“So am I good to go?” I stood up, tucking the paper into the front pocket of my messenger bag.
“I think so,” she said, eying me. “Just, Jennifer..?”
I looked up at her.
“Try to remember that this is just a project. I’ve seen too many students get wrapped up in their research and go over the deep-end. It’s just a project and your research is meant to be a temporary thing. Don’t get carried away with this fake profile business, okay? Especially pitting her against you online, there’s a chance of losing yourself in the shuffle.”
“I think I can handle it, Dr. C. It’s only for now, and then I’ll delete the entire thing. I’m not actually playing Olivia; I’m just using the name as a vehicle.” But even as I said the words, I heard the false note in my voice. Aside from talking to Sean, I wasn’t actually pretending to be Olivia. Not really.
Dr. Chase seemed to hear the truth in my voice too, given her skeptical look. She watched me for a moment before nodding. “Just keep it in mind,” she said.
As I stepped out of her office into the main foyer of the sociology department, I shook her words off. I mean, it was only for a few months. And Olivia would stay strictly online. I’d pretended to be different people before and that hadn’t hurt anyone. How was this any different from a regular game of childhood dress up?
CHAPTER SIX
Meanwhile, back on the internet, another influx of accepted friend requests waited for me in my notifications that night. Another five random men who had received Olivia’s friend request, taken one look at her picture, and accepted her as a new friend, no questions asked. They didn’t know her, probably didn’t have anything in common with her, but that didn’t seem to matter in the slightest. A pretty face, hot body, and the protected anonymity of social networking facilitated the easiest friend-making process a girl like me had ever experienced. Of course, I was only experiencing it because I was hiding behind the shield of a made-up identity, but still. Easy peasy.
So far my alter-ego had collected a whopping 94 friends, without even breaking a sweat. The long—and growing—list gave me a quiet thrill. Was this how pretty people felt? Or was this so easy to do just because of the virtual aspect of this experience? I grabbed my notebook and started jotting down some of these half-thoughts and questions, all fodder for my planned research paper. Less than two weeks into my project, this impromptu idea was already paying off.
I scanned through the list of my new acquaintances, or rather, the people I had snowed into believing my fake self was a live human being. Most of them were male, unsurprisingly, but there were a scattered few females throughout the list. While I was lost in a scrolling sea of headshot photographs and names that seemed just about as real as Olivia Saunders, my dinner grew cold beside me.
Then, out of the blue, an instant message popped up. It was Sean O’Dwyer, who hadn’t heard back from me since his tour invitation, but apparently, didn’t seem to mind being blown off. Or maybe he just didn’t take a hint very well.
His opening line was totally innocuous, and revealed nothing about either his hint-taking skills or feelings about being ditched. “Hey Olivia! How’s it going?”
I grimaced at my computer screen, then at my bowl of cold health-food sludge, and back at my computer screen. Talking to a guy in person was hard for me to do, but online? This would be a new experience for me. Email was simpler, because of the delay, but this live chat situation was sure to be a bit more stressful. It wasn’t like I could mull over my response for an hour or so. I was talking live. To a guy. Who was mildly attractive. And thought I was some hot model he could rescue from the confusing streets of Boston.
He was also a guy I’d been lusting over since I hit puberty.
As my impulsive brain fought to slam my laptop closed and bolt from my apartment, my rational brain knew this was an experience I would need to chart for research purposes. It was for this reason—and this reason alone, obviously—that I engaged him in conversation, and then copied and pasted our entire exchange into a Microsoft Word document. Thus, it remains preserved in its original format:
SEAN: Hey Olivia! How’s it going?
OLIVIA: Great! Keeping busy. How are you?
SEAN: Just got back from vacation.
OLIVIA: Nice! Where’d you go?
SEAN: Visiting my sister in California. She has a house near the beach—lucky bitch. LOL
Anyway, back to the daily grind for me on Monday. Not looking forward to it.
OLIVIA: Hahahaha. Landscaping, right?
SEAN: Yeah. I’m a project manager, so at least I don’t have to shovel anything. LOL
OLIVIA: It’s been so hot this fall, that would be awful. I bet you just sit idly by and drink spiked lemonade while they do all the work, right?
SEAN: I wish! Anyway, what are you up to?
Sitting at home on my computer, trying to pretend I have a life?
OLIVIA: Working on a play, plus a few photo shoots here and there.
SEAN: That’s great. It’s nice you can find so many jobs in an industry like that. I hear it’s tough.
OLIVIA: It can be. But not as tough as sipping spiked lemonade.
SEAN: Hahahaha. I’ll switch with you any time! So what else do you do with your time? That is, if you ever get any free time!
OLIVIA: I like to cook, I guess. And sometimes I visit my uncle’s farm where I keep my horse.
Lies, all lies.
SEAN: Awesome. I don’t really know anyone that rides horses. I always wanted to learn.
OLIVIA: Maybe I could teach you to ride sometime.
Sometimes I want to slap myself across the face as hard as I can.
SEAN: Is there any chance you’re free next weekend? I’d love a riding lesson.
