by Amy Sparling
Flirting with him is pretty easy, too. Staring into his eyes while we flirt is probably why I don’t see my old best friend walk into the diner. I don’t know how long she’s standing there when I finally see her, jaw rigid, eyes piercing into mine.
“What?” I say, looking at her.
She scowls and then turns on her heel and walks right out of the diner.
“Is that...?” Clay says.
I nod. “My old best friend.”
But she can’t do that. She can’t glare at me like I’m some slut and then leave without saying anything. I pull off my apron and toss it on the counter and then I storm outside after her.
“Risha!” I call out just before she gets to her mom’s car. No one else is inside of it, so she must have made the trip here just to see me. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” she says. “Just thought I’d see whose boyfriend you stole this time.”
I grit my teeth. “Clay is new here. He wasn’t anyone’s boyfriend so you can just get off your high horse, okay? I didn’t do anything wrong.”
She rolls her eyes. “Did you at least break up with Jake before hooking up with this new guy?”
I throw my hands in the air. “I am not dating Jake! I’ve told you this! I don’t like him at all!”
“Whatever,” she says, throwing open the car door. “You found yourself a Jonny C look alike. Good for you.”
“What?” I say. But she slams the car door closed and then she drives away. “What in the hell is going on?” I mutter under my breath.
Back inside, Clay looks concerned as I grab my purse and keys from under the counter. “Let’s go.”
“You okay?” he asks as he follows me outside.
“No,” I say. There’s a brand new black sports car parked next to my old Jeep. It looks out of place; a shiny new car in a town filled with clunkers. If I wasn’t so upset about seeing Risha just now, I’d probably wonder how a teenager with no job can afford such a nice car.
“She’s mad when her boyfriend kisses me and then she’s mad when I date a total stranger,” I say, gesturing toward him. “She’s so pathetic. I can date whoever I want.”
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I shrug. “Hey, do you know who Jonny C is?”
Clay freezes. “Why?”
“She said you’re a Jonny C lookalike.” I shrug. “Like some kind of actor or something? I mean, you are really hot, so I’m glad she’s jealous.”
Clay doesn’t smile back at me. His expression is tense, his jaw set.
“What exactly did she say?”
I think back to the conversation and relay it as accurately as I can.
“Shit,” he mutters. He stares at the ground. “I told my mom this wouldn’t work.”
“What wouldn’t work?” I ask.
He looks around, as if he’s afraid someone’s going to overhear us. Then he opens the passenger door of his new car. “Get in,” he says. “I’ll explain.”
And he does.
And it’s crazy.
And it barely makes sense.
I sit in the brand new car, the scent of leather filling the air as I watch Clay tell me the truth of why he and his mom came to this town. He says his real name is Jonathan. Jonathan Clay, but his four million YouTube followers know him as Jonny C. I’m not entirely sure what the word YouTuber means, but he says he got famous making videos for the internet a few years ago. He says he earned money from it too, and he was able to let his mom quit her crappy job and go back to college. He got them out of the ghetto and into a nice home in Miami, Florida where they used to live.
My eyes and mouth are open wide. After a while, I hold out my hand and grab his.
“But I don’t understand. If you’re famous, why are you here?”
He swallows. “The fame…it…it sucked. I mean, at first it was fun. The money was nice. We went from food stamps to steak dinners at five star restaurants. And yeah, having tons of fans online makes you feel awesome, but then it got too much. A few weeks ago, I was hacked.” He takes a deep breath and looks out toward the setting sun.
“They hacked my mom, too. She—well, she had photos on her phone.” He makes this disgusted face and then shakes his head. “She was dating this guy and she sent him…photos…” He meets my eye and I know exactly what type of photos he means. “And some prick hacked her phone too and showed the photos to the entire internet. My stuff was put on blast too, but I didn’t have anything embarrassing on my phone. I was pretty open with my life online and everyone already knew me. They also knew my mom and she had a lot of fans because she’s young and pretty for a mom, and it was fine until it wasn’t fine anymore. She started getting harassed, and stalked, and it was all my fault.”
“Wow, Clay.” I squeeze his hand. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s my fault. This internet fame isn’t worth it. It ruins your life. It makes it impossible to live a normal life. Mom thought we could just pack up and go somewhere in the middle of nowhere and start over and—” He sighs and then looks at me, his eyes painfully sad.
“When you didn’t recognize me yesterday, I thought she was right. I thought maybe there is a place that’s so remote no one would know who I am. But your friend did recognize me, so I was wrong.”
“She said you look like him…That’s all.”
He shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. She’ll figure it out. They’ll realize it’s me and the paparazzi will be here and my life will once again be all over the freaking internet. And my mom… God I hate this.”
“Clay, it’s going to be okay,” I tell him. My heart aches for what he’s gone through, for what those vultures online did to his mom. I didn’t even know people could be famous on the internet, but I guess there’s a lot of things online that I don’t know about.
“We will fix this,” I say, trying to sound like I’m confident. “We’ll cut your hair and we’ll dye it and no one will know.”
His lips twist into a slight smile. “I don’t want to leave this town. I like it here.”
