Little White Lies

by Brianna Baker

  Finally Mike cleared his throat. “The Skool twins really like the stance you took against bullying. They’d like to talk to you about starting a TV show, babe. How cool is that?”

  Ah, he could speak. How encouraging.

  He was smiling. So was I. Like an idiot again, frankly. I’d never thought about having my own TV show. Well, it’s not that I never thought about having my own TV show, it’s that I’d never thought it’d actually be possible. As cynical as I wanted to be about it all, the idiotic smile wouldn’t go away. The Corneliuses weren’t known for handing out false compliments—or compliments in general.

  Mr. Cornelius took his final bite of key lime pie and peered intently at me. He leaned his fork against the dessert plate. “Coretta, would you be willing to meet with the Skool twins if we were to set up the meeting?”

  Despite my comment on how it all just seemed to work, I wasn’t exactly twiddling my thumbs in all my free time. If I was twiddling my thumbs at all, it was because I was trying to tread water with any part of my body that had free time. “Let me talk to my parents,” I said after a minute.

  Mr. Cornelius nodded knowingly. “Very wise. And Coretta, I’m sure Karin and Anders would understand if you needed to back off on your volunteer time at SKOOLS 4 ALL, should it become too much on paper.”

  We all laughed together. But I alone secretly cringed, for myriad reasons.

  In the two weeks that followed my fancy dinner at Mike’s house, I’d:

  1. Half-assed a Spanish club meeting but ordered Taco Bell for the group so nobody would complain.

  2. Participated in a law club mock trial wherein my client was found guilty because I wrote a LWL rant on cat people the night before. Seriously, though, what is it with people and cats? Sick.

  3. Let Rachel go thrifting alone, which meant I was punished by sheer guilt every time I saw a pre-owned piece of clothing that never should have been bought the first time.

  4. Stopped volunteering at SKOOLS 4 ALL. Three hours of sleep a night apparently does not provide the best mental state for nonprofit work.

  My interactions with Mike were centered on text messages that usually revolved around Pulse TV, and my attempts to avoid answering. I didn’t want anyone to know why I was debating if I could handle the time commitment. I had hopes that I would pull myself up by my bootstraps, and that a master plan would hit me when the time was right. My GPA, which was once a proud 4.0 (yes, that is perfect), had dropped to a 3.7. That might not seem like a big deal, but I assure you, for the schools that my parents expected me to go to, that was a very big deal.

  I kept going back and forth on meeting with Pulse TV. Of course I wanted to have my own TV show, but I preferred not to become a high school dropout in the process. Obligations were really starting to pile up. I was waiting for the clock to strike master plan o’clock.

  My phone buzzed again. It was Mike.

  Babe, have you decided if ur going to meet with the Skool twins yet? They want to meet w/ u jan 3rd. My parents were asking …

  No, I hadn’t decided, which is why I hadn’t responded.

  Little White Lies had become a monster of its own. I was writing at least three posts a week, not to mention responding to the personal messages that left me wondering if someone might take their own lives if I didn’t. Every time I looked in the mirror, I expected all my hair to have fallen out. I should have been bald from stress. The universe had been kind enough to let me keep it for now. That was the only upside, that one day I could finally start to grow my Afro.

  Thanksgiving break was fast approaching, at least. Maybe I’d have time to catch up on all of my schoolwork and do some extra credit to pull up that GPA before my parents or any colleges noticed.

  I looked at Mike’s text message one more time. Then I thought about it. Colleges would be really impressed by a seventeen-year-old with a 3.7 GPA and a TV show. Why hadn’t this all made sense to me before? I needed this show. I could make it work; I always did.

  Yes, I’ll do it. Jan 3.

  Is it a good sign that upon hitting SEND I immediately wanted to barf? I chose to believe that yes, it was. A text came in almost immediately—Rachel.

  It’s set: Jan. 3rd is the student council regional meeting. Since we are the home school, we will be in charge of coordinating the accommodations for the visiting schools. Let’s meet tomorrow?

