One more thing. I go back to the first page, type Anna Soler into the search box.
Nothing.
Pages two and three: nothing.
Page four: One hit.
Wait. What? Oh God.
My eyes glaze over a little. When I’m able to focus again, I see my name next to the words Silver Pines anonymous.
But it’s not even mine. I didn’t write it!
Unfortunately, it won’t be hard for people to believe I did.
—
I’ve had anxiety issues since I was little.
Separation anxiety from my mom in preschool lasted for more than a year, and anxieties about my skin in middle school kept me home for days at a time. Every few weeks my poor mom had to listen to twelve-year-old me wail and beg her not to make me go, had to hear how I was disgusting and ugly, how everyone was grossed out by me.
I made it through the beginning of Prep only by the grace of Nikki and Rad and Jethro. Having them as friends made life and social interactions tolerable for a while, but eventually even that wore off. Junior year I stopped making eye contact with people again, and my voice dropped to the same ragged whisper my parents knew too well.
Non-IRL interactions were even worse. Maintaining the Internet presence of a not wildly popular but also not totally losery high school girl was too much for me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone could tell that the facade I was trying to create was just that, a facade. Like all my followers could see me take fifteen selfies in my new bathing suit at the beach before posting one—not of me but of my shadow on the sand. Like they were all laughing at my insecurity and were right to.
Then there was the paranoia.
I knew that any post could be turned into a meme for the whole student body to feast on. Of course, everyone knew this. But I really knew it. Like, I couldn’t get it out of my head that someone, somewhere, had screenshotted that photo of me at the Game of Thrones marathon—from three years ago!—in some khaleesi-style halter top I’d made out of a scarf, which Rad posted one night as a joke, taking it down only after I screamed at her three minutes after she posted it, an eon in Internet time.
That night was dark. I threw my phone across the room, and after an hour of thinking about what post could bring me back from the dead on social media, I started to feel like the walls, my bed, and everything else around me were trying to squeeze my body into a tiny little ball. My throat wouldn’t open; I tried to get up from my bed, but it was completely impossible; half my vision went black; and then my face went numb. I felt like I was going to die, and I couldn’t even call for help.
It was the worst panic attack I’d ever had.
The next day Dad tried to keep it light with one of his terrible jokes, and Mom held back her tears as they signed me in at the Silver Pines Clinic for Adolescents.
SP isn’t exactly One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s more like a year-round summer camp for kids who are “high strung” or suffer from narcissistic personality disorder. I talked to actual doctors with actual medical degrees, not just a guidance counselor. Getting a diagnosis was such a huge relief. It was confirmation that it wasn’t all in my head. Like, I’m not just a freak! There’s a reason I feel the way I do. They taught me how to manage it and also referred me to Dr. Bechdel, who continues to help with a long-term plan to overcome it.
Rad and Nikki and I had been inseparable since our Bratz dolls days, back before our interest in boys, before we knew about feminism, before our college application stress. They knew how I could get—how worked up and anxious and freaked out and weird. This was a whole new level of crazy, but Rad dealt with it mostly by reading me words of wisdom from Amber Rose’s memoir, How to Be a Bad Bitch, over the phone. Nikki hand mailed cards with inspirational sayings. Haven and Andrew texted me videos (think capybaras in swimming pools) to cheer me up. None of them had any idea how to handle a chick with SAD, but they sure did try.
Jethro…sweet Jethro…he called every single day I was in there.
So, through some combination of my friends, group therapy, individual therapy, “freewriting” in my dream journal, meditation class, and Zoloft, I got better. Mostly. And that doesn’t always happen. What I mean to say is, I was lucky.
Silver Pines anonymous. I lean back on my pillow and stare at the words.
I didn’t exactly hide the fact that I’d gone to SP, but I didn’t broadcast it either, and it seemed like people had been slowly forgetting it since last year. I thought dating Palmer had put the nail in the coffin. So much for that.
Suddenly, I realize that if I’m not the one who wrote it, that query was someone else’s. It makes me sad to think that someone else at Prep is struggling enough to need a visit to Silver Pines.
