#famous Read online

  “Well we were,” she said slowly. “Do you still want to be broken up?”

  “I never wanted to be at all,” I said truthfully.

  “I never wanted to be broken up, I just needed me-time, you know? It’d be nice to see you. It’s lonely over here.” She sighed. The sound made my heart squeeze tight.

  “Okay,” I said, “I’ll be over in a little.”

  Maybe this picture blowing up wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

  chapter three

  RACHEL

  TUESDAY, 5:15 P.M.

  It honestly didn’t occur to me that anyone would see the picture.

  Sure, Monique had reflitted it, but so what? I was annoyed at first—she had to know I wouldn’t want people to know how drooly I got over Kyle Bonham—but it’s not like it was some big secret that he’s good-looking. People might not even know I’d flitted it. Ever since middle school I’d been working to ensure I was one of Apple Prairie High’s least-known students; better to be nobody than have a target on your back. Besides, Monique barely has more followers than me, and half of them are her cousins.

  When I checked my phone as my mom pulled into the driveway, though, it had jumped to ten reflits.

  I only recognized one of the profiles, which meant that eight strangers had shared the picture. That was weird. Not bad, but definitely not great.

  “Rachel, for goodness’ sake, get out of the car.” Mom looked at me through the driver’s-side door. “Honestly I sometimes think we should never have let you have that thing,” she muttered.

  I fumbled at my seat belt with my left hand, refreshing the app with my thumb.

  39 reflits

  Crap-muffins. Someone from school was going to see this soon, and it wouldn’t be hard for them to put it together, if they hadn’t already. If Kyle found out, I wouldn’t be the strange girl from writing anymore, I’d be pathetic.

  A notification lit up my screen.

  @DanceQueenErin reflitted your flit:

  OMG that’s @YourBoyKyle_B @attackoftherach_

  face I’m digging what they’re serving up at

  Burger Barn today #idlikefrieswithTHAT

  Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT.

  Then it really exploded.

  It seemed like the entire school was reflitting the picture. First the girls on dance team with Erin, then a handful of athletes, then the names stopped even being familiar (I kind of tried not to know the meatheads). They were multiplying too fast for me to work out who most of them were.

  One name I recognized, though.

  @jessieflozo mentioned you in a flit: OMG I

  should’ve known @attackoftherach_face was

  up to something weird I totally saw this happen

  #idlikefrieswithTHAT

  @jessieflozo replied to a flit you were

  mentioned in: Sorry for not saving u from the

  stalker, @YourBoyKyle_B, I didn’t even know u

  were working

  @jessieflozo replied to a flit you were

  mentioned in: Don’t feel bad, though,

  @attackoftherach_face always liked fries with

  that #idlikefrieswithTHAT

  I would’ve assumed Jessie burned any pictures of us together back in middle school, to destroy all evidence of having been friends with a weirdo. Since then, she’d clawed her way to the top social tier. Making the Wolfettes dance team sophomore year helped.

  The picture she chose was from the worst of my awkward phase—I’d put on my puberty weight before having a growth spurt, I had one big caterpillar eyebrow I hadn’t learned to pluck yet, and I was still in braces.

  . . . and I was biting through a massive cheeseburger, the poster girl for childhood obesity. I swallowed hard. After this, if Kyle didn’t find me actively repellant, he’d probably just pity me, which was possibly even worse.

  I couldn’t believe she’d flitted it. She’d laugh along in middle school when her “cool” friends ragged on my hair, or the plays Monique and I wrote (I used to just write stories, but Monique wanted something she could perform), but she’d never started things.

  I should turn off my phone. The smart thing would be to turn off the phone for the next half hour until this went away.

  But Mo was the smart one. I compromised and slid it into my shirt pocket.

  I ran upstairs to my bedroom, flopped onto my back on the puffy black-and-white zigzag comforter, and tried to focus on something else. Anything else. Think up a new scene for Twice Removed; Mo would be pumped the play was coming along. Just whatever you do, don’t look at your phone again.

