Fake Halo

by Piper Lennox

Her fingertips swipe the tears under her eyes. She shakes her head.

  “To get you close to me.” I swallow the pinpricks in my throat and wipe the tears she missed, one brush of my thumb across her chin. “Not for ‘business,’ Clara. Not to boost my channel, or my sister’s...not because I wanted to make you miserable. And not because I hated you.”

  When I spread my palm across the side of her face, fingertips in her hair, she closes her eyes again and almost leans into it.

  “Wes....” Her lips part when mine are just half an inch from hers. She shakes her head, but doesn’t draw away.

  “You’re asking how you can trust me? Check my phone. Check my computer. It’s gone, Clara. It’s been gone. I promise.”

  “You don’t understand how it feels, after all this time thinking you....” More tears hit her skin. “If I put my faith in you—”

  “Then I’ll guard it with my life.”

  I kiss her before she can speak.

  As I pull her into me, I feel her start to relax. Her breathing slows.

  I was an idiot to question her. Of course she wasn’t in this relationship just to get her email back. I know Clara Hurley inside and out, and she would never do that.

  Maybe that halo isn’t solid, flawless gold. But at least she’s got one.

  Her cell rings. She tenses, torn between checking it and giving in to this, so I break the kiss and nod at her bag. “I can wait.”

  With a shaky smile, she gets up and looks at it.

  “Shit,” she sighs, showing me: a video call from Georgia.

  “Here.” I stand and position her between the balcony door and the dresser; the small expanse of plain white wall matches that of her apartment, which I saw when we picked up her luggage. “Just don’t swing the phone too far right or left, and she’ll think it’s your entryway.”

  “Why would I be sitting in our entryway?” she hisses, but I look around and shrug: what other choice does she have?

  With a few good breaths, she plasters on a smile and swipes to answer.

  Silently, I lie on the bed and practice some deep breathing of my own. So far, this trip has not gone as planned.

  “Hey! What’s up, how’s Greece? Tell me every—”

  “What the fuck is going on, Clara? You’re in the Hamptons? With him?”

  I sit up. Clara gives me a panicked glance, but I shake my head and make some crazed motion that, at least in my head, means: See where she goes with this.

  Clara reaches to adjust her hat before realizing it’s still on the floor where I threw it. I’d feel guilty, if it weren’t her sister on the other side of the screen. “What? Who?”

  “Durham.” Even from here, I catch the venom. “There are pictures all over New Set, Buzzfeed…. And that email’s trending goddamn everywhere. But I guess I can’t say shit about that, or I’m being ‘overbearing,’ right?”

  Clara gives me another look. There’s still plenty of panic in there...but something else, too, even worse than the bottomless anger I used to find, like she had a private reserve of it just for me.

  This is hatred. Pure, fierce, and so much more painful than I could have imagined.

  “I’ll call you back,” she says numbly, under her sister’s rant that’s so loud, it buzzes the phone speaker. She hangs up and walks straight to her suitcase, yanking her hat back on before she packs in the last of her stuff.

  “Clara.” I stand and reach for her shoulders again, but she tears away. “What’s she talking about? What photos? What email?”

  “The email, Wes.” Her tears are renewed, but her face is strangely stoic. Like she wasn’t just numb to Georgia’s words; she’s numb to me now, too.

  I sputter explanations I don’t have. After all, I don’t even know what’s going on.

  A quick search, and my phone screen floods with answers.

  Sure enough, every site she listed is covered with photos of us from earlier today. It’s hard to tell, but I think this was at the first store we visited. A few shots are of us holding hands. One is us kissing, in the middle of laughing.

  When I search “Clara Hurley email,” my gut twists. I have to sit back down on the edge of the mattress, staring at the words I memorized.

  The words I held over her head, pretending I’d ever actually use them.

  When she zips her suitcase and starts for the door, I snap out of it enough to stop her. She tries to yank the suitcase back, but I hold tight. “I swear to God, Clara—I didn’t post this.”

  This time, she doesn’t ask how she can trust me.

  I just know she doesn’t.

  “Don’t leave.” I pull her suitcase closer, making her stumble back to me.

  Idiot that I am, I think holding her luggage hostage will get her to stay, at least long enough for me to figure this out. Which basically means I think she likes her suitcase more than she now hates me.

  She lets go.

  “Clara.” I’m at her heels again, all the way to the driveway. “Please stay. I don’t know where this copy came from, but it’s not—”

  “Only two people on this earth,” she says, voice as quiet as the bay I think I can almost hear on the other side of the house, “had that email.”

  At a loss, I pick the one explanation I can think of, stupid as it sounds coming out of my mouth. “Maybe your therapist leaked it.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure Dr. Dune posted a private email that could land her HIPAA violations, a lawsuit, and cost her her license. I’m sure it’s a professional therapist, and not the guy who threatened to release it if I didn’t play by his rules.”

  “Then why would I release it now?” I push her phone down; she’s checking the status of a rideshare I didn’t see her order. “If it had to be me, why would I blast it everywhere today, of all days?”

  “It went up forty minutes ago. About the time I pissed you off when we were in the car.” She scrolls the results again, hands shaking but voice composed.

