation of all I already felt.
If Jake felt the same way—and part of me knows he did—then it’s not just that he likes her, it’s more than that . . .
She’s his dream girl.
Come to life in the most serendipitous way.
I’m just the girl he met at work, the girl there to accompany him on a hike or to sit next to him on a bale of hay for lunch. She’s the interesting one, the writer, the horror lover, the Queen of the Quizzically Terrifying. I’m just Olivia.
As if confirming my fears, Jake breaks into a smile. “Oh, and by the way,” he says. “I still haven’t read the screenplay, but I can’t wait. I’ve just been . . .”
Turn to me, look at me, say you’ve been too preoccupied with me.
“Just been busy, I guess,” Jake says.
Katie tilts her head to the side and shoots me a quick I want all the deets look before resuming her role. “Too busy to read my pièce de résistance? You better get on that.”
Jake’s eyes finally catch mine, and he must see the look of horror written all over my face. “What is it?” he asks. “Are you okay?”
What is it? Only that she’s doing it all wrong, turning Carrie into someone she’s not at all. Carrie would never tease him so casually about not having read the screenplay, would never refer to The Bad Decision Handbook as some sort of “pièce de résistance.” It’s a shitty first draft, at best. I’m thankful he even wants to read it.
More than that, it’s that he’s sure to be so enchanted by her—all the nerdy-cool elements of Carrie wrapped up in a drop-dead gorgeous, enigmatic Katie package—he’s going to forget about Olivia altogether.
“It’s nothing,” I s
ay. “Just hungry, I guess.”
The edges of his fingers, pressed against the booth, find mine for a second. “I’m sure the food will be out soon,” he says. Then, just as quickly, he whips his hand away, as if he shouldn’t do that sort of thing anymore—not now, not when his Internet Dream Girl is sitting there across the table. As if he’s rethinking everything he thought about me.
The burgers come out then, and Katie and Jake dig in, but the mise-en-scène before me makes my gut ache. Katie, as usual, takes the spotlight, going on about how she has to arrange her burger just so to ensure that each bite is the perfect mix of lettuce, tomato, cheese, and meat; talking about how sriracha is the most overrated hot sauce, even though she knows I love it; detailing her entire bus ride up here, every single leaf, tree, and creek, Jake nodding along the entire time, as if he’s happy for someone to take charge.
It’s hard to blame him; I usually feel that way, too. Hell, I usually like her stealing the show. She’s the loud one, the natural star. When we’re together, there’s no pressure on me to fill the space with words. When she’s in the spotlight, it means it doesn’t shine on me, on my imperfect skin, or my moments of awkwardness, on the fact that I feel far more comfortable in an online community like Reddit than I ever did up on a stage.
But it’s different now, because she’s pretending to be Carrie—and not only is she getting it wrong, Jake doesn’t seem to mind at all. He seems to love it.
It’s different because for the last few weeks, I’ve let myself take the spotlight, just a little bit. And I’m not sure if I want to go back to the way it was before.
Jake sets his burger down and looks at me. “What’s wrong? I thought you were hungry.”
I take another bite of a fry. “I am,” I say quietly. “Just going slow.”
He nods. “You know what’s really crazy is, The Haunting of Sophia Blaine—that movie we got halfway through the other night—I originally recommended it to Carrie. I mean Katie.”
“No . . . really?” I ask, dipping another fry into the sauce but not quite bringing it up to my mouth.
Katie smiles. “Oh, you know I love a good ghost story.”
My pulse quickens, this time not from jealousy, but from fear that it’s all about to come crashing down.