I went over and picked up my pile of clothes. But I didn’t want to put any of it on. So instead, I asked Jimmy if I could borrow something from his sister’s closet. “Go for it,” he said casually. So I grabbed the cutest little white dress, and then I grabbed an old red purse from the back of the closet. I stuffed my clothes in it, and then I was about to stuff my phone in it when I noticed a message from my friend, Steve.
“How’s it going? Are they done whacking at you like a piñata?” he asked.
“I’m just about to leave. It was the best night of my life,” I wrote. And I had to think about it before I sent it, to make sure that it was really true. But I couldn’t think of a better night—though I had a feeling that there were some truly amazing nights ahead of me now.
THE END
PRETENDING
After lots of begging, Joe finally agrees to get himself dolled up for his friend Chris. He was promised that it would only be for five minutes—just long enough to prove to Chris’s mother that Chris does indeed have a girlfriend.
It was just supposed to be a quick appearance at the mall, but now Chris’s mother is spying from afar, so Joe is going to have to stay in character until they can shake her, or until the pretend date is finished.
CHAPTER I
I arrived at the mall just on time, but I knew I was going to be late because I was too afraid to get out from my car.
I felt so stupid, wearing that sparkly bodysuit and that black skirt—by the way, the black skirt didn’t seem so short when I first put it on, back in my sister’s bedroom, but now it felt like it was hardly covering my bum. I looked down and saw my exposed thighs, and I wondered if I’d ever left the house with exposed thighs before.
My stomach turned and I took a deep breath. I should have asked for more than fifty bucks—this was definitely worth more than fifty bucks.
I flipped down my car’s little makeup mirror; my mom always called it the makeup mirror, and for once I was actually using it to check my makeup. I still couldn’t believe that I was wearing makeup. I couldn’t believe I actually spent an hour in front of the mirror, carefully drawing on eyeliner and eye shadow and eyebrow filler and concealer and all that other stuff. But even more unbelievable was the fact that I actually kind of looked like a chick by the end of it. I hated that I looked like a chick, even though that made this all worth it. I wished I would have looked ridiculous so that I could have just sent Chris a photo and said, “See—you were wrong. Now go find someone else to do your dirty work!” But sadly, I took a picture back in my home bathroom and the picture was actually pretty good. Chris texted me, asking to see how I looked. I didn’t want to send him that picture, even though it was exactly what he wanted to see.
“Perfect! You’re really helping me out today. I’ll see you in an hour,” he replied with speed. And that hour was the longest hour of my life: building up the courage to leave the house, building up the courage to get into my car—and now I was stuck trying to build up the courage to go into that mall.
I parked at the back, behind the movie theatre, so that no one would see me. Though I had to endure a few glances from strangers while I drove the ten minutes from my house to the theatre. I got stopped at one red light while a group of college kids were crossing the road. A few of them looked over at me, so I sunk into my seat. One of the guys stared for a moment too long, making my heart stammer. I wondered if he could tell that he wasn’t looking at a woman, or if he was ogling me the way I occasionally ogled pretty girls. I wasn’t a pretty girl and I didn’t want to be ogled—I just wanted to get through this stupid little stunt as quickly and as invisibly as possible.
But if I was going to get it over with, I needed to get it started. I needed to go inside to meet Chris. “You here? I just got here,” he texted me.
I bit down on my tongue and gave myself one more look in the mirror. I wasn’t sure if I actually looked like a convincing chick, but at least I didn’t look recognizable—well, maybe a little bit. If someone close to me saw me, they might be able to figure out who was beneath that makeup and that wig that Chris stole from a department store the day before. He asked me to go with him to get the wig, but that was when I was still refusing his offer. “At least tell me if you want to be a blonde or a brunette,” he said. And I told him to shove the wig up his ass. He ended up getting a blonde wig—and it was surprisingly realistic. I couldn’t help but wonder if he really nabbed it off of a mannequin or if he held up one of those professional wig stores with his dad’s revolver.
