I read the comments below the video, of which there are hundreds. They say things like:
OMG I LOVE HER.
Thanks. I needed this.
Sometimes the fantasy is all I have to get through the day.
Glad I’m not alone. Or am I? Damn. I am.
And then a dozen people leave comments telling that last person she’s not alone. It’s like a big group hug.
I spend an hour catching up on some of Rhyming Rhea’s videos that I’ve missed in the last couple of weeks, and rewatching my old favorites. She raps about books and music and her favorite shows, but also everyday stuff like doing homework or her “mum” driving her crazy. She raps about depression, too. “Don’t believe the lies it tells, that no one loves you, no one cares . . .”
I can’t believe she likes me, loves me.
Well, not me. She loves Vicurious. She loves the girl I’m pretending to be; she loves the pretending itself. She loves that I answer the followers who say they’re #lonely and #depressed, but Vicky would never do that. Vicky watches Raj at school every day and knows he’s lonely. Vicky is too chicken to say anything to him.
I suck.
Vicurious, though. She’s got 264,000 followers and growing. I search for Rhyming Rhea on Instagram, and click on the follow button for the first time. She doesn’t have as many followers on Instagram as she does on YouTube, only 37,000. I laugh, because how ridiculous is it that I would ever think 37,000 is not that many? I scroll through the images she’s posted, which are mostly screen grabs from her videos that say, “Posted a new video today. Follow the link in my bio.”
Also pictures of her cat.
As if on cue, Kat comes meowing at my door. I let her in. She perches on my bed, then starts batting at something on my comforter. It’s a stray Vicurious bracelet.
I pick it up and rest it on Kat’s head, like a miniature tiara. She bats it away and paws at it some more. Like she wants me to put it on or something. Instead, I pull my costume out of the closet, take the two-tone wig, and drape it over Kat’s head.
She quickly backs out of the wig and hisses at it. “Come on, Kat,” I soothe.
She gives me a go-away glare, and stretches. It’s one of those glorious cat stretches, tail and butt sticking up in the air, front paws forward, big yawning mouth upward. Like a yoga position. Then she reverses it, rear legs outstretched like a kitty plank pose, but with one back paw sticking out in the air. I grab my phone and take a photo. When she goes for a third stretch, I hold the wig at her head so her yawning face is visible and snap a photo with my other hand. She looks hilarious. And pissed.
“Aww, poor kitty.” I take her in my arms and try to pet her, but she is all skittish now. She hides under the bed.
I know exactly how she feels.
I crawl to the floor. I make kissy and cooing sounds. Kat eventually gets close enough that I can scratch her head, then comes out and lets me pick her up. I show her the photos of herself as I upload them from my phone to my computer. She purrs.
Vicurious hasn’t posted anything in days, but there are dozens of comments on the latest post asking if I’m okay. Some of them are blaming the new followers for chasing me away. They’re arguing among themselves, making all sorts of assumptions about where I’ve disappeared to and why. It’s too much attention, some say. It was only meant to be for my friends, one suggests. A dozen others pile up on her, asking if she knows me personally. Several claim to go to school with me. But they live in the UK or Canada or Singapore and can’t possibly.
A few devotees seem to know me better than I know myself, though.
reallllaubrey She’s just taking a break.
owntherabbithole She’ll be back when she’s ready.
donuts4every1 Probably has homework like the rest of us wankers.
I give my Siege of Jerusalem homework a side-eye and drag the last image of Kat into Photoshop. About twenty minutes later, she is dancing a hula on a Hawaiian beach, wearing my wig and the Photoshopped additions of the shredded yellow skirt, bracelets, and sunglasses. The white cat-eyed ones, of course.
She looks fabulous.
I post it with the caption:
Sorry I’ve been away. Took a little cat nap.
Better now.
And I do feel better. I don’t know if it’s the crazy number of followers, or the love from Rhyming Rhea, or maybe just letting myself go numb these past few days. There’s still a weight on my chest, but it’s not as heavy.