The doorbell rings.
I look up from Reddit toward my bedroom door. My parents didn’t say they were expecting anyone, and the days of Palmer showing up randomly are waaay over. I move to the window and peek outside.
Radhika stands on the front stoop, arms crossed.
—
“Hi,” I say in a neutral voice as I close the front door behind me. It’s freezing out, but Rad and I stay on the front porch, since there’s no place in the house where we’ll have privacy. “Are you here to torture me again? Honestly, I’m surprised you want to do it one on one. You seem to have so much fun doing it in public.”
It’s my best attempt at “whatever doesn’t kill me.” But Rad just laughs. Try as I might, we both know I can never be as razor sharp as she is.
Without a word, Rad reaches into the back pocket of her jeans and pulls out her American Spirits.
“You can’t do that here,” I tell her.
“Whatever. Your dad doesn’t care. Everyone smokes in Bogotá.”
“This is Fairfax, not Bogotá.”
Rad lights a cigarette with a Bic with Marilyn Monroe making a kissy face on it.
“I like the cold,” she says, picking a piece of tobacco off her tongue. “You’d think, being Indian, I’d be more into heat. But I like winter better.”
“What’re you doing here, Rad?”
“Where?”
“Here, at my house. What are you really doing? Because I think you’re doing that thing that a cat does with a mouse it’s already wounded—playing with the mouse until it gets bored and then killing it. So just, like, kill the mouse.”
Rad looks amused. “Excuse me?”
“Go on. Tell me I’m a terrible friend again. I deserve it.”
She blows out a plume of thick, pale smoke, watches it melt into the dark air—cream dissolving into coffee. “You’re spineless and disloyal and don’t seem to have the slightest grasp of girl code, but you’re occasionally useful to me.”
I can’t help smiling. I missed her repartee. Even when it’s insulting. I can tell she’s straining not to laugh too.
“Useful. Wow. Okay. So where does that leave us?” I ask, plucking the cigarette from her fingers and taking a drag.
“On the way to a party,” she says, like it’s obvious.
I blink. “It’s a school night.”
She sighs, annoyed to have to explain things that I should already know. “No, it’s a Thursday night. And in college, that’s a weekend night. We’re peacing out of high school in a few months, okay? We need to start practicing, getting our bodies adjusted to the new schedule. It’s the first day of the last high school semester of your life. Something you in particular should be glad to celebrate, because it means that you won’t have too many more chances to ruin every friendship you have.”
I grimace at the ground. “Whose party?”
“Vanessa’s.”
I groan.
Rad, though, is having none of it. “You know Vanessa throws good ones. I got, like, a hundred snaps about it in the last hour. Lots of kegs, and her parents’ McMansion is massive, and, best of all, they’re never in it.”
“Well, my parents are in my McHouse,” I say. “And there’s no way they’re letting
me leave it. I don’t think they’ll accept a Thursday night is a weekend night in college-land excuse.”
“So sell them another one. Tell them you have to do something for the Xandria, that that’s why I came over.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “My mom will never buy it.”
Rad hits me once, hard, on the upper arm.
“Ow!” I say, rubbing the spot.
“You’re avoiding Palmer, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“Whatever. You’ll be taking pictures of him all semester, so get used to it. Plus, Nikki will be there, and so will I, so you can begin your groveling program.”
“Rad, I told you how sorry I am.”
“Yeah, that won’t do it. You’re coming, and you’re still on probation. One slipup, and you’re done. Understand?”
“It’s just…,” I say.
She shakes her head, uncomprehending. “What, bitchy face?”
“Did you see the Reddit?”
Rad tsks. “That Silver Pines thing? Who cares. It wasn’t even you, was it?”
I like that she still knows me well enough to know. If only she knew how pathetic what I really searched is.
“Whatever, I’m so over the Knock List,” Rad says. “Party. Now.”
I don’t want to face the masses, but getting an olive branch from my best friend in the world—how can I say no?
