by Sloane Tanen
After sifting through countless articles on “the new plaid,” pap smears, and applying self-tanners, I saw one of those “My Life” essay contests. The subject was “Living with Loss,” and the prize was VIP tickets to a secret “celebrity event,” publication of the winning essay in the April issue of Seventeen, and a partial academic scholarship. I liked the idea of attending a screening in L.A. with Robert Pattinson, a published essay would be just the thing to dress up my college application essays, and a partial scholarship could mean attending the college of my choice. Adios, Lake Oswego. I noticed that the deadline for submissions was the next day. It was perfect. I had no time to overthink it.
I’d never had any delusions about my writing, but I’d been told on more than one occasion that I was good. I don’t mean to sound conceited, but it’s true. I’m creative and I like telling stories—in print. I’m much more interesting on paper than in person. Everyone has always assumed I’d grow up to be a writer, including myself. I just rarely got around to writing anything other than text messages. On the rare occasions I kept up with my journal, the contents were so depressing they could have had me committed to a psychiatric ward. I mean, it’s not like I ever recorded anything good that happened in there. The few times that something pleasant happened in my life—and I do mean few—the last thing I was doing was writing down how great I felt. There were Little Golden Books for people who liked that sort of thing. So I’d developed a bit of a flair for expressing my particular brand of teenage angst. It was all very emo.
Anyway, seeing as I had nothing to do for the next seven hours, I decided to write “Good-bye Father: A Daughter’s Loss” by Francesca Manning. I wrote the long-winded, sad-sack piece of catharsis on Jordan’s computer. It was hilariously bad, but I felt much better having written it all down. I filled out the contact information and set up a new email address so nothing could be traced back to me online. I emailed the file to Seventeen.
***
“We need to process this as a family,” my mother said, reaching for our hands and glaring at my father. It was Sunday night, and the four of us were sitting around the kitchen table. My mother was purposefully sitting in what had always been my father’s seat. He looked appropriately displaced.
“I agree,” my dad said. “I was just waiting for the right time.”
“Like the night after my high school prom?” Emily cried, her voice filled with an atypical bitterness that somehow lifted my spirits. Her eyes were puffy and red.
“That wasn’t my intention, Em. You know that.”
“How can you do this?” she asked my father, tears streaming down her swollen cheeks. “It’s disgusting. How can you just abandon us all and start a new family? You’re a cliché! You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“That’s good, Emily,” my mother said, encouraging her with a stroke on the back. “Let it out.”
It was hard not to laugh when my mom said things like “let it out.” I marveled that she had real patients who paid her real money to deliver such drivel. We all listened to Emily weeping for a few minutes before my mother tossed out another chestnut of psychiatric hogwash.
“Fran?” my mother whispered gently. “Is there something you’d like to say to your father? This is an open dialogue.”
I shook my head. I didn’t dare make eye contact with him. I knew if I made eye contact with him I would start to cry. And if I started to cry, the whole conversation would devolve into some horrific family therapy session. I was in no way ready for that kind of “dialogue.” Honestly, I just wanted him to go away. I wished all of them would just go away.
“It’s OK, Fran,” my dad said. “We can talk about this.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” Emily said after a long silence.
“Fran,” my father said. “Please.”
“You’re having a baby?” I finally asked, staring at the linoleum counter as I traced imaginary figure eights with my forefinger.
“Yes,” he said.
“Then there’s nothing to say. You’ve made your choice.”
“Francesca,” my dad mumbled, choking on a sob he tried to smother with a cough, “please understand that you girls are not being replaced. I’m sorry for the pain this causes you, but I deserve a chance to be happy too. I love you girls. Nothing changes that. I am not abandoning you.”
I could hear my mother taking long, meditative breaths.
“There is nothing in this world more important to me than my relationship with the two of…”
“I have to take a shower,” I said, cutting my dad off as I slid my chair out from the table. I wasn’t interested in his excuses, and I certainly wasn’t going to tell him I understood what he was doing.
