I can’t believe she likes me, loves me.
Well, not me. She loves Vicurious. She loves the girl I’m pretending to be; she loves the pretending itself. She loves that I answer the followers who say they’re #lonely and #depressed, but Vicky would never do that. Vicky watches Raj at school every day and knows he’s lonely. Vicky is too chicken to say anything to him.
I suck.
Vicurious, though. She’s got 264,000 followers and growing. I search for Rhyming Rhea on Instagram, and click on the follow button for the first time. She doesn’t have as many followers on Instagram as she does on YouTube, only 37,000. I laugh, because how ridiculous is it that I would ever think 37,000 is not that many? I scroll through the images she’s posted, which are mostly screen grabs from her videos that say, “Posted a new video today. Follow the link in my bio.”
Also pictures of her cat.
As if on cue, Kat comes meowing at my door. I let her in. She perches on my bed, then starts batting at something on my comforter. It’s a stray Vicurious bracelet.
I pick it up and rest it on Kat’s head, like a miniature tiara. She bats it away and paws at it some more. Like she wants me to put it on or something. Instead, I pull my costume out of the closet, take the two-tone wig, and drape it over Kat’s head.
She quickly backs out of the wig and hisses at it. “Come on, Kat,” I soothe.
She gives me a go-away glare, and stretches. It’s one of those glorious cat stretches, tail and butt sticking up in the air, front paws forward, big yawning mouth upward. Like a yoga position. Then she reverses it, rear legs outstretched like a kitty plank pose, but with one back paw sticking out in the air. I grab my phone and take a photo. When she goes for a third stretch, I hold the wig at her head so her yawning face is visible and snap a photo with my other hand. She looks hilarious. And pissed.
“Aww, poor kitty.” I take her in my arms and try to pet her, but she is all skittish now. She hides under the bed.
I know exactly how she feels.
I crawl to the floor. I make kissy and cooing sounds. Kat eventually gets close enough that I can scratch her head, then comes out and lets me pick her up. I show her the photos of herself as I upload them from my phone to my computer. She purrs.
Vicurious hasn’t posted anything in days, but there are dozens of comments on the latest post asking if I’m okay. Some of them are blaming the new followers for chasing me away. They’re arguing among themselves, making all sorts of assumptions about where I’ve disappeared to and why. It’s too much attention, some say. It was only meant to be for my friends, one suggests. A dozen others pile up on her, asking if she knows me personally. Several claim to go to school with me. But they live in the UK or Canada or Singapore and can’t possibly.
A few devotees seem to know me better than I know myself, though.
reallllaubrey She’s just taking a break.
owntherabbithole She’ll be back when she’s ready.
donuts4every1 Probably has homework like the rest of us wankers.
I give my Siege of Jerusalem homework a side-eye and drag the last image of Kat into Photoshop. About twenty minutes later, she is dancing a hula on a Hawaiian beach, wearing my wig and the Photoshopped additions of the shredded yellow skirt, bracelets, and sunglasses. The white cat-eyed ones, of course.
She looks fabulous.
I post it with the caption:
Sorry I’ve been away. Took a little cat nap.
Better now.
And I do feel better. I don’t know if it’s the crazy number of followers, or the love from Rhyming Rhea, or maybe just letting myself go numb these past few days. There’s still a weight on my chest, but it’s not as heavy.
I stare at my Instagram page, the number 1 above the following tab, and wonder if Rhea noticed she’s the only person I’m following. Which probably looks weird. But following people like Raj and Hallie and Adrian would give me away. I hit the search window and look up some of the people Vicurious has featured instead. There’s Neil deGrasse Tyson, even though his account never posts anything and I’m not sure it’s really him. I follow it anyway. And Jimmy Fallon, who has over 8.5 million followers, which puts my measly fandom into perspective. There’s an official page for Poldark on PBS, so I follow that, too. And the Foo Fighters. I throw in Neil Patrick Harris and Will Smith for good measure.
None of them will follow me back and that’s okay. Rhyming Rhea follows me, and a quarter million people I don’t know. Also Raj. I search for his Instagram and there he is, with his daily selfie. Pale blue button-down shirt today. Almost time for a haircut, Raj. I click back through his posts, really fast. It’s like a stop-motion film. Then I return to the most recent photo.
He’s added the #alone hashtag this time. He’s never done that before.
I stare at it until it stops looking like a real word. I move the cursor to the comment window and hover there for a moment.
Then I hold my breath and I write:
vicurious You are not alone, Raj. I see you.
18
AT SCHOOL ON MONDAY I make sure Raj doesn’t spot me, but observe him from afar. He does seem to have an extra spring in his step today, and I wouldn’t call it a smile, but the shape of his mouth is definitely on the brighter side of neutral.
I go to my locker, even though Hallie’s there. She says, “Hey,” and smiles.
I smile back. “Hi.”
We get our things from our respective lockers and put our coats and lunches away and all the while my heart is pounding and I’m sweating. But still. I did it. I said hi to Hallie Bryce, twice now, and I did not die.
I get to world history early so I can leave a note on Lipton’s desk. I tear off a tiny strip of paper, about two inches wide and the height of a single line of college-ruled notebook paper. I scrawl my message:
I’m sorry.
And I leave it on his desk. But when he gets to class, he drops his books right on top of it. Adam scowls at me as he always does, but Lipton continues to pretend I don’t exist. He hasn’t looked at me since that awful day.
After class, the note is no longer on his desk. I imagine it stuck to his notebook, or to his arm, and the ink will leave a mark, like a tattoo, only in reverse. He’ll spend the rest of the day wondering how he got “yrros m‘I” written on his skin, and what it means. Or he’ll see it in the mirror when he’s brushing his teeth before bed tonight.
On Tuesday I try again. Only this time I’ve carved “I’m sorry” into the side of a pencil, using one of my mother’s kitchen knives. I get to class and I leave the pencil on his desk.