My eyes went out of focus for a second. This made no sense. I clicked my texts.
It looked like I’d gotten one from everyone in my phone book, plus a few numbers I didn’t recognize. The top one was from Ollie, my best friend on the team. I liked Ollie. He was quieter than the other guys, and he never tried to prank people or anything, but he wasn’t all judgmental when other people did. He just didn’t seem to care. It drove Dave nuts how unconcerned Ollie could be. That was flipping hilarious.
(From Ollie): Dude, you’re a trend topic
What was he talking about? I scrolled back through his messages.
(From Ollie): Did you see this picture of you? Some junior chick has a crush
(From Ollie): Everyone is sharing it, you need to check this out
(From Ollie): You’re blowing up Flit
I opened my Flit app.
@jenDintheHEE and 15,822 other users reflitted
a flit you were mentioned in.
I looked. It was from Erin Rothstein, this girl on dance team that sometimes hung out with my girlfriend, Emma. Actually, Emma: technically my ex. Anyway, it was just someone else’s flit that Erin had added “OMG that’s @YourBoyKyle_B” to.
I opened the original.
62,414 reflits
My legs kinda went out from under me then, until I was sitting on the peeling linoleum floor in front of the lockers.
It was a photo of me behind the register, looking like a dork in my uniform. The hashtag said #idlikefrieswithTHAT.
It looked like it was taken today. And it already had how many reflits? I frowned, trying to make this make sense. That was what all the middle schoolers were saying all afternoon. “I’d like fries with that.” So clearly they’d all seen the picture . . . since my shift started. At four.
I took a deep breath, closing my eyes as I exhaled. Coach Laughton said it helped you focus, but it just made me feel dizzier.
First things first: who had taken the picture? The original flit seemed to have come from “attackoftherach_face.” That could have been anyone. The name on the account was “oh RHEally” so that didn’t help. I peered at the tiny thumbnail picture. It was mostly an explosion of curly, dark-brown hair.
I squinted.
It was totally that Rachel girl, the strange, quiet one from writing class. We’d talked at the start of my shift. I smiled a little. She had a crush on me? She seemed like the type that would be dating a twenty-year-old who smoked cigarettes end-to-end and wore skinny jeans and played bass in, like, some punk band.
Huh. Rachel: unexpected.
Without thinking, I clicked to follow her. It brought her count to twenty-nine. She only followed fourteen accounts herself, and one of them was Alec Baldwin, who had to be older than my parents. Who was this girl?
Oh, wait a second.
I clicked back to my notifications.
11K new followers.
K. As in thousand.
This morning I had 289, as in 289. I had checked.
I could feel my heart beating too fast, thumping against my rib cage. What was happening? Why would anyone even want to share a picture of me? I’d always figured I was decent looking. I never could have landed Emma otherwise. But I wasn’t anything special. My brother, Carter, was the handsome one. Or Ollie, he had that brooding movie star thing going on. I could see this happening to Ollie. But me? Seriously?
I stuffed the bag of dirty T-shirts into my backpack and jogged to the back of the store. The door there opened onto an employee parking lot near the food court dumpsters. It was deserted. I’d never been so happy to park next to trash.
I got into my car and gripped the steering wheel until my hands stopped shaking. Thank god the middle schoolers hadn’t figured out where I was parked. I didn’t know how they would have, but I couldn’t work out how they’d found the right Burger Barn so fast, either.
My phone lit up again. I grabbed it, ready to turn the stupid thing off. This was too intense. I needed time to process what was going on.
Emma’s picture popped up, the one she’d put into my contacts a year ago, right after we first got together. She had on bright-red lipstick and was making an exaggerated, ducky pout. She thought it was a better picture of her than I did.
I decided to answer.
“Hey, Em.”
“Ohmygod, KYLE. I have been trying to call you ALL. DAY. Didn’t you get my messages?” She was talking fast, even for her. She sounded breathless.
“No, sorry. I was at work.”
“You saw Flit, though.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I saw it.” I squeezed my eyes shut, frowning. I still couldn’t wrap my head around what had happened. It kinda hurt to try. I rolled down the car window; the air inside, still heated from the sunny day, suddenly felt claustrophobic. Even with the smells of rancid fryer grease and a thousand kinds of rotting vegetables, the outside air was better.
“Who is that girl anyway? I can’t believe she took that picture. Totally pathetic.”
I didn’t like Emma calling Rachel pathetic, but I didn’t know what to say. I guess it had been sorta weird. “She’s just some junior.”