A lie.
I’m frozen, my phone wedged up against my ear. She’s breathing heavily, betrayed, waiting for me to answer.
I don’t know if I can.
“I . . . I . . . I . . . ,” I stutter. I can’t help it. It’s not even a ploy to buy me time—literally cannot say anything. If I was a computer, it’d be the blue screen of death.
“Yeah? And?” Amy’s voice is like ice.
“I . . . I . . .”
“Oh, forget it. If you can’t even think up an excuse, then why bother?”
The line cuts dead.
Amy’s gone.
50: #personalhell
I stare at my phone. First Tori, now Amy. What’s the third thing going to be? I start the fucking apocalypse?
I’ve got to fix this. And quickly. My window of opportunity is ticking away, and fast. So, what? A text. I’m better with those. So much easier to express yourself virtually than actual talking.
Well, it usually is.
Amy . . . I dunno how to say this so I’m just gonna come out with it. I wanted to be at uni. Like, properly. I applied last year but didn’t get in. But Mum was so pleased I’d gone for it, I couldn’t bear to tell her I’d failed . . . so I told her I got in. She was over the moon. Things were difficult after Dad left and she got ill and it was the only thing that seemed to lift her. When the rejection came in I had no idea what to do, so I decided to . . . ignore it. She threw me a little party. Just me and her and brad, but it was nice. Kind of like how things used to be in the old days. She was so out of it, she didn’t ask about how it was going to work, you know, the money and everything. I wasn’t going to go ahead with the charade, not really, but then I turned up at the beginning of the year and all these people were going inside and no one was checking anything so I just tagged along and before I knew it I was in the lecture. It was that easy. If I’m honest, I wasn’t even going to keep it up—just go to a few lectures, let it fizzle out . . . Mum would never have noticed. But then I met u in the library and I got in too deep. I didn’t mean to do any harm—it was something to do to keep me occupied, and was a perfect opportunity to reinvent myself. You know, play the student, maybe make some friends.
I pause as my thumbs twitch.
I didn’t mean for any of this to go this far, but I’d spent too long kidding myself that I kind of bought into the lie . . . I’m sorry. I definitely didn’t do this to hurt you or anyone else. I suppose I could have told you the truth, but in a way, I wanted to believe the lie myself. Please don’t hate me. I am so sorry. xxxx
It’s a hell of a long text, probably the longest I’ve ever written, and it hardly scratches the surface of what I really want to say, mainly because even now, I don’t really know what I want to say. I pretended to be a student because I’m a loser and just wanted something to fill my time? Something to give me a semblance of normality? Something that made me feel like a functioning human being rather than a complete waste of skin and air?
I shake my head, burying my face into my hands, phone and all. Ugh, is there anything worse than a self-pitying fat girl? Time to face up to the truth. I did something stupid, and I fucked it up—badly. How the hell did I ever think this would end in any other way? I have literally no one to blame but myself. All I can hope is that Amy will reply and give me a chance to make amends, which, let’s face it, is probably more than I deserve. And even that manages to sound whiny.
My phone buzzes against my cheek. It’s not a text but another call. I don’t want to answer it, but I kind of have to answer it, because this is Amy replying, and I did just pray for that, so . . .
“Hi,” I croak.
“What the fuck are you on about? You were going to stop pretending to be a student, but you didn’t because you met me in the library that day? Are you blaming me for your colossal fuckup?”
She doesn’t shout at me. No, she’s beyond shouting and into angry hissing territory. I cringe back, my eyes screwed up tight, shame infecting every single part of my body.
“No—no, of course not. I—I—” I’m starting to hyperventilate, the shame giving way to panic, because I don’t know how to make this all better. “I knew it was wrong. Know it was wrong. But I wanted to be normal so badly. To have a second chance. And you gave that to me! I even tried to keep you at arm’s length at first, but—but—you’re so nice and so sweet, and you wanted to be my friend, and I’ve never had that before, and—and—” I can’t carry on. If I do, it’s just going to come out as one big Chewbacca-esque sob.