I primped up my golden locks and then I took another deep breath. “Just get it over with,” I said to myself.
Chris sent me another text message. “Well? You aren’t standing me up, are you? I need you, man. Just do this for me—please!”
I groaned and looked up as a group of young women walked by my car and towards the mall entrance. I tried for a moment to figure out if I was having a nightmare—because I’d had similar nightmares all night. In one nightmare, I was in the mall’s lingerie store, looking through the panties drawers, when my mother and father walked up to me and surrounded me on either side. They both looked at me and said, “What are we going to tell your grandfather?” It was a strange nightmare because my grandfather had been dead for fifteen years, but it still left me with chills and the inability to fall back asleep. I didn’t want to fall back asleep anyway, because I didn’t want to end up back in that nightmare. But somehow, there I was—back in that nightmare… Except this nightmare was really happening.
“Get it over with,” I said to myself again. Then I closed my eyes and reached for the handle of my car door. I pushed it open and stepped out. Then I nearly fell flat on my face, forgetting that I was in high heels. They weren’t the tallest heels, but when you think you’re two inches closer to the ground than you are, accidents tend to happen. I managed to grab onto the side view mirror of the car next to me before I hit the ground. I looked around quickly to make sure no one was watching, and thankfully, I was the only one in that back parking lot. “Get yourself together, Joe,” I said. I stood up straight and then I reached down to give my skirt a tug, making sure it was covering as much of my shaved legs as possible. I still couldn’t believe I shaved my legs for this—I really should have asked for more than fifty bucks. Chris had a rich family. He could have easily done two or three hundred bucks.
As I approached the mall entrance, the doors swung open. A few guys my age walked out. One of them looked at me, and I recognized him. His name was Tony and he was in my chemistry class. I froze and felt the blood rushing away from my head. I wobbled slightly. He reached back and grabbed the door, stopping it from closing. And I just stared into his eyes. “Going in?” he asked.
I parted my lips. I’d practised my voice quite a bit over the past twenty-four hours, and I thought that I did a pretty good chick voice—but now, I was speechless. I couldn’t even think of any words to say. So I just nodded my head.
“Alright. Go ahead,” he said, stepping more to the side in case there wasn’t already enough room.
It took me a moment to break free from my paralysis. What if he recognized me? What if he didn’t recognize me right away, but he recognized me in a few minutes? How long would it take for the whole school to find out about this humiliating incident? Would they sympathize with me when I told them I only did it for the fifty bucks? Or would that just make them laugh at me even more? I zipped past Tony and into the mall. And then my heart plunged deep into my gut. The mall was busy, even though Chris had promised me it would be dead. “It’s a Tuesday afternoon—who’s going to be at the mall?”
But it was the mall’s annual Customer Appreciation Day. Every store was having a sale and the mall was raffling off a brand new SUV. And on top of all that, the new Star Wars movie had just come out the day before. I looked around as I stood near the entrance, and in that first harrowing moment, I recognized two different girls from my school: Darla and Kelsey. I’d only been at that damned mall for one minu
te and I had already recognized three people.
I needed to get out. I needed to get far away from that mall before anyone recognized me and ruined my life. This was not worth fifty bucks. It wasn’t worth five hundred bucks. Even if that mall was empty, it wouldn’t have been worth the humiliation: shaving my legs, dressing up in my sister’s clothes, putting on my sister’s makeup. What was I thinking? Why did I ever agree to this embarrassment?
Someone tapped on my shoulder. I spun around, ready to flee. I knew I couldn’t let anyone stare into my eyes for more than a couple of seconds. I didn’t have any makeup on my eyes and my eyes were a very distinct shade of light green. And my nose was still my nose, and my cheekbones were still my cheekbones, and my lips were still my lips…
Chris was standing a foot away from me. “You came,” he said with a big smile. “And you look great. I’m going to hug you now and I’m going to pretend to kiss you. Don’t worry—our lips won’t touch.” He moved in before I could give him my consent. I closed my eyes as his arms wrapped around me. Then I felt his nose nestling up to mine. Five seconds later, he was staring into my eyes again. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? Now tell me—can you see my mom? Is she still standing behind me?”