  What if Jessie posted more pictures? Who else had them? There had to be a dozen just from that awful sleepover at Lorelei Patton’s in the fifth grade, when Mom had called Lorelei’s parents and forced her to invite me.

  I ran to the oak bookcase in the corner and started pulling out yearbooks.

  “Rachel!” Mom’s voice ricocheted up the stairs. “Dinner!”

  I flipped through manically. Here I was with a full-on fro, touching my tongue to my nose. Here I was around the height of my weight gain in a too-short shirt that showed my doughy belly. Jesus, they had me as an “orphan” in the seventh-grade production of Oliver!, tooth blacked out and dirt on my face. And these were just sitting in yearbooks, waiting for anyone to find . . . and flit. I’d always figured hiding in the corner with my handful of arty friends would mean this kind of thing couldn’t happen again. But Jessie’s followers were already piling onto the picture. Being invisible at school was my line of defense. And they were rolling over it like a tidal wave, disintegrating the only protection I had . . .

  “Rachel, I mean it! Get a move on!”

  I swallowed hard and dropped the yearbook. I thought about leaving the phone upstairs, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I’d just see how many notifications were coming through.

  I slid into my usual seat at our tiny kitchen table, wedged into the corner next to the door to the backyard we left permanently deadbolted. Jonathan sat across from me, fanning Pokémon cards across his place mat and squinting at them through his wire-rimmed glasses.

  He frowned, rearranging his card fiefdom, then grinned, nodded, and swept them together to stuff them into the kangaroo pocket of his sweatshirt. His Pikachu sweatshirt. God, the kid was hopeless, but I loved him for it. I wouldn’t have known how to handle a little brother who cared about seeming cool. People like that confused me—Jessie confused me.

  Maybe I should have spent more time trying to decode her.

  My phone buzzed right as Mom set the salad bowl on the table. I pulled it out to look at the screen.

  592 notifications

  My stomach pirouetted. Even Jessie didn’t have that many followers. Who else was talking about me?

  “Rachel, phone away,” Mom said automatically, turning to the counter to load plates with lasagna. “Dinner is a technology-free zone.”

  I slipped it into my pocket, tapping my toe against the ground as Dad sat down at my left. They were probably mostly luvs. That wasn’t so bad, right?

  I hadn’t even made it through a bite of lasagna before the phone buzzed again. I breathed in deep, stuffed my fork into my mouth, and swallowed as fast as I could. The still-molten cheese burned the roof of my mouth, making me tear up a little.

  “Jonathan, tell me one way you expressed yourself today.” Mom stabbed her salad precisely until she’d speared one of every element.

  Jonathan squinted thoughtfully.

  “I finished my vocabulary test early, so I drew pictures of the words around the edges.”

  “I’m glad you added more beauty to the world.”

  This was how they talked to us at dinner. I’d only realized in middle school that most people’s parents weren’t total hippies, but I didn’t mind that mine were. They’d always made us feel like what we were doing mattered. It was nice—and dorky—but today it made me want to spit acid.

  My phone buzzed again as Mom asked him
about Odyssey of the Mind. She was focused on Jonathan; I could sneak a peek.

  1,385 notifications

  I almost choked on my cherry tomato. That was more people than all of Apple Prairie High. Without thinking I clicked the screen; I had to know what they were saying.

  “Rachel.” Dad tilted his head down to peer at me over the top of his glasses. They were identical to Jonathan’s—he was Dad’s doppelgänger, wiry and myopic and narrow-faced, while I looked like a darker version of Mom, with her frizzy hair, single dimple, and permanent extra ten pounds. “Active listening shows respect.”

  “Okay.” I dropped the phone into my lap. I could feel its heat radiating into me like a burning brand. L, maybe, for loser. Or TP, for total pariah. “Monique’s been texting about homework,” I added. She had been a few hours back, so it wasn’t totally untrue.

  Dad frowned in a way he thought was menacing. He couldn’t pull off menacing.

  “Well, tell me something new you learned today, Rachel.”