“You lied to me, Beth, and that is not okay. That is never okay!” There’s a horrible, crackly quality to Amy’s voice now; I think I preferred the angry hissing.
“I know! I know. I—if I could go back and change it, I would, but I can’t. Amy? Please don’t cut me off. I’m still me. The uni thing was the only lie, everything else is true. Amy, please . . .”
My breath is hitching now, and so is hers.
“P-pretending to be a student is wrong,” Amy says. “You’re not just lying, you’re s-stealing, too! People pay loads to go to uni. How long were you going to let me think you were legit? Until graduation? How were you expecting to sit exams? Seriously, Beth, I just can’t understand how you thought this was going to work!”
“I know, okay! I know. It’s ridiculous. I’m ridiculous. I just wanted to join in, be like everyone else. I didn’t want to be a loser anymore. Is that so hard to grasp? I just wanted a clean slate and a chance to be normal, to do things normal people do—”
“Normal people don’t pretend to be things they’re not!”
“You don’t have to tell me that. I am totally aware of how mental all this sounds, but when you’re in the thick of it, looking for a way out, you do whatever you can. You don’t care how stupid it is, or how it might affect other people, or even what the consequences might be for you. You just—do it. And then boom, it’s done, and you’re stuck. Catch twenty-two. I couldn’t tell you because I didn’t want to hurt you, so instead I just kept pretending.”
That’s it. If I say anything else, I’ll just be rehashing old ground. If she doesn’t get it now, I don’t think she ever will.
“Amy, I can’t say sorry enough. You’re my best friend, my first, proper, real best friend, and I don’t think I can stand losing you too—”
I clap my hand over my mouth to stop the sob from escaping, because I know if it does, it’ll never stop. I can hear Amy breathing on the other end of the line: short, ragged little gasps that speak of grief and betrayal.
“I trusted you, Beth. That’s the bottom line. I trusted you, and you lied to me.”
Not the only thing she’s lied about, buttercup! my internal nemesis squawks gleefully. You wait until you find out about all the other nasty shit she’s done—you’ll *puke* . . .
I close my eyes. “I know,” I whisper. Well, what else am I going to say?
“Truth is, I don’t think I even know you. Not really. If you can lie about this, how can I be sure about anything else?”
I can’t answer that. But I’m going to have to try.
“You do know me. Everything else is me. Okay, so I’m not a student, but I’m still Beth . . .” I think. I’m on shaky ground here, because even I’m not sure who I am most of the time. “Please. I’m not asking for you to pretend this never happened, but you’re my friend, and I love you, and I don’t want to lose you.”
I love you. I’ve said that more times in the last few weeks than I ever thought I would in my whole life. There is a power to that phrase, one I didn’t realize it had. It isn’t just an expression of feelings; it comes in so many forms, with all kinds of baggage and a whole host of responsibilities—the first of which is “don’t stomp all over the person you claim to love.”
I kind of feel like I’ve fallen at the first hurdle.
My fingers curl around my phone, gripping it so tightly I think I might crush it.
Finally, Amy answers. “I don’t know, Beth. I—I need time. This is a lot to process.
I’m sorry. I’ll call you later.”
The phone goes dead.
So that’s it, is it? That’s your lot, missy, you’ve well and truly screwed up so you might as well forget it all. For fuck’s sake! How does anyone manage this? One false step and it all falls down around your ears.
I stare at my mute phone, and a sudden plume of anger cuts through the sickly dread. This isn’t fair. I try to do the right thing, and I lose Tori. Amy finds out about something that, let’s face it, doesn’t actually affect her in the slightest, and now she’s acting as if I’m some kind of criminal. I mean, come on! So I sat in on a few lectures. I wrote some essays. She even copied me—if anything, she should be thanking me! I basically wrote her last assignment for her; didn’t she wonder why I wasn’t that bothered about us being accused of plagiarism? If anything, I’ve done her a favor. I’ve gone to stupid clubs with her, listened to her twitter on about how terrible her charmed life is, done half her coursework for her . . . but no, all of that means the square root of shag-all, simply because I’m not a “proper” student.
