Except I can’t. I’m starting to sweat just thinking about it. But knowing someone as lonely as I am is right there, so close, makes me feel a little bit less alone.
16
MAKING IT THROUGH SCHOOL THE next day is like swimming upstream in a river of mud. Jenna’s texts are weighing me down, and every time I see Raj in the hall I stop breathing for a few seconds, worried he’ll recognize me. But he keeps moving along in his rhythmic, steady way, oblivious to the “me too” I am sending him telepathically. The fact that I can’t work up the nerve to speak to him only makes it worse. It takes all my energy to press forward, unable to focus on more than what’s directly in front of me. I keep stopping to duck into doorways and bathrooms and stairwells to catch my breath and steel myself for the next stretch of hallway.
I almost make it to world history but have to kneel down in an alcove and pretend to tie my shoe. That’s when I hear them. Lipton and Adam. They’ve stopped at Adam’s locker, which is just around the corner from where I’m crouched.
“. . . so I asked her if she wanted to come in and play Minecraft,” says Lipton.
“Dude,” says Adam. “You didn’t.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“That’s so . . . Are you, like, twelve?”
“You play Minecraft. You’re not twelve.”
“Yeah, but I would never ask a girl to come over and play. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking she might like Minecraft!”
“Yeah, well. Maybe wait until you know for sure.”
“So, what should I ask her?”
Adam snorts and pushes his locker closed. “I don’t know. But not that. Something you’re sure she’s interested in.”
“I think maybe she likes my socks? She’s always looking at my ankles.”
“Oh, God. No.”
“I was joking,” says Lipton. Unconvincingly.
“Just try not to say anything stupid, okay?”
“I’ll try,” Lipton mumbles. “No Minecraft, no socks . . .”
They walk off toward class, and I am now paralyzed by the realization that Lipton maybe . . . likes me? Unless he asked more than one girl to play Minecraft this weekend. What are the chances of that?
I force myself to continue my swim upstream to Mr. Braxley’s classroom before the bell rings. Against all better judgment, I glance at Lipton as I sit down. He disarms me with his smile. I mean, literally. My arms stop working and I drop all my books. He leans over to help me. The perspiration is flowing down my sides like waterfalls.
“Hey.” He hands me the book that fell near his feet.
Speak to him speak to him speak to him speak to him. “Thanks!” I blurt, taking the book. “Thank you,” I say again, because once is apparently not enough. “Thank you very much.” Okay, stop.
“You’re welcome,” says Lipton. “You’re welcome. You’re welcome very much.”
My eyes widen at his reply.
He laughs.
I swallow. Gulp, really.
He smiles. Pushes the hair off his forehead. It flops back down.
Smile, Vicky. Smile. I pull my lips into a shape that reveals my teeth, but isn’t exactly a smile. It likely resembles the face I make in the dentist’s chair when the hygienist is taking X-rays. My eyes are watering, too. Because I keep forgetting to blink.
Blink. Blink. Blink.
Lipton clears his throat, then leans toward my desk. “So, I was wondering if you’d like to come over to my house after school,” he says. “To, uh, pet my cat?”
On the other side of Lipton, Adam tips slowly forward, his head landing square on his desk with a loud thunk. He groans.
“I mean, we could do other things, too, of course,” Lipton stammers. “Whatever interests you.”
Say yes say yes say yes say yes. My brain is blaring the correct answer in my head! But do I listen?
“I can’t,” I whisper. “I’m, um, busy.”
Adam groans some more.
“It doesn’t have to be tonight.” Lipton shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “It could be, you know . . . whenever.”
My heart is pounding so hard now, and the roar in my ears is so loud, I’m not even sure what he just said or if I heard him right. I start flipping the words around in my head to make sense of them, until I’m fairly certain they went something like, “It’s tonight or never.” Which can’t be right.
He’s staring at me, waiting for my answer. His cheeks are getting blotchy. Oh, no. I’m embarrassing him. He’s starting to look like he might throw up. That’s not what I want.
“That’s not what I want at all.” It comes out almost a hiss. I smack my hand to my mouth.