“You won’t have to,” I say. “I will help you keep this secret.”
Chapter 5
At home, I borrow the family laptop and then take it into my room and close the door. I plug in the phone cord and wait forever for the dial up internet to connect.
While it loads, I pace the length of my room, thinking about everything Clay had told me earlier. The fear in his eyes, the regret stitched on his face, it all haunts me. This whole thing is crazy. He was famous online for posting videos? That’s so weird to me.
That’s why he was avoiding my gaze when I first saw him. He didn’t want to be recognized. I’d thought he was just a jerk, but once he realized I didn’t know him, he opened up to me. I really like the guy that he is. He’s funny, and cute, and sweet.
I sit at the computer and stare at a blank Google screen. Then I type “Jonny C” and hit enter.
Millions of search results pop up. The first one is a YouTube page. I click on it and see Clay’s face. He has four million subscribers and over two thousand videos. Holy crap.
The last video was posted three weeks ago. I try to watch it, but the internet connection is so slow, it makes it impossible. Instead, I look at the comments.
Hundreds of people saying they love him, calling him daddy, asking him to follow them on Twitter.
What the hell? This is crazy.
I click on his Twitter profile, which also hasn’t been updated in three weeks. The last thing he posted was a cute picture of a puppy. I scroll down and see all of his admirers, tweeting him stuff and generally treating him like a celebrity.
It’s all so weird it makes my stomach hurt. This guy who’d been so sweet and romantic last night when he kissed me under the moonlight is the very same guy in all of these videos and online posts, although they don’t feel the same guy.
I scroll through a Google image search of his name and see pictures of him with fans, at comic conventions where he had his own ta
ble to sign autographs. There’s pictures of him with actual celebrities, and selfies taken with fans.
There are pictures of him shirtless on the beach, looking like a freaking god. Pictures at restaurants and on airplanes and sipping coffee on hotel balconies.
He had an amazing life before he came here. I go back to the search and click on a celebrity gossip website. They posted an article about him three days ago. There’s a gorgeous picture of him smiling at the top of the article. I read through it.
The famous YouTuber Jonny C has been missing ever since he was hacked. He hasn’t posted any new content and sources close to the newspaper say that he moved out of his penthouse apartment in Miami.
The article expresses their biggest fear – that Jonny C is dead. That he’s in a coma. That something awful happened to him. Was he kidnapped?
At the bottom of the article, I skim through the comments section. Some people post rude things about how they never liked him anyhow, but most people are sad, saying they wish he’d resurface and post something to let his millions of fans know he’s okay.
It’s crazy to me how so many people care about this random guy they’ve never met. And yet, here I am, living my small town life with no clue that he even existed until he walked into my diner. Life is weird.
I go to Facebook and search for my high school. I don’t have a profile, but some of my friends do. I click on their names and scroll through their posts, and sure enough, a few of the most popular girls in school have posted that they wish Jonny C would come back online.
This is so crazy.
I read the comments on that girl’s post.
Jessica DeVry said: I’m glad his whore mom is gone but I wish he’d come back
My chest tightens. What a bitch.
There’s nothing wrong with a grown woman sending nude pictures to her boyfriend. The problem is when some jerk hacks her and puts her personal life on blast. It’s not her fault.
I think back to Clay telling me that this was all his fault. He feels guilty for the embarrassment and shame his mom had to go through. But it’s not his fault. It’s the hacker’s fault.
Still, I don’t blame them for wanting to move away and start over. This is insanity. Even people in my town are talking about him, which means he’s not safe here. I’d promised Clay I’d help him keep his secret, but that’s going to be hard when girls at my school know who he is.
But I don’t want him to leave. I know it’s crazy and I’ve only just met Clay, but it almost feels like we’re meant to be together. That we were meant to find each other.
I close the computer and I make a promise to myself.
I will find a way to keep Clay’s secret. No one in this town will ever find out who he really is.
Chapter 6
Clay and I have a new routine. Every day after work, I go to his house and we eat dinner (take out from the diner, something his mom cooks, or something we cook together) and then we watch TV for a while, and then we always end up in his room.
We haven’t taken things very far. Just making out on his bed, and I occasionally fall asleep on him while we’re watching a move. That’s my favorite part. I always wake up and he’s still here, his arm still wrapped around me, his lips occasionally pressing a kiss to the top of my head. Clay is the greatest guy ever. He doesn’t pressure me to do stuff I’m not ready to do. He’s always happy to see me, even though sometimes there’s this hurt look in his eyes. I know he’s still bothered by the people online who are looking for him and speculating about where he went. Sometimes when I rush up and hug him at the diner, I’ll catch a glimpse of his phone screen. He’s always reading the comments people post about him.
“Hey,” I say during one of the slow parts of the movie we’re watching.
“Yes?” Clay says, peering down at me. We’re sitting on his bed, our backs against the headboard.
“Do you think we should watch this in the living room and invite your mom to watch it with us?”
He lifts an eyebrow, fixing me with this look like I’m crazy. I laugh. “It’s just…she’s always in her room. I feel bad. She seems lonely.”
