#famous(26)
That voice: completely unexpected.
“Any reason?”
“I don’t know.” I could almost hear her look up at the ceiling, like she did when she was trying to explain something complicated. “People can just be . . . mean to girls. Online. And generally, I suppose.”
“People?”
“Not me, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
She sniffed but kept talking. “I just feel bad for her. It would be one thing if people were asking her on Laura too, but they’re not, you know?”
“I thought you didn’t like her. For taking the picture.” Jeez, sometimes it’s like there’s no filter between my thoughts and my mouth, especially with Emma. No wonder she keeps dumping me.
“Yeah, I was annoyed at first,” she said slowly, considering. “I guess I got over it.”
Wow.
Luckily even I wasn’t stupid enough to say that out loud.
“Okay, yeah, I’ll do my best. I honestly have no idea what they’ll ask, though.”
“I still can’t believe you’re going to be on Laura,” Emma said. I exhaled, relieved. The conversation was starting to feel less land-mined.
I could see Mom slicing through the crowd, chin up, Starbucks cup raised like a weapon.
“Hey, I gotta go,” I said. “My mom’s back. Call you tomorrow?”
“I’ll be waiting by the phone,” she said. Her voice was smiling again.
“Cool. Later.”
“I’ll be thinking of you, Kyle.”
Mom slid into the seat across from me. She sorta hovered forward on it, like she might have to make a run for it.
Looking at her made me more nervous. I turned to my phone instead.
I had a few hundred notifications. I swiped to clear them off my screen and opened Flit, clicking the search icon.
My phone autofilled the handle before I’d even typed three letters. Jeez, I hadn’t looked at her page that many times, had I?
@attackoftherach_face
She still hadn’t flitted anything new. And she still had fewer than a hundred followers.
I wondered what she was thinking about all this. I clicked open a PF window, ready to type something stupid, just like, “hey what’s up,” but I stopped myself. What would be the point?
After all, Emma was right. I’d seen those flits from Jessie, and Erin, and a couple other girls at school. It didn’t seem that embarrassing to me. So Rachel had an awkward phase: Who didn’t? But you could tell they were trying to humiliate her. Even if Rachel didn’t blame me for that, she probably didn’t want to hear from me.
I clicked my phone dark. I wasn’t going to write the message, and there wasn’t time to worry about this right now. They’d started boarding the plane to L.A.
chapter seventeen
RACHEL
THURSDAY, 7:45 A.M.
The last twenty-four hours, the only thing I could think was how much I wished people would forget about me, let me fall through some hole in the stage and stay there.
But it was kind of surreal to realize how quickly they had.
I walked into school Thursday morning bracing my brain for the very real possibility that a picture of me from the heyday of middle school awkward would be lining every single hallway. My insides felt like someone had tied rubber bands around all the important parts, restricting all the flow. I even started mentally reciting one of Mom’s mantras, “I choose joy, I choose joy,” which immediately made me feel snarky about how ridiculous her mantras were, which didn’t seem like the point.
But there was nothing there. My locker was covered in its usual seafoam green paint, no spectators in sight. The halls were plastered with exhortations to sign up for debate, many of them covered with Sharpie pictures of penises. It was any day at Apple Prairie High.
Maybe people got over it quicker because of Kyle’s whirlwind trip to L.A. It was the only thing anyone seemed interested in talking about.
“I heard he might get a part in a movie or something.”
—A COUPLE OF SOPHOMORES IN THE COMMONS AFTER SECOND HOUR
“Did you know he already has more followers than what’s her name from last season’s TRAINWRECK’D? And she has, like, a shoe line.”
—JENNA ARROYO, SENIOR COLOR GUARD MEMBER WHO PERSONALLY KEEPS THE WORLD’S HAIR BLEACH MANUFACTURERS IN BUSINESS
“All I’m saying is that show made Melodramatic Husky. I read the owners pull down something like a million a year from endorsements and appearances now.”
—CALEB DELEON TO CAM EATON, WHO LOOKED A LOT SOURER THAN YOU’D EXPECT FROM A GUY WHO HAD LITERALLY KISSED KYLE’S FEET YESTERDAY
Kyle was doing even newer, more exciting things than he had been yesterday, and yesterday had already been hard to wrap my mind around.
I guess that was why I wasn’t at the front of anyone’s mind anymore.
People hadn’t let up entirely, of course. A couple of sophomores gunning for the Wolfettes tripped me in the math hall between first and second hours, then acted concerned while their friends laughed uproariously. At lunch, someone had pasted a sign, “Rachel Ettinger approved!” with the cheeseburger picture, on the front of the fry warming tray. And of course people snickered, and stared, and gave me pitying looks.