#famous(4)

I walked away as slowly as I could force myself to, which was just this side of a sprint.

Breathing hard, I plopped onto a bench near the fountain. That had been disastrous.

But at least I’d gotten my picture. That had been the point, right? To flit something goofy to Monique? I finished typing her handle, then—because of course I’m oh-so-witty the minute actual guys have disappeared—I typed in a hashtag.

Send.

Immediately, I felt a little twinge. What if he saw it? He’d know it was me.

But that wouldn’t happen. Kyle didn’t follow me—maybe ten people did. I flitted all the pictures in the game to Monique, I’d been doing it for months; no one had ever noticed them before. I think the most attention any of the pictures ever got was a single non-Mo luv, and that squirrel vest had been AWESOME. Why would anyone suddenly care about this one?

My phone pinged with the sound that meant I had a reflit.

I opened my feed to see what Mo had said.

@attackoftherach_face tonight’s brain food.

The picture I’d flitted was below. That sweet, goofy half grin lingering around his lips was too adorable. So much so that it had made me feel sassy enough to flit:

@Mo_than_you_know I’m digging what

they’re serving up at Burger Barn today.

#idlikefrieswithTHAT

God, I am such an idiot.





chapter two


KYLE

TUESDAY, 5:00 P.M.

The girls who stepped up to the register looked about thirteen. Middle school age, probably. And they were all giggling.

Jeez, what was with the giggling today? I knew I looked like a tool in this hat, but it had never been noteworthy before. Middle schoolers: utter mysteries.

The ringleader: slick, straight, dirty-blond hair and what had to be fake fingernails. Finally she spoke up, hushing her crew with a wave of one hand.

“Okay, so, um, we’ll take three chocolate quake-shakes, please, and a burger for Lau-rie.” She said it with an exaggerated eye roll. Laurie must be the one in the back with the hunched shoulders, staring at her feet. Girls were so crappy to each other. “And a Diet Coke, please.”

I typed it into the register.

“Anything else?”

“Oh, um, yes, actually,” she said, biting her lip and looking back over her shoulder at her little posse. The group simultaneously giggled and squealed, sort of like a bagpipe laughing. I could see the bands on Ringleader’s braces. She’d chosen bright pink. “I’d like fries with THAT.”

Ringleader burst out laughing and buried her head in the nearest minion’s shoulder. The whole group was giggling louder than ever, whispering “I can’t believe you did it,” and raising their eyebrows at one another dramatically.

Jeez. These middle schoolers: extra annoying.

“That’s gonna be twenty-three eighteen,” I said, trying to make my voice as flat as possible. The less you give middle school girls to work with, the better. I’d learned that pretty thoroughly coaching lacrosse camp last summer. “Soda machine is to the right,” I added, pushing a cup with a plastic lid stuffed inside it across the counter.

After several seconds of dramatic breath-catching and hand fluttering, the girls paid and ran off, staring at me over their shoulders with googly eyes. Oof.

A middle-aged guy with a gut spilling out of the bottom of his polo shirt ordered a “Lite and Tasty.” Then another group of girls squealed their way up to the register. These ones looked older. They were maybe freshmen. But they were all still giggling. Like, a lot. Usually even girls couldn’t find anything funny about the Burger Barn. And I couldn’t remember the last time our clientele had been so female.

Could there be some sort of event at the mall? A pop star or something? One of the girls was pointing at me and taking out her phone, like she was gonna take a picture. Which was weird and kinda creepy. I felt like telling her I wasn’t whoever she thought I was, but that would have made things worse. She might have started talking to me.

This shift could not end fast enough.

I had never seen so many girls order fries in my life. I would have snuck back to my locker to google what was going on, but I was the only person on the register on Tuesdays; usually it was dead my whole shift.

By five forty-five we’d run out of fries. We’d never run out of anything before. By six fifteen, Jim, the manager, decided to close for the night, even though it was two hours early. We were running out of too many things. The only thing left was chicken tenders, minus the sauce.

At that point, the line went past the China House and around the corner by the Gap. It was mostly groups of girls, with a couple annoyed adults stuck between them, and it had to be fifty people long.

Which didn’t make sense at all. I eat this stuff, like, every day. There’s no good reason to wait around for it.

I headed to my locker, rolling my shoulders the way I did after a tough practice. All the girls had been laughing. Most had been taking pictures. The whole thing had been . . . terrifying. It had been kinda terrifying, all of them staring at me, placing the same exact order, even using the same exact words. It was like I was stuck in a french-fries-themed Body Snatchers sequel.

At first it seemed harmless. Like maybe some girls JV team was doing, like, extra-dumb hazing. But after the third or fourth giggle-giggle-FRIESWITH-THAT-giggle-giggle, I wondered if someone was trying to mess with me. Like, me specifically. It could have been Dave Rouquiaux, from lacrosse. He was always doing stuff to try to get a rise out of us after games, or in the locker room. One time he put about half a bottle of laxatives into Eric Winger’s Gatorade because he thought Eric had been hitting on the girl he liked. Another time he stole the entire starting line’s shoelaces before practice, just ’cause. He even took his own, to throw everyone off the scent. Dave might do something like this out of boredom. Dave: just that dude.