by Lele Pons
“But you didn’t think I was cool, you thought I was such a loser, you made fun of me for being so lame, don’t you remember? You taunted me and called me a pirate!”
“Yes, yes, I remember, and I’m sorry for that. But it wasn’t because I thought you were lame, it was because I thought you were independent and free-spirited and unique. I knew you weren’t going to follow me around like the other girls did, if anything you were going to take over as queen bee, and that threatened me. Yeah you were dorky, but you had that unshakable confidence, and that counts for everything, even I know that.”
“Wow. That’s so insightful . . . and so big of you to admit.”
“Thanks.”
“So now what were you saying about liking my boyfriend?”
“Oh. Yeah. That. Look, I’ve always kind of had feelings for Alexei, but I knew you two liked each other, so I stayed out of it. Every now and then I thought maybe you weren’t going to happen, so I would try again, but he’s never been into me. Ever since you got together with him I’ve backed off, I promise. And I’ve tried to move on. But at Nick’s party the other day I had like six beers and was actually embarrassingly drunk. I got out of hand. But you don’t have to worry because he would never cheat on you. If anything all you have to worry about is me not being a very good friend. At least when I’m drunk.”
“No, hey, look, it was a good-friend thing to do to be able to say all this. I think you’re strong for admitting this to me; I actually admire you for it. I’m not great with honesty and, like, emotions or whatever. It takes strength. The fact that you can be honest about what matters is a sign that you’re a real friend. Friendship isn’t perfect, there are always going to be problems, it’s just about how you deal with those problems. And I think you’re dealing with them amazingly right now.”
“Oh. Thank you, Lele.”
“And I’m sorry you’ve liked Alexei for so long. I never thought we were going to happen; I always thought he liked you, actually—he’s always talking about you and about how funny you are. In a way I sometimes think he still does. I’m actually always a little bit worried he’s going to leave me for you. I don’t know if that’s rational or just totally insane, but it’s one of the many, MANY reasons that our relationship is kind of falling apart. I’m starting to think we were better off friends. So hey, he might be available soon.”
“No! I would never date him after this! Hoes before bros, right?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Hoes before bros.”
• • •
I ditch gym and sneak off campus through a gap in the chain-link fence behind the language building, skip the rest of the day. I need to be alone, to get back in touch with myself. I walk down Fourth Street all the way to the beach, buy a vanilla ice-cream cone with extra rainbow sprinkles. I take off my shoes and turn off my phone and walk down to the water, savoring the feeling of ocean air on my face and cool sand between my toes and the crystalized sugar of rainbow sprinkles melting on my tongue. It feels nice to be alone. This school year I’ve been so preoccupied with becoming my best self and then proving to everyone that I’m still me that I forgot that I’m human, just like everyone else. And that means being flawed, it means trying your best but making mistakes, then waking up and trying your best all over again. I guess what I’m trying to say is being human means having to say you’re sorry . . . and sometimes it’s to yourself. So, I’m sorry, Lele, for being so obsessed with you that I ironically ended up neglecting you. No, I’m not crazy, I’m just trying to find a little peace of mind.
I sit down right at the edge of the water and trail a finger through the damp sand. It feels good to be alone; no Alexei, no Yvette, dare I say no Vine? It’s only me and the ocean and, like, countless sailors and mermaids before me, I feel free.
48
I’m Not Good with Breakups / When You Don’t Know How to Break Up With Someone
(9,700,000 Followers)
I have a distinct memory from when I was a kid where my mom’s friend Jill slept on our couch for a week because she was “going through a breakup.” I was about five and didn’t know what a breakup was, and so my mom explained that it’s when a boyfriend and girlfriend decide not to be together anymore. Being five and believing that boys not only had cooties but that they were also flat-out evil, I decided to be happy for Jill, as she was finally free. In addition, the week she spent on our couch seemed like the most fun way imaginable to live life. She had people to cook and clean for her, people who felt bad for her and loved her and wanted to make her happy all the time. My mom baked her cookies and kept a steady stream of weepy romantic comedies on the TV and brought her fuzzy blankets and kept her stocked in tissues and rubbed her feet and listened to her talk and cry for literally hours. I made her bracelets from my lanyard kit and put on dance shows in the living room to entertain her. Even my dad put in an effort to make her laugh.
