She's Faking It

by Kristin Rockaway

  “Oh, the jade egg works. Trust me on that one. It was worth every penny.”

  Aggressively blocking the image of Al and Natasha detoxifying their negative sexual energy together, I pressed on. “But her whole business is based on taking advantage of people when they’re down. Charging excessive amounts of money for things that aren’t actually proven to be effective. Mari said she’s a scammer.”

  “Mari?” She gave a condescending click of her tongue. “You know I love her, but she’s been working in the same coffee shop now for a decade. She’s not exactly the pinnacle of ambition.”

  I bristled. “She has a YouTube channel, too.”

  “Yeah, and it hasn’t gone anywhere. She’s exactly the same as she was when you met her. She hasn’t evolved at all. I’m just saying, consider the source before you take someone’s advice. Do you trust Mari’s judgment more than you trust mine?”

  That was a no-brainer. Of course I trusted Natasha’s more. She was older, more experienced, had a stable job and family and luxury car.

  “Even if you’re still skeptical of Demi DiPalma,” she continued, “the change of scenery will do you good. When was the last time you got out of San Diego?”

  “I have no idea.” Truly, I couldn’t remember. Maybe some time in college? High school? I rarely had a reason to cross county lines.

  “Then come with me. It could shift your mindset and potentially change your life.” She added, as if it were an incentive, “Plus, there’ll be plenty of Instagrammable moments.”

  Images of the event’s website floated through my mind. The glamping tents, the farm-to-table dinners, the beautiful views of the desert. Opportunities like this were few and far between.

  “Okay.”

  “Great.” Natasha flipped her blinker and turned off the highway at Hotel Circle. “Because I already bought you a ticket.”

  Chapter 20

  Natasha’s car sagged under the weight of Rob’s belongings. His snowboard, his PlayStation, his Oculus VR headset. I’d crammed it all in like some sort of packing engineer, not wanting to waste a single square inch of her interior. I even strapped his untouched Firewire surfboard to the roof rack.

  “Did this stuff really belong to the both of you?” Natasha asked, her eyes slivers of doubt as I reached for a baseball jersey signed by Cody Bellinger. “I don’t remember you ever being a Dodgers fan.”

  “I got into them while we were dating,” I lied. “Rob gave this to me as a birthday gift.”

  Which reminded me, I should grab that yoga mat, too.

  While doing a final sweep to see if there was anything else worth taking, my eyes fell upon my Bankers Box of old college memories. I had a sudden urge to throw it open and stomp on the contents, tear them to shreds, burn it until there was nothing left but cinders and ashes. Because college is what got me in this mess. The pursuit of higher education didn’t improve my status or prospects. It had turned me into a desperate thief.

  With one hand, I popped off the cover, revealing all those unpaid student loan bills I’d thrown in at the last minute. Maybe this debt lawyer would need to see them. I gathered the huge stack in my fist, then lowered the gate to the storage unit and made my way back to the car.

  Natasha was already in the driver’s seat, writing furiously in a spiral-bound notebook. When I slid into the passenger side, she slapped it closed. “Making last-minute tweaks to my book proposal,” she said, answering a question I didn’t ask. “It’s amazing how quickly the ideas have been flowing. What’s that?”

  She pointed to the envelopes in my hand. Instinctively, I clutched them tighter, not wanting her to see, but it was pointless since she already knew the truth. I fanned them out, their faces stamped with angry red ink, screaming URGENT and PAST DUE and FINAL NOTICE.

  Natasha gasped. “How long have you been ignoring these?”

  “I told you, since Rob moved out.” Though had it been longer? Even when he was around, I was never really on top of my bills, never quite sure of when I paid or how much. It was all too overwhelming, too many zeroes on my outstanding balance. And since I knew I would never, ever get ahead of my debt, I found it so much easier to fall behind.

  “Why didn’t you ask me for help?”

