None of the Above(36)

I’d never know.

I folded the crust into the pan and started to work on the filling.

While the pie baked, I brought out my laptop so I could email the secretary who was supposed to get homework assignments for students who were out sick. There were dozens of new messages in my account. I hadn’t checked my email since the locker incident. Half of it was spam, or the daily digests from the college track mailing list.

I would have ignored them all, just let them clog my inbox, if it weren’t for the Facebook notifications:



Pat Hermaphrodite tagged you in a photo.



Bruce Torino commented on a photo you’re tagged in.



Andy Sullivan liked a photo you’re tagged in.



The kitchen was warm from the oven being on, so I shouldn’t have felt so cold. My hand shook as I logged on to Facebook, where I had 846 friends. Where my status was still “In a relationship.” Where I was still listed as being female.

It hurt so much to see my profile picture that I almost couldn’t breathe.

Vee had taken the picture over the summer, at her annual pool party. Sam and I were cuddling with each other on a lawn chair, and God I looked happy. I remembered the day: the smell of coconut-scented suntan lotion, the brilliance of the pool reflecting the cloudless sky. It was surreal seeing myself like that, like looking at the school photo of a missing child.

Just below that was the picture I had been tagged in.

Whoever it was in real life, Pat Hermaphrodite was a pretty talented Photoshopper. He (or she) also had good access to porn, to find a penis that was just the right proportion and angle to splice onto the picture of me in my bikini at the car wash.

The picture had seventy-three “likes.” Sixteen comments. I didn’t want to read them, but it was as if I was going by a car wreck and couldn’t turn away.

There was one comment from Jessica Riley saying, “So not cool, guys. Not cool,” but five others that told her to chill out, that it was just for fun. Every post felt like a dagger thrust into my back, and still I scrolled through the list of people who “liked” them.

They were faces I had known since kindergarten, faces of teammates and rivals. A few people from my homeroom. One guy who’d sent me a singing Valentine during middle school. The girl who stood next to me in the alto section of our junior chorus.

I wanted to throw up. I ran to the bathroom, but when I got there all I did was dry-heave over the sink. When I lifted my head I could taste the acid in the back of my throat.

My brain could barely wrap itself around the hurt. These weren’t mean people. I told myself they’d probably just seen a funny picture and clicked “like” out of habit, because that’s what you do when you read something on Facebook.

But who was I kidding?





CHAPTER 20


When Faith called later that afternoon, she was totally shocked when I told her about my surgery.

“Oh my God, was it something serious?”

“It was just a hernia,” I said, which wasn’t exactly a lie.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

I had no excuse, and I knew it. But Faith forgave me, as always.

“You know I’m the chair of the Sunshine Club,” she said. “We should at least throw together a care package for you. My mom just got some of those almond cookies you love so much. I’ll send around a card tomorrow.”

And what would people write in it? “No. Please don’t make a big deal. I should only be out a few days.” Dr. Cheng had actually said that I might not have to miss any school at all, but no one needed to know that.

“I’m pretty sure they covered ‘Making a big deal about having a surgery’ in Friendship 101. I’ll stop by tomorrow to give you my bio notes,” she said. “I can’t promise that I won’t bring brownies, too.”


I really hoped she wouldn’t send around that card. Could I tell her not to ask anyone who had liked that picture on Facebook? After we got off the phone, I turned on my computer.

I had untagged myself in the photo, but I couldn’t help myself from going back to it like a moth to a flame. Pat’s picture was up to 132 “likes.”

Once again, seeing the profile picture of me and Sam together took my breath away, the reminder of old happiness cutting like a razor blade. I deleted the picture but couldn’t bring myself to find another one, and left the generic drawing of an androgynous blue silhouette in its place.

Fitting.

That’s when I noticed that just underneath my empty profile picture, where it said “In a relationship,” Sam’s name was missing. When I searched for his name in my friends list he was gone, too. I couldn’t find him on Facebook at all.

I’d been blocked.

We were officially over.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me; it shouldn’t have reduced me to a crying, shaking ball of misery. But there you have it: the power of the internet.

I cried at the memory of how warm and safe I’d felt when he hugged me. I cried because I blamed myself for not telling him as soon as I got my diagnosis. But mostly I cried because I missed everything about him—his grin, his quiet sense of humor, and the steadiness of his footsteps as they kept pace beside me.

I knew I wasn’t supposed to run yet. But my whole body itched for it, craved it like a junkie: the feel of muscles pulling, heart thumping, lungs filled to the brim with fresh air and life. I couldn’t stay in my room any longer, couldn’t sit still while the world crumbled around me. I pulled on my workout clothes. At the bottom of the stairs, I peeked into the living room, where Aunt Carla was ensconced on the couch.