  “How to apply a majolica glaze,” I squeezed out. I stuffed as big a bite of lasagna into my mouth as I thought could fit. Swallowing was becoming harder and harder—my stomach felt like a knotted garden hose, tangled and twisted and unwilling to take anything in—but I had to make a dent in the food or they’d never let me leave the table. “It was harder than I thought.” I’d also learned how to commit social seppuku, but opted not to mention that.

  “Jonathan,” Dad said, “what’s a difficult problem you overcame today?”

  Jonathan sat, thinking hard. He was still young enough to enjoy my parents’ earnest . . . well, probing. The phone buzzed again. Mom and Dad were both turned toward Jonathan. Surreptitiously I dropped my hand under the table, clicking it to life.

  1,529 notifications

  The most recent ones showed up below:

  @RickiTicki_TAVI mentioned you in a flit:

  @attackoftherach_face goes to APHS? where’d

  she come from? i’ve nvr seen her before

  #idlikefrieswithTHAT

  I exhaled. That wasn’t so bad. But there were more:

  @GabiBaby mentioned you in a flit: Ugh, cld

  @attackoftherach_face be any more pathetic?

  She was always weird but this is just sad.

  It was Gabi Ruiz, from ceramics club. I’d assumed my weird-kid activities were safe. She was low on the social totem pole, but clearly angling for more.

  @BethaneEeeEEE mentioned you in a flit: Found

  another middle school gem of

  @attackoftherach_face. Awkward phase much?

  #idlikefrieswithTHAT

  @chzfries mentioned you in a flit:

  @BethaneEeeEEE @attackoftherach_face

  she looks like one of those loner serial killer

  types. @YourBoyKyle_B shld slepe w/1 eye

  open haha

  Kyle wasn’t tagged in many, but enough that there was no way to avoid embarrassment. The whole school knew about my stupid crush, and now they were digging up proof of my long-standing patheticness. I was barely past seeing myself that way. Now Jessie was ensuring everyone would. Wouldn’t be able to not.

  I might actually implode from humiliation, like one of those stars Ms. Feldman talked about last year in Planetary Sciences, the ones that are too small and unimportant to explode when they die, so they collapse into themselves until there’s nothing left.

  “Rachel. Our family is here in the real world, waiting to engage with you.” Dad put his hand out.

  “No, please—” I breathed in too fast, in a choky kind of way. “Can I be excused? There’s a . . . thing I have to deal with . . .”

  “Rachel, what’s going on?” Mom’s voice was soft. She laid her hand on my arm. “This isn’t like you.”

  I knew I should have left the phone upstairs. Now I had to figure out the best way to lie about this.

  When I was little I told my parents everything, like Jonathan—ideas I had for plays, crushes, even when I got my first pubes (I know, totally mortifying). Besides Monique, they were basically my best friends.

  So when Lorelei Patton started calling me “oo-bee” in the fifth grade (short for “unibrow”—Mom hadn’t taken me to get waxed yet), I told Mom. I told her about Lorelei leaving a bottle of Nair on my desk with a drawing of my “monster brows.” I told her about everyone but me getting invited to Lorelei’s slumber party.

  Then she turned around and called Lorelei’s mother, and the teacher, and the fricking principal, and said they needed to deal with “this horrific bullying.”

  “If bullies aren’t confronted they find new targets,” she’d said, with this maddening, patronizing smile. “Kids will respect you for standing up to her.”

  The whole class knew I was the reason we had that stupid presentation in the gym, with middle-aged actors taunting the “shy kid” on a “bus” that was nothing more than chairs lined up in rows and a detached steering wheel for the actor at the front.

  Mom didn’t realize that this was like me. The me who spent the night of Lorelei’s sleepover pretending to be asleep so the girls wouldn’t know I could hear every mean thing they were saying. The me who lied the next day and said it was fun.

  We’d had intensely awkward conversations about how she and Dad wouldn’t punish me for “exploring my sexuality” or “experimenting with substances,” so birth control or calling home drunk for a ride was neutral ground.

  But when I told her something—a big something—she’d ratted me out to the entire fricking school. Not everything was neutral ground.

  So not everything was up for discussion anymore.