I stare at my Instagram page, the number 1 above the following tab, and wonder if Rhea noticed she’s the only person I’m following. Which probably looks weird. But following people like Raj and Hallie and Adrian would give me away. I hit the search window and look up some of the people Vicurious has featured instead. There’s Neil deGrasse Tyson, even though his account never posts anything and I’m not sure it’s really him. I follow it anyway. And Jimmy Fallon, who has over 8.5 million followers, which puts my measly fandom into perspective. There’s an official page for Poldark on PBS, so I follow that, too. And the Foo Fighters. I throw in Neil Patrick Harris and Will Smith for good measure.
None of them will follow me back and that’s okay. Rhyming Rhea follows me, and a quarter million people I don’t know. Also Raj. I search for his Instagram and there he is, with his daily selfie. Pale blue button-down shirt today. Almost time for a haircut, Raj. I click back through his posts, really fast. It’s like a stop-motion film. Then I return to the most recent photo.
He’s added the #alone hashtag this time. He’s never done that before.
I stare at it until it stops looking like a real word. I move the cursor to the comment window and hover there for a moment.
Then I hold my breath and I write:
vicurious You are not alone, Raj. I see you.
18
AT SCHOOL ON MONDAY I make sure Raj doesn’t spot me, but observe him from afar. He does seem to have an extra spring in his step today, and I wouldn’t call it a smile, but the shape of his mouth is definitely on the brighter side of neutral.
I go to my locker, even though Hallie’s there. She says, “Hey,” and smiles.
I smile back. “Hi.”
We get our things from our respective lockers and put our coats and lunches away and all the while my heart is pounding and I’m sweating. But still. I did it. I said hi to Hallie Bryce, twice now, and I did not die.
I get to world history early so I can leave a note on Lipton’s desk. I tear off a tiny strip of paper, about two inches wide and the height of a single line of college-ruled notebook paper. I scrawl my message:
I’m sorry.
And I leave it on his desk. But when he gets to class, he drops his books right on top of it. Adam scowls at me as he always does, but Lipton continues to pretend I don’t exist. He hasn’t looked at me since that awful day.
After class, the note is no longer on his desk. I imagine it stuck to his notebook, or to his arm, and the ink will leave a mark, like a tattoo, only in reverse. He’ll spend the rest of the day wondering how he got “yrros m‘I” written on his skin, and what it means. Or he’ll see it in the mirror when he’s brushing his teeth before bed tonight.
On Tuesday I try again. Only this time I’ve carved “I’m sorry” into the side of a pencil, using one of my mother’s kitchen knives. I get to class and I leave the pencil on his desk.
He arrives, picks it up, glances around . . . even, I’m pretty sure, at me. He lays his book on the desk and gently places the pencil in the little vertical ridge along the binding. He doesn’t hold the pencil sideways and read it.
Mr. Braxley walks to the front of the room and tapes a paper to the wall. “This is the sign-up sheet for your presentations,” he says. “We’ll do two per week until we get through them all. And since the due date was always Monday, this shouldn’t put anyone at a disadvantage. Because you all should be ready to give your presentation on Monday. Right?”
A weak nod goes around the room. Nobody’s anywhere
near ready, obviously. “Still,” says Mr. Braxley, “I’ll give a bonus ten points to the first group to make their presentation.”
People start getting out of their chairs to sign up, but Braxley shoos them all back to their seats. “I should mention,” he says, grinning, “that the opportunity to sign this sheet must be earned. By answering questions. Correctly.”
The class moans. All except for Lipton. He sits up straighter. If this were a quiz show and there was a glowing red button to be pushed when you knew the answer, his hand would be hovering over it. Twitching.
Meanwhile, I am paralyzed by the dueling fears of raising my hand to answer a question in class, and being left with the dreaded first slot on the schedule. Giving a presentation at all is terrifying. Going first? Just kill me now.
Mr. Braxley starts a review for our upcoming test. Every now and then he shoots out a question. “First Christian emperor?”
Lipton is caught off guard and doesn’t get his hand in the air fast enough, so Renee Prusso takes the first stab. “Constantine,” she says.