  Rachel has the most properly punctuated texts of anyone I know. But … WAIT! WHAT? JANUARY THIRD? Was I into self-sabotage? I had just canceled on Rachel six times in a row. Every day at school I was surprised to see that her head had not yet exploded. I had to meet her tomorrow. I had to.

  Oh, great, another text. This one was from Mike.

  Jan 3rd at 4PM, set in stone! So excited for you!

  Set in stone. That’s funny, that’s exactly how I was feeling at that very moment. Okay, this was fine, this was fine, THIS was FINE. Nobody has ever died from a blog, right? This sounds like a question someone would ask me. To which I’d answer, “Let’s wait and see.”

  Rachel and I met at her house after school to talk about this regional student council meeting. I felt like those people on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, minus the addiction. (Though maybe my addiction was Little White Lies.) I was so tired, so stressed out, so afraid that she was going to see through my routine of “I’m really doing great, guys!”

  We were in her bedroom, which always felt like home. Not surprisingly, it was still decorated the same as it was ten years ago. She even had the same Muppet stuffed animals on the bed, Kermit and Miss Piggy. I admired that about Rachel, how she was never restless for change. If her only addictions were thrift store clothing and her stuffed animal collection, good for her.

  “Coretta, are you listening to me?”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” I wasn’t, though. I hadn’t really heard what she had been saying for the last five minutes. At least I thought it was five.

  “Okay, what is your deal?” Rachel snapped. “You think you can just treat me like this because I’m not as Internet famous as you or whatever, and I get that. This meeting, however, has a purpose beyond our friendship. Which, honestly, doesn’t seem all that important to you anymore.”

  Those words I heard.

  The worst part? She was right. I hadn’t just been neglecting our friendship; I’d gone days without talking to her, which hadn’t happened since we could form words. As I was trying to figure out what version of “I’m sorry” I’d offer, tears started pouring from my eyes. I am not using the word pour lightly. I’m talking about the kind of crying where the tears don’t even hit your cheeks. They just drop right to the floor. I managed to get some words out. They weren’t terribly coherent.

  “Rachel … I can’t. The blog, and my GPA, school, and the twins, Skool, and the messages, NASCAR? Why? I … I am so sorry.”

  I buried my head in my lap and cried into her Rainbow Brite pillow.

  When I finally looked up, Rachel was staring at me. She backed away, her lips twisted in a look of horror or concern or both. To be fair, I hadn’t been showing any signs of a breakdown, until, well, the breakdown itself. “Coretta, what’s going on?” she whispered.

  “I’ve gotten way in over my head with the blog, and my grades are suffering, and … and … and I scheduled a meeting during the student council regional meeting! I think I’m actually losing my mind.”

  Rachel nodded. “Just breathe, okay, just breathe. Everything is going to be okay.” She bit her lip and looked up toward the ceiling. This meant she was thinking of a plan. Normally this was a bad sign, but at this point, I was willing to take any advice. After all, at this point, she was the only one who knew my dark secret. And let’s face it: I needed all the help I could get.

  Finally she took a deep breath. “Listen, I know someone that can help you lighten your load. There’s a person I know of through my parents who specializes in this. The thing is, you have to trust me. Do you trust me?”

  “Who is it? What do I have to do
?”

  “Do you trust me?” she repeated.

  “Of course I do!”

  She sat beside me, looking straight into my watery eyes. “Here’s the thing, you can’t know who the person is, and you can’t tell anyone about this. Nobody can know, Coretta. Not Mike, not your parents, not my parents.”

  Now I’m not exactly a detective, but coming from anyone else, this offer might be classified as “shady.” But this was Rachel. And what the hell? If she had a shady side, great. I did. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I could use some shade from the blistering limelight that was frying my brain.

  “Yes. Yes. I’ll trust you. I’ll do anything. Thank you, Rachel. Thank you.”

  With that, I lay my head on Rainbow Brite’s face, avoiding the puddle of snot.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Karl (November 26 and December 3, 2013)

  “Alex, darling, you’ve barely touched your steak.” I glanced down at the glorious slab of meat—blackened crispy on the outside, juicy pink on the inside, expertly sliced and glistening with melted butter. I aimed a look of concern at her. “Is anything okay?”

