“Yeah, but, that’s before I knew you. And now we’re dating and—”
“Oh, Jesus.” Carter’s green eyes narrow and he gets a look on his face like I smell like I haven’t showered in a week. “Dating?”
“Aren’t we? I thought—”
Carter stands up and starts pacing the room.
“This is not what you advertised. You’re a cool chick, sure”—cool chick??—“but I just want to have fun. And come on, after all this chasing, you kind of owe me. Not to mention the fact that I got your blog viral and—”
“Because you told deviant to aggregate my blog?”
“Nah, Davie was going to do it anyway. I just gave him the picture of us. My tax for being your Make-Out Bandit muse.”
“So, why do I owe you?”
“I sent it over to my Internet troll connection so it would get more attention—things aren’t really doing well unless there’s controversy.”
For a second everything stands still.
“You did what?”
“It worked, didn’t it? I knew my troll would hate it, and he’s not shy about his opinions. I was helping you.”
“Helping? People are still being horrible to me whenever I tweet anything. I had to make my Instagram private because angry guys were telling me I’m ugly and should take what I can get every time I posted.”
“You’re being so melodramatic. If you can’t handle this, then I did do you a favor. Journalism isn’t for the weak. ‘To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.’ ”
“Are you quoting Nietzsche right now? That isn’t even relevant!”
“I think I know what Nietzsche was talking about. I’m majoring in philosophy.”
Carter walks back over to the couch and sinks back into the cushion. He softens his voice.
“I’m probably being harsh. I just want you to have thick skin.” He strokes my arm to emphasize his point and puts his mouth to my ear. “Although I also like your skin soft, just like this.”
He touches my arm, but what I’m feeling isn’t warm tingles. Something is building inside of me. It starts in my stomach and then moves up to my chest, to my shoulders, to my arms, and to my hands, which push Carter away as hard as I can.
Totally taken by surprise, Carter stumbles back and knocks into the table. “What the hell? You really are a spaz.”
“And you’re insane if you think that after all that, after pressuring me and admitting that you’re the reason why my life was hell this whole week, there’s even the slightest chance we’re going to hook up. I was so wrong about you.”
“You’re going to regret this when you’re home alone tomorrow night Instagram stalking me and my hot date hanging out with the most important people in media at my dad’s party. . . . I was going to introduce you to the dean of the Columbia School of Journalism.”
“Of all the things I might regret this summer, not hooking up with you is definitely not going to be one of them.”
“As Nietzsche said, ‘To regret deeply is to live afresh.’ ”
“Um, okay, I got an A in AP English Lit. Nietzsche didn’t say that, Thoreau did. And as my favorite philosopher Taylor Swift would say, ‘We are never, ever, ever getting back together.’ ”
I slam the door on my way out.
37
WHEN I GET BACK TO Aunt Vee’s apartment, Kristina’s already in bed.
I change into my pajamas in the dark and quietly crawl under the comforter, careful not to disturb her. But Kristina isn’t asleep. Both of us just lie there side by side for a few breaths, unsure of what to say.
“How’d things go with Carter,” she asks finally, breaking the awkward silence.
I could pretend it was fine. Prove her wrong. But I don’t have the energy.
“You were right,” I say. “He’s a jerk.”
She turns on her side to face me, but I can’t make out her features. My eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark. “Do you wanna talk about it?”
“Maybe tomorrow.” It’s still too fresh.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I wish he hadn’t been.”
“Please. You hated him from the first second you met him.”
“No.” She pauses. “Well, yeah. But still. I know you really liked him. That sucks.”
She pauses and another few seconds pass. Now it’s my turn to break the silence. My parents always say you shouldn’t go to bed angry.
“After brunch,” I start. “The things I said . . .”
“I said things, too. . . .”
Our sentences don’t feel like they have beginnings or ends.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask.
“Maybe tomorrow.”
We’re trying to make things better but are so emotionally worn by the day that we don’t have the words.
