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“Close your mouths, you two. You’ll catch flies.” Miss Maxima licks yogurt off her spoon. “I’ve done you a service. You deserve to know the truth. Especially since you devoted so much of your valuable time to critiquing our fic this year.” She taps the spoon against her lip. “What did you say about mine again?—Oh, right: Hacky and derivative…”
She’s saying more, but I’m not listening. I’m pushing my chair back, stumbling through the maze of tables after Michelle Arnott.
***
She’s good at disappearing.
I check the gift shop, the pool, the corridors—everywhere I might hide if I had to run away. Nothing. Then I start checking stupid places. The men’s room. The slim space between the wall and the vending machine. The more places I check, the longer I can put off the full truth seeping in. hey_mamacita. Not real. Never was.
A joke.
I step up on the little wooden bridge that arches over the huge clear koi pond in the lobby. The blue and gray tiles on the floor of the pond are littered with pe
Now that she’s here, I think about ru
“Gummy bear?” she says.
I whisper, “How old are you?”
“Guess.”
“You look twelve.”
“I’m seventeen. But thanks. That never gets old.”
I shake my head. I can’t look at her. “Your profile picture…”
“Some random artist. I was in Baltimore last year and she let me take photos at Artscape. Gorgeous, right? I hate dreads and neck tats in general but on her…?” The bag crinkles and she says her next line with her mouth full. “If you’re going to be fake, at least be a badass, right?”
My tongue goes numb. I want to sit but my legs won’t move.
“You’re not going to sue me, are you?” she says. “I don’t think that’s legal.”
“Why would you do this?”
“You want me to like, explore my psychology?”
“Yeah. Please.”
“What am I, a Bond villain?” She drops a gummy bear into the pond and watches it sink to the bottom. “I don’t know, Brandon. It started out like, just making fun of Missy and her whole stupid shipping thing in the most ridiculous elaborate way, and then actual people started joining the community—like, who knew you had fans for real?”
“Thanks.”
“And so they like worshipped my fic and they started calling me their fearless leader and no one’s ever done that before because Missy always butts her way to the front of everything. It was like crack. Just having fans, you know?—Yeah, you do. So I just kept going bigger and bigger and deeper and deeper with it and—you know where this is going, right? Standard drunk-on-my-own power narrative?”
I glance at her. “I guess.”
“I feel like crap. I totally told whispering!sage I’d meet her at the Long Beach con. Like, why did I do that? You lie enough and all of a sudden it’s like lying is the language you speak and your first language starts to disappear.” Her eyes get bright and hungry. “God. That’s good. I wish I still wrote fic.”
She tries a smile. I can’t.
“Look, I said I was sorry,” she sighs. “What do you want? Money? I’m completely broke.”
“No…no.”
“Seriously—you can’t be surprised. Not really. People pretend all the time. You live online, pretty much everyone’s a character.” She points an eyebrow. “Even you. Right?”
“That’s different.”
“Why? Because shit got real and you’re all in love now?”
“Italics not necessary.”
“Oh, Brandon.” She crunches up the gummy bear bag. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but as the Internet’s foremost expert on you, I think you need some therapy.”
“Really.”
“I mean, whatever: you guys are pretty hot together. I’ll admit. I wouldn’t have kept writing that silly fic if you weren’t, you know…compelling in some way. But taking your past into consideration?” She makes a dismissive tch sound. “I don’t think you’re ready for a relationship.”
I feel six inches high. “That’s…mean.”
“No it’s not. Look, I freaked when I saw your schmoopy post that night. It was a total what-have-I-done, Frankenstein’s-monster moment. I had no clue it would go this far.”
“Yeah, well, we would’ve—”
“Hooked up anyway? Maybe, maybe not. It’s a bad idea regardless. I’m a screwed-up Catholic too, you know? I sympathize. I mean, Missy’s too full of herself to have hangups but I’m a total chickenshit in real life, to the point where I’m too chickenshit to even deal with being chickenshit, which means I’ll never get anything figured out.” She pops a handful of gummy bears. “I’ll probably be a virgin till I die. I think I might be a lesbian. Or maybe I’m bi, I don’t know. I don’t have any answers.”
“Oh.”
“Like, all that stuff I spouted in my fic, how God didn’t make us to suffer? Pfft. How would I know? Maybe he’s like Xaarg and he uses us for his sick amusement, you know? Maybe he thinks it’s hilarious that I’m attracted to people, but then I sort of feel like throwing up when they touch me, and I’ll probably end up dying alone in a studio apartment with a Chihuahua eating my face off.”
I study the railing. “You won’t.”
“Don’t be so sure. Honestly, I don’t think people ever get un-screwed-up. I think it’s just, how well can you pretend to be someone else, and how long.”
Two businessmen in suits clomp across the bridge. The koi startle and scatter. Abel appears across the lobby, sca
My time with her is almost up.
“So, ah,” I draw in a breath that makes my throat ache. “Guess you weren’t really sent by God?”
I try to keep my voice light and jokey, but it splinters on the word God. She flicks one last gummy bear off the railing and stares down into the clear trembling water.
“You’ve thrown a lot of pe
Chapter Twenty-Three
I don’t want Abel to find me. Not yet. I duck down a corridor, slip into a quiet stairwell.
I don’t think people ever get un-screwed-up.
My heart pummels so hard I expect to hear an echo.
I don’t think you’re ready for a relationship.
I lean over the railing. My head swarms. I wish I was good at dismissing people. I could be like Nat: What a bitch. Screw her. Who does she think she is?
I don’t have any answers.
My phone goes off. I jump. HOME CALLING.
I sink down on the steps and pick it up, not thinking it through. All I’m thinking is yes, please, I need home.
“Thank God,” Mom says. “Brandon, we were worried!”
“You haven’t called for days,” Dad snaps. “We just get one email, four words long—”
I feel like crying. “I’m sorry.”
“You could’ve been kidnapped. Maybe someone was impersonating you. How would we know?”
“Did you really think—”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter! The point is, you made your mother lose sleep.”
“You’ve just been having fun with Becky, right, Brandon?” Mom says. “That’s all.”
I drop my head on the concrete step behind me. “Yeah,” I get out. “It’s been really great.”
“That’s so wonderful. See, Greg?”
“Did you take her out for that di
“No, but I will.” I close my eyes. “Maybe tonight. I think tonight we will.”
“Okay. All right,” Dad says. I sense the anger fu
“Sure.”
“Wherever you two want to go.”