by Donna Cooner
“Sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Asha,” I tell Luke, and we ham it up at the stoplight, singing loudly. The light turns green and Luke’s attention goes back to driving.
I caption the video #happybirthdayAsha and post it to ChitChat. It gets a few likes right away, and I rewatch it. My hair looks weird and I wish I could reshoot it, but that’s not how ChitChat works. No takebacks.
ASHA
Asha holds up her phone and shoots a video of herself wearing a silly striped paper hat and blowing a party horn. Then she captions it #IAmAshaMirza celebrating, and posts it to ChitChat. It instantly starts garnering likes and complimentary comments.
Asha leans back against the teak deck chair and sighs, scrolling through her ChitChat feed. A ton of posts bear the hashtag #happybirthdayAsha. Birthday texts from friends and acquaintances keep popping up on her screen, but she ignores them all for now.
After coming home from school and changing, she went for a good, hard run, which was helpful. Running is the only thing that shuts down her overactive mind. But her calm state is quickly disappearing.
The air by the lake has a touch of the Colorado spring snowstorm that forecasters claim will blow in over the mountains tonight. For now, though, it isn’t even cold enough for a thick sweater. She unzips the Nike hoodie she wore over her black running tank top. The late afternoon sun feels pleasantly warm, even though the glare makes her squint. The world narrows into the window of her phone screen, framed by her thick, spiky lashes.
A silly sophomore, Alicia Montoya, just posted a video giving a shout-out to her new bangs. It definitely requires a response. Thank goodness ChitChat comments are anonymous. Just one more reason to love it.
DEFINITELY NOT YOUR BEST LOOK! #STYLEFAIL
While she’s at it, Asha writes #stylefail under a few other posts—Beth Hunt’s picture of her new Miu Miu super-round sunglasses and Jessica Martin’s full-body shot in a new maxi dress. Then Asha has to make a couple of positive comments to balance things out.
One under a video of her newest crush, Nate, hiking …
STOP BEING SO CUTE!
And one under Emma’s montage of birthday clips from random movies, captioned #HappybirthdayAsha …
YOU’RE THE BEST! GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW.
Asha closes out of ChitChat and checks her texts from Skye. Asha’s been kind of annoyed with Skye lately. She’s always so holier-than-thou about her stupid job. It makes Asha nuts. And maybe a little jealous. It’s not just the time Skye spends at work, it’s the fact that she’s always talking about needing to work. Like that somehow makes her better than everyone who doesn’t. And then of course the way she’s all geared up for her future political career. It can be a bit much.
Asha takes a deep breath. She crosses her arms over her chest and tucks her phone into her hoodie pocket, staring down at her lime-green Reebok running shoes.
“Honey, can you give me a hand?”
Asha turns around. Through the large sliding glass doors of the house, Asha sees her mom stringing a Happy Birthday banner across the wall. The table below is covered with party hats and streamers even though there will only be two guests—Emma and Skye. Asha’s mom doesn’t understand why she doesn’t want a big birthday party.
Not this year.
“You’re going to have dinner with us upstairs before your friends arrive, right?” Asha’s mom calls out the door.
Asha frowns. “Yes,” she says, for the third time this afternoon.
“What time are they coming?”
“Around nine.”
Her mother steps out on the deck with a birthday hat in her hands. For a moment she stands looking out at the water; then her eyes drop to the hat in her hands. Her forehead wrinkles in confusion. “Is it someone’s birthday?”
“Mine,” Asha answers.
“Sorry,” her mom says. Sadness engulfs her face. “I forgot.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Asha says. “Everybody forgets sometimes.”
Her face clears in relief. “You’re going to have dinner with us upstairs before your friends arrive, right?”
DONNA COONER is the acclaimed author of the novels Skinny, Can’t Look Away, Worthy, and Screenshot. A Texas native and graduate of Texas A&M University, Donna currently lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with her husband, a cat named Stu, and two chocolate Labradors, Roxanne and Murphy. Follow @donnacooner on Twitter or visit her online at donnacooner.com.
ALSO BY DONNA COONER
Screenshot
Worthy
Can’t Look Away
Skinny
Copyright © 2019 by Donna Cooner
All rights reserved. Published by Point, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, POINT, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cooner, Donna D. (Donna Danell), author.
Title: Fake / Donna Cooner.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Point, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., 2019. | Summary: Maisie Fernandez has just about convinced herself that she does not care about her weight or her looks, or about only having one friend in Fort Collins High School (nerdy Owen Carpenter), but “Sienna”, the internet profile she creates, is beautiful, skinny, and confident; the profile is part of her plan to humiliate the popular kids who bully and make fun of her, but suddenly the deception gets complicated—because the actual Sienna, the girl whose photos Maisie has been using, shows up in real life.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019007005 | ISBN 9781338239492
Subjects: LCSH: Obesity—Juvenile fiction. | Identity (Psychology)—Juvenile fiction. | Social media—Juvenile fiction. | Self-acceptance—Juvenile fiction. | Bullying—Juvenile fiction. | Secrecy—Juvenile fiction. | High schools—Juvenile fiction. | Fort Collins (Colo.)—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Obesity—Fiction. | Identity—Fiction. | Social media—Fiction. | Self-acceptance—Fiction. | Bullying—Fiction. | Secrets—Fiction. | High schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Fort Collins (Colo.)—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.C78285 Fak 2019 | DDC 813.54 [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019007005
First edition, October 2019
Cover design by Yaf fa Jaskoll • Cover photography by Michael Frost, © 2019 Scholastic Inc. • Stock photos ©: top left: Lauren Naefe/Stocksy United; center left bottom: Clique Images/Stocksy United; bottom left: Lauren Naefe/Stocksy United; top right: Pansfun Images/Stocksy United; center right bottom: Lauren Naefe/Stocksy United; bottom right: William Blanton/Stocksy United
e-ISBN 978-1-338-23950-8
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
-share-buttons">share
