Like Lana

by Danielle Leonard

  “Cheers.” I raise my glass. She reluctantly clinks, unsmiling. She doesn’t appear to be feeling any more celebratory than me, but in the world of family dysfunction, this is what passes for bonding. I imagine telling her about the photo. Her rising from the table and wrapping her arms around me, telling me it’ll all be okay. That we’ll get through this together. She scrapes her plate with the fork.

  “Mom, do you ever feel like life is too much?”

  “Too much? You’re still worried about the money?” Stuffing the fork into her mouth.

  “No. That’s not it. I mean, what if you do something that you wish you hadn’t. What if…”

  “Everybody has regrets, honey. It’s part of life.” She takes a sip of wine and sits up suddenly. “Oh, I almost forgot. I bought you something for your complexion problem.”

  I shake my head. “I have a complexion problem?”

  “I was at the mall today and told the woman at the makeup counter, you know the good ones in the department store, I told her about the pimples on your chin.” She squints her eyes, leaning in to examine my face. “You look good now, though.”

  “I don’t give a shit about my skin, Mom.”

  “You have such a foul mouth, Lana.” She sighs. “I’m just trying to help, that’s all. You’re a pretty girl, but that goop you put on your face doesn’t help you any. It’s too oily. You should switch to powders.”

  “Yah.” I drop my head and stare at the peas peeking through the slosh of ground beef and sauce. If she hadn’t cut me off, I might have told her that nobody looks at my face except to aim something at it. I shovel the dinner into my mouth and push the chair from the table when I’m done. Mom doesn’t like the truth. She wants pink balloons and silver confetti. Anything less will be dismissed. So, shut up and smile.

  “It’s by a new line of cosmetics. Fleur something. Want me to grab it now?” She asks, setting her hands on the table, about to lift herself up. I shake my head and rise.

  “No.” Dad is walking through the front door as I head upstairs.

  “Lana,” he says, “How was your day?”

  “Fine.” I stop midway up the steps and turn around. “I’m not feeling well tonight.”

  “Really?” He sets his hand on the banister. “If it’s about the car…”

  “No, it’s not.” I’m not going to help Mom lay all the blame on Dad. “I think I’ve come down with a stomach bug.”

  “All right. Let me or Mom know if you need anything, okay?”

  Nodding my head, I continue to my room, shut the door behind me and pick up my cell phone. An argument erupts downstairs. Mom’s voice is raised. Leveled responses from Dad, too muffled for me to make out his words. Not again. In need of a diversion, I send Demit a message.

  Watcha doin?

  I change out of my uniform, toss the blouse in the hamper and leave the kilt on the floor, then throw on a pair of track pants and a t-shirt. My phone dings.

  DEMIT: Just hanging out. U?

  LANA: Same. Shd start my english essay but not in the mood

  DEMIT: I hear ya. Don’t feel like homework either. How was football?

  LANA: Boring. I left early

  DEMIT: Were mean girls there?

  LANA: Yep. In full form.

  DEMIT: did u tell them off yet? >:o

  LANA: No. Not yet

  DEMIT: That’s too bad. Hey! Feel like coming over? Sounds like you could use company

  LANA: Not sure. Just told my parents I’m sick

  DEMIT: r u?

  LANA: No

  DEMIT: Then come. Tell them u have to work on a project or something

  I stare at my phone, not sure how to respond. I barely know this guy. It would be messed up to show up at his house, wouldn’t it? I sigh. Laugh. What about my life isn’t mess up these days? I really do need some company. I’m desperate actually. It might help get my mind off of Fitz, too.

  LANA: All right. Better than hanging in my room

  DEMIT: 177 Morrison Rd. C u soon

  LANA: Cool. I can walk there. B there in 15

  ***

  Three pink frosted cupcakes sit in the centre of a white plate. Demit’s mother is standing across from me, her arms folded, examining my face.

  “I know it’s a lot, but if you just take one bite from each, that would be great.” She has the same long, thin face as Demit, as well as his piercing stare. Even behind her black-rimmed glasses, I feel its penetrating scrutiny and press my arms into my sides to prevent myself from squirming.