I looked over his shoulder, and then he snapped at me. “Don’t look!” he said.
“I don’t know what your mom looks like,” I said quietly.
“Use the voice you practised! Are you crazy? You’re going to get us both busted.”
I cleared my throat. “Sorry,” I said in my girly voice.
Chris casually turned around. “Pretend to walk with me,” he whispered. “Shit—there she is.” He rose up his hand and waved. A woman at the far end of the hallway waved back. Was that his mother? He had showed me a photo of his mom earlier that day, but I couldn’t remember what the picture looked like. When I was staring at it, my mind was too busy trying to figure out if he was serious about this whole thing. Now, as I stood dressed up like a girl in that busy mall, I still couldn’t figure out if he was serious.
CHAPTER II
Chris had been lying to his parents for months about having a girlfriend. He claimed that it had all started out as a little white lie after his dad awkwardly asked him if he was gay. “I’m seeing this girl from school and it’s actually pretty serious,” he told his parents. And since that day, his parents asked about this fictional girlfriend every single night. So night after night, this made up character became more and more intricate, and more and more real in the minds of Chris’s mother and father.
Chris didn’t think it was a big deal, until his mom told his uncles and aunts and his sick grandmother. Then she told her friends at work and she even told some family friends. She was starting to ask Chris for pictures. “I don’t have any,” Chris would say, and then his mother would become suspicious. “She isn’t on Facebook or SnapChat or any of those apps. She likes to keep a low profile,” was the lie he used.
“I don’t get why you care so much about what your parents think,” I said to him when he first told me about his fictional girlfriend.
“I don’t care,” he said.
“So just tell them that you lied—or just say that you and your girlfriend broke up.”
“If I do that, then my parents will think that I’m gay all over again.”
“But you just said that you don’t care what they think,” I said.
“I don’t care!” he snapped. “But I do care what my brother thinks—and my parents told him about my girlfriend. And he told some of his friends at school, and now there are kids in our grade who think I have a girlfriend.”
It was a very complicated matter, and I had a feeling that Chris wasn’t telling me the whole story. I was shocked when he asked me to play the role of his girlfriend. “It will just take five minutes,” he told me. And I resisted his offer for days. But I eventually folded when he showed me the money and said, “I promise—just five minutes, and then you’re done. It’s the easiest fifty bucks you’ll ever make in your entire life.”
But Chris was wrong. It didn’t just take five minutes. It took me hours to nail down that voice. It took me hours to get myself dolled up for our ‘date’. It took me twenty minutes just to get down to the mall, and it would take me twenty minutes to get back. Adding in the five minutes I had to spend with him at the mall, the payout was starting to look like roughly four dollars an hour. And that wasn’t even accounting for all the humiliation.
And if that was it, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But after the first five minutes in the mall with Chris, it didn’t end. “Can I go now?” I asked.
“She’s still watching. She hasn’t left,” Chris said. And he wasn’t lying. His mother had slipped into a nearby store. We could see her sifting mindlessly through racks of clothing, looking over at us occasionally as if she was the worst spy in the history of espionage. “This is so embarrassing,” Chris said.
“You think this is embarrassing for you? How’s about you put on the skirt and wig and give this a try? I’m leaving. I didn’t agree to this,” I said. I turned around and started to head back towards that movie theatre where my car was parked.
He grabbed me by the wrist. “Don’t go! Please! Don’t go! I’ll give you another fifty bucks. I mean—you’re already here. Just tough it out until she leaves. We can sneak away from her if she doesn’t leave.”