“You’re powerless against me.” Rad eyes my jeans and sweatshirt. “Change into a better outfit—you look gross. Also, you have to take your car. Nikki, Haven, Andrew, and Jethro are already coming in mine. I have to go pick them up.”
I feel my eyes getting big in my head. “Haven? He’s going? To Vanessa’s?”
“You know Haven has a death wish.” She chuckles, taking a final drag on her cigarette. “So, anyway, you can follow us there. Unless you want to sit on Jethro’s lap.”
Can she see how deeply I’m blushing in the dark?
“You guys looked like two goddamn peas at lunch,” she continues, to my despair.
I lean back. Jethro obviously hasn’t told anyone about our conversation. “He just wasn’t making me his whipping girl.”
“You and I both know he’d like to whip you any day.”
“Ew.” I pause. “Just friends. I think.”
“You think?”
“I mean, I think we’re friends again. I hope we are.”
“Keep it that way,” Rad tells me. “You’ve messed up enough of us for one year.”
I don’t utter a word about her and Andrew. I can hear her response already, the same one I’ve heard a dozen times: That’s just sex, Anna, nothing else. Grow up.
With the toe of her ankle boot, Rad kicks the cigarette butt off the porch and into the bushes. “And prepare to follow my commands over at Vanessa’s. Think Theon Greyjoy. My wish is your Yes, ma’am, I’m the shittiest friend, ma’am.”
“I wasn’t even in the comp sci lab when it happened,” Haven says. “They were working on some visualization tool and fishing for big data sets to throw into it, and they stumbled on the search terms. Then they just dumped it into an email. Sooo boring. It would’ve been much more spectacular if I’d been there.”
Rad, Nikki, Andrew, and I are listening to Haven complain about how underwhelmed he is by the Knock List, which he’s been doing all day, apparently. We’re clustered on the front steps of Vanessa Eubanks’s Spring Valley house—super new, super huge, and super tacky. Prep parents are a D.C. mix of spies, think tankers, too many lawyers to count, and soccer moms and dads, but a lot of us get some kind of financial aid. Not Vanessa’s parents. Her dad is some kind of defense contractor who people say gets richer every time a foreign country is invaded. Which has made him pretty rich.
“My work has more flair,” Haven continues. “More panache.”
“Will all of you just shut up about the stupid leak?” Rad says. “Isn’t there anything more interesting to talk about?”
“It would have been more interesting if I’d done it,” Haven grumbles.
He’s wearing a pair of Lolita sunglasses he must’ve found in the backseat of Rad’s car (the lenses are heart shaped, the frames bright-red plastic), and he’s turned his BYTE ME T-shirt inside out. It wouldn’t fool a fourth grader, and, after the turkey-head spirit-squad announcement hack he perpetrated on Vanessa, I put our chances of making it inside with him somewhere in the Not Happening range.
Rad turns back to me. “Knock again,” she says. “Harder.”
Haven and Andrew laugh a little when I humbly do as the slave master tells me. Nikki doesn’t—I guess she isn’t quite ready to laugh about me yet. As we wait for my second, louder knock to be answered, the bass line of the song playing inside thump-thumps away, shaking the ground, sending vibrations up our legs.
“Is Jethro coming?” Nikki asks as we continue to wait.
Rad glances at me. “He said he can’t stand Vanessa. I told him none of us can, which is why we’re gonna drink all her booze.”
I have a sinking feeling I know the real reason Jethro’s not here.
Finally the front door opens, and the swell of noise and heat envelops us. “Hey there, come on in,” says the drunk girl who answers. Actually, it’s more like heytherecomeonin.
Vanessa’s living room is a wreck. The furniture’s been pushed carelessly to the walls to make space for a trio of kegs manned by Wallace Reid and a couple of the other basketball players. Bowls of M&M’s and potato chips, some overturned, are scattered across various surfaces. Stereo equipment, balanced precariously on a windowsill, is blasting Rihanna. The cast of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has gathered in the front of the living room, with Mattie Eizenberg at the center of the cluster. Nikki stares at the group longingly. Rad puts her hand on Nikki’s back, pushing her forward.
