She's Faking It

by Kristin Rockaway

  I was dying to know what Shayla looked like, but it would be hard to find her on Instagram; a quick search showed over a hundred influencers named Shayla (or Shay), a handful of which were verified. So I did what any normal person in the twenty-first century would do, and I googled her.

  The search phrase “Trey Cantu Shayla” returned approximately twenty-one thousand results. From this, I learned her last name was “Miller,” and she was drop-dead gorgeous. I also learned that she and Trey had spent a lot of time getting photographed in public together. There were photos of the two of them cuddling on the beach, posing in front of step-and-repeat banners, and cozying up on what looked like nightclub banquets. In one, they were sharing an extremely sensual kiss.

  This was torture. I needed to stop.

  But before I closed down the browser window, one of the search results caught my eye. An article from SurfBuzz.com detailing an incident that happened almost two months ago, in Sydney. Naturally, I clicked it to read more.

  CANTU CAN’T DO: WSF Suspends Trey Indefinitely for Tweetstorm

  By Dax Ruffin, SurfBuzz Staff Reporter

  After a Twitter tirade against the World Surf Federation, Trey Cantu has been expelled midway through the Sydney Surf Pro and indefinitely suspended from all future WSF events until a full investigation can be completed.

  During Wednesday’s Round Two heat against Zander Nakamura, Cantu was slapped with an unsportsmanlike interference call, resulting in the loss of half of his lowest scoring ride—a significant blow to Cantu, whose ranking has been slowly slipping all season. Upset by the call, Cantu stormed from the ocean, swore at Nakamura and the judges, then tweeted the following:

  @treycantusurf

  Disgusted with the call today. WSF is more concerned with commercial opportunities than protecting the integrity of the sport. Judges no longer reward competitors for technical competence, but for ass-kissing abilities and star power. In short: Fuck this shit.

  According to Article 180 of the WSF Rule Book, any comments broadcast from social media accounts “disparaging the sport of surfing or causing harm to the WSF image” are grounds for “immediate expulsion or suspension upon the first offense.” This is the latest in a series of disappointments for the once-revered Cantu, who’d won two championships in previous WSF World Tours.

  Attempts to contact Cantu for comment have been unsuccessful. At the time this article went to press, Cantu had deleted all his social media accounts. Nakamura has remained silent on the incident, though his girlfriend—and Cantu’s ex—Shayla Miller tweeted, “I hope Trey finally gets the help he needs.”

  Yeesh. This was a mess I had not been prepared to deal with.

  Turns out I’d been right when I suspected Trey had been involved in some sort of scandal. Though, frankly, I was having a hard time picturing how this could’ve gone down. The vision of a screaming, angry, unsportsmanlike Trey was incongruous with the Trey I’d been introduced to. With me, he had always been gentle, supportive, soft-spoken. Was he secretly some rageaholic? Or had this been an isolated incident, spurred on by a broken heart?

  Either way, that tweet from Shayla did not instill confidence. What kind of “help” did he need?

  This escape from PB couldn’t have come at a better time. When the car pulled up in front of Natasha’s house, I left all thoughts of Trey and Shayla behind, intent on spending the weekend relaxing and enjoying my family.

  Izzy answered the door and immediately vaulted into my arms. “Auntie Bree!”

  “Hey, Iz! It’s so good to see you.”

  I wrapped my arms around her slender little body, closing my eyes as I nuzzled the crook of her neck. It was hard to believe over six years had passed since I first saw her at the hospital, wrapped up like a burrito in a Plexiglas bassinet. I’d been too nervous to pick her up, afraid I might break her, but Natasha had trusted me completely. She sat me down in the vinyl visitor’s chair and placed newborn Isabella in my arms.

  As soon as I felt the weight of Izzy’s warm, wiggly body, I was suddenly no longer afraid. How could there be fear in a world where something as perfect as this tiny little human existed? And my sister had created her! After everything Natasha had endured, she’d still managed to build this beautiful life for herself. A home, a family, a purpose. In that moment, for the first time since our mom died, I felt like the possibilities for my future were endless, too.

