She's Faking It

by Kristin Rockaway

  Demi DiPalma can help you #EVOLVE.

  #noexcuses

  #aspirationalactionplan

  Intrigued, I tapped Learn More and was directed to Demi DiPalma’s website. The home page featured a photo of her smiling beatifically, her smooth, pale skin practically glowing. From her appearance, you’d have thought she lived a completely stress-free, blissed-out life, but she was clearly an extremely busy woman—and kind of a big deal. Not only was she a “lifestyle guru” and bestselling author, but she had her own YouTube channel called Aspire Higher. According to her “Praise” page, she’d been described by the Huffington Post as “Goop meets The Secret, for the Instagram generation,” and had been a featured guest on Oprah’s podcast, SuperSoul Conversations.

  She also offered a whole slew of products and services listed under her “Shop” link: online courses, immersive retreats, books and planners, and one-on-one coaching sessions. She even had her own apparel line, including Andrea T.’s No Excuses T-shirt, and a rose gold bar necklace that said Choose Happy.

  So that’s where my sister got that saying from.

  Look, I wasn’t completely cynical. There was a big part of me that wanted to believe happiness was a choice. But a bigger, more rational part of me knew bad feelings weren’t optional. Sadness, disappointment, anger—they showed up unannounced, barged their way in, and often overstayed their welcome.

  Still, it was a tempting idea, wasn’t it? That you could create a happy life simply by wishing it into existence.

  Whatever. The only thing I needed to wish into existence right about now was an extra two hundred dollars. So I shut down Instagram and pulled up a website called SurveyAllDay. According to one listicle, I could earn up to twelve bucks an hour on this site answering simple questions about movies and politicians. If I buckled down, I figured maybe I could make enough to cover both my rent and the cost of my car repairs.

  Unfortunately, I thought wrong.

  Chapter 4

  Fourteen dollars and sixty-three cents.

  That’s how much I made after five continuous hours of completing online surveys.

  It certainly wasn’t rocket science. All I had to do was tap and swipe through a series of straightforward questions.

  Are you over eighteen? Yes.

  What’s your marital status? Single.

  What’s the highest level of education you’ve completed? Some college.

  What’s your annual salary? Prefer not to answer.

  Each question was a reminder of how little I’d accomplished in my twenty-five years, but I tried not to think about that. I simply focused on my endgame of tapping and swiping for dollars. I didn’t pay any attention to how much I was earning, either. All I did was tap, tap, tap, swipe. For five hours straight.

  At around one in the morning, my wrist cramped up and my fingertips started to go numb, so I figured it was time to call it a night. My plan was to catch a few z’s, then wake up bright and early to tap, tap, swipe all day.

  Just before I turned off my phone, though, I opened my SurveyAllDay Earnings Report to see that paltry dollar amount, and suddenly realized no amount of tapping and swiping would help me pay my rent on time. To add insult to injury, I couldn’t even transfer that fourteen dollars and sixty-three cents to my PayPal account for a full seven days. So I’d just wasted five hours of my life. Which, I supposed, was par for the course, but it didn’t make it any less infuriating.

  I closed my eyes, resolving that tomorrow I’d find something of value to sell on eBay. Or better yet on Craigslist, since in-person sales would get me cash in hand right away. In the meantime, I’d start brainstorming ideas for a lucrative ebook. Maybe an inverse self-help guide on how not to live your life titled, From Dropout to Delivery Girl: A Cautionary Tale.

  With my mind racing, I fired up a nature sounds app to help drown out the chatter in my brain. Scrolling right past the Exotic Rainforest track (too reminiscent of Rob), I settled on the Stream of Serenity and pressed Play. I closed my eyes, willing myself to envision a tranquil woodland, with soft beams of sunlight shining through the branches of lush, green trees and tiny, adorable creatures scampering underfoot. It took some effort, but eventually, I replaced my frantic thoughts with soothing fantasies and fell asleep to the gentle burble of water gliding over smooth stones.