It was somewhere around here that I had to step away from my laptop and walk a circle around my apartment. Sean was polite, seemed genuinely interested in my fake job and fake interests. We were chatting away like old friends catching up, except for my deception. Something in the pit of my stomach just didn’t feel right about all of this. He really wanted to be friends. How could I do this to someone?
I sat back down and typed as tactful a response as I could think of: “Sorry, Sean. Have a shoot this weekend, out of town. Maybe some other time.”
His answer was equally nice and polite. “Have a great time! Hope it’s somewhere nice to visit so you can do some vacationy things!”
How cute was that? Fighting with myself not to encourage him any further, I made up a lie about needing to get to bed early and signed off. I dumped my mushy dinner into the sink, ran the disposal, and headed to the bathroom to get ready for bed.
My little two-bedroom apartment was the perfect size for someone like me, who didn’t do much in the way of entertaining guests. I had enough space for a couch, a couple of bookshelves for all my textbooks and related sociological reading, and a two-person table. My bedroom housed my full-size bed and one dresser, plus my comfy reading chair. It was all I’d ever needed and, aside from the fact that it was attached to my parents’ house, it was the perfect set up for me at that point in my life. Especially once I’d gotten my mother to stop coming in to tuck me into bed every night. I guess some old habits die hard.
Teeth brushed, pajamas on, I turned out the light and climbed into my bed. I really wanted to let myself get swept away in this Olivia thing, but I knew that in the light of day, I would still be Jennifer.
****
The next few days flew by in all the activity of gym trips, friend requests, and healthy meals. After a full week of Claire-enforced diet and exercise, it was time for my first weigh-in. She’d made me climb onto a scale the previous Sunday and I still hadn’t quite forgiven her for the cruel and unusual punishment. Doing it again so soon was not something I was quite ready for.
“Can’t I wait another week so I can get a bigger result? I think that would really help to keep me motivated. I mean, if I don’t get a big number this week, what if I—�
�
“Cut the crap, Jen, and get on the scale.”
Claire has always had this weird ability to make me do things just with the power of her voice. I never understood it, and yet, I never fought her either.
So I shrugged off my sweater, handed it to her, and stepped onto the scale. I closed my eyes tightly, too nervous to look. If this number was too small a change from the previous week, I would probably just quit like every other time. It wasn’t that I expected immediate, overnight success. I just needed to know when I checked in with that scale that something was going to be different. To know that all of the pain and each one of those Oreos I denied myself was somehow worthwhile. Why couldn’t I just trade in a half-pound of weight loss for every donut I passed up? That would be so much more motivating!
The scale did its thing with Claire watching and me nauseous, my eyes still closed. After a moment of painful silence, she slapped my arm.
“Open your eyes! Look, Jen!”
My eyes went to her first, and I was a bit taken aback by her look of total shock. Nervously, I glanced at the scale. Mostly out of curiosity. Had I gained weight after all of that? No! A number almost four pounds less than my previous week’s weight stared me in the face. I could hardly believe my eyes, so I rubbed them and looked again. Yup, that was right.
“Holy cow,” I said, a bit in awe.
“I know! Aren’t you excited?” Claire jumped up and down, clapping her hands. I stepped off the scale and hugged her. A moment like that, that’s what sisters are really for.
“Oh my God, Claire!” I had to wipe a few tears from my eyes, I was so overwhelmed. “I can’t believe that just happened.”
“See? It’s all gonna pay off. Stick with me, kid, and we’ll hit your goal in no time. We’re already ten-percent of the way there!”
Slinging one arm around my shoulders, Claire guided me out of the bathroom and into the kitchen for lunch, talking about our next big plans together and how much weight I should expect to lose in the next few weeks, now that I’d dropped some of the initial “water weight.”
It felt good to be here in this mental space again, to be working on the new me. To be working toward a goal. I was actually proud of myself for doing something for me. Not for a grade, not for a raise, not for someone else’s praise. Just for Jennifer Smith.
****
With all that excitement and newness swirling around me during those days, it struck me as odd to have to do something as mundane as go to class. It was kind of like being a kid again, watching a really awesome commercial for a toy you just had to have, only to have that commercial fade directly into the five o’clock news or something. Snore.
Still, as I thought this each and every weekday morning, I still managed to choke down an on-the-fly (but healthy) breakfast and go about my daily routine. Most girls wake up and shower, style their hair, put on some makeup, and get dressed. But for me, mornings look a little bit different.
First of all, my alarm clock is not the typical kind that most people wake up to every day. Mine has a special bed shaking feature that helps me to get up in the morning. Being hearing impaired, I can’t just rely on the irritating beep of the alarm. While that noise grates on me just as much as the next gal, sometimes it isn’t loud enough to hear… especially if I’ve burrowed my way under the covers, as usual. So my alarm buzzes, shakes the bed, and all but shoves me onto the floor.
Sometimes I think I’d be better off trading it in for a “hearing ear” dog, as I call them, who could just lick my face or something. That would at least be more pleasant, if less hygienic.
