Backlash

I’m tired of chatting with that girl every night. That’s why I stopped being friends with her in the first place — because I was sick of listening to her whine about her miserable life.

Another reason I’m ready to end this is because now that Mom knows she keeps making all these little suggestions about how I can flirt with Lara better, which is weird and freaks me out on too many levels to count. Last night after I broke off the chat with Lara, she came into my room and wanted me to start it up again so she could be Christian for a while and “have a little fun.”

I was like, “Are you insane?”

Mom got mad and told me to show her some respect, which just pissed me off even more. Seriously — this was my thing and now Mom’s trying to take it over. Story of my life.

Sighing, I look out the bedroom window and notice a light flickering in the window of the old tree fort. Who would be in there? I haven’t been up there in, like, forever. It reminds me too much of Lara. I wonder if all those posters of bands we liked in middle school are still on the walls, and if the book of secret passwords and rules we used to keep Liam and Sydney out is still hidden under the remnant of carpet that Mom got from one of her clients after they moved into their new house.

I just hope it’s not some crazy axe murderer or a stinky hobo or something living up there. That would suck. I better make sure to close my curtains from now on. I don’t want to give some random tree-fort freak an eyeful.

The next morning before school, I pull Marci aside and show her the chat convo printout. Je

“Wow,” Marci says after she reads the chat. “I can’t believe you didn’t let her have it then and there.”

“Well, they say revenge is a dish best served cold, right?” I tell her.

“So are you going to dump her tonight?” Marci asks.

“After school,” I say. “I’m going to do it publicly. On her Facebook wall. So everyone can see.”

“I can’t wait,” Marci says, gri

“Don’t tell anyone,” I remind her.

“Top secret,” she says, pretending to button her lips shut. “My lips are sealed. Text me when it’s done, promise?”

“Yeah, I promise.”

As I walk to the cafeteria at lunchtime, I pass Lara in the hallway. She’s wearing her cheerleading uniform and she’s with Ashley, her new BFF, and some other cheerleaders. She doesn’t even acknowledge I’m alive.

I don’t care. Because I know what’s going to happen to her later today, and she doesn’t. So let her giggle with Ashley and the rest of her stupid cheerleader friends, all their ponytails bobbing as they laugh with their matching purple-and-gold ribbons, like a bunch of horses’ butts on a merry-go-round.

My classes after lunch drag even more than usual. Now that I’ve made the decision to break up with Lara — or that Christian is going to break up with her — I want to get it over with. Not just think about it, do it. Everything has been leading up to this; the fake account, the fake flirting, it’s all been a setup for what’s going to go down later on today.

Deep down, I wonder if Lara has any clue that Christian isn’t who he says he is. Deep down, I wonder if she has any idea that he is really me.

No way. I’ve covered my tracks pretty well. The only people who know are Marci and Mom. Marci is totally for it, and strangely, so is Mom. It’s all good.

As anxious as I was to get it over with all afternoon in school, when I get home, I find myself hesitating. Once I do it, I can’t go back to pretending I’m him anymore. Once I do it, I lose that power. This will really be the end.

So I make myself a snack — Nutella on toast with a glass of milk — and watch a few episodes of a reality show about crazy stage moms.

“Why do you even watch that show?” Liam asks, coming into the family room chomping on an apple. “Those people are seriously messed up.”

In my head I hear Mom urging me to log back in to chat with Lara so she can pretend to be Christian again.

“Ya think? They’re no more screwed up than our parents. Trust me.”

Liam stares at me, goggle-eyed, his mouth hanging open, filled with unchewed apple. It’s gross, like looking at a train wreck in a tu

“No way Mom and Dad are like those crazies,” he says.

“Can you at least finish chewing before you talk so I don’t have to look at your food debris?”

He swallows.

“Okay, fine, but I’m serious. I wouldn’t want to be one of those stage kids. No way.”

I would. Even with an ambitious, pressuring stage mom. ’Cause I already have a pressuring mom, but at least then she’d be pressuring me to do what I want, instead of what she wants me to do.

Too bad, Mom. I failed, too. Guess we’re both losers, huh?

I wonder if my failure is going to give me “grit” so I’ll be more like Mom. But is that what I really want? Dad’s the one who’s always understood me more. Or at least he’s the one who tries.

I switch off the TV and get up off the sofa. “Don’t worry,” I tell Liam. “You’re not talented enough to be onstage anyway.”

He nabs the sofa and the remote and turns on some geeky science show that’s just an excuse to blow things up and call it an “experiment.” I’ve caught a few episodes when I haven’t had anything better to do, and the explosions are pretty cool, especially in slow motion.

Showtime, I figure, as I walk up the stairs. Time for Christian to teach Lara a lesson. Time for the final curtain in the Christian and Lara Show.

I log into Facebook as Christian and go to Lara’s wall. I type, look it over once, and add one more thing. My finger hesitates over the mouse button for a moment. I take a deep breath, and click Post.

Then I log out, log back in as myself, and wait for the fun to start.

IF YOU hold the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet toward the bathroom mirror there are hundreds of versions of you, like clones created in a secret lab by white-coated scientists. The first time I did it I thought it was so cool — an infinite tu

I don’t.

Christian just messaged me that the world would be a better place without me in it. He’s right.

I wish I knew what I did to make him change his mind about me so suddenly, without any warning. One minute I think he’s about to ask me to his school dance, the next minute he’s posting on my wall that I’m an awful person and a terrible friend. That he would never consider being seen with a loser like me at his school dance.

He didn’t even know me in middle school, before Mom took me to the nutritionist and the shrink and I lost thirty pounds.

Why? What did I do? I just want to understand. I need to understand. If I only understood, then I could change, I could be a different Lara, a nicer Lara, a better Lara. A Lara that people didn’t like one minute and then hate the next. A Lara that didn’t make friends, then lose them.