I drag the image into Photoshop, then set up my monitor so the Photo Booth on my computer is pointing toward my blank wall, click the little photo button, and fling myself around so I’m dancing like a lunatic when the photo snaps.
The angle’s all wrong, though, and I look slightly deranged with my massive hair flying and my big, baggy sweater billowing. I find a hairband and flip my head upside down, tying my hair into a high ponytail. I dig around in my jewelry box for a pair of dangly earrings my mother bought for me last Christmas. I pull off my sweater to expose the plain black T-shirt underneath.
What I do next would probably earn me some weird stares if anyone was watching. Because I’m flinging myself around, then lunging toward the computer to press the photo button, then flinging myself around again to make sure I’m dancing when the three-second timer goes off. I push the photo button and dance and push the photo button and dance and push the photo button until I have about twenty images to choose from.
Then I catch my breath, select the best photo, and Photoshop myself into the crowd. This one’s harder than the bus scene. I have to motion blur my image before layering it over the other, so it looks like I’m really there dancing. The color temperature in my room is different than the purplish hue of the concert, so I have to adjust it to match. Then I use the airbrush tool to blend myself into the scene.
I turn the music back up and stare at the picture and it almost feels real. I’m there. Only I’m not worried that people are laughing at me, or I’m dancing wrong, or I don’t belong. I’m at the concert, not caring what anybody thinks.
I’m fiddling with the image, making slight modifications, when my phone starts vibrating across my desk. I scoop it up. It’s Jenna.
“You’re alive!” I practically sing into the phone, still pumped from my pseudo-adventure. “I thought you were blowing me off.”
She doesn’t say anything, which is weird, since she called me.
“We must have a bad connection. Can you hear me?”
Nothing. But it’s not totally silent. There are muffled voices in the background.
“Jenna!” I shout into the phone. “Are you there?”
No answer.
Did she just butt dial me?
I flop onto my bed, turn the volume on my phone all the way up, and press it to my ear. Someone’s bouncing a basketball. There’s laughing. One voice is Jenna’s. I’d know her laugh anywhere. There’s a male voice, too. I catch snippets of conversation.
“Come on,” the guy says.
“. . . have to go.” That’s Jenna.
“You just got here.”
Bounce. Bounce.
“She’s waiting.”
I open my mouth to speak, to try and shout loud enough to get her attention, but then I hear his reply.
“. . . such a drag . . . Let her wait.”
More bouncing. Mumbling. My heart pounds.
“. . . needs me,” says Jenna. “I’m her only friend.”
“So you’re just going to text her all day?”
“No.” Jenna sounds sulky.
There’s a banging noise in the background, like a basketball hitting a board, then more bouncing. It stops, and is replaced by a different sound—like he’s slapping a hand against the ball.
“She needs to get a life,” he says.
I lift my hand to my mouth, phone still pressed to my ear. The pause before Jenna speaks again is excruciating, but not nearly as painful as what she says next.
“Yeah.” She snorts. “I guess it is kind of pathetic.”
I drop the phone as if it’s burning my fingers, my breath coming in short gasps like the hiccups after a hard cry. Tears burn my eyes. I can still hear the mumble of their voices. That damn basketball pounding in my chest. I fumble to turn off the phone, so they won’t realize I’ve been listening.
So I won’t hear any more.
It takes a minute to process what just happened. Jenna was talking about me. With her new boyfriend. Who thinks I need to get a life. She . . . she told him I’m pathetic? No, she snorted that I’m pathetic.
I stare at the phone, my thumb hovering over her number. I’ll call her. I’ll tell her I heard everything she just said, and how could she say that? She’ll say she’s sorry. She’ll tell me she’s done with that guy, that he’s a jerk. That she was only agreeing with him because she felt she had to, being new and all.
But I can’t press her number, because what if she really does think I’m pathetic?
How could she not?
I drop into the chair in front of my computer and stare at the Photoshopped image of myself dancing at the concert. Even though it’s all fake, I look . . . good. Like I’m having fun. Not pathetic. If Jenna saw me like this—if she could show her new friends—she wouldn’t have to be embarrassed by me.
So I email it to myself. Then I open my phone, and I paste the photo into the text window below my last desperate plea to Jenna. And I write:
Went to the East 48 concert last night! So much fun.
I hit send, then wipe my tears. It only takes a few seconds for that “ . . . ” bubble to pop up on Jenna’s side, then:
OMG! Jealous!
Adrian was amazing.
!!!!!!!
:-)
I can’t believe it! Call me!
I don’t write any more than that. And I don’t call. I’m mad at her for saying what she said, for dismissing me so easily. When my phone rings a few minutes later, I let it go to voice mail. Maybe I’ll check it tomorrow, and maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ve fooled her into thinking I’m not so pathetic after all. It will only be a matter of time before she realizes that I still am, that nothing has changed. And worse, that I’ve lied to her.
But maybe it’s best to leave her thinking I’m off doing something fabulous, so she won’t feel bad about leaving me behind.
4
FABULOUS IS NOT HOW I feel the next morning when I press myself against the wall outside the yearbook office, hoping to disappear into the painted concrete blocks. Marissa DiMarco told me to meet her here. She texted this morning before I left for school, which thankfully gave me the opportunity to pack two extra T-shirts as backups for the inevitable sweat-through, which is happening at this very moment.
I see Raj at his locker. Alone. Two other Indian kids walk past and pretty obviously ignore him. His not-happy-not-sad face falters, but only for a second. Then he’s back to neutral, shoulders square and walking away. Something is definitely going on there, but I have no idea what. I recognize the green collared shirt he’s wearing. It’s his favorite, I think, because it appears most often in his selfies.
The fact that I know this pretty much confirms that I am, in fact, a pathetic weirdo stalker.
Lipton walks past, too, and I am studiously averting my eyes when the door to the yearbook office opens and Marissa’s head pops out, inches from mine. “There you are. Are you coming in?”