Anyway, once I’m up, it’s not just coffee that I need to get going. If I want to hear anything at all, I’ve got to wipe down my hearing aids, scrape out the wax from inside those tiny ear holes, and test the batteries. Trust me; it’s worth testing them every morning. There’s nothing worse than having one hearing aid shut off in the middle of a class, while driving, at a movie, or somewhere else inconvenient—which is pretty much everywhere. Well, I guess, having them both shut off is the only thing that would be worse.
See, without my hearing aids, I sometimes feel like I’m in a crowded mall. Everyone is talking around me and it’s noisy, I can hear things, but I can’t quite distinguish any of the words or even the voices. It’s all there, echoing around me, but too far out of my grasp. Or it’s traveling towards my ears, just landing somewhere around them instead of hitting my ear drums. I can hear, but it doesn’t sound very good at all.
So after I stumble out of the shower—the only real time I spend awake without my hearing aids is when I’m in the water—I get to work preparing my communication lifeline to the rest of the world. While other girls are stressing over mascara smudges, I’m worrying about why my earwax seems to have doubled in quantity. Then, when I’m ready to go, that’s when I look in the mirror and think to myself, Gee… one of these days I should get up earlier so I have time to wear mascara.
Then I go to class.
Class time those days was, obviously, made better by the use of my iPad to chart my progress online as Olivia Saunders. During one of Dr. Chase’s many lectures that week, I learned that I had officially reached the “friend recommendations” stage of the experiment. Meaning, total strangers who had become my virtual friends on Facebook had begun to suggest “people I may know” among their own friends. They were passing me on and helping me to connect with more and more people, bringing my total up over 300.
Flipping back to my own profile, on the other hand, showed that not all Facebook profiles were created equal. Of the more than 200 ‘blind’ friend requests I had sent out as plain old Jennifer Smith, only 26 had accepted—mostly normal-looking women like myself with regular interests like reading, baking, and playing Monopoly. All of the hot guys who snatched up the opportunity to friend Olivia seemed to be ignoring my real profile’s requests.
Well, who wants to be friends with those guys anyway?
As I scrolled through my notifications for the influx of new friends, however boring they might have been, one name caught my attention above the others. If I hadn’t been in class, I might have slapped myself.
Noah Wayland, trainer extraordinaire.
Well, it didn’t say the part about being a trainer extraordinaire—obviously. I added that part myself when I read the name in my head. All the same, there was his dimpled profile picture, smiling back at me from the screen of my iPad. I knew I was blushing and it needed to stop before Dr. Chase noticed. I took a deep breath, paid attention to her lecture long enough to get the basic idea, and then turned back to Noah’s profile.
He’d sent me a note along with the friend request: “Thought I could keep an eye on you online. Don’t worry… my policy of trainer confidentiality is still good on the internet.” And then he added a little winking smiley face at the end of it. No signature or anything, as though we were the kind of friends that needed no formalities to stand between them.
My head spun at the thought. Because, up until about five minutes before then, I hadn’t even known that Noah and I were friends at all.
“All right, Jennifer?” Dr. Chase’s voice cut into my thoughts, sending the room spinning around me. I forced my eyes to focus on her.
“Fine, Dr. C,” I offered a weak smile, embarrassed that the rest of the class was now staring at me. Lyla squinted at me from across the classroom, trying to show some concern. I gave her the tiniest shake of my head that I could manage.
As Dr. Chase resumed her lecture, the attention shifted from me back to note-taking for most of the other students. Struck by an idea, however, I couldn’t quite jump into the lecture just yet. Instead, I accepted Noah’s request and sent a light-hearted message back to him: “Are you sure you know me? There are about a thousand Jennifer Smiths out there, you know.” I added my own winking smiley so he would know I was kidding and not panic and unfriend me. How awkward would that be?
Meanwhile, the lecture had shifted into a discussion again, something abou
t human rights in today’s world or something. I hoped Dr. Chase would just leave me out of this one, since my brain felt a lot like Jell-O right now and couldn’t be trusted to spit out any reliable information whatsoever.
Besides, my final project had absolutely zero to do with human rights anyway.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A month into my Master’s project and three weeks into my exercise plan, I was starting to hit my stride. Olivia had racked up a total of 353 friends in that short span of time. And I had lost almost 10 pounds. Things were moving along well, all in the right direction for a change.
I was almost suspicious.
But it felt too good to be so busy and so successful all at the same time, so I decided to just keep going and not think about it. I’d been visiting Tom’s Workout World three times a week, doing yoga DVDs on alternating days in my tiny living room, and eating a strict diet of Green Light foods. Sometimes I snuck a Yellow Light food in there, but not often. The number going down, down, down on the scale was too thrilling to let a Yellow or Red Light food binge ruin things. I was actually choosing to ignore the vending machines on campus, navigating straight to the salad bar in the cafeteria, and passing up on the carb-loaded dinners my mother kept trying to force-feed me. Claire was helping with that part, too, since my mother is a special breed of stubborn.
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