  Needless to say, the feeling was fleeting. But I still thought my niece was perfect. Possibly the most perfect person in the entire world.

  “Are you ready to have fun tonight?” I asked.

  “Yes!” Her eyes lit up as she looked at me. “Mommy got me a new Lego set—Princess Ariel’s castle! Wanna build it with me?”

  “You bet.” Natasha told me Izzy had recently discovered The Little Mermaid and was a full-fledged Ariel fangirl now. Apparently, she’d even redecorated her bedroom in a splashy mermaid theme. “I can’t wait to see how your room looks.”

  “Isabella, what did I tell you about answering the door without someone around?” Natasha descended into the hallway, carefully negotiating the stairs in her portrait collar satin gown and peep-toe stilettos. At the landing, she smoothed a hand over her chignon, assuring every last hair was in place. “You never know who could be ringing the doorbell.”

  “I knew it was gonna be Auntie Bree,” Izzy muttered, then slithered out of my arms and ran toward the kitchen.

  “You look amazing,” I said to Natasha.

  “Thanks!” She struck a pose and did a little spin. “I don’t have many excuses to play dress-up, so I decided to go all out tonight. What happened here?” Natasha gestured to my lips.

  Goddammit. “Nothing. Just an allergic reaction to new lip gloss. It’s better now.”

  “Okay. Well, come, let me show you a few things in the kitchen before Al and I leave.”

  I followed her down the hallway and into the L-shaped kitchen which was easily bigger than my entire apartment, and a lot neater, too. Every surface gleamed, from the stainless steel appliances to the marble countertops. The glass doors on each cabinet revealed meticulously organized contents: perfectly aligned stacks of plates and bowls; glassware sorted by size and color; an expensive-looking soup tureen that must’ve been there just for show. The smart fridge hummed extravagantly in the corner.

  Natasha led me straight to the wall beside the pantry, which she referred to as her “kitchen command center.” There was a blackboard, a whiteboard, a calendar, two corkboards, a letter bin, a key ring, and a hand-painted distressed wooden sign above it all that said The DeAngelis Family.

  “All the important phone numbers you might need to know are right here.” She pointed to the chalkboard, where she’d written out not only the number for Izzy’s doctor and dentist, but also for the banquet hall hosting the gala as well as her and Al’s own cell numbers, as if those weren’t already stored in my contacts.

  “Here’s the money for dinner,” she said, indicating the envelope she’d pinned to the corkboard containing two twenty-dollar bills, next to which was a flyer for Flippin’ Pizza. Then she opened the pantry door and switched on the light. “If Izzy wants a snack, she can pick anything from the fruit baskets, the veggie bins, or from this bottom shelf here.” I caught a glimpse of a row of wicker baskets with printed labels like Granola Bars, Gummies, Fruit Pouches, and Crackers before she cut the light and closed the door again.

  All this hyperorganization made life easy in a lot of ways, but it also felt a little constricting. There was all this pressure to keep things neat and tidy. The tiniest water spot on the faucet or misaligned basket in the pantry would stand out like an eyesore. In my excitement to hit up the hot tub, I’d forgotten about the stress that often arose from maintaining my sister’s pristine household.

  Al walked in, looking dapper and chipper, as usual. “Hey, Bree! Thanks for covering at
the last minute.”

  “No problem, I’m happy to help.”

  “You’re the best.” He brought me in for an affectionate brotherly side hug before grabbing his keys from the kitchen command center and turning to Natasha. “Ready, baby?”

  “Yes.” She nodded, then turned to me. “Bedtime’s at eight. Read her a chapter from The BFG and make sure she brushes her teeth.”

  “I will, Mom,” Izzy said, a tinge of annoyance in her voice.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Everything will be fine. Have fun tonight.”

