open haha
Kyle wasn’t tagged in many, but enough that there was no way to avoid embarrassment. The whole school knew about my stupid crush, and now they were digging up proof of my long-standing patheticness. I was barely past seeing myself that way. Now Jessie was ensuring everyone would. Wouldn’t be able to not.
I might actually implode from humiliation, like one of those stars Ms. Feldman talked about last year in Planetary Sciences, the ones that are too small and unimportant to explode when they die, so they collapse into themselves until there’s nothing left.
“Rachel. Our family is here in the real world, waiting to engage with you.” Dad put his hand out.
“No, please—” I breathed in too fast, in a choky kind of way. “Can I be excused? There’s a . . . thing I have to deal with . . .”
“Rachel, what’s going on?” Mom’s voice was soft. She laid her hand on my arm. “This isn’t like you.”
I knew I should have left the phone upstairs. Now I had to figure out the best way to lie about this.
When I was little I told my parents everything, like Jonathan—ideas I had for plays, crushes, even when I got my first pubes (I know, totally mortifying). Besides Monique, they were basically my best friends.
So when Lorelei Patton started calling me “oo-bee” in the fifth grade (short for “unibrow”—Mom hadn’t taken me to get waxed yet), I told Mom. I told her about Lorelei leaving a bottle of Nair on my desk with a drawing of my “monster brows.” I told her about everyone but me getting invited to Lorelei’s slumber party.
Then she turned around and called Lorelei’s mother, and the teacher, and the fricking principal, and said they needed to deal with “this horrific bullying.”
“If bullies aren’t confronted they find new targets,” she’d said, with this maddening, patronizing smile. “Kids will respect you for standing up to her.”
The whole class knew I was the reason we had that stupid presentation in the gym, with middle-aged actors taunting the “shy kid” on a “bus” that was nothing more than chairs lined up in rows and a detached steering wheel for the actor at the front.
Mom didn’t realize that this was like me. The me who spent the night of Lorelei’s sleepover pretending to be asleep so the girls wouldn’t know I could hear every mean thing they were saying. The me who lied the next day and said it was fun.
We’d had intensely awkward conversations about how she and Dad wouldn’t punish me for “exploring my sexuality” or “experimenting with substances,” so birth control or calling home drunk for a ride was neutral ground.
But when I told her something—a big something—she’d ratted me out to the entire fricking school. Not everything was neutral ground.
So not everything was up for discussion anymore.
I looked down at the smear of brown and creamy red I’d smashed out of the lasagna. I had to say enough that they’d buy me being stressed, but not so much that they’d look into it.
“It’s dumb,” I started. “It’s this . . . flit. I flitted a picture, and some people at school have seen it, and I’m mildly freaking out.” I could feel my ears getting hot. Who gets hot ears? Was that one of those body signs that you’re lying?
“What kind of picture?” Mom said slowly, leaning forward to look at me more closely. Her eyes were buggy, and her mouth was pulled tight.
Oh god.
“NOT that kind of picture. Wow. No. Nothing like that.” She nodded, obviously relieved no one had seen digital versions of my naughty parts. “It was of this random boy who’s out of my league. Mo reflitted it, and now people at school have seen it . . .” I had to tread lightly here. Mom barely went on social media; she wouldn’t look unless I gave her a reason to. “It’s just embarrassing.”
“So you’re worried because people know you think this boy is cute?”
I grimaced. Even though I was deliberately feeding her a sanitized version, it did make the whole thing sound silly.
“I mean . . . yeah, I guess.”
“Attraction is a natural thing, and nothing to be ashamed of.” Dad looked at me meaningfully.
Mom glared at him, eyebrows raised, and squeezed my arm.
“What your dad means is this is going to blow over before you know it. By tomorrow morning, everyone will have forgotten about it. They probably already have.”
I tried to force a smile, but it felt like my cheeks were stuck in the off position. At least I hadn’t succumbed to stress tears. If I’d been on my period (when my balloon-skin of normal is barely able to cover the ever-expanding explosion of emotional wreck and snotty cries), this game would have been over.
“Trust me, sweetie. This is barely a speck on people’s radar.” I nodded, mute. I couldn’t tell her otherwise, and besides, I really wanted to believe her.