“Oh.” Lipton looks like I just slapped him across the face. “Never mind.”
“Okay, class.” Mr. Braxley starts teaching. I would sincerely like to concentrate on what he’s saying, but I’m too busy trying to calm my heart rate and figure out what just happened.
Lipton asked me out.
Breathe.
He asked me to come to his house.
Breathe.
To pet his cat.
Breathe.
I panicked and said I was busy.
The rest is a blur. But it can’t be good, because Adam’s eyes are shooting death lasers at me. Lipton keeps glancing my way and jiggling his knee. Just like I do! Except his pant leg is tucked into his sock AGAIN. It wouldn’t be so obvious if he didn’t have such colorful taste in socks. Today he’s wearing bright yellow.
I do like his socks. Should I tell him? I like your socks, Lipton. Maybe it would fix whatever I’ve messed up. I wait until class is over and I start packing up my things. I watch him do the same, hoping he’ll look up at me again so I can smile and deliver the compliment.
But he doesn’t look at me. And then he’s leaving. I’m missing my chance!
In a panic, I blurt out, “Nice socks!” Which isn’t how I meant to say it.
He spins around, looks down at his ankles.
Jeremy Everling laughs, points at Lipton’s socks. The pant leg is tucked in. “Nice,” he says. “Very stylish.”
Lipton doesn’t reach down to fix his pant leg. He just gapes at me. His expression is even worse now than if I’d slapped him. It looks like I killed his dog or something.
“Cold,” says Adam, shaking his head.
I watch them go. The classroom empties. The roar of the vacuums quiets to a hum and I realize what I’ve done. It’s like I was trying to drive through a dense fog and couldn’t see which way to go. Now the fog’s lifted and I can see where I made a wrong turn, but it’s too late. I’ve gone off a cliff.
I’ll never find my way back to Lipton, or to Jenna, or anybody. I’m stuck here at the bottom of a ravine—alone again.
17
FOR THE REST OF THE week, I go to yearbook, select photos, remove obscene gestures and nose pickers and crotch scratchers. I crop, file, nod, smile. I listen to Marvo and Beth Ann and Marissa brainstorm ideas to make this yearbook the most memorable ever.
I don’t care if the yearbook is memorable.
Lipton doesn’t offer any more peanut M&M’s. He doesn’t nudge me when I zone out, or tell me what page we’re on. He doesn’t even glance at me in class anymore. I stop carrying the candy wrapper I saved because it only reminds me of what I’ve ruined.
I go to school. I go home. I do my homework. I eat. I sleep. I repeat.
I don’t check in on Vicurious. Don’t log in to Instagram at all. Adrian Ahn tosses a drumstick at me on purpose in the hall one day, and I don’t even realize until it’s too late. It hits me on the shoulder and clatters to the floor.
“Sorry,” I mumble, and keep walking. I should be embarrassed, but I’m not.
He calls after me, “Vicky! Hey!”
Huh. Adrian knows my name. He’s shouting it in the hall, and I feel . . . nothing. Nothing at all.
At first, it’s kind of nice, this numbness. Nothing fazes me. If people star
e, I don’t care. If they laugh or think I’m weird or stupid or ugly, I haven’t noticed.
And then I find myself standing in front of Mrs. Greene’s office one day, not entirely sure how I got there or why. Before I can shuffle off, she looks up from her desk and smiles. “Hi, Vicky. Do you want to come in?”
It’s easier to stay than to come up with an excuse not to, so I shrug and sit down in one of her comfy chairs.
She gets up and shuts the door, but doesn’t say anything right away.
We sit in the quiet. My eyes follow the string of twinkly lights draped across the room. Back and forth, back and forth. It’s almost hypnotic. I wonder if she did that on purpose.
“I get the sense you’re having some trouble,” she says after a while. “Would you like to talk about it?”
I pause. This is my opening. I could tell her everything right now. Maybe it would help. But all I say is, “No, thank you.”
I prepare for a pep talk, like something my mom would say. But Mrs. Greene is true to her word, and doesn’t make me talk. She works at her computer while I sit there with my eyes closed, just breathing.