  She rolled her eyes and pushed the platter closer to me. “Bad joke, Karl. I haven’t eaten meat for nearly ten years. You know that.”

  “Yes, but in the twenty years that I’ve lived in Brooklyn,” I replied with maybe too much smug satisfaction, “Peter Luger Steakhouse* is the one thing in Williamsburg that hasn’t changed at all.”

  “I don’t think this place has changed much since the late nineteenth century.”

  “Exactly. Since eighteen eighty-seven. Remember that cab ride we took through this neighborhood about ten years ago? I was pointing to all the different buildings and businesses and saying, ‘Changed, unchanged, changed, changed, changed, unchanged—’ ”

  “Yes, I do. After two minutes I got really annoyed and asked you to stop.”

  I stabbed a piece of meat with my fork. “I know. And you still want to get out of Brooklyn as fast as humanly possible. I don’t blame you. But my point is everything in this moneyed-hipster mecca of excess has changed. Everything except Peter Luger Steakhouse.”

  With that, I finally got a smile. “And what’s so wrong with change, Karl?”

  “Nothing, I guess, if it amounts to progress,” I admitted. “But there’s a lot to be said for consistency. I mean, look around.” I gestured at the crowd, packed into the overly bright wood-paneled room—more German beer hall than American steakhouse. The faces were as pink as the meat on their plates. “You’ve got to admit, I picked the perfect place to discuss our new client, right? I don’t see too many teenagers eating here, and not one black person.”

  “Well, you’re right about that,” Alex said, her smile fading. She looked down at the oversized tomato and raw onion slices on her plate. “Anyway …”

  “Anyway,” I echoed. “Seriously. Noprah? Are you really not going to tell me who’s bankrolling this thing? And is it really not Oprah? Because I’ve been racking my brain—and the Internet—and I haven’t discovered any African-American media moguls who are women, who own their own network, who aren’t Oprah. And you do know her network is actually called OWN, right?”

  “Don’t patronize me more than you already have, Karl. It’s not Oprah.”

  “Well, that clears things up,” I lied.

  Alex signaled our crusty old waiter for another martini. I flashed him a casual peace sign, by which I meant, Make it two.

  “So let’s talk Coretta White.” I punctuated her name with a dreamy sigh. “My hero.”

  “Oh, please,” Alex snapped. “As if you have any heroes.”

  “I’m serious, Alex. This chick is legit. She’s the real deal.”

  “I know.”

  “So why does she need me? I mean, us.” I took another bite of steak. “I mean, our services,” I added in Errol Flynn style.

  Alex glanced toward the exit. “We’ve been over this. She’s grappling with schoolwork, college applications, et cetera.”

  “What’s the et cetera?”

  Alex turned back to me, her eyes glittering. “Pulse TV wants to develop a Coretta White TV show with a robust web presence. Something that capitalizes on the live-tweeting everyone in the sweet-spot demographic does during the Oscars or an election or a football game or—”

  “Pulse TV?” I interrupted. “Are you linked up with the Skool twins? They’re, like, taking over the world right now. Will I get a piece of the TV show?”

  I knew I wasn’t getting a piece of the TV show, but I was irritated at the way Alex had snapped into pitch mode with me. Like I was one of her rich-mummy clients who needed to be sold on something.

  “At this point, no.” Alex accepted her fresh martini from our ancient waiter and took a long deliberate sip. “This is really meant as a temporary measure to get her through a rough period.”

  “Temporary?” I ignored my own fresh cocktail. “I thought you said this could turn into something long-term and exclusive. And lucrative.”

  “It could, Karl.” Alex set down her drink. “The blog isn’t going away. She’s going to need it to drive the popularity of the new show. Once she finishes her negotiations with Pulse TV, I’ll be able to renegotiate the terms of your contract.”

  “And what are those terms?” I wondered.