“Francesca,” he pleaded, reaching for my hand.
“Let her go,” I heard my mother say as I ran up the stairs to my bedroom. If my father could behave however he wanted to, with no thought about how his actions might affect me, I saw no reason why I had to give him the big, daughterly OK. He was on his own.
Sixteen Going on Seventeen
When I received the call from Seventeen six weeks later I thought it was joke.
“Is this Francesca Manning?” a woman’s voice had asked on the other line. It was a hot June day, and I’d called in sick at the library. Nobody was around. My mom was at work, Jordan was in Colorado with her family, and Emily was visiting our cousin in California as a graduation gift before leaving for college in the fall. I was studying a picture of Uma Thurman without makeup on the cover of Star. I considered saying no. Whoever was calling, it wasn’t anybody cute, and I was busy.
“Who’s calling?” I asked.
“This is Courtney Gallagher from Seventeen magazine.”
Seventeen magazine? I sat up. With all the drama following my dad’s big news, I had completely forgotten about the essay. It felt like years since I’d written that schlock. And I seriously blocked out that I’d actually sent it in.
“This is Francesca.”
“Congratulations, Ms. Manning, you’ve been selected as the winner in this year’s nonfiction writing contest.”
“Very funny, Jordan,” I said, deflating.
“I’m sorry?”
“Jordan?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re not joking?”
“Joking? Is this Ms. Manning?”
“Jordan?”
“Who is Jordan?”
“Are you for real? I won? Are you serious?” I asked, allowing myself to feel excited. I was momentarily forgetting that the prize was having the essay actually published for the entire world to see. I kind of felt like I might start to cry, but I managed to get a grip.
“We all loved your essay about your father’s death and the comfort you found in books. It was very moving.”
OMG. It all came back to me in a flash. I’d written the essay as if my father had died in a car accident. It was so much easier to write that way, and I was so mad at him about the baby I half wished it were true. Jesus. There was even a passage about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and how both Francie Nolan and I could only blossom into adults—yes, I used the word blossom—once the burden of a difficult but beloved father had passed. Holy shit. I’m dead meat, I thought. I wondered if I should admit this lapse into fiction to Mrs. Gallagher, but then I remembered the celebrity event and the academic scholarship part of the prize. Visions of R. Patz and Stanford clouded my common sense.
“Thanks,” I said. I was looking at a picture of my dad taken two days ago at his forty-sixth birthday party. I started to think about all those authors being publicly flayed on Oprah for faking their memoirs and panicked again.
“Um, Mrs. Gallagher—”
“And the theme,” Courtney Gallagher continued, “is perfect for encouraging literacy in developing countries where loss and recovery is a day-to-day trial.” She interrupted me before my feeble attempt at coming clean could be finished.
<
br /> “Thanks. So where am I going?” I joked, envisioning Gwyneth Paltrow and me macro-cleansing together in her London flat or Justin Timberlake and me presenting “Best Kiss” at the MTV Awards.
“Africa,” Mrs. Gallagher said, and she didn’t sound like she was kidding either.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m getting the idea you didn’t receive the email sent out to the finalists last month, Ms. Manning?”
“I didn’t,” I admitted, remembering the email account I’d set up and never bothered to check again. “I didn’t even know I was a finalist.”
“Well, no wonder you sound so surprised! You were selected from a very competitive pool.” She sounded like she was going to burst.
“Wow,” I said, mimicking her enthusiasm while imagining the disappointed pool of my worthy and honest peers.
“Well then, in addition to the partial scholarship to the college of your choice,” she continued, “you’ll also be going on a celebrity tour of Madagascar and other regions of East Africa through GLEA.”
“GLEA?” I asked.
“Girls’ Literacy East Africa,” she patiently explained. “It’s a branch of UNICEF.”
“Oh.”