  “You didn’t piss me off. Not enough for me to do something that fucking horrible to you. You really think I’m that spiteful? That just because you told me something I didn’t want to hear—”

  “I told you to embrace who you used to be.” She stalks to the curb to wait for the car. “And let’s face it, everyone knows you hate Cut to the Chases, so, yeah: I do think you’re that spiteful. Because it wasn’t just something you didn’t want to hear. It was something you can’t stand to hear. Something you’re terrified to believe.”

  Slowly, she looks at me. The sunlight glows in the ends of her hair and illuminates every last freckle across her nose. I want my mouth on them. One by one, I want to kiss the marks the sunlight has made on her.

  I want to kiss the marks I’ve made, invisible but so much deeper.

  “And until you embrace it,” she finishes, “it’s never going to leave you alone.”

  “Yeah? Because that’s what you do so fucking well, right—pretend to be this happy, confident person online, when in real life you’re so insecure you can’t even believe when someone tells you you’re beautiful? That this thing you put so much emphasis on—that you let control your life—isn’t important to them?”

  Throughout all of this, I’ve stepped closer to her. I’ve put my hands on her shoulders and drawn her close again.

  And, up until the moment her ride appears at the curb, she lets me.

  “You’re right,” she whispers, “I don’t embrace who I am the way I should. One of these days, I hope I do believe those things. Every word you just said.”

  The driver calls her name, questioning.

  She puts her hands on my chest, pushing me back so slowly I barely register it happening...but so sure of herself, I’m suddenly unable to stop her.

  “But it won’t be from you.”

  Thirty-Three

  It’s funny how you can know something perfectly well with your brain, but your heart just won’t listen.

  Example: the entire ride back to Brooklyn, I combed online gossip sites and
social media feeds, anywhere that made even one mention of my email and the secrets it just spilled into the world like a pierced oil drum.

  Logic saw the outraged fans, crying for justice on my behalf against whoever leaked the email. Logic counted tons of comments that said, simply, “And we should care why?” or “Who even is this girl?”

  Logic told me, See? It’s not a big deal.

  But my heart—it found the rest.

  Bet Royale is going to drop her. Sad.

  Fake publicity stunt.

  Pulls out her hair? What the fuck am I reading?

  Does her sister do it too or is she normal?

  Good. These twins are useless.

  Uhhh ok, aren’t they releasing a hair care line soon??

  Disgusting.

  Freak.

  On and on I scrolled, logic making me stop to read the dismissive, kind, or neutral articles and comments, while my heart carried all the rest along like thorns picked up from a rose bush. And by the time I got back to the apartment, that was all I had left.

  Another example: how badly I wanted to believe Wes didn’t do this, and how much my heart ached just to imagine it—even when my brain believed it instantly.

  Of course he didn’t really care about me. How many times had he glared at me from across event rooms, or insulted my clothing or makeup in some snide little comment?

  Of course he wanted to see me miserable. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have blackmailed me in the first place.

  Of course he wasn’t really interested in me.

  Of course he didn’t find me beautiful, or impossible to resist. Look at me.

  Look at me.

  For the first time in hours, I set down my phone and notice, in the spotty mirror of my bathroom, that my non-scrolling hand was up to its own agenda to make me miserable.

  I hold my breath and lift the edge of my hat higher.

  The spot near my ear, dime-sized this morning, is now almost three inches wide. It’s sore and hot to the touch, the skin peppered with tiny dots of blood from ripping out so many roots.

  Tears clog my throat as I turn my head completely to the side and stare at the damage.

  My heart knew I was pulling, the entire time. Logic checked out.

  It’ll grow back, I remind myself—but I hear it in Georgia’s voice, and the tears swell and fall too fast to stop them.

  My phone rings. It’s him.

  I hit Ignore.

  My fingertips brush the bald area again, the skin too sensitive, too smooth and empty.

  Already, I know I’m searching for more to pull: some lone hair in the center of the patch that I missed, or ones along the edges that disrupt an imagined “line” that never actually shows itself.

  This is how it usually goes. There’s regret, so powerful I feel sick to my stomach and hate myself...but, seconds later, I’m trying to even out sides and perfect edges, as though pulling more will somehow fix what I’ve done.

  “No,” I whisper, hand shaking as I clench it into a fist against my side. “Stop. God...just fucking stop.”

  I sink to the bathroom floor and sob until I actually get sick to my stomach. Every heave leaves me gasping, my nose stuffed up from crying and my throat burning with salt.

  Wes calls again.

  This time, I answer. But I don’t speak.

  “Clara? Hello?”

  His voice echoes around the bathroom. If I weren’t already crying, tears smearing on my legs when I pull my knees up and press my eyes against them until I see stars, I’d cry hearing him say my name like that.

  I’d cry at how much I want to believe he misses me.

  “Okay...I don’t know if you can hear me or—or what’s going on,” he breathes, “but I’m on my way back. All right? I’m coming straight to your place. My neighbor’s still got Bowie until Monday, so I’m not leaving until then. Okay? I’m not leaving until I get things right with us, Clara.”