“I can’t wait until one day I go through a breakup,” I said to my mom one night at dinner.
“Why?” She laughed. “What a silly thing to say.”
“Well, just because it seems so fun! Everyone treats you special and you get to have lots of sleepovers with your friends.”
“Oh, honey”—she was amused—“it doesn’t quite work like that. People have to be extra nice to you because you’re going through so much pain. A breakup can be one of the most painful and difficult things in the world.”
• • •
Aaanndddd she was right. I’ve decided things will be better with Alexei as my friend and not my boyfriend, but I can’t help but feel the sadness of failure and loss. Plus, how the hell are you supposed to break up with someone? Do you pass them a note in class that reads, Do you think we should break up? Check YES or NO. (PS, I personally think we should) . . . ? Ugh, no, that’s not right. I take out a pen and paper and get down to brainstorming.
Ways to break up with someone when you just don’t know what you’re doing
Take a sick day to think it over. Decide you need a week of sick days. Keep taking sick days until he assumes you’re dead or forgets you exist altogether.
Hire his little sister to do it for you, even if she’s evil. He can’t get mad at her for that, so in the end everyone wins because nobody gets yelled at.
Go into the witness protection program: change your name and hair color, flee the country, never return.
You don’t do anything: you know that you’ve broken up and that’s all that really matters. Right? Heh.
You hire your friend to kiss him so that you can “catch him cheating,” then use this as an excuse to break up with him.
You bake him a cake with frosting letters that spell out “It’s Over.” By the time he reads it you’ll be long gone.
Skywriting?
Did I already say leave the country?
Hire a hit man? (Too dark?)
Be a mature, decent human being and have a conversation with him, no matter how hard it is for you to do.
Dammit. Why do I gotta have this intuition to do the right thing?
• • •
After sixth period I have a powerful urge to book it, run home and hide under my covers for the next twenty to thirty years, but I force myself over to Alexei’s locker, where I know he’ll be waiting for me. At first he isn’t there, and I think I’ve caught a lucky break—maybe he has fled the country and I’m totally off the hook—but I make myself wait it out just to be sure, and sure enough he does show up, looking effortlessly cute as always. Are you sure you want to do this? The lovesick voice in my head always has to get its two cents in. Yes, I’m sure. If I want Alexei as a friend, if I want things to go back to the way they were, if I want to get back in touch with myself, this is what has to happen.
“Hey, girl,” he says, his eyes already melancholy, predicting what’s to come.
“Hey. I think we need to talk.”
“You’re probably right.” He nods, hunching his shoulders. Suddenly he looks more like a cartoon drawing of an
emo kid than an actual human being. Awwww.
• • •
We walk to my house, taking the same path we took the very first time he walked me home about nine months ago—several million followers ago. I joke that if we had had sex back on that day, then by today I could be giving birth to our baby, but he doesn’t think it’s funny. Men, am I right?
“So what do you think we need to talk about?” he asks.
“Okay, listen, I’ve been thinking about this all day and I still don’t know the right way to say it, if there even is a right way. But I guess the bottom line is, do you ever feel like we were happier when we were just friends?”
“Yes! I do!”
“Whoa, really? That’s such a relief. I think so too.”
“I didn’t know how to say it either. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
“I didn’t want to hurt your feelings!”
“Well, this is perfect then,” he tells me.
“So perfect.”
“Do you, uh . . . do you think we can go back though? To just being friends?” he asks.
“I don’t know, I hadn’t really thought about that. We were friends before . . . and if you think about it we’ve kind of just been friends throughout all of this, the only real difference is that I’ve turned into a melodramatic monster with an apparent hormone imbalance.” I frown.