  Demit rests his hand on the back of my chair. “Mom, relax already.”

  I take a bite out of one and hastily nod my approval. “This is really yummy. What is it called again?”

  “Cherry Ka-ching,” she answers with a bright smile. “You like it?” I nod and move on to the next one, trying not to notice the dirty baking tins and bowls piled on the table around my plate.

  “I can’t believe you don’t have a cupcake store here,” his mom says, lifting a stack of dirty silver bowls from my left and adding them to the overflowing sink. “I’m going to just bake at home for starters, but there are a couple great locations I’m looking at to open a store.”

  Nodding, I taste the second cupcake which I recognize as salted caramel. It melts in my mouth. “This is awesome.”

  She lifts her shoulders and claps her hands, nodding her approval of my judgement. Moving on to the last one, I detect a weak peanut butter taste. The cake is crumbly.

  “Yum,” I raise my eyebrows and force a tight smile, fighting my gag reflex.

  “You like it?” She points a finger at Demit. “See? It’s not bad! I’ll have to tell your sister, too. She’s far too picky.”

  Demit knocks the back of my chair. “She’s just being nice. We’re going now. You’ve gotten your taste test, Mom.” I push the chair back.

  “Yes, you can go now,” she waves us off as I follow Demit through a door that leads to a staircase downstairs. A girl walks into the kitchen, who I assume is Demit’s sister, and complains about the mess. I only catch a glimpse of her, but she looks about fourteen. Tall and skinny, with coal black hair that hangs past her shoulders. An argument between her and her mom breaks out as we descend the stairs into a darkly lit room. Toward one end is a red couch, two old recliner chairs, and a flat screen TV. Empty pop cans and a rumpled bag of Doritos sit on a white coffee table. Clearly, housekeeping isn’t a priority. My mom would have a heart attack if she saw this.

  “Want a Coke?” Demit disappears into another room and re-enters with two cans.

  “Thanks.” I sit on the couch. “Your mom is interesting.”

  “If by interesting, you mean crazy, then yeah.”

  “Did she work in a bakery when you lived in Brooklyn?”

  “No.” He pauses, like he’s thinking about what to say. “She was a magazine editor. Laid off last year. But she was sick of it by then and wanted to try something different. Like cupcakes. She’s always loved to bake, so that’s pretty much all she does these days.”

  “What magazine did she write for? Vogue? Elle?” I ask eagerly.

  “World Financial Report,” he says.

  “Oh,” I frown. “It must’ve been cool to live in New York City.” Demit picks up a white electric guitar resting against one of the chairs.

  “It was the best.” He plays a couple of riffs.

  “You play a lot?”

  “Yeah. Do you know what this is?” He taps the face of the guitar.

  “A guitar,” I answer dryly.

  “Not just any guitar. It’s a Stratocaster. The one good thing that came out of my parents’ break-up.”

  “Hmm. It looks cool. When did your parents separate?” He strums a soft tune that I don’t recognize.

  “Last year,” he answers without looking up. “It was my dad’s. He let me keep it when he moved to California.”

  “California?” I’m not sure if I’ve crossed the line from showing interest to prying, but after what I’ve b
een through today, I guess I don’t care.

  Demit sets the guitar back down and shrugs. “He got a job down there. That was the start of it. Quit his job as a professor when he landed a gig writing for a sitcom. That’s when he told us he didn’t want any of us moving with him. Not me or my sister. He needed time for himself, apparently.”

  “A sitcom?” I should have said something supportive, like wow, your dad really sucks. But divorce is so been-there, done-that. But writing for TV? Now, you don’t hear that every day.

  Demit strums his guitar for a minute. “Don’t be too impressed. It’s one of those annoying Disney sitcoms with the recycled jokes and canned laughter. Embarrassing, actually.”

  I cock my head and shrug. It’s still TV. I shift my eyes to his arm tattoo.

  “What’s the tattoo say?”

  “You can read it.” He rises and sits close to me, stretching his arm out. I take his wrist in my hand, and follow the stream of words.

  “Do I dare disturb the universe? In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.” It sounds profound, like I should nod my head gravely and respond with a deep observation. What I really want to do is read it again. Maybe two or three more times, so I can actually understand it.