“The winner documents the entire trip for Seventeen,” she continued. “Writer’s dream, right?”
“Does this mean the original essay won’t be published?” I asked, feeling a wave of relief wash over me.
“Of course not! Your essay will be prominently featured in our April issue along with your diary of the GLEA tour.”
Crap. I could feel a raging case of hysterical hives brewing under my skin. I reluctantly gave Mrs. Gallagher my mother’s work phone number and email so they could discuss the details regarding my passport, inoculations, travel, and accommodations. I remembered thinking that it was typical that the one good thing that had ever happened to me was about to condemn me forever. What was the matter with me? They’d ship me off to juvie for sure. My father would never speak to me again. Even Jordan would be horrified to discover that her best friend was a liar and an imposter. And then I had an idea.
“I know this is sort of unusual, but I wonder if you could not discuss the subject of my essay with my mom?” I asked Gallagher. “Maybe you could tell her it was a fiction writing contest or something?”
“I can’t do that, Francesca.” She paused suspiciously. “Why don’t you want her to know about the beautiful essay you wrote? I’m sure she would be very proud of you.”
“It’s not that I don’t want her to know. I just don’t want to tell her yet. She’s still really raw on the subject of my dad’s dying, and I don’t want to upset her,” I lied. “I’d like to show it to her once it’s published. That way I can surprise her without having to deal with the psychological fallout beforehand. It might upset her now.”
Gallagher paused again and, much to my surprise, agreed to simply tell my mother that I requested that the subject of the article remain confidential until publication. That would do. I could figure something out between now and then.
Once I’d managed to postpone my inevitable exposure as a swindler, I could focus on the larger issue at hand—that I had to go to Africa with famous people. I couldn’t help but feel this was some karmic revenge for my secret tabloid fixation. I mean, I wanted to put something fancy on my college application as much as the next girl, but I didn’t want to travel to Africa with Spencer Pratt for the privilege. I was more of a hide-in-the-hall-and-judge-people-behind-their-backs sort of girl. And what would my dad say when he found out I’d killed him off? I was pretty sure his new baby would never do something like that. I mean, what on earth had possessed me to enter a writing contest for Seventeen magazine anyway? How completely cheesy. I didn’t want anyone reading my writing. And I certainly didn’t want to go to Africa with a bunch of celebrities. I could barely talk to my peers in the school cafeteria. Seriously, I could barely talk to Mrs. Gallagher. And what was I going to do without Jordan? I rubbed my phone like a worry doll.
On Not Getting Papped
I went to the bathroom one last time before the plane landed at John F. Kennedy airport in New York. My thighs look distinctly thinner, I thought proudly as I balanced myself over the lavatory toilet. It seemed my fear of being outed as a fraud, coupled with my anxiety about the actual trip, had combined in the not unwelcome outcome of a nine-pound weight loss. Between that and my frequent trips to the bathroom at home, my mother was totally convinced that her little lecture about junk food had indeed driven me to bulimia. All I could think of in the days before I left was that it really was too bad I was going, as I’d finally gotten a little leverage in the family. I swear my mother likes me more when she’s worried about me. It gives her maternal vomit-outs a place to land.
I turned on my phone the minute the plane landed in New York.
There was a message from Jordan.
F:
Are you there yet? Tell John Mayer to stop calling me. It’s annoying and I have a boyfriend. I hear Brad Pitt is pregnant with Viennese quintuplets. Does he look chubb?
J.
Starcasm. Jordan didn’t share my hidden fascination with pop culture. She genuinely didn’t care how much Kate Bosworth weighed. I admired her for this and tried to mimic her casual tone.
J:
Who cares? Just landed in NY. Not even off the plane. Stand by.
F.