“That’s a good point. I mean, not the part about the hormone imbalance, I actually think it’s great that you’re so . . . intense. Well, don’t get me wrong, it’s not the most fun to be in a romantic relationship with someone so . . . never mind, that’s not what I’m trying to say. What I’m trying to say is that I think you’re right that we’ve stayed friends throughout being boyfriend and girlfriend. I think for us being ‘more than friends’ meant being friends with romance and drama. So yeah, maybe we could just take away the romance and drama and go back to ‘just friends.’ ”
“Yeah . . .”
“What’s wrong?” He makes a concerned face.
“I dunno. It’s just that ‘just friends’ sounds like such a downgrade. ”
“But it won’t be. I think maybe in our case less really is more.”
“I feel like that’s one of those sayings that doesn’t actually mean anything but people say it to sound smart and it only sounds smart because it is actually nonsense and no one is brave enough to stand up and say, ‘Hey, I think this is nonsense,’ ” I say.
“First of all, you are hilarious. Second of all, that’s not true. It means sometimes taking less can be a more rewarding experience. It means being ‘just friends’ means so much more than what it sounds like.”
“Ohhhh. I see! Yes, very profound.”
“Now the only question is, do we still have romantic feelings for each other?”
“I dunno.” I shrug, trying to play it cool.
“Okay, well I definitely do.”
“Fine, I do too.”
“So then will we be able to let each other date? I mean, won’t we get jealous?”
“Yeah, we’ll get jealous,” I say. “But I’ll be an adult about it. The jealousy will be worth it if I can have my friend back.”
“So what you’re saying is you won’t try to sabotage my wedding like Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding? Because I sort of think you will.”
“You’re getting way ahead of yourself, no one is ever going to want to marry you.”
“Why you gotta be so rude?” He punches my arm lightly and I shove him into some hedges. It’s like we’re just a pair of kindergartners trying to figure life out. It’s perfect.
• • •
May and June fly by, an exciting tangle of countdowns to summer and weekend beach days and Vines upon Vines upon Vines. There’s always something oddly unsettling about the last week of school—the sun is high and perfectly positioned for beach parties, and yet you’re still indoors. The teachers have run out of assignments to give you, and yet they insist on keeping you as prisoners. There’s this tension between how much fun you could be having and how much fun you are not actually having.
So, we spend all day signing yearbooks, despite the fact that we are all going to see each other again in two months, and then on the last day they always have some sad activity you have to participate in, like boys versus girls softball or capture the flag. This year for the juniors it’s a relay race involving water balloons and trivia from the year’s curriculum. Alexei and Darcy and I play one round before we can’t handle the anticipation of summer anymore, and decide to just make a run for it.
“Hey! Get back here!” Coach Washington calls after us. “Eh, never mind, it’s summer. Just go.” Awwww, I like to think summer vacation brings out the very best in people.
#HIGHSCHOOLSURVIVOR
Three Months Later
49
Meeting Your Ex’s New Bae
(10,000,000 Followers)
When I tell Alexei about my ten brainstormed ways to break up with somebody, he thinks it’s hilarious and insists we adapt them into our six-second masterpieces. Yvette and Darcy are kind enough to join our crew and help turn the visions into realities. Even Yvette’s crew wanted to pitch in! What’s best is Darcy and I finally came up with a name for them: They’re the Whatevers, because seriously, whatever, they’re not important enough in our lives to warrant thought or attention.
Summer comes full of freedom and possibility, everything is bright and beautiful and I’ve never felt so optimistic. There is one tiny itsy-bitsy little glitch in the perfection that is summer, and it happens sometime around July. Okay, fine, it happens on July 1 at 3:47 p.m., but who’s keeping track? Not me, that’s for sure.
So, like I was saying, it’s 3:47 p.m. on July 1 and I’m lying like a beached whale on my bed without a single care in the world, when I get a phone call from Alexei.
“Hey, loser,” I say.
“Hey! How are you?”