  “Didn’t it hurt getting all of that tattooed?” I’m embarrassed that I can’t come up with anything better to say.

  Demit twists his arm to look at it. “It was worth it.”

  “Where’s it from?”

  “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” he says. “It’s a poem by T.S. Eliot. I think you’d like it.”

  “I’m not all that into romance these days,” I admit. He flips his head back and laughs. I’m not so much into feeling like an idiot either, I want to add.

  “It’s not romantic. It’s about trying to fit in, loneliness.”

  “Hm. Sounds like my life.”

  “We’re all lonely. The poem is a reminder to me to not get caught up in the need to fit in. At least that’s how I read it.” Demit rises from the sofa. He runs upstairs, returning a minute later, carrying a laptop. Resting it on the table in front of us, he sits back beside me. “Ever wish you could take control of your life? Stop letting everyone else decide who you are? There’s freedom in not giving a shit about other people’s opinions. Don’t you think?”

  I stare back at him, even as my thoughts wander to the locker room today. Fitz groping me. The coach eyeing me like I’m working the street. What is control? I’m wondering if I’ve ever experienced it. Can anyone, really?

  “Yeah,” I answer softly.

  “To hell with them all,” he says. “Nobody has any right to judge you.”

  I look at him from the corners of my eyes. “Yeah, right. That’s a nice dream, but not realistic.”

  “When’s the last time you disturbed the universe?” He asks, his eyes flashing. I cross my arms over my chest. This conversation is getting weird. Shrugging, I turn away and sigh, wishing I hadn’t come after all.

  “You don’t deserve to be treated this way. No matter what you’ve done.” His voice has turned soft. I suddenly feel hot.

  “You know about it.” I hunch forward, suddenly self-conscious. Laid bare. “You know about the photo.”

  “Yeah.” He nods his head.

  “You’ve seen it? Please tell me you haven’t seen it.”

  He shakes his head. “No. Of course not. I found out through a guy I know and I read your Facebook page. I mean, it’s out there. But it’s not right how everyone has gone after you.”

  “You have no idea,” I say.

  “Then let me help you end it.”

  I laugh. “How do you plan to do that? Everybody hates me. What? Am I going to go all Carrie and burn the school down? Or go all Prom Night and kill everyone that has done me wrong?”

  “All viable choices, but no.” Demit lifts his laptop onto his thighs and flips it open. “Let’s start with telling the world. You can’t be the only person out there going through this kind of shit It’s everywhere.”

  “What? Like a blog?” I chew my thumbnail. “I’m a terrible writer.”

  “Have you never read a blog? It has nothing to with writing ability. You’re not writing the great American novel, you’re just telling your own story.”

  Two thumbnails between my teeth now. Maybe he’s onto something. What have I got to lose? My relationship with Stu is over and the fabbies show no sign of stopping their I-hate-Lana campaign. I think about all the humiliations I’ve suffered since the photo got out, fast forwarding to Fitz’s attack today. Not sure I can share all that. Mostly, I want to erase it from my memory. Forget it ever happened, but somehow still keep the hate. Because I don’t ever want to feel anything other than hate toward Fitz.

  “I don’t know about this. Who’s going to care about my life?”

  “Just start putting out there and see what happens.” His elbow nudges my arm. “I care. And I think you’ll see others do, too.”

  I stare at the dark television screen on the wall and nod my head. I guess I haven’t anything to lose. “Okay. I’ll try it.”

  “That-a-girl.” He opens a new screen and gets to work. Fifteen minutes later, he has a website up. It’s simple. White background with a picture of a graffiti covered school bus in the header. Across the top it reads, Girl Unformulated.

  “How’d you come up with that?” I ask, pointing to the name.

  Demit stretches out his arm. “I took it from a line in the poem. I know the eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, and when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, wriggling on the wall, then how should I begin to spit out the butt-ends of my ways.” He shrugs. “Something like that, anyways.”

  “Wow.” I wish I could better grasp what he just said, but I somehow feel the heaviness of its meaning. “Any other poems you can rhyme off from the top of your head?” I tease him.

