Backlash

by Sarah Littman

  That’s when I realize I have to continue, and I laugh to myself as she passes, because I know that the guy she’s seriously started crushing on is just make-believe. That actually, that guy is me, her old BFF Breanna Connors. How do you like that, Lara, sweetie, honey, babe?

  I think it was because I was getting bored of flirting with Lara that I decided to let Marci in on the secret. Until then, my alter ego as Christian DeWitt was a secret between Gmail, Facebook, and me. But Marci was over one night around the time Christian would normally be chatting with Lara, and I was getting tired of having to keep thinking of nice things to say to the girl. I decided that Marci might be a source of useful inspiration.

  At first I was really nervous about how Marci would react. I was worried she would think I was some kind of freak for doing this to Lara. Turns out she thought it was hilarious.

  “Wait — Christian DeWitt is you?” she said.

  “Yeah. Well, actually, he’s this Abercrombie model,” I told her, bringing up the model’s website. “But the ‘guy’ Lara is crushing on? That’s me.”

  Just then, I noticed that Lara had come online.

  “Check it out. She’s online,” I said. “Want to flirt with her?”

  Marci giggled. “Oooooh yeah! Flirting is my specialty!”

  She was speaking the truth. It’s one of the reasons I hang out with her. I keep hoping her flirting skills will rub off, and I’ll be able to interact with guys without coming off as a total dork. I mean, I’m great at flirting from behind a computer screen when I’m pretending to be Christian, but put me in front of a real boy and I get tongue-tied.

  I started off the conversation, asking Lara how her day went. She went on and on with all her boring cheerleading stuff: how she’d mastered some new tumble and she was going to be second from the top of the pyramid. Like some guy would actually care about any of that. If there were an Olympics for Boring, Lara would be the all-time gold medalist.

  Marci was cracking up. “You’d think she’d never talked to a guy before,” she said. “Let me have a turn!”

  Marci doesn’t know about Lara and me and how we used to be best friends, and about Lara’s problems in middle school. She doesn’t know what I know: that Christian probably is the first guy who has ever shown interest in Lara. And he’s not even real.

  “Sure,” I said, letting her sit in the chair.

  “I know!” Marci said. “Why don’t we pretend Christian’s got a big dance coming up at his school and have him hint that he’s going to invite Lara?”

  “Why didn’t I think of that?!” I said. “I’ve been getting so bored of flirting with her. At least this will give us something else to talk about so I don’t have to keep lying and telling her she’s cute and pretty.”

  “Lara’s kind of cute,” Marci said. “I mean, she’s not a total dog.”

  For some reason this annoyed me. She didn’t know Lara when she was Lardo. I was the one who was friends with that girl. I was the one who had to listen to Lardosaurus cry and complain.

  “Well, she’s not my type,” I said, trying to cover up my annoyance with a joke. “Anyway, let’s look on the East River High website and see if they have an actual dance coming up, just in case Lara thinks to check.”

  We were in luck. The weekend before Thanksgiving there’s the East River High homecoming parade, football game, and dance. That gave us plenty of time to string Lara along with the hopes of a fake date.

  So do you have any big plans the weekend before Thanksgiving? Marci (as Christian) asked Lara.

  Not really. I think we march in the homecoming parade. The cheerleaders, I mean.

  You don’t have a dance?

  Well, there’s a dance, but I doubt I’ll go.

  Why not?

  Oh, you know. Not my scene.

  So … if we had a dance at East River, that wouldn’t be your scene?

  Marci and I laughed as we watched the cursor blink, picturing Lara completely freaking in front of her computer as she tried to figure out how to respond. It took her long enough.

  I guess that would depend … on who I was there with.

  So, hypothetically, if you were there with someone like … me?

  “I wish I could see her face right now,” I said. “I bet she’s peeing herself.”

  “I know, right?” Marci said. “Come on, Lara, tell your boyfriend what he wants to hear!”