  Alex laughed. In that brief instant, in the way she forgot herself except to cover her mouth from spewing martini, I caught a glimpse of the girl I knew from college. But then she was gone.

  “Since when does Karl Ristoff concern himself with the terms of his contracts? Aren’t you working on your next mixtape or something?” Alex ignored my reaction to her cheap shot and took another sip. “Don’t you worry about the money. That’ll start pouring in as soon as you complete your first blog post. But things are going to run a bit differently with this client. Rather than go through me, you will be dealing directly with Miss White. Like in your PowerPoint days. Remember those?”

  “She’s Miss White now?”

  “Coretta White. Whatever. She’s a kid, Karl.”

  I recognized that tone. Alex called me a kid, too. She was calling me one right now. “Okay, that’s cool,” I said. But I was lying. Strange, but for the first time ever—really, the first time since Alex and I had begun our arrangement—I felt anxious about a new client. I’d never felt this way before, not with any of the countless big shots, celebrities, or power brokers I had impersonated in the past. They were part of an elite I envied and resented and knew deep down I’d never become, or even mingle with. But this was different. This was interfacing with and passing myself off as a seventeen-year-old girl. One I respected (i.e., not Selena Gomez).

  Alex polished off her second martini. “Great. I’m setting up a phone call between the two of you for early next week.”

  “Phone call? Why a phone call? Can’t we just email?”

  “I need her to be comfortable with you, Karl,” Alex explained. “This is a big deal for her. And I think it will help if she hears your voice.”

  “Isn’t my writing enough?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you think I can adequately reassure her with the written word?” I asked flatly.

  Alex rolled her eyes. “She wants to be sure that you’re not some forty-year-old wigger who failed as a rapper yet still insists on steeping himself in black culture.”

  I dropped my fork on my plate. “Please do not use the W-word, Alex.” I wasn’t joking. “I hate that word. It’s patently offensive, and white people should not be allowed to use it any more than they should the N-word. And if Coretta uses—”

  “It was my choice of words,” Alex interrupted with a sigh. “Coretta did not say ‘wigger.’ She probably wants to be sure you don’t think you have the ability to write ‘black’ just because you’ve been listening to Lil Wayne* for the past ten years and you know who Killer Mike* is.”

  I glared at the woman I once thought I could love. There was no reason
to remind her that I’d tweeted for Birdman*, and he’d practically raised Lil Wayne as his son; Alex was no doubt running through the same list in her mind, the list she’d helped facilitate.

  “I think the real question is not whether I can write ‘black’ but whether or not I can write Coretta White,” I said.

  “I have apprised her of your bona fides,” Alex answered, her voice back to the All-Business Boss Lady 2013 edition. “Now just take the call when she rings. And don’t put her on speakerphone.”

  The following Tuesday afternoon, I sat at my communications table, bouncing gently on BSB. I anticipated the familiar sounds of Pink Floyd, and the toothy grin of Tony Robbins to appear on trusty R$$P.

  Our phone appointment was for 3 P.M. sharp. At 3:04 the cash register chimed, and Tony’s face lit up—his smile reflecting mine, yet considerably brighter.

  Props for Coretta: I love it when people are a few minutes late for appointments. I’ve always interpreted the promptness of others as a personal affront. That being said, I make it a point to always be on time myself—no offense intended. Once the bass line kicked in, I pressed the green bar. “Hello?”

  “Hello, is this Karl?” The voice was not young and fresh, or really anything close to what I’d been expecting. I detected a hint of weariness, a healthy dose of wariness. She sounded like Alex, minus about five years.

  “Yes, is this Coretta?” I tried to convey the casual confidence likely endorsed by Tony Robbins. “I hope you don’t mind speakerphone. My ears don’t accommodate those little earbuds.”

  “Okayyy.” Coretta drew out the second syllable. Then we got into it.

  Note from Karl: In order to present this initial phone meeting, I will dispense with the tedious he said/she said of traditional prose narrative and its attendant adverbs and adjectives. For the sake of abbreviation, K will stand for Karl, and C will signify Coretta.