She strode off rapidly, a woman with a plan. Always.
I looked around for something to distract me. We were at the farthest end of the terminal, at a gate that didn’t even have places to plug in near your seat. The airport felt worn out. Everyone walking by looked like they needed a nap, and half the shops had metal grilles pulled down over the entrances. Even the carpet looked tired, all the neon geometric designs in it dingy from the feet that had rushed over them.
I needed to talk to someone about the show. Besides the people responding to my selfie with the sign above the gate, proving we were going to L.A. They’d all been positive, but they all sounded the same.
My thumb tapped it out automatically before I even realized what I was doing.
“Hey, Kyle,” Emma said. I could hear her sleepy smile through the phone, and somewhere in the background, twinkly boing sounds. Apparently she’d found the right game for Nathan.
“So do you want me to pick you up anything from L.A.? I hear they have great . . . smoothies?”
Emma laughed. My arm twitched, like it wanted to reach out and bury her head against my chest from miles away.
“If you could get your name on one of those stars, that’d be great.”
“Just that?”
“Yup. I’m easy to please.”
I laughed. The muscles in my neck and shoulders released a little. I must have been tensing them.
“Have you practiced what you’re going to say?”
“What is there to say? ‘I guess people like how I look covered in grease’?”
Emma snorted.
“No. I’m just saying if it were me, I’d be practicing one-liners in the mirror until the second I had to go onstage.”
I had practiced a couple things before we left the house. My name, where I worked, where I went to school: things I knew I’d have to say. But I didn’t need to tell Emma that. Worrying about messing up your own name: kinda embarrassing.
“I don’t know. Not really. I’ll say what happened, I guess. Rachel took a picture of me, and it blew up.”
The name came out before I had a chance to think. I held my breath, waiting for Emma to . . . I dunno. Get pissed, most likely.
“You should try to keep the focus off Rachel,” Emma said quietly. Almost . . . sweetly.
That voice: completely unexpected.
“Any reason?”
“I don’t know.” I could almost hear her look up at the ceiling, like she did when she was trying to explain something complicated. “People can just be . . . mean to girls. Online. And generally, I suppose.”
“People?”
“Not me, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
She sniffed but kept talking. “I just feel bad for her. It would be one thing if people were asking her on Laura too, but they’re not, you know?”
“I thought you didn’t like her. For taking the picture.” Jeez, sometimes it’s like there’s no filter between my thoughts and my mouth, especially with Emma. No wonder she keeps dumping me.
“Yeah, I was annoyed at first,” she said slowly, considering. “I guess I got over it.”
Wow.
Luckily even I wasn’t stupid enough to say that out loud.
“Okay, yeah, I’ll do my best. I honestly have no idea what they’ll ask, though.”
“I still can’t believe you’re going to be on Laura,” Emma said. I exhaled, relieved. The conversation was starting to feel less land-mined.
I could see Mom slicing through the crowd, chin up, Starbucks cup raised like a weapon.
“Hey, I gotta go,” I said. “My mom’s back. Call you tomorrow?”
“I’ll be waiting by the phone,” she said. Her voice was smiling again.
“Cool. Later.”
“I’ll be thinking of you, Kyle.”
Mom slid into the seat across from me. She sorta hovered forward on it, like she might have to make a run for it.
Looking at her made me more nervous. I turned to my phone instead.
I had a few hundred notifications. I swiped to clear them off my screen and opened Flit, clicking the search icon.
My phone autofilled the handle before I’d even typed three letters. Jeez, I hadn’t looked at her page that many times, had I?
@attackoftherach_face
She still hadn’t flitted anything new. And she still had fewer than a hundred followers.
I wondered what she was thinking about all this. I clicked open a PF window, ready to type something stupid, just like, “hey what’s up,” but I stopped myself. What would be the point?
After all, Emma was right. I’d seen those flits from Jessie, and Erin, and a couple other girls at school. It didn’t seem that embarrassing to me. So Rachel had an awkward phase: Who didn’t? But you could tell they were trying to humiliate her. Even if Rachel didn’t blame me for that, she probably didn’t want to hear from me.
I clicked my phone dark. I wasn’t going to write the message, and there wasn’t time to worry about this right now. They’d started boarding the plane to L.A.
chapter seventeen
RACHEL