I am breathing.
Some days, it feels like that’s enough. I’m just so tired. It takes all my energy to make sure my mom thinks I’m fine, to sit upright in class all day when I really want to rest my head on the desk and close my eyes, to go through the motions of everything, to not cry when Lipton pretends he doesn’t see me.
When I finally leave Mrs. Greene’s room, Hallie Bryce is waiting outside. She says hi to me, and I stare at her, waiting for my usual panic to ensue. When it doesn’t, I say hi back, and she glides past me through the doorway but crumples into the chair as if she simply cannot carry herself erect for a single second more. And I totally understand how she feels.
Mrs. Greene gently closes the door.
I don’t move. Not right away. Because for the first time all week, I let myself really feel something. And it’s not even my own pain.
I feel bad for Hallie Bryce.
I start to feel like my old self. Not my best self, from before Jenna left, but my week-ago self, before I ruined everything with Lipton. The result is that I remember how horrible I felt before everything went numb. The pain Mrs. Greene was sensing? It’s not so raw as before, but it’s there. I’m still at the bottom of the ravine but no longer wanting to lie on the jagged rocks and suffer. I want to climb out.
I’m just not sure how to do it.
On the Saturday morning before Halloween, my mother says, “Don’t you have a party to go to tonight?”
I blink at her.
“The one you ripped your skirt apart for? Marco’s?”
And then I remember the other lie I told my mother.
“Marvo,” I say. “He canceled.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Or you just don’t want to go.”
Last week, I overheard her telling my dad that she ran into Roberta DiMarco and told her I’d had a nice time at Marissa’s party. The woman gave her a funny look and said, “Vicky was there?” And Mom said, “Yes, I dropped her off myself!” And Mrs. DiMarco apologized and said, “It was so crowded. I’m sorry I missed her.” My father said, “You know how Vicky is. She was probably standing in a corner and Roberta just didn’t notice her.”
“There’s no party,” I tell her now. Which is the truth, since I made it up in the first place.
“Then you ruined a perfectly good skirt for nothing.” She sighs. “You can wear it for the trick-or-treaters, I guess. Though I doubt the neighborhood kids will know who you’re meant to be.”
“They won’t get that I’m a punk girl? It’s generic enough—”
“No. That . . . What’s her name? She’s all over the internet.”
I freeze.
“Orange-and-purple hair, bright yellow skirt.”
I blink. Blink again.
“Oh, you know who I’m talking about. She calls herself Vicarious or something.” Mom goes to the computer in our kitchen and opens a browser to her Facebook page, scrolling down and then leaning back so I can see it from where I’m sitting at the kitchen island. “Just add some crazy sunglasses and an armful of bracelets and you’re a dead ringer.”
I slide off my stool and walk closer, peering over her shoulder. There’s Vicurious riding the hippogriff with Harry. One of my mother’s friends posted a link to my Instagram on her Facebook page, adding:
I’ve always wanted to do this! Go Vicurious!
Mom turns back to the picture, clicking to enlarge it. She studies it a minute, looks up at me, then back at the screen. “You know . . . ,” she says, turning to face me again.
She recognizes me. I lean to brace myself against the back of a chair, wait for the dizziness that usually comes in moments like this. But, oddly, I don’t feel it. I feel relieved, like I can finally let my guard down.
“I’m . . .” I start to say it, I’m Vicurious, but I can’t. I need her to say it, to see me. To finally #SEEME.
Mom’s eyebrows crunch together as she studies my face. She’s visualizing me with the wig and the sunglasses, the lipstick. I’m sure of it. Vicurious almost always smiles, so I smile for my mother. So she’ll know it’s me. Mom, it’s me.
But she just smiles softly, then turns back to the computer. “You really pegged her. It’s a shame you can’t wear that costume to a party.”
“Yeah. Shame,” I mumble. “Guess I’ll never be her.”
Mom shrugs. “Maybe next year.”
I retreat to my room, my whole body trembling now. It’s exactly what I wanted, right? To disappear. Lose myself. Leave Vicky behind and experience life as someone else entirely. And I’ve done it. I’ve really done it.