  “Just a few,” he laughs. “I’m joking. That’s the only poem I know, but shhh. Don’t tell anyone.”

  I roll the name off my lips. “Girl Unformulated. It’s pretty cool. Let’s keep it.”

  “Awesome.” He flips to another screen that looks like the back end of the website and passes the computer to me. “Time to write your first entry.”

  Chapter 7

  The Power of One Plus One

  October 8

  The Photo That Killed Me

  My senior year in high school. I had only one plan: have a killer year. I had every reason to believe it would happen:

  Hot boyfriend

  Super popular

  My own car

  Awesome BFFs

  Parties every weekend

  Sounds perfect, don’t you think? No Plan B in place. Why bother? I was on top of the world. Hell, I felt like I owned the world. I mean, I kinda did. But that was then and this is now. And now... I’m the most hated person at school.

  Let me introduce myself. I’m Girl Unformulated. Call me GU, for short. Like Goo, which is kind of fitting since that’s what you step on and later find stuck on the bottom of your shoe. Pretty much sums up my life. But how did it get this way? I’m about to tell you... or at least try. Welcome to my blog. It’s the true story of my senior year, starting with how I went from popular to pariah in twenty-four hours.

  Twitter version:

  Boyfriend takes photo of girlfriend while fooling around. Shares photo with entire school. Girl loses all friends. Senior year hell.

  Longer version:

  He swore over his mother’s grave that they were just for him. I really didn’t see the harm in that. He was, after all, my boyfriend. I trusted him. And, anyways... It was just a photo and I wasn’t the first girl to show her boobs to a camera. But mostly, I trusted him.

  Word of caution: Don’t ever trust ABF. This is worth repeating.

  Don’t ever trust ABF (Asshole Boyfriend.)

  Fast forward to the next day. By lunchtime, I’m feeling a little paranoid. It seems like everybody is staring at me and
whispering as I walk by. When I see my BFF, she’s kind enough to show me the photo (it was on her phone!) I’ll spare you the details of what it looked like, but ugh! Who else had seen it? Apparently everyone.

  I thought, at least, my BFFs would stand by my side. Surely, they wouldn’t turn on me. How many of them had photos taken of them? Well, I was wrong. They turned their backs on me, except to call me a whore or slut. Suddenly everyone was in on the action. Slut, whore, skank, bitch... I heard it all. Every time I walked down the hallway, into a class, or across the school yard. My friends led the charge.

  I figured this would all be forgotten in a few days and we’d be laughing about it in a week. But here I am, three weeks later, and still the most hated girl in school. No friends. No fun. No life. All because of one stupid photo? Seems crazy to me. There’s got to be something more to this. But I can’t figure out what it is.

  At least one good thing has come of this. I finally broke up with my boyfriend. In other words: I am officially ON MY OWN. Translation: Total Loner. Mercy.

  October 10

  You Can’t Get Past Spit

  I know I promised to write the true story of my senior year from hell, but here’s a little honesty for you. Some things I’m just not ready to share. I could go back to the very beginning and tell every awful incident that I’ve experienced but (a) that would probably get boring real fast, and (b) some stuff is just too humiliating for me to remember, much less write about.

  So let’s just start with the here and now. Because the way my life is going I still have plenty to tell you about! Like today, for instance, in English class. I am just so lucky to have two BFF’s in that class. Even more awesome? They sit behind me. Oops, did I say BFF’s, I mean BFH’s. That’s short for bitches from hell. Today one of them spat on my desk. WTF? Until today, I’d held out hope that we could eventually all be friends again. It was faint, but it was there. But there’s something about spit. You can’t get past saliva.

  It all started with Abby (not her real name) creeping up behind me as I’m about to enter class and hissing in my ear. Made my stomach turn. At least she got one thing right. She is a snake. The stupid hiss got a good laugh from Sissy (the other BFH.) Sissy has no original thoughts in her head. She never has, which is why Abby loves her so much. Very monkey see, monkey do kind of friendship. Abby likes to control everyone and everything, so we’ve always had a patchy friendship. I never liked being on her leash. I imagine Abby dared Sissy to spit on my desk. And, voila. This made them both laugh hysterically. Sad, really. (Is this how I used to act?)