Of course I did care, and the prospect of meeting everyone was exciting but was also giving me diarrhea. That said, I read US Weekly and comforted myself with the fact that A-listers didn’t fly commercial—in groups. I was pretty sure J-Lo flew private, and I certainly wasn’t going to be intimidated by fringe actors. Tara Reid could suck it. I took out my phone to jot down some notes. My assignment was to document my impressions of the experience for Seventeen from take-off in New York to landing at Dulles, two weeks from now. I was holding my thumbs above the keyboard, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. I was thinking of that animated movie Madagascar. Maybe those crazy refugee animals would be on our flight.
When I got into the terminal at JFK, the first thing I saw was a man in a gray suit holding up a white sign that read “Francesca Manning.” I looked around stupidly as if there might be another Francesca Manning on my plane. I walked over to him and introduced myself, forgetting the bright pink laminated name tag I’d been forced to wear by a representative from Seventeen at the airport in Portland. I blushed. A name tag. How mortifying. He nodded silently. I nodded back.
“Bags?” he asked. I nodded again. He nodded. Weirdo. He wrestled my carry-on bag away from me, and I practically chased him down an escalator to baggage claim. I felt like I was in a Kafka novel standing next to him as we both stared silently ahead at the carousel going around and around. My bags came out about twenty minutes later, and Mr. Chatty put them on a cart.
We started walking again. And we walked and we walked and we walked. I struggled to keep pace with him. I assumed we were going to the Admirals Club (where I knew the VIPs wait—I was feeling VIP-ish), but I never saw the club, and so the endless walking continued. I turned to ask Chatty where we were going, but his graveyard expression put me off. And then I saw that we were leaving the airport. This made me edgy. I followed him through two glass doors, and we were outside, immediately enveloped by hot, steamy New York breath. My eyes closed against the sun as it reflected off the white pavement. Just as I thought things couldn’t get any weirder, I opened my eyes and noticed a lone, unmarked black sedan waiting at the curb with a suited driver leaning on the passenger side. He raised his hand in a halfhearted salute. And all I could think was: I’m going to die.
Newspaper clippings of teenage abductions and prostitution rings flashed through my head. I started to sweat. “Your car, Ms. Massing,” Chatty Guy said.
“Manning,” I corrected, panicking. “I thought we were flying out of JFK?”
“No, Teterboro.”
“Teter who?”
“Teterboro,” h
e said again, like this cleared anything up.
As if in some choreographed ballet, Chatty slid the baggage cart to the driver, who began silently loading my luggage into the car trunk. When he was done, he walked around and opened the back door for me. As I slid into the cool, cushy back seat—complete with magazines and chilled water—I thought of the million times I’d seen news stories about young girls getting into cars with strangers and thinking what kind of idiot would do such a thing. Apparently, that would be me.
My heart was beating through my chest, but I was too embarrassed to say anything. I cut to a fantasy where Diane Sawyer was interviewing me about my abduction.
DS: How did your captors manage to get you into the black town car, Ms. Manning? Was there a struggle?
ME: No struggle, Diane.
DS: So what happened? she’d ask, her voice brimming with television concern.
ME: I just followed a strange man in a gray suit who told me to get into the car with another strange man in a gray suit.
DS: And why did you get into the car without a fight?
ME: I didn’t want to make a scene. And the car had air-conditioning.
DS: So, just to clarify, you followed a strange man through a crowded airport and then got into a black car with another strange man because you didn’t want to make a scene and because the car was well air-conditioned?
ME: That’s about the size of it, Diane.
I’m a role model for young girls everywhere.
I took out my phone. Perhaps I should tell someone my whereabouts just in case.
J:
Music Express Limo, License plate number 2K159.
F.
After I sent the text, I did my best to settle in and enjoy the ride. For all I knew, this was perfectly normal, and really, I was quite comfortable. I pressed the window and lock buttons just to make sure they worked. They did. I crossed my fingers and closed my eyes. The driver asked if I’d like to hear the radio, which I took as a good sign. I didn’t think a molester would be so polite. Just in case, I dialed 911 and suspended my finger above the Send button.