THURSDAY, 7:45 A.M.
The last twenty-four hours, the only thing I could think was how much I wished people would forget about me, let me fall through some hole in the stage and stay there.
But it was kind of surreal to realize how quickly they had.
I walked into school Thursday morning bracing my brain for the very real possibility that a picture of me from the heyday of middle school awkward would be lining every single hallway. My insides felt like someone had tied rubber bands around all the important parts, restricting all the flow. I even started mentally reciting one of Mom’s mantras, “I choose joy, I choose joy,” which immediately made me feel snarky about how ridiculous her mantras were, which didn’t seem like the point.
But there was nothing there. My locker was covered in its usual seafoam green paint, no spectators in sight. The halls were plastered with exhortations to sign up for debate, many of them covered with Sharpie pictures of penises. It was any day at Apple Prairie High.
Maybe people got over it quicker because of Kyle’s whirlwind trip to L.A. It was the only thing anyone seemed interested in talking about.
“I heard he might get a part in a movie or something.”
—A COUPLE OF SOPHOMORES IN THE COMMONS AFTER SECOND HOUR
“Did you know he already has more followers than what’s her name from last season’s TRAINWRECK’D? And she has, like, a shoe line.”
—JENNA ARROYO, SENIOR COLOR GUARD MEMBER WHO PERSONALLY KEEPS THE WORLD’S HAIR BLEACH MANUFACTURERS IN BUSINESS
“All I’m saying is that show made Melodramatic Husky. I read the owners pull down something like a million a year from endorsements and appearances now.”
—CALEB DELEON TO CAM EATON, WHO LOOKED A LOT SOURER THAN YOU’D EXPECT FROM A GUY WHO HAD LITERALLY KISSED KYLE’S FEET YESTERDAY
Kyle was doing even newer, more exciting things than he had been yesterday, and yesterday had already been hard to wrap my mind around.
I guess that was why I wasn’t at the front of anyone’s mind anymore.
People hadn’t let up entirely, of course. A couple of sophomores gunning for the Wolfettes tripped me in the math hall between first and second hours, then acted concerned while their friends laughed uproariously. At lunch, someone had pasted a sign, “Rachel Ettinger approved!” with the cheeseburger picture, on the front of the fry warming tray. And of course people snickered, and stared, and gave me pitying looks.
But there were no buckets of blood on my head. It all felt kind of anticlimactic. I’d thought I was starring in some intense drama, but it turned out I was just a B plot.
This was what I wanted. I had to remember that. It probably only felt strange and anxious and unfinished because I was subconsciously waiting for the other shoe to plop down in a big pile of catty and splatter it all over me again.
The message came in about an hour after I got home from school.
I was sprawled on the beige Berber carpeting in the basement, staring at a muddle of x + y over fractions to the nth power equations. Algebra II might as well have been in cuneiform for how much sense it made. Geometry had been so much better. Shapes you could see. This was just . . . alphabet soup.
My phone pinged from the coffee table. It hadn’t been going off much all day. A few notifications before lunch, but since then, radio silence. Maybe Monique was texting. I did still have a couple of real-life friends willing to talk to me.
I levered up—the carpet painfully peeling away from my elbows, where it left a series of red ridges and bumps—and scooted over to the low coffee table on my knees.
@YourBoyKyle_B has sent you a private flit
Wait, what?
A thousand centipedes started scuttling around the inside of my stomach, trying to escape up my throat.
Wasn’t it enough that my total social annihilation had bought him overnight fame—couldn’t he just leave the deluded idiot alone now, like he’d promised? But of course a huge part of me was whole-body-electrified-excited that he hadn’t forgotten me yet. Totally pathetic—it was like some deep, buried part of my brain was okay with him treating me like the dorky sidekick as long as he talked to me. Stupid fricking subconscious. Get with the program.
Weakly, I touched the screen.
Q: were you gonna watch the show tmw?
I blinked for a minute. Kyle had to be sending this from L.A. Oh god, that had to mean something about me had come up on the show. The thought made me want to vomit. I typed before I could lose my nerve entirely:
Probably. You’ve finished filming, right? Should
I be worried about mobs with pitchforks?
Kyle’s response came in before my screen even went fully dark.
Yeah, wrapped about an hour ago. And no,
nothing like that. But you should def watch.
Am I going to like what I see?
Oh my god, was I seriously trying to flirt right now? Also, was that maybe the worst attempt at flirting that had ever happened in the history of ever?