Mr. Braxley points to the schedule. She gives a squeal and briefly consults with her project team members, then skips up front and writes on the sheet. She takes the last slot, and everyone whines because they wanted to go last. I’m happy, though. Going last is almost as bad as going first. It means waiting and watching everyone else and realizing how bad your presentation will be in comparison.
I pull my attention back to Mr. Braxley, who is talking about a period of peace and prosperity that lasted two hundred years, around the first couple of centuries AD. “Anyone know what this period was called?”
Lipton’s hand is in the air before anyone else’s. Mr. Braxley gives him a nod.
“Pax Romana,” says Lipton, all breathless.
“Which means?”
“Roman peace.” He breaks into a grin and bolts to the front of the room, ignoring Jeremy Everling’s coughed utterance of “Socks!” Lipton pencils his project name into a slot somewhere in the middle.
The torturous process continues. Sometimes I know the answers before anyone else, but I can’t bring myself to raise my hand. By the end of class, I’m the only one who hasn’t signed up. Mr. Braxley eyes me and says, “If you aren’t on the schedule . . .” and points his pencil toward the paper.
I gather my things, and make my way to the front of the room as everyone files out. The emptiness of that first slot on the sign-up sheet taunts me. Monday. First presentation. For a project I haven’t even started.
My hand trembles as I raise my pencil and start to scrawl my project title onto the paper. But before I can spell out the word “Siege,” another hand, holding its own pencil, reaches over my arm.
It’s the pencil I etched “I’m sorry” into. It erases “Battle of Thermopylae” from the third to the last slot and writes “Siege of Jerusalem” in its place. I step back, stunned, as Lipton puts his own project into the first slot. Adam hovers in the doorway, shaking his head.
We are standing so close, Lipton and I. Closer than I’ve been to another human being in a long time. Lipton has the faintest beginnings of facial hair on his upper lip, but it’s blond. And there’s a dimple in his right cheek that is tweaked upward in a close-lipped, sideways smile. A side smirk.
I mouth the words “thank you” because that’s all I can manage in such close proximity to that dimple.
He shrugs, tucks the “I’m sorry” pencil behind his ear, and walks out.
19
I FLOAT THROUGH THE REST of the morning on that moment with Lipton, and the hope of his forgiveness. It’s almost like crowd surfing at a Foo Fighters concert, being lifted up that way. Or saved, at least, from falling flat on my face.
I know I don’t deserve it.
In the yearbook office at lunch, the brainstorming on “how to make the yearbook not suck” continues. Marissa wants something groundbreaking. She wants to write about it in her college applications. She wants to win awards.
“Could we not have eight pages of football?” says Marvo, flipping through last year’s book. “And why do the cheerleaders get two pages when the LGBTQ Club only gets one lousy photo? I guarantee there are more LGBTQ kids at this school than cheerleaders.”
“Yeah, but they don’t build pyramids wearing miniskirts,” Beth Ann says with a fake smile.
Marvo shakes his head. “Some kids aren’t in here at all. I was in five photos last year. How many were you in?”
Beth Ann says, “Three.”
Marissa cringes. “Sixteen.”
They all turn to me.
I shrug, as if I don’t remember that I was in zero yearbook pictures. I purposely hid in the bathroom when they took the freshman class photo.
Marvo turns to the index in the back of the yearbook where every student is listed alphabetically, along with pages on which they are pictured. My name is there, but no page numbers.
He looks up. “You weren’t in the yearbook at all?”
I shake my head.
“That’s just wrong.”
“It’s okay,” I say quietly.
“No, it’s not.” He flips through the book, stops at a two-page collage of the most popular kids with their friends—hugging, smiling, laughing. Marissa is in at least three of the pictures. The spread is titled “Friends!” but the obvious subtext is, “Don’t you wish you were us?”
Marvo points to an unsmiling kid caught in the background of one. “I want to know who that guy is.” He points to another. “And her.” He’s basically pointing out all the people I zoomed in on that day when I left the images open at my workstation.