  There was no good way for me to answer this, so I didn’t. I just collected the envelopes into a neat little stack and stared out the window as we took off down the highway. Soon, we passed by Mission Bay, with all the enthusiastic outdoorsy people running and biking and swimming, but this time, I didn’t feel envious. All I felt was deep fatigue. The need to go home and crawl into bed and never come out.

  Natasha pulled her Audi down the alley behind the triplex, where we could unload by the garage door and take the back gate to get to my apartment. Not only did this save us time and steps, but it also helped me avoid the possibility of running into Trey out front. I wasn’t in the mood to see him right now, not with thousands of dollars’ worth of ill-gotten goods. He’d undoubtedly ask me why I had a surfboard if I was so afraid of the ocean, and then I’d have to fake my own death and move to Mexico to avoid admitting to him that I stole it from my ex-boyfriend’s storage unit.

  Although faking my own death and moving to Mexico sounded like a pretty sweet way to get me out of this crippling debt situation. I’d keep that in my back pocket in case this lawyer couldn’t help me.

  Natasha gave me a quick kiss and said she’d call me later with details about the weekend trip. “I’ll drive us. I’m thinking we’ll leave midmorning tomorrow but let me check the traffic forecast first.”

  As she walked out the door, I called, “Thanks for the ride!” and turned to face the massive pile of stolen property in the middle of my apartment floor. There was a moment’s hesitation in which I second-guessed this decision. Technically, what I was about to do was illegal, and I already had one outstanding court case to deal with. Did I really want to bury myself deeper?

  Then I remembered Rob’s Instagram posts. His sleeve of tattoos and his brand-new six-pack. How he posed with a hot bikini model up in Brentwood. How he’d been “slumming it” down in PB with me.

  That was all the motivation I needed to fire up the Craigslist app and start posting. I approached it methodically, carefully. There was a science to selling things on the internet; that much I’d learned from my stint as an influencer. I had to manipulate the photos, making the products look light and bright and flawless. I had to craft compelling copy, using keywords I knew people would be searching for. I had to develop a narrative for each posting—something to convince the buyer they didn’t just want this item, they needed it.

  Most important, I had to emphasize that these transactions were cash only. No Venmo or PayPal or anything else that could potentially be frozen by a court order.

  The electronics all sold pretty quickly. Within minutes of posting the Oculus VR headset—“Hardly used! Still in original packaging!”—I’d had five requests and was even able to finagle a bit of a bidding war. Most of the items were sold to whomever could pick them up first, though. Since I was heading to Palm Desert the next morning, I wanted to clear out as much as possible before I left. I asked people to meet me outside, in the alley by the garage, so I wouldn’t have to let any strangers into my house.

  There was less demand for Rob’s other stuff, though, which wasn’t much of a surprise. No one wanted to buy a used snowboard in the middle of spring, and there were already so many surfboards for sale in this town, Rob’s Firewire got lost in the crowd. To improve the chances of a sale, I changed the price, making it the cheapest available surfboard on Craigslist. It was probably too low, but frankly any cash was better than no cash, and my strategy worked, because moments later, my inbox lit up with a request. Someone named Dan-O would be swinging by this evening at around 7 p.m. with a crisp stack of twenties in hand.

  The only item I didn’t bother to post was an Italian-leather
briefcase. It was in mint condition, wrapped in tissue paper and nestled into the original box. Google told me it was worth eight hundred dollars brand-new, but there was one little problem I hadn’t noticed when I’d first grabbed it from the storage unit: a monogram burned into the leather—RJM for Robert Justin McCrory. Putting aside the obvious issue of low demand for a briefcase with someone else’s initials, this would also be a definitive way to trace the item back to Rob, and therefore, me. Best to shove this back in storage whenever I got the chance.

  Which was a big waste, really, because I was sure Rob never had any intention of using this briefcase. According to the card that was still taped to the inside of the box, it had been a high school graduation present from his father, who’d apparently envisioned his son proudly swinging this around the hallways of some Hollywood law firm. Rob told me his dad always wanted him to follow in his footsteps, but Rob didn’t want to be an attorney. He didn’t want to be anything, really. He was directionless and passionless, just like me.