He exhales slowly. “Mom’s just…she’s just not over what happened to her. She was understandably humiliated, and I’ve been trying to hang out with her and cheer her up and sometimes it just doesn’t work.”
He reaches over and takes my hand. “I think we should just give her more time.”
“Okay,” I say, watching his fingers lace into mine. I sigh. “People are so shitty. You and your mom are human beings. You deserve privacy. You deserve to be left alone if that’s what you want.”
He snorts. “I’m a total idiot. I thought we could just up and leave and everyone would forget who I am, but they didn’t. I mean, of course they didn’t.”
His lip curls in disgust. “Now all the fans online are starting these like, search parties, going out in the world and looking for me. It’s disgusting. I keep wondering if I should post another video, just one last one, that tells everyone to piss off because I’m done making videos.”
“That might work, but it probably won’t,” I say, frowning.
I haven’t exactly told Clay about this, but I’ve been Googling him, too. There are thousands of teenage girls who are obsessed with him and trying to find him online. They’re using the hashtag #WhereisJonnyC in their efforts to scour the planet to find him.
“Hey,” I say as an idea comes to me. “People are looking for you, right?”
“Right,” he says suspiciously.
“What if we give them a fake clue?”
He turns to me. “What does that mean?”
“Like… what if you jump on a plane and fly somewhere far away, like to Washington or something, and then let yourself get spotted there. Then you sneak home and everyone will think you’re living there.”
He shakes his head. “I already tried that, actually. I was swarmed at the airport and it was so bad I didn’t even get on a plane. I was even wearing a hoodie and sunglasses, but freaking Security made me take them off.”
I’m not going to give up that easily. “Okay, new plan,” I say. “Do you have any friends you can trust? Someone that lives far away?”
“I have no friends,” he says, emphasizing the last word like it’s a bad thing. “The last few years I’ve only known people who pretend to be my friend to get famous or mooch off my money.”
His head tilts to the side. “But I do have a cousin.”
“Do you trust this cousin?” I ask.
He nods. “Her parents died in a car wreck a few years ago. She’s really sweet and she’s never cared about my fame. I’ve been paying for her college in Ohio. I could trust her.”
“Perfect,” I say. “You know what’s in Ohio?”
“Nothing?” he says.
I grin. “Wal-Mart.”
#
The next day, Clay and his cousin are totally in on my plan and they think it’s a great idea. Since we can’t fly Clay out to Ohio, or anywhere else for that matter, because he’d be spotted, I decided to bring Ohio to Texas.
In the form of a store that’s everywhere.
Our closest Wal-Mart is an hour away, but it looks just like every other Wal-Mart I’ve ever seen. Clay and I wake up a three in the morning because I have to be at work at six. I tell my parents a simpler version of the truth—that Clay needs to run to Wal-Mart and I want to go with him.
Then we make the drive. This early in the morning, there’s practically no one in the store except a few employees who all look like they’d rather be anywhere else, and some old people who are awake this early.
I had Clay dress in normal clothes that he used to wear during his videos, and then we took a shopping cart and filled it with boring household necessities. I decided on this because of how crazy the fans get. They act like detectives anytime a photo of their favorite celebrity is posted, and they analyze every piece of it.
So, with that in mind, we make his shopping cart lo
ok like he’s buying stuff for his house. As if he lives right here in Ohio. And no one will know any different because the Wal-Mart in Texas looks just like the ones in Ohio.
I take a few pictures of him as if I were a fan who was sneaking photos without wanting him to see. He laughs at my antics, but I think it’s going to work.
When we’re done, we go ahead and purchase the stuff in the basket because he needs it at home, and then I go through the photos while he drives us back to Spockle.
“These are perfect,” I say, scrolling through my fake paparazzi shots. “You can definitely tell it’s you.”
“Good,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “Because when we get home, you’re going to shave my head.”
I give him a surprised look.
“It’s the only way to make sure no one recognizes me here. I’ll wear sunglasses in public and I’m going to dress differently too. No one here in Spockle wears designer T-shirts and jeans.
“That’s for sure,” I say with a snort. He rolls his eyes, but then he winks at me.
We send the photos to Clay’s cousin and tell her about our plan. She thinks it’s brilliant. Using her phone and a fake account, she posts them to Instagram using the GPS tag that shows her being in Ohio.
A few minutes later, the photos are all over the internet, courtesy of the most popular Jonny C fan site. The fan site immediately saw the Instagram shots, and then posted them just four minutes later with a caption that will make everyone think it’s true.
This just in! The first sighting of our beloved Jonny C since he went dark two months ago. A fan spotted him at a Wal-Mart in Cleveland, Ohio at four in the morning! Looks like someone’s trying to lay low and shop for paper towels without anyone spotting him. What’s he doing in Cleveland, you might ask? Looks like he tried to get as far away from Miami as possible. Come back to us, Jonny! We miss you!
I barely pay attention to the coffee orders I’m making at the diner, because I keep sneaking glances at the work computer to watch the drama unfold. Sure enough, all over social media, the world is in a frenzy about the new Jonny C sighting. Everyone is trying to make a trip to Ohio in the hopes of spotting him. People are saying he must live there now because of the stuff in his shopping cart.