  “I’m not her boyfriend yet,” I said. “Don’t rush things.”

  “You’re not her boyfriend at all!” Marci said.

  She had a point. But I’m the real Christian. He’s my creation. I wanted to be the one in control, the one setting the pace.

  If it were … hypothetically someone like you, then it would definitely be more of my scene. : )

  “Look! She went smiley face on him!” Marci said.

  “DON’T ASK HER YET!” I said frantically. “Tell her you’ve got to go.”

  Marci looked at me like I’d flipped.

  “Why? We were just starting to have fun.”

  “It’s more fun to string her along,” I said. “That’s what Christian would do if he were a real guy, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Marci sighed as she typed, Talk soon, gotta go.

  I could just imagine Lara’s disappointment as Christian logged off so abruptly after teasing her with the idea of the dance.

  A few years ago, my phone would have been ringing right away, and we’d have dissected every sentence of the chat for meaning. But that’s the beauty of this whole thing. I know exactly how Lara thinks.

  Two days later, I tell Marci she has to come with me to the media center during our open period because I’ve got something to show her.

  “This better be worth it,” she says. “Because Taylor Goodhew is in the student center, and no offense, but he’s a lot cuter than you are.”

  Marci’s one of my best friends, but when she’s pursuing a hot guy, she’ll dump Jenny and me in a heartbeat. That’s just the way she is. It’s annoying, but you learn to live with it because she’s fun to hang out with the rest of the time.

  “You’ll have time to go to the student center afterward,” I tell her. “Trust me, you want to see this.”

  I find a free computer that isn’t close to other students and go to Wanelo. I know Lara’s screen name from back when we were friends. And I show Marci the “Cute dresses for the Dance” list she’s set up.

  “Oh. My. God,” Marci says so loudly I have to tell her to shush before the librarian does. She lowers her voice. “The girl is, like, totally delusional. She’s making lists of dresses to go to a dance with a guy that doesn’t even exist!”

  “I know! Isn’t it hysterical?” I tell her. “And look at the dresses!”

  “This one just screams loser,” Marci says.

  “What about this one?” I say. “It’s like she wants to be Ariel from The Little Mermaid but in tenth grade.”

  We go through the entire list, shredding all of Lara’s choices. Marci’s having so much fun dissing Lara, she spends the whole open period with me and doesn’t even care that she missed going to the student center to hang out with “way cuter” Taylor Goodhew.

  NOT A-FREAKING-GAIN. I am so sick of this! Every time I need the computer to do homework, Lara’s on it. I thought since she made varsity cheerleading she’d be out of the house more and getting a life.

  To be fair, she is out of the house more at practice and stuff, but the problem is when she comes home, she’s glued to the computer. And judging from how she’s all smiley and smug, I’m betting you anything she’s not doing homework all the time she’s on it, even though whenever I say I need to get on she swears she is.

  Type, type, type.

  Plink!

  That’s Facebook chat. She so isn’t doing homework, the giggling, lying dork.

  That’s it. It’s my turn.

  “Lara, I need the computer now. I’ve got homework to do. You’re just messing around.”

 
“I’m not,” she says. “I’m chatting to someone about my homework.”

  Seriously, I can’t understand why God doesn’t just strike her down with a lightning bolt. It’s so obvious she’s telling great big whopping lies.

  “I’ll give you twenty minutes, and then I’m calling Mom,” I say, furious that, as usual, I’m the one who ends up giving in and letting Lara get her way.

  Being the younger sister stinks. Especially when your older sister has “issues,” and everyone expects you to tiptoe around her in case she loses it again.

  Especially when she’s completely fine now. But everyone got so used to her not being fine that my parents still treat her like a piece of fragile porcelain.

  Me? I’m their beef jerky kid. As far as Mom and Dad are concerned, I’m a nonperishable item, tough as old boot leather.