  With a kiss and a hug, they were out the door, and within minutes, Izzy and I were huddled on the floor of the den, assembling a 220-piece Lego set. When that was done, we ordered pizza, and in a stunning act of defiance and bravery, I told Izzy it was okay to eat dinner in the living room while we watched Wreck-It Ralph. By some miracle, the couch cushions escaped sauce stains, though the movie lasted a bit longer than I’d anticipated, and she wound up getting to bed twenty minutes late. Fortunately, I remembered to make sure she brushed her teeth.

  As we snuggled up in her new mermaid-print comforter, on top of frilly pink pillows, beneath a gauzy blue canopy, I reached for Izzy’s copy of The BFG. It was resting on the nightstand between a ceramic lamp and a jewelry box covered in seashells. The box looked achingly familiar. I knew I’d seen it somewhere before, but the memory was fuzzy, as if looking through frosted glass.

  “Where’d you get this box, Iz?”

  She shrugged. “Mom brought it home one day when we were redecorating my room.”

  I picked it up, opened the top. It was filled with plastic beaded bracelets and brightly colored hair clips. The red felt lining was peeling around the edges and it had a musty sort of smell, like dust had been collecting in its fibers for years.

  Suddenly, the memory came into sharp focus.

  “This was my mom’s box,” I said, remembering quite clearly where it used to sit in the middle of her dresser. She used it as a catchall—a miniature junk drawer, of sorts—and when I was a kid, I liked to poke around in there to see what I could find. There was never anything super interesting, mostly dry cleaning receipts and extra buttons. Once I found a packet of Life Savers.

  This was one of the many, many things I’d thought Natasha had gotten rid of in her clean sweep of Mom’s belongings. To see it here, in Izzy’s bedroom, was jarring.

  “This belonged to Grandma?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” The word came out raspy, my throat unexpectedly thick. “Your mom didn’t tell you that?”

  Izzy shook her head, seemingly unperturbed.

  I ran my fingers over the shellacked scallop and dove shells. “Does she ever talk about Grandma at all?”

  “Not really. I know she died before I was born, and that she was a schoolteacher.”

  “That’s all?”

  She thought for a second, then nodded. This depressed me to no end, that Izzy didn’t know the wonderful, beautiful, funny, quirky, interesting person her grandmother had been. There was so much she needed to know, so much I wanted to tell her. But when I tried to conjure up stories to share, I realized most of my memories had that frosted-glass fuzziness to them.

  I was beginning to forget her.

  The only memories I could reliably access were the tangible ones. The ones I’d secretly stored under my bed.

  “She liked to read Danielle Steel novels,” I said. “And she baked the best chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting.”

  “Those sound good.”

  “They were good.”

  “How did she die?”

  “Uh...” The room echoed with the sound of my nervous swallow. If Natasha hadn’t told Izzy how our mom had died—a surprise brain tumor, followed by unsuccessful surgery—I wasn’t about to divulge that information. It wasn’t my place. “You’d better ask your mom about that.”

  “She never talks about her.”

  I wanted to say I know, but I didn’t. Instead, I put the trinket box back on her nightstand and gave it an affectionate pat. “Well, at least you’ve got a little piece of her beside you all the time.”

  Then I cracked open The BFG and lost myself in the story of an orphaned girl who goes on to become a courageous, international heroine with the help of a big, friendly giant.

  Chapter 15

  After that, I needed a drink.

  I was never one to drink alone, but this day had been like a roller coaster, and a glass of wine in the hot tub sounded like the perfect way to quiet my brain and settle my nerves. So once Izzy fell asleep, I did a thorough tidying up—loading the dishwasher, polishing the countertops, vacuuming errant pizza crumbs from the living room carpet—then slipped into my bikini and popped open a bottle of Riesling.

  Hopefully, it wasn’t an expensive one. With over two dozen bottles in their wine fridge, though, they probably wouldn’t mind even if it was. I didn’t understand why they had so many bottles, anyway. I’d never even seen Natasha finish an entire glass of wine.

  With the bottle in one hand and a stemless wineglass in the other, I made my way to the backyard, where the hot tub sat beside an elevated deck. The water glowed blue and ethereal from the built-in lights. I cranked up the jets and stepped inside, then served myself a heavy pour, and allowed the hum of the motor and splash of the bubbles to drown out the noise in my head.