In the grand scheme of things, what I did was nothing. Less than nothing. No one died. No one got hurt. Hell, no one but her even knows!
But she does know. And I know. And I also know nothing will ever be the same between us again.
I should have known things would end up like this. Nice things don’t happen to Fuglies. This is just the natural order being restored. Our Cosmic Overlords have decided to hit the reset button. I’ll just have to go back to living online. Who needs real life, anyway? I could just melt back into the background. It would be easy enough. Amy doesn’t know where I live. Block her number. Block her on social media. Pretend that she never existed, that I just made her up, my new imaginary friend. No one would ever need to know.
I blow out a trembling sigh, hoping that might relieve the tension trapped within me, but nope, it’s still there. And I know, deep down, that ghosting Amy would be the worst thing I could ever do. Because she’s the real deal. A proper friend. And no matter how many excuses I might try and make, my fugliness had nothing to do with this. This one’s on me. I lied, and now I’m paying the price. Funny how you only realize how good things are when you’re on the edge of losing it all.
51: #theruleofthree
It’s been five days since my fight with Tori, and two since Amy confronted me. I haven’t heard from either of them, but then again, I haven’t tried contacting them either, so I guess it balances out. I suppose I was hoping that if I gave them some space, they’d eventually cool off and come back to me.
This morning, though, I can’t log into Facebook. It’s doing that “I’m going to randomly throw you out of your own account and make you log back in” thing again. It pisses me off when websites do that, forcing you to scrabble around your brain to remember which incarnation of your go-to password you’re using at that particular moment. For some people, that’s a pretty simple task, but that’s because they are total muppets who still think password123 or their date of birth is a good idea. Since I am not one of those muppets, my passwords tend to be jumbles of random letters and numbers, or at least they look random unless you know all the things I like and can figure out the little codes I have for them.
First attempt . . . no. Second . . . dammit! Third . . . what, wrong again? A sneaking sense of something not being right steals over me, which is saying something considering my whole life is generally one big suspicion that something isn’t right.
Okay. Hammering in more passwords isn’t going to help here. I bring up Google and take in a deep breath: Beth Soames+facebook. The first hit is my Facebook account, which is both good (don’t have to wade through potentially loads of horrible stuff I never knew existed about me) and extremely worrying, as I usually set my privacy setting to “friends only” (although recently I switched to the more optimistic “friends of friends,” because I am an utter tool).
I click the link.
The first thing that strikes me is the pictures. The pictures of me. Pictures from my cloud account (fuck you, cloud account—default settings, my big fat ass) which I should have deleted but hadn’t. And pictures I had sent Tori, including aaaallllll of the “private” ones she’d coaxed out of me, the ones showing cleavage, the one in my bra.
I stare at it and at the comments it is attracting.
I can’t take them down. My hacker (yes, I know, it’s obvious, but I don’t think I can physically cope with admitting that to myself right now) has changed all my settings to “public” so they have as broad an audience as possible. And that’s not all. “Beth Soames” has managed to comment on quite a few profiles, including members of my extended family and complete strangers. She’s a vicious bitch who is obviously inviting trouble—in fact, she has loads more “friends” now. Some are asking bewildered questions, such as “Who are you?” and “What have I done to deserve this, B?” and “Do you want me to have a word with your mother, Bethany?” An even smaller cohort are trying to defend me, saying I’ve obviously been hacked, don’t respond, report it. But a disturbingly large amount are ripping into her like she is a prime cut of ribs dripping with delicious BBQ sauce.
I blink. I can’t quite take it all in. I can’t do anything except scroll, read, and despair.
Of course, there is only one person who could’ve done this. I’ve seen her do it before. Hell, I’ve been involved.
