#famous Read online

  But somehow I managed to keep it together long enough for him to squint back and forth between my hand and the fry box, measuring the two against each other before finally nodding as though I’d passed muster.

  “Yup, looks like a fit,” he said.

  He dropped my hand. I tried to breathe again.

  “HA.” I forced a laugh. Poorly. “I should go. I have to meet up with my mom.” Awesome, Rachel, add to your intrigue by reminding him you hang out with your mother.

  “Enjoy the fries, Rachel from writing,” he said, grinning. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Sure.” I gulped, nodding too many times, too fast. “See you around.”

  I walked away as slowly as I could force myself to, which was just this side of a sprint.

  Breathing hard, I plopped onto a bench near the fountain. That had been disastrous.

  But at least I’d gotten my picture. That had been the point, right? To flit something goofy to Monique? I finished typing her handle, then—because of course I’m oh-so-witty the minute actual guys have disappeared—I typed in a hashtag.

  Send.

  Immediately, I felt a little twinge. What if he saw it? He’d know it was me.

  But that wouldn’t happen. Kyle didn’t follow me—maybe ten people did. I flitted all the pictures in the game to Monique, I’d been doing it for months; no one had ever noticed them before. I think the most attention any of the pictures ever got was a single non-Mo luv, and that squirrel vest had been AWESOME. Why would anyone suddenly care about this one?

  My phone pinged with the sound that meant I had a reflit.

  I opened my feed to see what Mo had said.

  @attackoftherach_face tonight’s brain food.

  The picture I’d flitted was below. That sweet, goofy half grin lingering around his lips was too adorable. So much so that it had made me feel sassy enough to flit:

  @Mo_than_you_know I’m digging what

  they’re serving up at Burger Barn today.

  #idlikefrieswithTHAT

  God, I am such an idiot.

  chapter two

  KYLE

  TUESDAY, 5:00 P.M.

  The girls who stepped up to the register looked about thirteen. Middle school age, probably. And they were all giggling.

  Jeez, what was with the giggling today? I knew I looked like a tool in this hat, but it had never been noteworthy before. Middle schoolers: utter mysteries.

  The ringleader: slick, straight, dirty-blond hair and what had to be fake fingernails. Finally she spoke up, hushing her crew with a wave of one hand.

  “Okay, so, um, we’ll take three chocolate quake-shakes, please, and a burger for Lau-rie.” She said it with an exaggerated eye roll. Laurie must be the one in the back with the hunched shoulders, staring at her feet. Girls were so crappy to each other. “And a Diet Coke, please.”

  I typed it into the register.

  “Anything else?”

  “Oh, um, yes, actually,” she said, biting her lip and looking back over her shoulder at her little posse. The group simultaneously giggled and squealed, sort of like a bagpipe laughing. I could see the bands on Ringleader’s braces. She’d chosen bright pink. “I’d like fries with THAT.”

  Ringleader burst out laughing and buried her head in the nearest minion’s shoulder. The whole group was giggling louder than ever, whispering “I can’t believe you did it,” and raising their eyebrows at one another dramatically.

  Jeez. These middle schoolers: extra annoying.

  “That’s gonna be twenty-three eighteen,” I said, trying to make my voice as flat as possible. The less you give middle school girls to work with, the better. I’d learned that pretty thoroughly coaching lacrosse camp last summer. “Soda machine is to the right,” I added, pushing a cup with a plastic lid stuffed inside it across the counter.

  After several seconds of dramatic breath-catching and hand fluttering, the girls paid and ran off, staring at me over their shoulders with googly eyes. Oof.

  A middle-aged guy with a gut spilling out of the bottom of his polo shirt ordered a “Lite and Tasty.” Then another group of girls squealed their way up to the register. These ones looked older. They were maybe freshmen. But they were all still giggling. Like, a lot. Usually even girls couldn’t find anything funny about the Burger Barn. And I couldn’t remember the last time our clientele had been so female.

  Could there be some sort of event at the mall? A pop star or something? One of the girls was pointing at me and taking out her phone, like she was gonna take a picture. Which was weird and kinda creepy. I felt like telling her I wasn’t whoever she thought I was, but that would have made things worse. She might have started talking to me.

  This shift could not end fast enough.

  I had never seen so many girls order fries in my life. I would have snuck back to my locker to google what was going on, but I was the only person on the register on Tuesdays; usually it was dead my whole shift.

  By five forty-five we’d run out of fries. We’d never run out of anything before. By six fifteen, Jim, the manager, decided to close for the night, even though it was two hours early. We were running out of too many things. The only thing left was chicken tenders, minus the sauce.

  At that point, the line went past the China House and around the corner by the Gap. It was mostly groups of girls, with a couple annoyed adults stuck between them, and it had to be fifty people long.

  Which didn’t make sense at all. I eat this stuff, like, every day. There’s no good reason to wait around for it.

  I headed to my locker, rolling my shoulders the way I did after a tough practice. All the girls had been laughing. Most had been taking pictures. The whole thing had been . . . terrifying. It had been kinda terrifying, all of them staring at me, placing the same exact order, even using the same exact words. It was like I was stuck in a french-fries-themed Body Snatchers sequel.

  At first it seemed harmless. Like maybe some girls JV team was doing, like, extra-dumb hazing. But after the third or fourth giggle-giggle-FRIES-WITH-THAT-giggle-giggle, I wondered if someone was trying to mess with me. Like, me specifically. It could have been Dave Rouquiaux, from lacrosse. He was always doing stuff to try to get a rise out of us after games, or in the locker room. One time he put about half a bottle of laxatives into Eric Winger’s Gatorade because he thought Eric had been hitting on the girl he liked. Another time he stole the entire starting line’s shoelaces before practice, just ’cause. He even took his own, to throw everyone off the scent. Dave might do something like this out of boredom. Dave: just that dude.