Yet I haven’t been online in days. I’ve ignored Vicurious completely, haven’t even charged my phone.
I sit at my desk. Open my computer. Log in to Instagram. And with a few clicks, I find my way back to her. I don’t care how many followers she has. I’m not going to chase followers again. I just need a place to escape myself. A place . . .
My eyes don’t seek it out, but the number of followers is right at the top of the page and . . .
I can’t even . . .
I lower my head between my knees to stop from hyperventilating. And hallucinating. Because I’m pretty sure I’m seeing things now. I catch my breath and the blood returns to my head. I sit up again. Open my eyes. And there it is.
264k
followers
That’s . . . not possible. It has to be some kind of glitch. I click through all my posts, scan the comments, try to figure out what’s happening. How did I go from 14,000 followers to more than a quarter million in six days?
A quarter million.
I Google “Vicurious,” and what comes up is crazy. There’s so much. First is my Instagram. Then a Twitter account, which I never set up. I click on it, and see that someone has posted a screenshot of my user photo as their icon, and is tweeting all my Instagram posts. She has 23,420 followers.
I click back to the Google search window. Next is a link to a YouTube video titled, “OMG Best Instagram Ever.” It has 437,258 views. It’s posted by . . . oh my God. It’s Rhyming Rhea! I’ve been watching her channel for years, since she started it when she was fifteen and I was twelve. She’s this wild, redheaded girl from England who does everything in rhyme. Sometimes she gets all Shakespeare-like, and other times she raps or makes really simplistic poems about whatever is on her mind. She has 2.1 million followers now. The description for the video says, simply, “Vicurious!”
I press a trembling finger to the play arrow and hold my breath.
She’s wearing footie pajamas. She says, “Hello, sweeties!” in her British accent, sounding just like that lady from Doctor Who. Then a beatbox track starts, and her head is jutting side to side to the beat.
“Today I’m in my jim-jams,
hanging with the Instagrams,
saw this girl, said what is THIS?
She calls hers
elf Vicurious . . .”
A little picture box pops up in the bottom right corner with posts from my Instagram.
“Check out her fuzzy sock cocoon,
hey baby do you want to spoon?
Or ride a spaceship to the moon
with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Swoon!”
She tips her head back like she’s fainting. I watch, mesmerized, as she raps her way through almost all of my posts, rhyming “Where’s Waldo” with “crazy hairdo” and “hippogriff” with “Pope Francis.” When the rhyming ends, she does a little bow. But it’s not over. The video cuts to her, still in pajamas, sitting in front of the camera and talking right into the lens. No rhyming.
“If you’ve been watching my videos for a while,” she says, “you know I suffer from depression sometimes. I talk about it, probably too much. Sorry ’bout that. You understand, though. Right?” She pauses as if waiting for her audience to answer. And I guess we do, because she says, “Thanks, loves. You’re the best. I take medicine that helps, and you guys help me a lot, too. But sometimes I just want to escape my life and be someone else, go somewhere else.”
She raises her hands in a calming gesture. “Not permanently, loves. Just for an hour or an afternoon. That’s why I like this girl so much. I mean, how many times have you seen a photo and thought, Aw, man, I wish I could do that. I’m so jealous. I want to be there. I want to feel that. So, she does! She does all this crazy stuff and, spoiler alert, it’s not real. We all know it’s not real. But it’s soooo fun to pretend and imagine, and I love it. I just love it.
“But that’s not even the best part,” she continues. “The best part is, if her followers tell her they’re depressed or alone, she’s there for them. She’s like, Hey, I see you. You’re not alone. I’m here for you. It’s really great. I’m a fan. Check her out.”
She puts her fingertips to her lips and blows another kiss to the camera, and says, “Love you, Vicurious.”
I watch the whole thing again. And again. My heart is pounding. I keep looking over my shoulder, thinking it must be some kind of prank. Half a million people have watched this video, and half of those people have followed me. It’s insane. All I’m doing is Photoshopping myself into pictures! Anybody could do it with a few tutorials and a little practice. It’s not that special.
How to Disappear Page 12