“Look,” I said. “If you think I care about your mom, you’re an idiot. Look around you. Half of our school is here. I saw Kelsey Addison when I walked in, and she was here with that Darla chick. You know how popular those girls are? You know how quickly they can start a rumour? This is social suicide—I’ll be lucky if they haven’t already started the rumour.” I was still speaking in my girl voice, just in case anyone came within earshot.
“You’re unrecognizable, dude,” Chris said with a low voice. “You look like a chick. Don’t worry about anyone recognizing you. Believe me—you pass.”
“You recognized me immediately,” I said.
He nodded his head. “Because you sent me a picture.” He showed me his phone, showing me the picture I took in the mirror before heading out. “I even showed this to my mom and she said, ‘Oh my God, she’s so pretty.’”
“She didn’t say that,” I said. My stomach turned.
“She did. She said you have the most beautiful eyes. She thinks you’re the real deal. You can’t leave now. Just walk around with me. We’ll sneak out near the Apple Store. There’s a service exit there. We can just loop back to your car.”
I felt light headed and my feet were already starting to hurt in my tall heels. The Apple Store was on the other side of the mall—a ten-minute walk at a casual pace. And presumably, Chris would want to stop at a few stores to make the date look legitimate. And then there was the walk back. I was looking at forty minutes at least. “One hundred bucks—on top of the fifty,” I said.
“Fine, fine,” he said. Then he smirked. “Maybe I’ll even buy you a nice dress or a pair of heels or something.”
I wanted to slap him. I bit down on my tongue and forced a smile. “I’ve got rich taste,” I said through clenched teeth. “I only wear designer brands.”
He laughed. “See? We’re having fun. Now let’s go.” We started to walk, and then he reached down and grabbed my hand, sending a cold shiver up my arm and down my spine. I wanted to pull my hand away, but I could feel the gaze of his proud mother. As tempted as I was to pull away from him, I knew he was paying me a lot of money—and I’d already gone through all the trouble of making myself pretty, so the least I could do was hold his hand and pretend like I really was his girlfriend.
CHAPTER III
We started our mall journey at the food court. I made Chris buy me a milkshake and then I made him buy me some French fries. I was surprised when he actually did it, so I started to wonder how much I could get out of him. We hit up the record shop next. I saw the new Arctic Monkeys vinyl pressing. I pointed to it and said, “I wish I had that with my colle
ction.” And then I watched as Chris looked back, presumably to check for his mother. Then he looked back at the shelf and grabbed the album. “I’ll buy it for you,” he said.
“Aw, thanks sweetie,” I said, getting a little more into my role.
It’s not like it was Chris’s money. Unlike me, he didn’t work an after-school job. He’d never worked a day in his life. In fact, he always bragged about his big allowance, and his parents even bought him a brand new car for his sixteenth birthday. As much as I hated socialists, I couldn’t help but think that this was a nice way of evening out the playing field just a little bit.
I watched as his face turned a shade of red when the cashier asked him for thirty dollars. I guess the album was more expensive than he thought. He hesitated before grabbing his credit card. I tried not to laugh. “The girl gets what the girl wants, am I right?” Chris said to the cashier. But the cashier didn’t even crack a smile.
We slipped out from the record store. I couldn’t help but notice that Chris wasn’t acting like himself. He was standing upright and tense. He would become silent whenever we were anywhere near people from our school—and there were lots of people from our school at that mall, seeing as our school was just four blocks away. He kept grabbing my hand, whenever groups of students were coming towards us, as if he wanted everyone to know that he had a girlfriend, and not just his mother. And maybe this wasn’t really about his mother. Maybe other people were starting to wonder if he was gay, and he was just desperate to set the record straight—no pun intended.
He pointed at a shop window, at a mannequin wearing a little white dress. “You would look great in that dress,” he said—and he said it just loud enough for the nearby group of our classmates (whom I vaguely recognized) to hear. I decided to leap on the opportunity to have a little bit of fun.
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