  The salt stings my lips. I lick them clean and don’t answer him.

  Somehow, he seems to know I’m listening. Maybe he just hopes I am.

  There’s a rush of wind in the background. I picture him gunning the rental car down the interstate in the sunset, his angular face and shadowed eyes painted in tangerine and lemon. Sweet colors. Soft lighting.

  A glowing halo he doesn’t deserve.

  “I know there’s nothing I can say that you’d believe. Maybe I shouldn’t come over.” The ticking of his turn signal pricks up and down my skin. “Maybe...shit. I don’t know. Maybe this thing’s over.”

  My heart stands at attention, ready to tell him no. It can’t be over.

  It barely got started.

  Logic stops me, and makes me peek at my phone from underneath my elbow, as though it’s Wes himself sitting beside me on the lavender bath mat.

  “Yeah,” I whisper.

  Because, at that very moment, I’m tagged in an Instagram post from yet another online entertainment blog. It’s a screenshot of that viral email, except larger—all the others have been cropped to the message.

  This one isn’t.

  Wes’s email address sits at the top. It’s a screenshot of his entire computer screen, in fact; you can see his own channel, bookmarked in the browser bar, along with websites for guitar tabs and a gaming stream platform.

  The entire time I’m staring at it, he’s still talking.

  “...don’t know who the hell did this...hacked my email...sure as shit going to find out—”

  “Stop.” God. Just fucking stop.

  “Clara, I swear—”

  I hang up. Then I screenshot the screenshot, DM it to him, and wait for him to see.

  “Ay, man, she clearly don’t want to see your ass. Perhaps it’s time to shut the fuck up?”

  I glance at the guy lighting a cigarette a few feet from me who, for all his cavalier pearls of wisdom such as this, seems pretty damn entertained watching me shout at Clara’s window from the street.

  “Clara,” I call again, and this time, the woman who lives below her pokes her head out to tell me to, verbatim, shut the fuck up.

  “The masses have spoken,” the guy laughs around his filter. I think about bumming one, but decide I’d rather have my last two years of bragging rights. Quitting cigs was easier than quitting pills, but harder not to start again. Especially when you’ve got dudes like this one, puffing smoke rings of sage advice right into your face.

  “Must’ve pissed her off pretty bad.”

  I shove my hair out of my eyes and lean against the brick with him. Time for a break. “You think that’s any of your business?”

  “You’re out here screaming up and down my block, so yeah, I should say so.”

  My sigh earns another laugh. I watch a streetlight flicker out a few yards away, the bulb finally spent. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one die out, before.

  “Do you know her?” I ask.

  “We’re talking about the pink hair, right?” When I nod, he shakes his head and ashes into, of all things, an empty Flintstones vitamin container from his pocket. “Talked to the other one, now and then, but not her sister. She’s quiet. I figured she was shy.”

  “She’s actually not.” I used to think so, too. Turned out I just wasn’t listening well enough.

  I get out my phone.

  Wes: Please let me in.

  She’s left all the others on Read, but this one remains untouched the rest of the night—long after her neighbor wishes me luck with a pitying kind of laugh and goes inside. Long after I give up for the night and go home.

  Bowie’s happy to see me when I pick him up, but not for long. I bet he smells Clara on me and wonders why she’s not here. Maybe he can sense that my weekend went to hell so fast it should’ve split the earth in two.

  I give him food and water before falling into bed. Goddamn it—the sheets still smell like her.

  After I move to the sofa for the night, I get a beer from the fridge and check my phone again. Still nothing.

  I
open Instagram and look at the masquerade post.

  Miss this.

  Maybe I should delete it. It is, after all, ancient history.

  Absentmindedly, I click the message icon. I’ve had to mute the push notifications on all my media apps, ever since we uploaded our fake friendship posts. My phone was pinging at all hours of the day with strangers liking and commenting everything, random fans and trolls messaging me.

  My inbox reveals more of the same, so I almost don’t see it.

  Clara Hurley sent you a message.

  It’s from hours ago, before I got back into the city: the email, in a screenshot from some post.

  No...it’s the email, in a screenshot straight from my computer.

  “Clara,” I type, desperate to explain this thing I can’t fucking explain, “I didn’t take that screenshot, I don’t know how—”

  Before I can finish and send it, she blocks me.

  Thirty-Four

  “Hey.”

  I look up from the book I’ve been pretending to read since I saw Georgia and Rylan step out of their cab on the street below. “Hey.” My eyes comb her. “You got super tan.”

  “Oh.” She turns her arms in the light, then her legs. “Yeah, it was seriously perfect weather. No clouds, never muggy. I loved it.”

  “I knew you would.” My smile’s not forced, but I wish it was. I wish it didn’t feel every bit as broken as it probably looks, judging by the sympathetic one she gives me before shutting my door and sitting cross-legged on my rug. I hear Rylan in the living room. He turns the television up a bit too loud.

  I ask, “Did he see it?”

  “Everyone’s seen it, Clare. Mom called me freaking the fuck out because you weren’t answering anybody. She thought you...” Her fingers dig at a busted stick of conté in the rug, smearing it across her palm. “...were going to do something stupid.”