  In the end, that was the only thing Rob and I had in common: we were both aimless college dropouts, searching for meaning in a confusing and competitive world.

  Even though I knew it was dangerous, even though I knew it was not where I was going, I closed my eyes and took a moment to look back. What if I had not allowed the criticism of a single bitter professor to decide my fate? What if I’d chosen to ignore him, to soldier on, to pick a major—any major—just to eke out a diploma and get a degree? So many more doors would’ve opened for me. So many more choices would’ve been available. I’d have a stable job, I’d live in a better apartment, I never would’ve wasted my time with Rob...

  Though maybe that was just an excuse. After I dropped out, I could’ve easily chosen a different path besides GrubGetter and stoner boyfriend. A college degree was not a requirement to live a stable, happy life. Natasha was living proof of that.

  My phone buzzed in my hand and I opened my eyes to see a YouTube notification on my screen.

  Marisol Vega Hates Everything just uploaded a new video!

  I tapped the notification to load the YouTube app. A still image of Mari filled my screen, her face contorted into a rehearsed cynical scowl, overlayed with the words: SELF-HELP GURU...OR SCAM ARTIST?

  Oh, boy.

  The video played, and there she was, sitting in her usual desk chair with an overstuffed bookshelf in the background. The Hunger Games was visible just over her left shoulder, the same copy she’d had since we were tweenagers, with a cracked spine and dog-eared pages. After all these years, she was still the same Mari. And, unlike Natasha, I didn’t think that was such a bad thing. In fact, it was pretty great.

  On my phone screen, she held up a stone—the same stone she’d picked up at the beach the other day. With a stern expression, she stared into the camera. “What if I told you this rock had magical healing powers? That it could manipulate the energy around you to improve your mental, physical, and emotional well-being? And what if I told you that to activate its powers, all you had to do was—” the camera quick-zoomed into her face here “—stick it in your vagina?”

  I laughed so hard, I snorted.

  “You’d probably tell me to get bent,” she continued, tossing the stone to the side as the camera angle widened. “And you’d be right to do it. There are only two people whose advice you should take about what to stick in your vagina—your gyno and that very helpful store clerk at Déjà Vu Love Boutique. Yet every day, people are spending hundreds of dollars on vagina rocks peddled by self-help gurus—” she put air quotes around that phrase “—who have huge Instagram followings and no actual professional qualifications.”

  Mari steepled her fingers and leaned back in her chair, appearing to be lost in deep thought. “It really got me thinking, you know? Like, maybe I’ve been doing my life all wrong. All I do is record myself complaining and upload it to YouTube. What’s the point of that? Who am I really helping?”

  This sounded uncomfortably familiar. My tongue felt thick in my mouth, remembering our fight, the words I’d spat at her in anger and shame.

  On the screen, she leaned forward again, a huge smile spreading on her face. “And that’s when I realized—it’s time for a change. I’m hopping on the self-help bandwagon and getting a piece of that sweet vagina-rock money. Say goodbye to YouTuber Marisol Vega, and say hello to Marisol Vega, lifestyle guru!”

  For the next four minutes and twelve seconds, Mari ranted hilariously about overpriced essential oils and cultural appropriation, while deftly weaving in incisive commentary on our society’s collective obsession with self-improvement and how it conflicted with our need for external validation. How we derived our self-worth from likes, follows, ratings, and stars instead of finding it within ourselves.

  “I fall victim to it, too,” she said, in a rare moment of on-camera vulnerability. “In fact, just the other day, I thought about quitting YouTube because my subscriber count has been at a standstill for weeks. And frankly, you people aren’t always very nice to me in that comments section.

  “But then I realized I’d be miserable if I quit. I love creating these videos, and I’m not gonna let anyone steal that joy from me. I’m just gonna keep striving to be better at this, to turn out the best work I possibly can. Because I’m all about self-improvement, but I’m not doing anything just for the likes.”