“Fine, chillaxing. What’s up?”
“I just wanted to . . . I guess I just wanted to tell you this before you heard it from anyone else. I met someone, her name’s Lila and, well, she’s pretty much my girlfriend now.” HOLD THE PHONE. Wait, I’m already holding the phone. What do you say in this situation when you are already holding a phone?
“Wow, that was . . . fast.” A gray rain cloud drifts over the spectacularity (Lele Vocab Trademark) that is this summer.
“I know, this is probably super uncomfortable for you; I didn’t mean to meet someone so fast but—”
“Uncomfortable? Please! Who’s uncomfortable? I think it’s awesome. Good for you, buddy. Happy for you.” I chew on a cuticle until it bleeds.
“Really? I was worried that—”
“No need to be worried about anything, I’m fine with it. Why wouldn’t I be? You’re my best friend and you met someone you really like so— Hey! I think we should all go out to dinner together, I’d love to meet her!”
“Really? Well, okay, just the three of us?”
“No, of course not. Us three and uh . . . Bryce.”
“Who’s Bryce?”
“Just this guy I’ve been seeing. Casually. He’s not my boyfriend or anything, but we’ve been hanging out.” Actually Bryce is a guy who has been relentlessly trying to get me to go out with him who I have up to now not given the time of day.
“I see. Well, yeah, okay. Why not?”
“Exactly,” I say. “Why the hell not?”
Lila. Hmpf. Sounds like a mutilated version of Lele if you ask me, but NO ONE IS ASKING ME I GUESS.
Me and my big mouth. Why’d I have to suggest dinner? Now I have to find the absolute perfect outfit and act like the absolute perfect version of myself throughout an ENTIRE MEAL. Plus, I have to spend an entire evening with Bryce, who I really have had no intention of getting to know. Getting yourself on fleek in order to meet your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend is one of the most involved processes of all time. This is how you do it.
Start early. Go to the spa f
or massages, soaks, scrubs, and, of course, a full mani-pedi. Spare no expense!
Go shopping. Sure you could look through your closet for the perfect outfit, but everything you own has been done before. If you really want to present yourself as the unique butterfly that you truly are, you will need a brand-new outfit. Again, spare no expense—your appearance is more important on this occasion than any other time. If you show up and the new girl looks more magnificent than you, your self-esteem could be seriously damaged. The outfit should be casual but sharp—jeans and kitten heels, a tight-fitting black T-shirt and leather jacket, for example.
Unwind, get relaxed. You don’t want to show up tense and anxious, so take an hour or so to profoundly chill out. Watch mindless TV, take a bath, take a nap, go swimming, whatever helps you get into your cool-girl headspace. Cool-girl headspace is basically just being so relaxed and laid back that nothing can shock or upset you. You’re above it all, floating on a cloud.
Find a date. This should be someone who likes you more than you like him, someone who will make you look good and contribute to your cool-girl vibe, instead of detract from it. So, you know, someone cute to show you’re a catch!
Last, but not least, follow steps one through fourteen of “How to get yourself on fleek for a fancy Nickelodeon party.” Remember how on fleek you wanted to look for that? You should look and feel at least three times more on fleek tonight.
If you think these steps seem harsh or intense, it’s only because I’m trying to look out for you. And myself. Following these steps will put you (and hopefully me) in a position to feel good about the night. God save us all.
• • •
Bryce picks me up around seven in a metallic blue BMW from 2006. He’s wearing a polo shirt that is practically the exact same shade of blue and a backward baseball cap that says Yankees or Dodgers or whatever, who cares, it’s a sports team no doubt and that is all you need to know. The blue polo is something I can live with, the baseball cap is not, so I make him take it off and put it in the backseat where I can’t see it. Crisis averted. For whatever reason, Alexei has chosen the nearest Olive Garden as our meeting place, which is a crisis that simply cannot be averted. On the bright side, they do have a killer virgin watermelon margarita. You always gotta look on the bright side.