  But how would he have convinced about a zillion girls to mess with me at the Burger Barn? Did Dave even know that many girls? Not likely.

  Sighing, I opened the locker and chucked my hat inside. I checked the pile of T-shirts on the shelf. Only one clean shirt left. I’d have to take the rest home and do laundry tonight. Weak.

  I jogged back to the register to grab a plastic bag to put them in.

  CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK.

  Two girls had been lying in wait. By the time I yelled “What is going on?” they were already halfway across the food court, dodging and weaving around customers holding trays. If they had any stick skills they might have been good at lacrosse. One was making this wheezing sound of excitement, like she might faint. Or pop. This day: definitely getting weird.

  I walked as fast as I could back to my locker, stopping to check my reflection in the mirror alongside Jim’s office for pulsing zits, or, like, a full-on snot mustache. Something worth lying in wait to photograph. Maybe something mangled and evil had started growing out of my neck. What were those things called? Parasitic twins?

  But there was nothing out of the ordinary. I looked exactly the same as always, except I was still in my grease-splattered Burger Barn shirt. I headed to the locker and started stuffing dirty shirts into the bag. I needed to get out of here. Like now.

  After I’d changed and checked the schedule to see when I was on next, I grabb
ed my phone from the back of the locker shelf. We weren’t allowed to have them when we worked the register.

  I pressed the on button.

  10 notifications . . .

  The little refresh wheel at the top kept spinning.

  36 notifications . . .

  And spinning.

  492 notifications . . .

  Dang.

  Then it just totally died. Turned itself off. Blip.

  Seriously, what the heck was going on?

  I turned the phone back on and set it on the shelf. It convulsed with notifications. Finally it chimed loudly, buzzed one last time, and came to a stop. Cautiously, I picked it up.

  13,178 notifications

  It buzzed again.

  14,256 notifications

  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.”

  “Isn’t that cute.”

  Emma’s voice was low and monotone. I shouldn’t say any more about Rachel. Emma had always been kinda jealous.

  “I guess.”

  “Anyway, what are you doing right now?”

  “I was gonna go home. We closed early. Ran out of food.”

  “Really? I thought you guys had, like, five freezers full of stuff in back.”

  “We do. Usually. A lot of middle school girls came by to get fries. I guess because of the picture?”

  “Whoa.” Emma whistled. “They tracked you down? That’s insane. Are you okay? That almost sounds scary.”

  “Yeah, kinda.” I exhaled. Emma had always been really good at hearing what I wasn’t saying. It was one of the things I liked best about her. Maybe it was ’cause we were both used to people not paying much attention to us. Emma’s dad was too busy marrying and divorcing new women every couple years to be around much. Her mom and stepdad seemed cool, but she always said they loved their kid, Nathan, more than they loved her.

  My stuff was less drama. My brother, Carter, was the golden child with the grades and the ambition and the looks. I was like the knockoff version. The crappier mini-Carter that my parents had stopped paying attention to ages ago. At least I was taller.

  “I’m just glad they don’t know what I drive. For a second I thought there might be a few camped out in the backseat.” I leaned over to make sure I wasn’t right, but it was empty.

  “If you closed early you don’t have to go home right away, do you?”

  “I dunno. Why?”

  “Maybe you can come over. I was supposed to have dinner with my dad but he bailed at the last minute. Again. I guess Lindsay had some event, I don’t know.” Emma trailed off. She never said much about her dad’s current girlfriend. “Anyway my mom and Martin are out somewhere, and Nathan is over at a friend’s, so I don’t even have him to play video games with. Pretty pathetic, huh?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut tight and leaned my forehead on the steering wheel.

  Was she inviting me over because she wanted to get back toget
her? Or was she just lonely, and curious about the flit, and she figured I’d answer? If I came, would it smooth things over, or would she think I was whipped? Emma wasn’t the kind of girl who would get back together with someone she thought she had on too short a leash.

  Girls: I definitely need a translator.

  “It’d be pretty hard for you to be pathetic,” I said. It was the least puppy-dog thing I could come up with that was still true.

  “You’re sweet.”

  “Just honest.”

  “So are you coming over? I’ve got the whole place to myself, I think all night. Plus, if you go home there will probably be middle schoolers camped out at your house. And you just said you don’t have any more fries.”

  I laughed.

  “That’s an excellent point.” I tried not to think about how it might actually be an excellent point.

  I couldn’t say yes until I knew what she wanted. If she was trying to push me into the friend zone, I should go home. It would be easier in the long run.

  “Does this mean . . . I thought we were broken up?” It had only been a week since Emma had told me she “needed to just be alone for a while.” That put her two weeks ahead of schedule for “missing me so much,” if our last two breakups were any guide.

  I know it’s pathetic that I didn’t just ditch her already, but there was something about Emma. She was really hot, obviously, but she was also good at reading people, at reading me. Like if I was down, or if I wanted to leave wherever we were, Emma always knew, sometimes even before I did. It was like she noticed me more than other people. And when no one was around, I’d catch glimpses of this side of her that was so . . . fragile. For most people she was on all the time, but when we were alone she was different. Smaller somehow, and sadder. It made me want to make her happier. And she had this way of looking at me sometimes that made me feel . . . I dunno, like something legit amazing. Emma made you want to be cool enough to hang out with Emma.