  I looked down at the smear of brown and creamy red I’d smashed out of the lasagna. I had to say enough that they’d buy me being stressed, but not so much that they’d look into it.

  “It’s dumb,” I started. “It’s this . . . flit. I flitted a picture, and some people at school have seen it, and I’m mildly freaking out.” I could feel my ears getting hot. Who gets hot ears? Was that one of those body signs that you’re lying?

  “What kind of picture?” Mom said slowly, leaning forward to look at me more closely. Her eyes were buggy, and her mouth was pulled tight.

  Oh god.

  “NOT that kind of picture. Wow. No. Nothing like that.” She nodded, obviously relieved no one had seen digital versions of my naughty parts. “It was of this random boy who’s out of my league. Mo reflitted it, and now people at school have seen it . . .” I had to tread lightly here. Mom barely went on social media; she wouldn’t look unless I gave her a reason to. “It’s just embarrassing.”

  “So you’re worried because people know you think this boy is cute?”

  I grimaced. Even though I was deliberately feeding her a sanitized version, it did make the whole thing sound silly.

  “I mean . . . yeah, I guess.”

  “Attraction is a natural thing, and nothing to be ashamed of.” Dad looked at me meaningfully.

  Mom glared at him, eyebrows raised, and squeezed my arm.

  “What your dad means is this is going to blow over before you know it. By tomorrow morning, everyone will have forgotten about it. They probably already have.”

  I tried to force a smile, but it felt like my cheeks were stuck in the off position. At least I hadn’t succumbed to stress tears. If I’d been on my period (when my balloon-skin of normal is barely able to cover the ever-expanding explosion of emotional wreck and snotty cries), this game would have been over.

  “Trust me, sweetie. This is barely a speck on people’s radar.” I nodded, mute. I couldn’t tell her otherwise, and besides, I really wanted to believe her.

  “I’m sorry I was looking at my phone. But can I be excused? I’m not hungry.”

  “We want you kids to live your lives offline.” Dad shook his head. Mom gave him a Jesus, Dan, give it a rest face. “But I suppose it’s all right this once.”

  I practically ran to the sink, slopping the gory mess of pasta sauce and drowned leaves into
the disposal. I’d just thought of one way to keep this from going any further; I could deactivate my account. If Kyle hadn’t seen things yet (possible—he was still at work) he might not realize it was me. The mean pictures weren’t addressed to him; he might miss those entirely.

  “Rachel,” Dad said as I was rushing out the door. I turned, fingers tapping my impatience out against my leg. “There’s no such thing as a boy that’s out of your league. If he doesn’t realize that, he’s not good enough for you in the first place.”

  God, dads were so perpetually blind to reality. Still, your dad should believe that. Even if he’s wrong.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  I checked my phone on the stairs. A new batch of mentions filed down to the bottom, but sitting above them, separated out, was a different notification.

  @YourBoyKyle_B followed you

  So much for that idea—he definitely knew. I dug my fingernails into the butt of my hand.

  Was he messing with me? Getting in on the joke? I thought back to the afternoon. He’d seemed so genuine. So nice.

  Maybe we could actually get to know each other?

  Not likely, but it’s not like I could somehow be more humiliated by this whole debacle. Before I could think better of it, I followed him back, then tapped out a quick private flit.

  Sorry about the pic. I had no idea it would blow

  up. Also, you’re welcome for the massive ego boost.

  I immediately refreshed my account to see if he’d responded. Instead I just got another notification.

  @Lolobear1899 mentioned you in a flit: eww

  @attackoftherach_face is so fat and disgusting.

  just kill yourself girl ur gonna die a virgin anyway haha

  I dropped the phone on my bedroom floor so fast it might as well have stung me. Why would someone say that? My stomach roiled, and I could feel my cheeks getting hot. Before this whole thing had been embarrassing, but now I felt . . . ashamed. Like someone had just pantsed me in the middle of the commons. Was there something wrong with me? I’d never thought about it before; Mo was still a virgin too.

  Cautiously, I picked up the phone, and pecked at the girl’s profile picture to see who she was.