  It was the realest version of Mari I’d ever seen on YouTube. It was also my favorite of all her videos. By a long shot.

  Our fight on the beach had been less than twenty-four hours ago, but it felt like it had been ages. We never went this long without corresponding; normally, we would’ve exchanged a dozen texts by this point in the day. It was time to put this disagreement behind us, so I whipped out my phone and made the first move.

  I just watched your video. It was amazing.

  Honestly, the best one you’ve ever done.

  No exaggeration.

  Thanks.

  I wanted to try something a little different.

  I was actually afraid you’d be mad at me.

  Since I quoted you and everything...

  Not at all.

  You’re 100% right.

  I’m sorry for everything I said.

  So am I.

  I hate being mad at you.

  Me, too.

  I love you.

  I love you, too.

  Now that we’ve buried the hatchet,

  do you think I could borrow that drone again? Lol

  Um... I don’t have it anymore.

  It’s a long story.

  Rob didn’t come back for it, did he?

  Ha! Hell no.

  But I do have a funny/horrible Rob story to tell you.

  Wanna hang out tomorrow & fill me in?

  Spending the weekend with Natasha.

  Let’s catch up on Monday.

  There was no way in hell I was telling Mari where Natasha and I were actually spending the weekend. After watching that video, I felt extra ridiculous about even partaking in this charade. Even though I wasn’t paying my own way, my presence alone would be a show of support for Demi DiPalma and her scam artistry.

  The more I thought about it, the less I wanted to go to Palm Desert. And, frankly, I didn’t think Natasha should go, either. Everything she’d achieved had been because of her own hard work and strategic planning. She didn’t need to fork over thousands of dollars to become a success, because she already was one. As for her book proposal, there must’ve been plenty of legitimate ways to pursue publication without going through Demi DiPalma.

  I was so worked up about it, so replete with indignation, it drove me to do something completely out of character: I pulled up Natasha’s number in my contacts list, and I pressed Call.

  She answered on the second ring, her voice tight with concern. “Bree?”

  “Yeah, hi.
”

  “What is it, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, why?”

  “What do you mean, why? Since when do you ever call me? You always decline my calls and tell me you hate talking on the phone.” I opened my mouth to respond, but she interjected. “Anyway, I’m glad you called, because I was actually just about to call you. I got an email from Nazanin Ansary—she’s the debt lawyer I was telling you about. I’ll forward it on. Basically, she said she’s out of town right now but she can meet with you first thing on Monday to help you get your accounts back.”

  “Wow. That’s great, thanks.”

  “Her office is in Encinitas, so I figured if you wanna stay here on Sunday night, I can drive you there in the morning after I drop Izzy at school. We’ll probably get back late on Sunday, anyway.”

  “Right. About that, I—”

  But she didn’t let me get a word in edgewise, launching forward into her plans for the next day. “I’m thinking I’ll send a Lyft for you at, like, nine. Then we can hit the road at ten so we can arrive in time to settle into our tent before the introductory Passion Powwow.”

  “Okay. But don’t you think—”

  “Oh! And I forgot to mention, I just found out we got upgraded to an UltraLuxe tent. I’m not totally sure what that entails, but I know it’s gonna be amazing. I really can’t wait for this weekend. We’ve never spent time together like this, just the two of us.”

  I wasn’t quite sure what she was talking about, because my entire adolescence consisted of time together, just the two of us. She must’ve been able to read my mind, because she quickly added, “I mean, I know there’s been a lot of you-and-me time over the years, but there hasn’t been much quality you-and-me time since you went away to college and I got married, and we’ve never taken a you-and-me vacation. This is gonna be really special.”

  Well, shit.

  Clearly, this trip meant more to Natasha than I thought it did. It wasn’t simply an overpriced self-help retreat in the Coachella Valley. It was a chance for sisterly bonding. Only a total asshole would suggest canceling now.