  Eight hours later, I awoke to the grinding screech of rusty gears echoing through the floor. This was nothing to be concerned about; it was merely the garage door opening beneath my apartment. One of the legal tenants stored their car in there, so I was acutely aware of their comings and goings. Some grease on the hinges of the door would probably make it a lot less noisy, but again, I didn’t like to complain.

  I was glad to be up, anyway. I needed time to concoct a fund-raising plan.

  But first, coffee.

  With bleary eyes, I rolled out of bed and crossed the room to my kitchenette, which was sparse, but serviceable. There was a small sink, a microwave, a minifridge, and a narrow countertop on which I’d placed a toaster and a single-cup coffee maker. From the cabinet above my head, I grabbed a canister of Folgers, but when I popped off the top, I discovered it was tragically empty. I’d meant to pick some up on my way home from work last night. Obviously, that plan got derailed.

  The grocery store was a twenty-minute walk from home, but I needed caffeine immediately, if not sooner. Fortunately, my BFF Mari was the head barista at The Bean House, a cozy little coffee shop just two blocks away. They served all sorts of costly, frothy espresso drinks, but their drip coffee was reasonably priced, and Mari usually hooked me up with a free cup, anyway. So I threw on my least dirty pair of joggers and an oversize T-shirt, then grabbed a protein bar from the cabinet for a quick breakfast to go.

  Outside, the weather was predictably pleasant. San Diego came through with its usual balmy breezes, rustling the palm trees against the clear blue sky. I took a deep breath, letting the salt air fill my lungs. Dumpy apartment notwithstanding, I was extraordinarily lucky to live here, a stone’s throw from the ocean, in a city where the sun always shined.

  I hustled past the blue bungalow, relieved Trey was nowhere in sight, then turned left onto Cass Street, where a homeless man was digging through a trash can on the corner. With the ever-growing homeless population in PB, this was a pretty common sight. Normally, I’d avert my eyes and keep walking, but when he unearthed a half-eaten, rancid burrito and thoughtfully sniffed it, as if contemplating his breakfast, I found it hard to turn away.

  “Excuse me.” I approached him cautiously, the unopened protein bar in my outstretched hand. “If you’re hungry, you can have this.”

  There was a glint of suspicion in his watery eyes. I shifted my weight onto my back foot, just in case things took a turn for the worse. Fortunately, he dropped the burrito and grabbed the protein bar, grunting something that sounded vaguely like “Thanks,” before trudging away.

  Well, that put some stuff in perspective. I may have been jobless, carless, and in danger of imminent eviction, but at least I didn’t have to go digging through the trash for my breakfast. Though now that I’d given my own breakfast away, coffee would have to sustain me this morning. Thankfully, I was lucky enough to have a friend who’d provide it for free.

  The Bean House was located two blocks south, in a bright yellow, 1920s-era cottage. Considered a PB institution, it had been run by the same owner for almost twenty years. Mari had worked there for ten of them, and I’d been hanging out on the patio during her shifts ever since.

  I’d met Mari in seventh grade, when she and her family moved into our apartment complex on the side of the freeway. My mom, Natasha, and I were in unit 209; Mari and her mother were down the hall in 202. I distinctly remember the first time I saw her, hauling a massive milk crate full of books up the stairs. When I offered to help, she accepted with a grateful smile. We quickly bonded over our shared love of The Hunger Gam
es (way better than the Twilight series) and the tweenage frustrations of being raised by strict single moms.

  Twelve years later, we were still inseparable. We both still lived in PB, too—though I was alone in my tiny apartment, while she split a bigger, nicer space with two roommates on the other side of town.

  The Bean House wasn’t very busy right now, but that was to be expected. According to Mari, their weekday morning rush hours were between five o’clock, before the surfers hit the waves for dawn patrol, and eight o’clock, after all the commuters hit the highway for a long day at work. I was neither a surfer nor a commuter, so I often took advantage of the subsequent lull to say hi.

