Backlash

“Yeah, and do things always go so well with Lara?” Dad says. “Just because other parents are doing it doesn’t mean we should.”

Score one for Dad by bringing up Lara’s imperfections.

Mom grumbles her response, so I can’t hear what she says. But from the tone of her grumbling, I can tell that Dad’s won this round. Now he’ll go up and talk to Bree, and hopefully peace will be restored in the Co

I HATE my mother. Nothing I do is ever enough because I’ll never be her.

What if I don’t want to be her? Does she ever think about that? What if I want to be me, whoever that is?

Like I’ll ever get a chance to even find out, living with the Great White Shark Mom.

If she goes to talk to Coach Carlucci tomorrow, I’m never going to speak to her again. Ever. I will die. Seriously, die.

There’s a knock on my door.

“Go away, Liam!” I shout.

“It’s Dad. Is it safe to come in?”

He says it in a joking way, like he knows how mad I am at Mom. Dad’s gotten used to acting as the United Nations peacekeeping force between us.

“Yeah, okay.”

Dad comes in and closes the door behind him.

“Doing your homework?”

“Trying to.”

“It’s hard to concentrate when you’re upset, huh?”

I nod.

“Heard about cheerleading.”

I don’t say anything. I don’t even look at him. I don’t want to talk about it.

“Look, Breenut,” Dad says, calling me by a nickname from when I was a baby. “I know Mom’s upset you didn’t make the team, but it’s not the end of the world.”

That’s when I turn to him. “Do you mean that?”

“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”

I have to swallow a lump in my throat. At least one of my parents doesn’t think I’m a total disappointment.

“In a way, I think this could be good for you. It’ll give you a chance to try something new. Didn’t you say you wanted to try dance?”

“I did. But it’s probably too late to try out now.”

“Well, how about exploring some other interests?”

That would be good if I could think of any. But it’s pretty much been cheerleading all the way my whole life.

“Like what?”

“Anything. Newspaper. Debate. Volunteering. School dance committee. At last year’s open house, they had a list of clubs as long as my arm. Longer, even.”

“I’m not going to do debate like Liam, Dad,” I tell him. “Forget it.”

“I just used that as an example, Bree,” Dad says. He sounds a little irritated. “Choose whatever strikes your fancy. But try something new. Experiment while you’re young, before you get stuck in a track and it’s too late.”

He sighs, and I wonder if he feels like he’s stuck and it’s too late. Did he dream of owning his own plumbing supply store when he was my age? Didn’t he ever want to get out of Lake Hills and go somewhere else?

“Okay, okay, I’ll think about it. Thanks, Dad,” I say, turning back to my desk. “I’ve got to finish my homework.”

Dad comes over and kisses the top of my head.

“Go easy on your mother, Breenut,” he says. “She means well.”

Whatever feelings I had of being understood disappear. As Dad walks out of the room, I can’t help wondering if he asked Mom to go easy on me, too.

I’ve been chatting with Lara as this Christian DeWitt guy for a few weeks now, and it’s getting kind of weird because Lara is flirting with me. I mean really flirting. It’s a side of her I’ve never seen before. I’m like, Who IS this person? This isn’t the Lara I knew. This definitely isn’t the Lara you see in school.

Okay, so I’ll admit I started flirting with her first. I mean, Christian did. I would never flirt with another girl. It’s not like I’m gay or anything. I guess that’s why this all feels so weird.

But like I said, it’s not me who’s really flirting with her. It’s Christian, or, as Lara’s started calling him, sweetie (barf), honey (puke), and babe (awkward).

Sometimes it creeps me out so much to be flirting with her that I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing it. I wonder if I should shut down his profile and the Gmail account without saying good-bye. Just disappearing Christian DeWitt from the face of the Internet. A few clicks here, a few clicks there, and His Royal Hotness Mr. DeWitt is virtual toast.

But then Lara walks past me at school with Ashley Trapasso, the two of them in their little cheerleading outfits with matching purple-and-gold hair ribbons, and Lara ignores me like she’s better than me all of a sudden.

That’s when I realize I have to continue, and I laugh to myself as she passes, because I know that the guy she’s seriously started crushing on is just make-believe. That actually, that guy is me, her old BFF Brea

I think it was because I was getting bored of flirting with Lara that I decided to let Marci in on the secret. Until then, my alter ego as Christian DeWitt was a secret between Gmail, Facebook, and me. But Marci was over one night around the time Christian would normally be chatting with Lara, and I was getting tired of having to keep thinking of nice things to say to the girl. I decided that Marci might be a source of useful inspiration.

At first I was really nervous about how Marci would react. I was worried she would think I was some kind of freak for doing this to Lara. Turns out she thought it was hilarious.

“Wait — Christian DeWitt is you?” she said.

“Yeah. Well, actually, he’s this Abercrombie model,” I told her, bringing up the model’s website. “But the ‘guy’ Lara is crushing on? That’s me.”

Just then, I noticed that Lara had come online.

“Check it out. She’s online,” I said. “Want to flirt with her?”

Marci giggled. “Oooooh yeah! Flirting is my specialty!”

She was speaking the truth. It’s one of the reasons I hang out with her. I keep hoping her flirting skills will rub off, and I’ll be able to interact with guys without coming off as a total dork. I mean, I’m great at flirting from behind a computer screen when I’m pretending to be Christian, but put me in front of a real boy and I get tongue-tied.

I started off the conversation, asking Lara how her day went. She went on and on with all her boring cheerleading stuff: how she’d mastered some new tumble and she was going to be second from the top of the pyramid. Like some guy would actually care about any of that. If there were an Olympics for Boring, Lara would be the all-time gold medalist.

Marci was cracking up. “You’d think she’d never talked to a guy before,” she said. “Let me have a turn!”

Marci doesn’t know about Lara and me and how we used to be best friends, and about Lara’s problems in middle school. She doesn’t know what I know: that Christian probably is the first guy who has ever shown interest in Lara. And he’s not even real.

“Sure,” I said, letting her sit in the chair.

“I know!” Marci said. “Why don’t we pretend Christian’s got a big dance coming up at his school and have him hint that he’s going to invite Lara?”

“Why didn’t I think of that?!” I said. “I’ve been getting so bored of flirting with her. At least this will give us something else to talk about so I don’t have to keep lying and telling her she’s cute and pretty.”

“Lara’s kind of cute,” Marci said. “I mean, she’s not a total dog.”