“I can’t believe you still do this.”
Something constricted a little in my chest. Maybe it was that I could so easily envision myself in those photos replacing Ellie. If I hadn’t ditched Ailey, it would have been me. But I guessed things had all worked out the way they were supposed to. Seeing the girls’ pretty, happy smiles, I knew that Ailey had clearly found her people. People who, unlike me, wouldn’t dump her because better ones had come along. And then I noticed something else: almost in equal number to the shots of Ailey and Ellie were pics of Ailey with a boy.
I lightly touched one of those photos as if it were an ancient artifact. In it, Ailey and the boy were wearing enormous sunglasses, hugging. The photos made me notice the dried roses pinned next to the board. The lone teddy bear on her bed where a pile of childhood ones used to be. It stopped me in my tracks.
I gasped. “Ailey, do you have a boyfriend?”
“Triple smiley face,” she said as an actual smile lit up her features. “I hoped you’d notice. We met at the Y. He’s a lifeguard and goes to that new charter Learn in Excellence. That’s part of why Mom takes my Doc away when I come home. He’s on it, like, equal sign, always. ‘Homework first, Ailey.’”
And that was why Ailey didn’t have her Doc.
I had an urge to rip up the pic of Ailey’s boy. I don’t know if it was jealousy for the normalcy of it all, or that the boy looked wholesome—obv no checkered past there—or that Ailey was so clearly happy. She stayed good, didn’t abandon anybody, and she still got the friends, the boy, and the smooth complexion. For the first time I had a tiny sense of how she must have felt when I dumped her. It was a thick, gooey kind of awful—like existential tapioca.
“Congrats, that’s awesome,” I said, trying for the enthusiasm I didn’t feel. “B-T-W what did your mom have to say about the video? Did you show her yet?”
“Gawd no.” Ailey laughed. “She gets worked up enough when we talk about you. I didn’t want my next two days equaling a dissection of every lurid detail of your downfall. Is it weird? Knowing so many people are watching you? I mean, it already has over forty thousand views.”
Forty thousand views? At Sharma’s it had been in the low single-digit thousands. Maybe if someone hadn’t watched it twenty-seven times and shared it with her thousand friends, I wanted to say, it wouldn’t be at forty thousand views. The warmth I’d felt at being back around Ailey burned off.
“Ailey, it’s hardly a downfall. I had over a hundred likes on my outfit before I left the house this morning. Fifty thousand views is nothing. I’ll post one old video of me and the girls at Fire Island this past summer and the Mr. E. video will be buried in no time.”
I put on my hat and scarf. I shouldn’t have come. I should have just txted. This was why I cold turkey stopped talking to Ailey. Faced with her saccharine good-girl personality I always, all-caps ALWAYS, said something that made me hate myself later.
“Oh, sorry, I know, I just meant with your college apps in and all…”
My knees turned liquid. As discreetly as possible, I steadied myself against Ailey’s desk. My applications. Everyone knew admissions boards began at your ConnectBook page before they even glanced at your app. I mean, what was a more truthful depiction of a person than their CB profile?
I could feel Ailey watching me. So although I was finding it hard to breathe, I zipped into my coat and managed a breezy laugh.
“I haven’t hit send on those yet. I have lots of time to figure this out. You know me. Tenacious is kind of my thing. I know you have to get going. Sorry I barged in on you, Ailes.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. It was nice. Kyle, for what it’s worth, I swear I didn’t make that video.” Ailey bit her lip, and for the first time since I arrived, her eyes met mine. Swear. There was no lying when you called a swear. Or there didn’t use to be. “And hey, seriously, let me know if you need anything.”
The best argument was always the most logical. I’d known Ailey since kindergarten. She wasn’t a liar, which meant she was telling the truth.
What was I going to do?
“I want to warn you, what you’re about to see isn’t pretty, but it’s not me.”
Ailey said she probably wasn’t going to “that thing in the city” anyway and did I want to hang and stay for dinner? But seeing as dining in a group where two out of the three people hated me was the most unappetizing idea ever, I demurred.
Now I was home. Three pairs of Kyle’s shoes were strewn across the living room floor. Mom’s crocheting sat in a lump next to the couch. Dad’s basswood replica of the Brooklyn Bridge was spread out on the coffee table. Half-burned-out strings of colored Christmas lights blinked haphazardly from the mantel and windows. Our house was a mess. I’d never been so happy to be anywhere in my whole life. Finally, my people.
“Honey, what’s going on?”
Kyle and I had waited an excrutiating hour for Dad to get home before we called both our parents into the living room. Mom had on the same expression she wore that time Ruichen Li shoved Kyle into the street when we were kids. I hadn’t even shown her the video and she looked ready to end the world.
“Please don’t tell me this is about shoes,” Dad said. “If we’re not having dinner because you ordered another pair of expensive no-refund, no-return vintage shoes that pinch your pinky toe, I’m going to be one big unhappy face.”
“Frowny face,” Kyle and I corrected together as Dad grinned.
When my dad was younger, he was in a Chinese gang in Flushing. Now he was a librarian who had R E A W tattooed in Old English on his knuckles. It stood for “Read ’Em and Weep.” He was better at gaming than Kyle and, in all honesty, he was probably hipper than me. His misspoken slang was solely meant to annoy us.
“Sung, this isn’t a joke,” Mom said. “Less levity for once, please. Kylie, you’re scaring me. Enough with the preamble.”
I used my Doc to bring up the link on our hub.
“Kyle, tap play.” I couldn’t stay for it. Maybe it had to be stuck in their memory banks, but their watching it didn’t have to be stuck in mine. “Call me when it’s over.”
I motored into the kitchen.
“What the—?” Dad immediately sputtered.
“Kyle, what is this?” Mom called.
“A fake video, remember?”
I rested my forehead against the refrigerator door. I already felt exhausted by the effort it would take to convince my mom the video wasn’t real. When Dad bellowed, it was my cue that the video was over. I pried open the fridge and grabbed a beer. Dad would need liquid strength to help me deal with Mom’s ensuing atomic freak-out.
I slunk back to the living room. Kyle gave me a weak smile. Mom was still staring at the screen, stunned. I handed Dad his beer. He waved it off, pointed at the stairs.
“Go to your room.”