After another pause, another set of sleepy breaths, I say, “Love you.”
“Love you, too,” Kristina replies. “Night.”
* * *
Come Monday morning, things might not feel back to normal, but they do feel better.
“I can’t believe you know how to do smoky eyes now,” Kristina says, watching me put on makeup.
“Brie taught me. She’s the Beauty intern; you’d like her!”
Kristina raises an eyebrow.
“No, you actually would this time. Really!”
Before this summer I always assumed sorority girls were really fake, but Brie genuinely is that sweet. She really is that easily excited about almost everything. And she’s better read than just about anyone else at Shift, including me.
“You should stop by Shift if you have time today,” I say. While I’m at work, Kristina has a long list of sightseeing destinations planned. A part of me wants to ask if Ben’s going to be joining her for any of her to-do list, but I don’t. “The office is awesome. And I have to show you the open kitchen. You’ll die. There are mountains of pastries that no one eats because they’re all afraid of carbs.”
“Swimmer. Very pro carbs,” she says, still in her pajamas.
“Um, my cardio is typing. Also very pro carbs.”
Feeling more confident that we’re good now, that yesterday was an anomaly—I mean, every lifelong friendship has to have at least one big fight, right?—I leave for work.
Gigi has a Diet Coke waiting for me on my desk as soon as I get in and demands a debrief of the rest of my night with Carter.
“Ohhh yes.” Sunny joins our gossip circle. “Did you guys finally hook up?”
“Kind of?” I pop open the can’s tab.
“Did you have sex?” Gigi asks, eyes open wide.
I shake my head.
Gigi looks confused. “But why not? I thought you wanted to have sex with him.”
“He was . . . I don’t know . . . kind of clingy?” I don’t want to lie to Gigi, but I also don’t want to tell the truth. “You know the type. And all the Nietzsche stuff was getting on my nerves.”
“He did quote a lot of Nietzsche.” Gigi nods.
The day continues as normal. We comb through the Internet for clicky story ideas to write about and help reporters-in-need with last-minute research projects. Brie and Sunny are huddled together completing the daunting task of making a master list cataloguing every single item of clothing, brand and price included, that appears in the September issue.
“From head to toe, hat to pointy-toed heel,” Sunny says. Then she surreptitiously points to the little black dresses that made a field trip to Mode with us. The fully accessorized models might look exquisite in them, but I guarantee we had more fun wearing them.
The issue is complete except for the blank two-page spread that’s being held for the intern feature. But that will be filled soon. The internship is over in less than two weeks.
My stomach does somersaults whenever I think about it. What’s the word McKayla used again? Shoo-in?
I’m not ready for the summer to end, but I also can’t wait to go to school, to walk into the Ca
stalia Chronicle room, with my magazine copy in hand. Proving to the world that while people at home just see me as a fact-checker, Shift freaking magazine says that I’m the “Teen Journalist to Watch.”
Everything is going to change.
Of course, I can’t let on to the other interns that it’s going to be me. The circulating rumor is that McKayla’s going to announce it any day now, so I’ll know for sure soon enough.
I want to ask McKayla about it, to make sure that we’re still on the same page, but she’s in back-to-back meetings “with the dinosaurs upstairs” for the entire day. She didn’t even have time to edit my copy of this week’s proposed blog.
“What’s it going to be about?” Gigi asks. “Ditching the Bosh heir?”
I flash back to last night. How cold Carter was. What an idiot I was. He was interested in someone I was pretending to be. And whose fault was that?
“I don’t think I want his Twitter wrath,” I say, deflecting. “I wrote about pug proms.”
“Huh?” Sunny says.
So then I have to explain about dog dating culture and how it’s not a lame topic at all. It’s hilarious. The Shift Girls are unconvinced, but I know Ben would laugh his butt off. He gets me.
Luckily I don’t have to explain my blog choice for long. My work phone rings. Security says Kristina’s here, and I have to go downstairs to pick her up.