  When I walked in, I spotted Mari at the register, tending to a customer with an extremely specific request for his latte.

  “Half-caf, nonfat, two-shot, extra hot, with absolutely no foam.”

  There was murder in her big brown eyes. When she caught sight of me in the doorway, though, her face lit up. She called over to a guy standing at the condiment bar, stuffing napkins into a dispenser. “Hey, Logan, can you take care of this gentleman’s order, please? I’m going on break.”

  Logan complied, and as the man repeated his lengthy instructions, Mari filled two cups with dark roast, then stepped out from behind the counter. “Let’s sit outside,” she said.

  We settled down at a bistro table on the back patio, right beside the rose-filled garden and beneath the shade of a crape myrtle tree.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, then took a luxurious sip of the hot brown life elixir.

  She shrugged. “Nothing new. Things have been kind of slow around here, which is good because it gives me extra time to write.”

  Although Mari worked at The Bean House to pay the bills, her true passion was comedy. Her ultimate goal was to be a Hollywood screenwriter; she had a whole drawer full of original rom-com scripts she’d been pitching to agents with no luck. In the meantime, she’d set herself up with a moderately successful YouTube channel, Marisol Vega Hates Everything, in which she complained about the world in a way that was both hilarious and endearing. In my opinion, she should’ve been famous by now, but it was hard to gain traction in the overcrowded web series world.

  “How are you doing?” she asked.

  “Fine.” I swallowed hard. “But my car broke down.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yeah. Right in the middle of a shift. And you’ll never guess who I was delivering to. Remember that physics professor I had? The one who accused me of grade grubbing?”

  “Of course I remember. What a dick.”

  I’d spent hours crying on this patio after that happened, Mari consoling me with a bottomless cup of joe.

  But the truth is, I had been grade grubbing, just a little. My GPA had been on a downward slide for the past two semesters, and I was desperate to bring it back up. Five extra points on my physics final would’ve brought me from a D+ to a C-in that class, saving me from academic probation. With grades like that, Professor Trammel was right that I didn’t have what it took to succeed in the premed program.

  Honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to pursue a career in medicine, anyway. At that point, I’d switched majors five times in three years. Six months before I dropped out, I’d been sure my calling in life was urban planning. The semester before that, it was philosophy. No accredited med school would’ve admitted me.

  So Trammel was probably also right about me being mediocre.

  I wouldn’t have considered myself coddled, though. Mostly, I was just confused.

  When I’d dropped out of school, Mari had told me I was making the right decision. That college was a scam fueled by the “education industrial complex” and I was lucky to escape before I’d accrued any more debt.

  Natasha, on the other hand, had told me I’d live to regret it. And as I sat here, sipping my coffee, recounting the tale of how I delivered fried chicken to my old physics professor before my car died in his driveway, I had to admit my sister was right.

  “Where’s your car now?” Mari asked.

  “At some mechanic in Encinitas. I don’t know if they’ll be able to fix it, though.”

  “Geez, I’m sorry.” She fidgeted with her earring, a look of genuine concern clouding her face. “What’re you gonna do now?”

  “Well, I’m gonna try to find some stuff to sell on Craigslist.”

  Her fidgeting stopped abruptly. “What, as, like, your job?”

  “No.” Though I hadn’t exactly ruled it out. “I just have to score enough cash to pay my rent on Sunday. I’m short two hundred bucks. Rob left his bong in my closet, I’m thinking of selling that off.”

  “Forget the bong,” she said. “You should go swipe some shit from his storage unit.”

  Rob did have some good stuff in there. Video game systems, barely used surfboards, collectible sports memorabilia, a camera drone. All courtesy of his parents, who gave their son a monthly “stipend” to subsidize the income he made from his part-time job as a marijuana dispensary clerk.

  Now, that was a guy who’d been coddled. What a waste of three years of my life.