  I’m going to ask for my own laptop for my birthday. I don’t care what the stupid police chief says. And if my parents say no, I’m just going to save up the money my grandparents give me for birthdays and Christmas and whatever until I can afford to buy one for myself. Then I can do my homework whenever I want to, instead of having to work around my faking-it fragile sister.

  I have to get away from Lara and her annoying giggling, but I don’t want to go all the way upstairs. I want her to know I’m hovering in wait. So I go out on the patio to text Cara and Maddie.

  The sun is sinking behind the trees, and I see the silhouette of the old tree fort, the one my dad made with Mr. Connors, where Lara and Bree used to spend so much time together before they stopped hanging out.

  I spot movement in the shadows beneath the tree, a faint rustle of the dried leaves piled around its base. And then I see a person climbing up the wooden rungs nailed to the trunk. Liam.

  These days we smile at each other on the bus and when we see each other in the halls, but since our families stopped hanging out, we don’t see each other as much as we used to. I suddenly find myself wondering why. It’s not like we ever had a problem with each other. I guess we were used to our friendship just happening. Or maybe he got embarrassed about hanging around with a girl because his friends were teasing him. I swear, the minute I started wearing a bra, some of the guys at school started acting all weird.

  I glance inside. Lara’s still on the computer. She’s still got eighteen minutes, according to the time on my cell, so I figure, what the heck? I walk over to the bottom of the big old oak, hoping I don’t scare Liam with the sound of my feet crunching through the leaves.

  As I start climbing up the wooden rungs, I whistle so he knows someone is coming up. His head pops out of the doorway, and he shines the flashlight app on his cell down in my face, almost blinding me.

  “Do you mind?” I complain.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he says. “I was afraid it was Bree.”

  I climb up the rest of the way and crawl in to join him. The tree house seems so much smaller than I remember. A spiderweb catches in my hair as I lean against the wall, breathing in the must and mold of disuse. Liam lights a candle, and it glows, flickering, showing the boy-band posters my sister and Bree had tacked up on the wall back when they were into that kind of thing. Back when they were still friends.

  “So what brings you up here?” Liam asks.

  “I had to get away from Lara,” I say. “And I saw you climbing up so …”

  “Funny that,” Liam says with a wry grin. “I came up here to get away from Bree.”

  “Remember how they always used to keep us out of here, even though it was supposed to be for all of us?”

  “Oh yeah,” Liam says. “And we’d be stuck down below complaining about how not fair it was, but not knowing how to do anything about it.”

  “How did they get away with being so mean to us?”

  “ ’Cause they’re the older sisters?” Liam suggests. “Because that’s the way it is in families?”

  “I guess. So is Bree still mean to you?”

  “Not mean. Just … annoying. Seriously annoying. Sometimes it feels like the house isn’t big enough for the both of us — that’s when I escape out here. Bree hasn’t been up here for, like, two years or something.”

  “It looks like no one’s been up here. It’s gross. You should clean the place up if you’re planning to hang out here regularly.”

  He laughs, the candlelight reflecting on the whiteness of his teeth.

  “Wow. You’re such a girl, Syd.”

  “Duh, really? I hadn’t noticed.”

  Some guys get all weird when I joke around with them. But not Liam. Even though we hadn’t hung out in a while, he definitely gets my humor. We used to play Mad Libs and do silly stuff like try to make all the words have to do with farts and poop. It made us laugh so hard our stomachs hurt. Our parents called us the little hyenas, because we were always cracking up about something.

  “Why did we stop getting together as families just because Lara and Bree got all teenage girl and fell out?” Liam bursts out suddenly. “Does the whole freaking world revolve around my sister?”

  Yes! It’s as if the candle’s glow has reached to the very deepest part of me, the part that I don’t want to let people see because I’m afraid it makes me an awful person. But suddenly, the person I’m so afraid of, Deepest Darkest Syd, realizes she’s not alone.

  “Tell me about it,” I say. “When you’re normal in my house, you might as well be invisible.”

  “How … is … Lara?” he asks.