“This is the night. Tell him you want to hear him do one of his amazing monologues,” Rad whispers. “Upstairs.”
“That’s stupid,” Nikki says as she stops short. “He’ll never believe that.”
“Please,” Rad says. “He’s an actor. He needs any and all validation.”
Then Rad leans in and whispers something I can’t hear to Nikki.
What I can hear is Nikki’s response. “I can’t do that!”
“You wanted to know how to make it happen tonight,” Rad says loudly, jabbing her finger into Nikki’s arm. “That’s how you make it happen.”
Once upon a friendship I would have stopped Rad from exerting pressure on Nikki about sex, but, since I’m on eggshells with her now, I stay quiet. Rad gives Nikki a final look, like, Ignore me at your peril, then summons Andrew to come with her, heading for parts unknown—presumably dark, quiet parts where no one else is. Typical.
Neither Nikki nor I drink (I don’t because of the vestigial habit to not mix meds and booze; Nikki doesn’t because she’s afraid of turning into her mom), and by silent mutual consent, we find a spot together by the back wall and sip from lukewarm cups of Diet Coke. For nearly a minute we watch the actors without a word.
It’s the first time we’ve been together one-on-one in, well, months, and I’m not sure where to start. How’ve you been? feels way too shallow.
“You should go over,” I say finally, trying to break the silence, trying to be a better friend. (Of course I don’t want her to leave me where any random person could approach, but she needs to know where my priorities are.)
“Rad spent twenty minutes last night telling me that if I didn’t find a way to get Mattie alone in a bed soon, she’d sleep with him first,” Nikki blurts. I’m grateful for her confessional outburst. Skip the small talk, let’s dive back in, she seems to be communicating. She’s probably missed having someone to talk to about Rad too, I realize. The girls are thick as thieves, but they can definitely irritate each other.
“Just talk to him if you want to,” I say. “You don’t have to rush anything.”
Nikki doesn’t look at me. “I thought you didn’t like Mattie.”
I sigh
. “Nikki, I think we all know that I’m the last person to be judging anyone’s boy choices right now.”
She shrugs. “Anyway. Those guys are all actors. I’m just on the crew.”
“I saw you talking to Mattie this afternoon.”
“That was different. That was, like, a mixed group with other random kids too. Not just the star Thesbos.”
“You’re a star set designer.”
“Yeah,” she says absently. “By the way…did you and Palmer…”
“Do it?”
“Yeah.”
I laugh. We’re officially back, up in each other’s business.
Nikki smiles at me expectantly.
“Almost,” I say.
“Well, that’s good that you didn’t, right?”
“I guess, yeah.”
“Did you love him?”
I’d been purposefully avoiding talking about Palmer with her and Rad. But now, it actually feels good. I’ve been suppressing all these feelings and could really use some advice from my friends, aka not just Dr. Bechdel and my mom.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe, for a while. But after we broke up, it didn’t last. I just kinda felt stupid that I ever thought it was real. And that I screwed you guys over.”
Nikki looks at me, then touches my arm. “I shouldn’t have ignored you in the lounge, A. That was sucky.”
“I get why you’re mad at me.”
Nikki shakes her head. “Rad really yelled at me after lunch, you know. She just…she plays the bitch, but I think you know she was actually pretty hurt.”
“I know.” I look at my hands.
She’s about to say something else, but suddenly she falls silent. Across the room, Mattie is crooking a finger at her, giving her a sexy grin.
Nikki breathes in sharply, sucking in her stomach. “Wish me luck,” she says.
Mattie welcomes her with a full-body hug, and the others move to make room for her at his side. Nikki smiles wide, which makes me smile.
But not for long. Because now here I am, standing alone at a party. My heart flutters, and I clutch my phone like it’s my lifeline. I breathe deeply and make myself look busy—writing texts to nobody, fake-reading my Instagram. I know this party is a perfect scenario for my SAD to flare up. But sometimes I still can’t believe how ridiculously uncomfortable I get being around other people. It’s not that I don’t enjoy socializing, under the exact right conditions; it’s just that these aren’t them.
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