“I’m sorry, but did you notice the gigantic waterfall in the middle of this skyscraper?” Kristina asks, when I meet her downstairs. “It’s, like, Yosemite big.”
“Did you see the fish?” I point to the pond below.
“Wow.”
Kristina isn’t wearing a denim skirt and flip-flops today.
“Nice dress,” I say.
“Oh, thanks.” She smooths the floral-printed wrap dress’s hem. “Your aunt lent it to me. I wanted to look the part when I came here. Didn’t want to make you look bad in front of your boss.”
“That’s crazy,” I say reflexively. But then I feel a pang of guilt remembering Bacchanal. Shit. “You could never make me look bad. I never meant to make you feel that way. Let’s go upstairs so I can ply you with free cupcakes.”
We take the elevator up to the forty-second floor, and when the doors open I say, mimicking Skirt Suit from day one, “Welcome to Shift.”
I show her the different signed magazine covers, sneak her past the fashion closet (whispering about our break-in), and take a detour to the open kitchen. When I make it to the main part of the office with the electric-blue desks, I see that McKayla is back from her meetings and is holding court over the interns by the Leader Board, which has both my MatchBook and Gigi’s purge-watching stories on display.
“There you are, Harper,” McKayla says. “Just the intern I wanted to see.”
The Shift Girls stare, like they were waiting for my return.
OMG, is she going to announce that I have the magazine feature right now, in front of everyone? Am I about to be whisked away to hair and makeup before my coveted photo shoot with a famous fashion photographer?
Not quite.
“As I was saying,” McKayla continues to the staff (plus Kristina), “one of the dinosaurs upstairs announced his retirement this morning, so I’ve spent the day in meetings with Trenton and other Bosh Media executives about the future direction of Shift’s magazine and website.
“Aaaaand”—she elongates the word to tease us, happy to have a captive audience—“I won. We now get to write the provocative material I’ve wanted to publish on the site since I got here. I used the MatchBook post as an example of the kind of clicks really controversial and bold posts can bring in. So now we’re free to write about sexcapades!”
She makes eye contact with me. “Harper, I was just reading your sexcapade post out loud to show everyone what I’m talking about. Forget your pug post. I’m putting this up on Wednesday.”
“What sexcapades?” Kristina whispers to me through a smile.
For a second I have no idea what McKayla is talking about either. And then I do.
Shit, shit, shit.
McKayla’s talking about the sexcapade blog post I sent in with my application. Or, rather, Kristina’s sexcapade that I sent in my application.
The anxious tension starts in my core and then radiates out to the rest of my body. She has to stop talking. This can’t be happening.
“McKayla, can I talk to you in your office for a sec?” Maybe I can cut off this conversation before it goes any further. Before she says anything in front of Kristina. I can just make up some other, crazier sexcapades that she can put online instead of this. I just need her to stop—
“I do not enjoy being interrupted,” McKayla says, putting her hand in the air to shush me. Then, after she fiddles with her iPad for a few seconds, the television screen above her changes from displaying the Leader Board to showing a preview of my to-be-published blog post:
HOW I RUINED MY DAD’S SECOND WEDDING BY . . . GETTING CAUGHT HOOKING UP WITH MY NEW STEPBROTHER AT THE RECEPTION
Clueless is kind of my life.
38
THE HEADLINE SMACKS THE SMILE off Kristina’s face, which contorts into an expression I’ve never seen before. But it’s easy to read: betrayal.
Complete betrayal.
“How could you not tell us about this during the Clueless screening in the park?” Brie squeaks. “You hooked up with your stepbrother? Gross! No offense.”
“Haven’t you learned to read past the headline?” Sunny says. “Look at the first paragraph. They didn’t grow up with each other like Cher and Josh in the movie. They basically just met.” Sunny turns to me with her faint version of a smile. “You just met him. That’s way less gross. . . . No offense.”
This is not happening.