The three of them argue for a while over how to identify the kids who are “hiding in plain sight” and “diamonds in the rough” and “the best-kept secrets.” Beth Ann suggests we cliché them to death until they come out. She glances at me and says, “Anyway, some people don’t like being the center of attention.”
Marvo chuckles.
“What?” She scowls at him. “Not everyone is as starved for attention as you are.”
He leans back in his chair again and smiles at her. “You’d be surprised.”
And I am officially freaking out.
“So, who do we feature in this not-the-usual-overachievers section?” Marissa opens her spiral notebook to a fresh page and writes a number one on the first line. “I need names.”
“Vicky Decker,” says Marvo.
I hold my breath expecting “Vicurious” to be the next word out of his mouth. Instead, he grins and says, “Secret weapon of the yearbook staff. And I bet she has some great ideas. Don’t you, Vicky?”
Marissa looks over at me, her pen poised to write. If Marvo knows about Vicurious, he’s not outing me. Yet. I swallow and slowly raise my hand.
“You don’t have to raise your hand, Vicky,” says Marissa.
I pull it back down. Hug it to my stomach. “Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
I almost say sorry again but manage to stop myself.
“Just . . . what?” says Marissa. “Do you want to be featured?”
“No,” I say. “No, thank you.” I drop my gaze to my knees, which are bouncing. I press my hands to steady them. “I was thinking we could focus on kids who do stuff outside of school. Like Hallie Bryce is a dancer. And . . .” I dart a glance at Marissa. “And Adrian Ahn has his band.”
She smiles. Writes their names on her list.
I think of a dozen other kids I’ve discovered online just by clicking on who follows who follows who.
“Elizabeth Gaffey makes the most amazing cupcakes,” I say. “And Darla McMann is a dog walker. She must walk ten miles a day with different dogs. Also there’s Becca Eliason. She paints her fingernails to match the books she’s reading. And Geoffrey Phillips is helping his grandfather build a race car. It’s pretty cool.”
Marissa keeps writing and I keep talking, faster as I go. “There’s a girl, Felicity, who’s a yarn bomber. She knits scarves arou
nd trees. And Joshua Devon is really good at skateboarding. He does these amazing flips.” I pause, but only for a second. “Lindy Johannsen makes jewelry out of soda tabs and safety pins. It sounds like they would look cheap but they’re really beautiful and delicate. And, uh . . . Raj Radhakrishnan, he, um . . . ”
I glance up. Marissa has stopped writing. I’ve probably said too much, but I can’t seem to stop. “Raj, he, uh, takes these really interesting selfies. He stands in exactly the same spot every day and he changes his clothes, of course, and gets his hair cut every few weeks. Objects in the room move around sometimes. It’s uh, it’s kind of . . .” My voice drops to a whisper. “Fascinating.”
Marvo tips his chair back and lets out a low whistle. Beth Ann says, “Wow.” And Marissa closes her notebook.
I can’t think of the last time I’ve spoken that many words at once, even in one of my unintended word vomits, and it’s left me breathless. Also strangely invigorated.
The bell rings, and Marissa smiles, but as if someone’s holding a gun to her head and forcing her to read a ransom note. “Great ideas, Vicky. We’ll, uh . . . keep brainstorming. It’s a good start, though. Really good.”
She backs away from me and out of the room. Beth Ann follows, but Marvo holds the door.
“You coming, Vic?”
I gather my things and hurry out. I feel like a cat whose fur has been brushed the wrong way. I’m poised to skitter to one of my hiding spots, but I hesitate, estimating how long it will take to reach the bathroom versus Mrs. Greene’s office, except someone else might be in there so it would be quicker to just go straight to the bathroom, except if all the stalls are taken and then—
“Walk with me,” says Marvo.
I didn’t even realize he was still there. He hooks his arm through mine and we are walking. Ohmygod, I am walking down the hall with Marvo. I have never walked down the hall with anyone other than Jenna. Not on purpose, at least. Other people have walked near me or next to me for a few paces, but not with me. I always slow down or speed up to leave a respectable gap.
How to Disappear Page 13