More seconds tick by, and Tori-As-Beth spreads more bile, more spite. She’s all over my friends’ profiles, calling Amy a stupid bitch, telling Indigo to go fuck herself, telling as many of Indigo’s Beautiful People friends as she can get her claws into that they’re all sad excuses for human beings and I hope someone rapes them to death—I mean, seriously? Yes, I was awful. Yes, I said terrible things to people who probably didn’t deserve it. But even I drew a line at rape and death threats. Although these people don’t know that.
At least she hasn’t brought Dizzy into it, a thought that starts off in relief and ends up in terror, because Tori isn’t the kind of person to forget something like that, which means she’s holding it back for later.
My stomach twists painfully. Amy’s online, pleading with “me,” asking “me” what I am doing. She’s probably trying to message me, but since I can’t log into that either, Tori must be in control of that too, which is enough to have me running to the bathroom.
I rinse my mouth out and sit, shakily, on the edge of the bathtub. It takes three attempts to bring up my contacts, and I swipe through them, always fumbling past Amy’s number, like one of those nightmares when something bad is happening but no matter what you do, nothing works, and no matter how hard you try to stop it, everything you try is doomed to failure. Finally, I manage to catch the squirmy fucker and hit the call button. At least this is one form of communication Tori can’t take over.
Of course, it’s only effective if the other person picks up, and I’m back in my nightmare as the phone rings and rings, finally dumping me to Amy’s voicemail, where she declares that she’s super busy but she’ll get back asap. Yes, she even says “asap.” I hang up and try again. More ringing, super busy, get back asap. Oh, come on! Just pick up! Surely you’ve realized that this isn’t me . . .
Finally, on the fourth try, I leave a message. I tell her it isn’t me, that I’ve been hacked—except that’s a lie, isn’t it? I haven’t been hacked. I invited Tori in. “Circumnavigate the Blue Check Mark,” I said. “Sure, babe,” she said.
I handed all of this to her on a plate, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I hang up, and like a masochist seeking their next flagellation, I flip back to Facebook, watching helplessly as more hate spills out from the screen, from “me,” at “me,” about “me.”
Why would she do this? I mean, yes, she was furious with me. And we all know what happens when Tori is furious with someone. Just ask John Corlen. She decimated his life, and I still don’t really know why. I thought it had to be something bad for her to go so nuclear, but now? Now
I’m not so sure.
And yet, she said she loved me. Told me I was special to her. How could she do this to someone she said she loved? How could she go this far?
Maybe when she said she loved me, what she meant was that she loved using me. Was I just a tool to her, one she tossed into the “Step in front of a very fast train” bin as soon as I stopped doing her bidding? Nothing is good enough except 100 percent compliance. I think back to her “psychobitch” ex and wonder if maybe it was the other way round after all.
There is nothing lower than this.
52: #lowestofthelow
Well, whaddaya know? Turns out, there is something lower! Fun, eh?
According to the email I’ve just received, I am now the proud owner of a “Fat Bitches Love It Hard” account. Needless to say, I’ve never been a dick pic recipient before. That cherry has now been not so much popped as savaged to bits, if you’ll excuse the pun.
SUK ON THAT U FAT BITCH U NO U WANT TOO!!
I’m not sure what I’m appalled more by—the (what I hope is) deformed member assaulting my eyes or the absolutely atrocious spelling.
I zombie-walk back to my room, my eyes fixed on my phone as I scroll through email after email of misogynistic hate. I suppose this is what they mean by “morbid curiosity.” It’s almost enough to make me look at Fat Bitches Love It Hard to see what Tori has put on there to incite these men to send me such horrific stuff. Almost, but not quite.
It’s not far from the bathroom to my bedroom door, but that doesn’t stop me from bashing into Brat, who is coming up the stairs.
“Beth? What the fuck is going on with you?” He thrusts his phone under my nose. “You do know you’ve been hacked?”
It takes me a moment to digest the fact that my now-public Facebook page is on his phone.
“Everyone’s talking about it,” he says, as if he’s reading my mind. “I got a message from Tankie saying you’d gone mental and it was hilarious, then another one from Jason saying you were giving his sister hassle.”
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