  Still, it would be wrong to steal from him. “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not? He owes you!” Mari’s brown eyes got wide and fiery, the tiny stud in her nose shimmering as her nostrils flared. “If he hadn’t ditched out and stuck you with all the bills, you wouldn’t even be in this situation.”

  She had a valid point. But getting revenge didn’t seem cathartic. On the contrary, it felt like I’d be tethering myself to Rob through spite and resentment, when at this point, I should be cutting myself free.

  A thought popped into my head, unbidden and kind of annoying. Don’t look back, because that’s not where you’re going.

  “The past is in the past,” I said, channeling Natasha and her aphorisms. “I need to focus on moving forward. Right now, that means coming up with rent money. But my eventual goal is to figure out some other career path. Something I can pursue in the long term.”

  “That’s great.” Mari’s voice was stilted, like she was trying not to sound surprised, though it was obvious in the way her eyebrows shot up. She never pushed the issue like Natasha did, but every so often she’d ask if I’d ever given thought to pursuing a more meaningful line of work, something I had a passion for. Usually, I’d respond with a shrug, and that would be the end of the conversation. “Have you come up with any ideas?”

  “Not yet, no.” I sipped my coffee and thought back to last night’s Google search. “I heard you can make a lot of money by writing an ebook.”

  She blinked. “An ebook about what?”

  “I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet.”

  “Okay.” The word came out slowly, and I knew what she was thinking, because I was thinking it, too. You’ve lost your mind, Bree Bozeman.

  “Yo, Marisol!”

  A guy was standing on the threshold to the patio, decked out in typical surfer bro attire: board shorts, tank top, bare feet. He waved to Mari and held up a stack of flyers. “Can I put one of these in the window?”

  “Sure, Cam. You can hang it with the others, right next to the front door.” She turned to me and said, “He’s the new sign spinner for SurfRack.”

  SurfRack was another PB institution, the oldest family-run surf shop in all of San Diego. It was located right on the boardwalk, just a few feet from the ocean. They mostly catered to tourists, offering surf lessons and rentals out of their unpretentious wooden shack, but they also held surf camps and birthday parties for kids. I’d attended one of those birthday parties when I was in fifth grade, and nearly drowned while trying to paddle out. It was my first—and last—encounter with a surfboard, and I hadn’t dipped more than a toe in the Pacific since then. While I loved living by the beach, I much preferred the stillness of the sand to the tumult of the sea.

  Cam nodded
thanks and retreated into the store, leaving Mari to pick up where she’d left off. “So, where exactly did you hear about this ebook idea?”

  “Some website,” I said, wishing I’d never mentioned it in the first place. “I know it’s not realistic. I was just brainstorming.”

  “Well, maybe start by finding what you’re passionate about.”

  Everyone always talked about finding your passion as if it was this evasive creature you had to smoke out of a burrow. They also seemed to operate under the assumption that everyone had a passion to find. But I had long since accepted the sad reality that I was born passionless.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Come on, that’s bullshit. First of all, I know how much you love to read. That most definitely counts as a passion.”

  I shrugged and sipped, not wanting to admit out loud how long it had been since I’d finished reading a book.

  “And you’re a really hard worker,” she said. “In high school, you were a rock star. You used to get As in every subject.”

  “Yeah, well, that changed when I got to college, didn’t it? I couldn’t get an A to save my life.”

  “That’s because college is a scam.” She tapped her chin. “Let’s try something else. Complete the following sentence. ‘My life is thriving when...’”

  “When I have money to pay the rent.”

  “That’s not thriving. That’s surviving.”

  “Isn’t surviving enough?”

  Mari took a deep breath. “I don’t think it is. Not for me, at least. I survive by pouring coffee, but it doesn’t feed my soul. That’s what comedy is for. It’s what makes me thrive.”

  A loud voice emerged from inside the shop. “I said, six pumps of syrup! Not five!”

  We glanced through the window and spotted an angry woman standing at the pickup counter, yelling at a terrified Logan.

  “Goddammit,” Mari muttered. “I’ll be happy when I don’t need this job anymore.”