  “Oh, she’s fine and being totally annoying and inconsiderate, not that my parents would ever see that. That’s why I was outside. She’s hogging the computer every night, pretending she’s doing homework, but really she’s chatting.”

  “ ‘Totally annoying and inconsiderate.’ Wow. Sounds just like Bree,” Liam says.

  We sit, watching the flickering candle, enjoying a moment of silent younger-sibling solidarity.

  “Why didn’t our moms stay friends?” he asks. “Or our dads?”

  He doesn’t say, “Or us?” but it’s there, hanging unspoken like a ripe fruit unpicked, and now that I’m sitting here with him in the candlelight, I wonder, too. Because unlike all my other friends, Liam gets it.

  “Mom got all caught up in the city council stuff, I guess.”

  “Yeah, she’s, like, a big politician these days, huh?”

  “Ugh, I know.”

  “And my mom’s determined to be the real estate queen of Lake Hills,” Liam said. “You can’t go past a bus shelter without seeing her face.”

  “Tell me the truth … Have you ever felt like drawing a mustache on her poster with a Sharpie when you’ve been really mad at her?”

  Liam bursts out laughing. “How did you know? That was the one secret I thought I was taking to the grave.”

  “Probably because I’ve felt like defacing Mom’s campaign posters once or twice,” I admit. “But at least I only have to deal with that every two years. You have to see your mom on the bus shelter all the time.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it. I mean I love Mom and all, but … ‘Everything I touch turns to sold’? Cringe!”

  “Well, what about my mom? ‘Kathy Kelley — Putting the public in public service.’ As long as she doesn’t have to admit that there’s anything the matter with our family in public, that is.”

  Speaking of things wrong with our family, I check the time on my cell. It’s been more than twenty minutes.

  “I’ve got to go. I told Lara she had to get off the computer in twenty minutes so I could do my homework, and her time is past being up.”

  “Wait,” Liam says. “I … it’s just … even if our families aren’t friends anymore, do you think you and I could maybe still … you know, hang out sometime?”

  Even in the candlelight, I can see him blushing through his freckles. He means like friends, right?

  “Yeah,” I say, hoping that’s what he means, because I’m not sure how I’d feel about anything more. “See you in school. G’night.”

  “Careful
going down. I’ll shine the light for you.”

  I climb down the slat ladder bathed in the light from his flashlight app. We call good night to each other again when I reach the bottom. I crunch through the dead leaves back to my house. When I let myself in through the sliding door, my cold fingers and cheeks tingle from the warmth.

  When I get into the living room, though, it’s my temper that flares when I realize Lara is still on the computer, giggling and typing and so obviously not doing homework.

  “Lara, get off! It’s my turn.”

  “Just give me two more minutes,” she says.

  “I’m calling Mom,” I say, pressing her number in Favorites.

  Lara’s still typing.

  My mom picks up and she’s not happy.

  “Sydney, I’m in the middle of a council meeting. What is it?”

  “Lara won’t get off the computer, and I need it to do my homework. She’s not even doing work, she’s chatting.”

  “You interrupted me at a meeting —”

  “Mom, I need to do my homework!”

  “Put her on.”

  I hand Lara my phone. “Mom wants to talk to you.”

  I can hear Mom yelling at Lara, furious that we interrupted her while she’s busy doing oh-so-important city council business at her meeting. Lara’s typing as she’s listening, but she finally says, “Okay, FINE!,” hangs up, logs off, throws my phone onto the table, and storms upstairs.

  I’m fuming with anger and frustration as I start my homework.

  But then I think about hanging out with Liam earlier and how that was the best part of the day. At least Lara can’t ruin that.

  THERE ARE pros and cons to having told Marci about Christian. In the pro column, she’s been giving me ideas on how to keep my flirtation with Lara going. I guess it helps that she’s got a lot more experience with flirting than I have. Marci’s way more advanced than I am on the guy front. She’s done stuff that I only think about — and even then I feel guilty.