“I can explain,” I whisper to Kristina.
She doesn’t look at me. Her eyes are glued to the screen. Her face reddens as she reads through my quippy, snarky, embellished-for-laughs write-up about her actual life.
Her dad’s wedding over spring break sophomore year was only the second time, after the cruise I crashed, that she had met her soon-to-be stepfamily. And it was one of a handful of times she had been in the same time zone as her dad since he left her mom. His new wife wasn’t one of the women—yes, women, plural—he cheated with. She was his new beginning. New leaf. New family. New life across the country without Kristina in it.
Kristina’s soon-to-be stepbrother, Erik, was a year older, really smart, really cute, and just as unhappy about the upcoming nuptials as Kristina. And so, just like they commiserated over strawberry daiquiris on their Faux Family Cruise, they commiserated at the reception over champagne flute after champagne flute. Only this time, instead of some light flirting, things went slightly farther.
After nabbing two extra-large slices of wedding cake—“We’ll take these to go,” Erik told the caterer with a wink—they traipsed off in search of an ideal hookup destination.
“You ate cake in a bathroom?” Abigail reads in horror. “That’s so unhygienic. Such a bad idea.”
It was a bad idea for a lot of reasons. One of them being that the bridal bathroom at the venue didn’t have a working lock. When Erik heard the doorknob turn as he was jokingly shoveling chocolate frosting into a half-undressed Kristina’s face, he freaked. His horrible gut reaction to the interruption was to throw the cake in his hands at the intruders.
Also known as the bridal party.
Five bridesmaids barged through the door to accompany his mom to the bathroom, so that they could lift up her now-cake-splattered, poofier-than-poofy dress while she crouched over the toilet.
“You have bad luck with white clothing,” Gigi laughed, reading that bit off the television screen.
“See how Harper makes this a scintillating but still humorous read?” McKayla asks. “The part about the bridesmaids clumsily lifting her ‘Stepmonster’s’ three million layers of tulle, silk, and crinoline so that she could simultaneously pee and yell at them, for
the entire reception to hear? Those details are begging to get aggregated all over the Internet!”
It was Kristina’s most embarrassing moment. The one dalliance in her otherwise very public love life that she has kept secret, fiercely hidden from everyone in Castalia. No one outside that reception knows the story.
Except me.
And now everyone at Shift.
And soon, everyone with access to the Internet.
Everyone will read my humorous retelling of Erik blaming the cake throwing on Kristina. “You don’t have to live with them,” he said. And while this was true, it was also cementing her future fate. Stepmonster made it very clear that Kristina, a seductress, wouldn’t be welcome. And until her dad’s recent overtures at resuming a relationship, he seemed to agree with his angry bride.
I turn to Kristina and she backs away. I don’t know what to do. There has to be a way to clean up this mess without outing myself to McKayla.
“I’ll fix this,” I whisper to Kristina. I reach my hands toward her but stop short, as if she were a live grenade and the slightest movement would risk setting her off.
“Now I know how to get you out at Never Have I Ever,” Gigi says. “I can’t believe you did this.”
Kristina answers, no longer whispering, “She didn’t!”
“Excuse me,” McKayla says, finally noticing that there is another girl in our midst, “but who are you?”
“That’s Harper’s childhood friend from San Francisco,” Gigi answers, rolling her eyes.
“And we’re not from San Francisco,” Kristina says, even louder. “God, Harper, did you lie about everything?”
Everyone is staring at me.
What do I do?
“What is she talking about, Harper?” Gigi asks, and then stage-whispers to me, loud enough that everyone can still hear, “Is she, like, deranged or something?”
“Should we call for help?” asks Abigail.
Kristina explodes.
“Yeah, I’m the one who needs help. Not the virgin who says she hooked up with the stepbrother she doesn’t have! Not the girl who says she’s a dating expert when really she couldn’t ever get a date if I didn’t beg a guy to find a friend to double with.”
Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies Page 23