  In light of all her “they’re just things, Bree” talk, I couldn’t believe Natasha had saved our mom’s trinket box. Not that I begrudged her—I had a box of Mom’s belongings under my bed, for crying out loud—but it was so antithetical to the decluttering principles she always preached. It wasn’t like her to save things for sentimental value without putting them to immediate use. Where had she been storing it all these years? And was there more where that came from?

  Before I knew it, my wineglass was empty, and as I poured myself another round, my limbs felt loose and limber. Lying back against the reclining wall of the hot tub, I stared up at the stars and the bright crescent moon and the tops of the palm trees silhouetted against the sky. It was so beautiful, so picturesque.

  So totally Instagrammable.

  Given the swell of emotion I’d been through today—the swimming, the surf scandal, the resurfacing of the long-lost trinket box—I wasn’t feeling particularly glamorous or inspired. If I were to hashtag my current mood, it would be something along the lines of #confused or #bummedout or #tiredaf.

  But when it came to Instagram, my actual mood didn’t matter. As I was quickly learning, Instagram wasn’t about authentic emotion. It was about fantasy and facade, about crafting a narrative to entertain and engage. To make people want what you had, or more accurately, what they thought you had.

  A picture of this wine bottle next to the hot tub with all the blue lights twinkling off the green glass would make for some A+ quality aspirational content. Who wouldn’t wish they were sitting here, getting tipsy, while dozens of jets blasted their backs with warm, frothy water? No one!

  So I whipped out my phone and Instagrammed it.

  Hot tub + Riesling + balmy San Diego night = #friyay perfection.

  And because alcohol had dulled the edges of my inhibitions, I decided to tag @vitalvineyards, the wine brand that made this Riesling. There was nothing inherently strange or bold about this; people tagged brands all the time. But influencers always tagged them for advertising purposes, to let everyone know this was an official collaboration, especially if they added the #collab hashtag to their post.

  Which I did, after the fact.

  Look, it was a lie, but it was a small lie. The simple truth was that if I wanted to start getting more freebies, I was going to have to up my game.

  Put another way: I’d have to fake it till I made it.

  By pretending this bigwig wine brand chose to collaborate with me, I could build some credibility in the n
ano-influencer sphere, and potentially attract more (and better) sponsors. No more toxic makeup. Maybe I’d eventually get paid with money instead of free products. Or at the very least, maybe the products I’d get for free wouldn’t leave a rash on my face.

  I stayed in the hot tub for a good long while, basking in the brilliance of my clever yet completely harmless deception. After draining my second glass of wine, I cut myself off. Even though Izzy was asleep, I was still on babysitting duty. If she woke up from a nightmare, shit-faced Auntie Bree wouldn’t be much comfort.

  Just then, a loud slam emanated from somewhere inside the house. I sat up, prepared to jump out and towel off before escorting Izzy back to bed. But through the sliding screen doors, I saw Natasha totter into the kitchen, looking slightly unsteady on her feet. She made eye contact with me, then broke out in a wide grin, yelled, “Let me get my suit on!” and disappeared out of view.

  If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought Natasha was drunk. But Natasha didn’t get drunk. It was part of her type A control-freak personality to always have her wits about her, to always stay in command of her faculties.

  Al sauntered into the kitchen, hanging his keys on the command center with a worn-out expression on his face. Then he looked up and spotted me, waving before coming out into the backyard. “Hey, Bree. How’d things go with Izzy tonight?”

  “Fantastic. She fell asleep a little late, but that was my fault. How was your gala?”

  Through a great, gaping yawn, he said, “Eh. It was a networking opportunity. Nothing too exciting.”

  “Natasha seems like she had a good time.” I didn’t want to mention what I was really thinking, but Al said it for me.

  “She’s drunk.” He tittered, evidently amused. “I can’t blame her. It was four straight hours of orthodontia talk. She needed to entertain herself somehow.”