Backlash

“About two months.”

“Have you ever met him in person?”

I avoid looking at Mom.

“No. But he was friends with a bunch of kids from my school, so I figured he had to be okay.”

Mom exhales her disapproval.

Yes, Mom, I know. I broke the rules. Don’t you think I’ve learned my lesson?

“Did he friend you or did you friend him?”

This guy clearly must have forgotten what it’s like to be in high school. Like I ever would have had the courage to friend someone as good-looking as Christian.

I couldn’t believe when I got the friend request from him. He’s so gorgeous, like, seriously, he could be an Abercrombie model. I looked at his profile picture for ten minutes, unable to believe that he actually wanted to friend me.

“He friended me.”

“And how did you develop a relationship?”

What relationship? There is no relationship, Detective. Somehow — I don’t know how or why — I screwed it up.

“We started chatting. You know, by IM.”

“Did you ever video chat?”

“No. I wanted to, but the camera on his laptop was broken.”

“Did you ever speak to Mr. DeWitt on the telephone?”

“No.”

“And on the night of your hospitalization, he sent you this message?”

Detective Souther nods to Officer Hall and she takes a piece of paper out of a folder. It’s a printout of the Facebook direct message Christian sent me. The one that said the world would be a better place without me in it. The one that said, “GOOD-BYE, LOSER!!!”

I realize, horrified, that they’d been reading my chats and my emails. They know everything. How stupid I’d been. How I believed someone like Christian could actually like someone like me.

But they’re still asking me questions instead of giving me answers. Like everything else that’s supposed to be helping me, this is just another royal waste of time.

I’m beyond sick of it. I’m furious.

“Why are you even bothering to ask me questions when you’ve already pried into my personal life and read everything?! When you already know!” I snap. “Huh? Why don’t you answer my questions for a change?” I stand up and grab the paper, crumple it up into a ball, and throw it on the table in front of the spying detective.

“Lara!” Mom exclaims. “Calm down!”

She grabs my wrist and tries to pull me back into my chair.

“Why should I?!” I shout at her, trying to pull my arm out of her grasp.

Don’t I have a right to be mad? Why does she always shut me down?

“Maybe this was too much, too soon,” she explains to the police, pasting on a warped version of her Politician Smile. Even Mom can’t manage full-watt fakery right now.

“This must be incredibly painful for you, Lara, and I understand that our questions feel intrusive,” Officer Hall says in a calm, gentle voice. “But we want to help you find answers.”

I still.

It’s the hope, however unlikely it might be, of finding an answer that makes me slump back into my seat and answer the question. Trying to understand why Christian turned on me is an obsession.

“Yeah. He sent me that message. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what I did wrong, why he suddenly changed like that. He went from being so sweet to …”

This is why I don’t want to let any kind of feeling start — because I have no control over the size of it, or how to control it or stop it if it gets too much. Emotion pours over me like a tidal wave, drowning me with primitive force. I lay my head down on my arms on the table and sob until the sleeves of my T-shirt are wet.

Mom flutters around me, panicked by the force of my grief, stroking my back, trying to give me tissues, telling me everything is going to be okay, which I know isn’t true. I know full well it’s a lie, because how can things ever be okay after what’s happened?

When my sobs have slowed to sniffles, Mom sits holding my hand, and I face Detective Souther and Officer Hall with red, swollen eyes.

“Lara, you didn’t do anything wrong to make Christian turn,” Officer Hall says. “The thing is …”

She glances at Detective Souther. He takes over.

“What we’ve learned from our investigation, Lara, is that there is no Christian DeWitt. The profile was deleted a week after you were hospitalized. According to the administration at East River High, there is no student of that name registered. No family by the name of DeWitt lives in the town of East River. And we cross-checked the few profile pictures — they are all of a young man named Adam Bernard who models for Abercrombie and Fitch, the clothing store. We contacted Mr. Bernard and he has no knowledge of anyone named Christian DeWitt.”

I stare at his mouth as the words come out, my mind unable to believe what he is telling me can be true. It can’t be.

This is a dream. A really bad dream. The worst dream ever. I’ll wake up and it won’t be true, just like the one I had where I went to the dance with Christian in the limo and we ended up at my middle school with everyone calling me Lardo.

I start pinching my leg, hard, with my left hand, over and over to try to wake myself up. Mom sees me and takes my hand.

“Lara, stop. You’re going to bruise yourself,” she says, thinking that I care.

And that’s when I know beyond all shadow of a doubt, this isn’t a dream. The horror of this is that I’m awake, and it’s all too real. Even worse, it’s not going to go away.

I thought my world had already shattered when Christian sent me that message, but I realize now that was only the appetizer, the prelude to this moment, which is the main course.

Because Christian isn’t even real. He’s fake. I tried to kill myself over a boy who doesn’t even exist. It’s official. I am the stupidest person alive.

And I wish, even more now, that I were dead.

EVER SINCE I can remember we’ve had a Sunday afternoon family football-watching ritual. If Mom makes appointments to show a house during game time, Dad gets mad because he says it’s supposed to be our “sacred time” or whatever. Mom’s a bigger believer in the sacred principle of making money and paying the bills — at least that’s what she says whenever they fight about it, which is often.

But today, the sacred gathering around the big screen is on — well, kind of. At least we’re all in the same room, sitting around in front of the television, with the game on, pretending that we’re watching it together. Bree checks her cell phone every few minutes. Mom has her iPad on her lap to check work emails and browse real estate websites, but she’s smart enough to look up and comment about game plays often enough to keep Dad happy.

I don’t know why Dad insists on this whole family football deal. If you ask me, everyone would be a whole lot happier if he just let us do our own thing. But gathering around the TV to watch guys throw the pigskin is Dad’s thing with a capital T. So we do it.

The camera focuses in on the cheerleaders, who are totally hot in their short shorts, crop tops, and knee-high leather boots.

“Don’t they get cold when the game’s in, like, November?” I ask. “I mean, they’re not exactly, you know, wearing a lot.”

“Is that so?” Dad chuckles, glancing over at Mom. “I can’t say I noticed.”

My mother makes a pfft sound and rolls her eyes.