If You, Then Me

by Yvonne Woon

  Was I sharing too much? Ms. Perez had told us that we should always answer positively, spinning the bad into the good, but it was a relief to just answer like myself. “Honestly, I made it because I was lonely.”

  “And what do you want? What constitutes success for you?”

  The dogs were yipping at my feet. I remembered what Mitzy had said about not touching them and tried to ignore them. “I—I guess I want to make something that improves people’s lives.” The moment it came out of my mouth, I knew it wasn’t true. Sure, I wanted Wiser to help people, but that wasn’t really what had motivated me to apply to the Foundry.

  Veronica gave me an impatient look. “This isn’t the time to be modest.”

  “I want to feel like I have a place in the world,” I said, my voice so low it was almost a whisper. I’d thought it so many times but had never said it out loud to another human being. It felt too intimate, too scary. “I want to belong. This is the only place where it feels like I can, and starting a company is the only way I know how.”

  Veronica looked satisfied. “Come with me.”

  She led us upstairs to a sunny dressing room. Racks of clothes lined the walls, and floor mirrors were perched around velvet armchairs.

  “Rule number one: no more turtlenecks,” she said, pinching my shirt. “It’s derivative and boring, and frankly makes you look childish.”

  I felt a rush of embarrassment.

  “Rule number two: no more interview pants.” She pressed the polyester fabric of my pants in between her fingers and grimaced. “These are for teenagers interviewing for their first internship. Not for Founders.”

  She eyed my backpack. “Rule number three: always carry your things in a nice bag. No more backpacks, no more binders, no more nylon unless you’re going to the gym.”

  She touched my ponytail. “We need to work on this, too,” she said, and called over her shoulder to someone downstairs. “Lillian? We need a cut.”

  “A cut as in a haircut?” I said, beginning to panic.

  “Trust the process,” Mitzy said, fingering through a clothing rack. “Before I met Veronica, people constantly talked down to me. I would go to meetings where executives would talk about how wonderful my product was, but they would barely look at me other than to assess my chest size. If they had questions, they would direct them to my legal advisor, who was, of course, a man. Veronica was the first person who told me I needed to sharpen my look. She put me in clean lines and bold colors, told me to stand up straight and wear more crisp, white cotton.”

  “You were very girl-next-door,” Veronica said. “People looked at you and thought that a person who looked like their little sister couldn’t possibly run a company. Unfortunately all women get it in some way or another. We can’t win. But we can try.”

  Veronica picked through the clothing racks, pulling out jeans and trousers and shirts and blazers and what looked like a velvet smoking jacket.

  “You’re a dark horse,” Veronica said. “That’s what we need to communicate. Everyone in this town wears light colors and loungewear. We need you to stand out. We need moody colors. We need sharp lines and dramatic tailoring.” She added what looked like a leather skirt to the pile. “Your look needs to scream that you don’t need anyone. You need to make lonely look desirable.”

  “Are you sure—” I began to say, but Veronica thrust a bundle of outfit pairings into my hands and shooed me into a dressing room. They were right, I looked like a high schooler pretending to be an adult because I was. It was hard to imagine that any piece of clothing could change that. Still, I tried on the first outfit. It was a tight black shirtdress that looked militaristic, with buttons down the front and epaulets on the shoulders. I looked absurd, like I was the villain of a superhero movie.

  “Do I have to show you?” I called out.

  “Yes,” Mitzy and Veronica said at the same time.

  “I’m a dark horse,” I whispered to myself. “I make looking lonely desirable.” I let out a deep exhale and opened the door. “I look ridiculous.”

  Veronica studied me. “It is a little much, isn’t it?”

  The next option was a leather skirt so short I was scared to bend over and a low-cut V-neck that was so formfitting I hardly recognized myself.

  Mitzy whistled when I opened the door, making my face go red.

  “I don’t know. I can barely move in this.”

  Veronica nodded in agreement. “Too X-rated. You’re still underage, after all.”

  The next was a scoop neck and a pencil skirt that was so tight I had to shimmy toward the door.

  Mitzy put a finger to her lips. “Maybe.”

  Veronica squinted at me. “We can do better.”

  Three pairs of twill pants, two tailored suits, a handful of ruffled blouses, and one disastrous silk jumper later, I finally put on something that I maybe sort of kind of thought was okay, or dare I say . . . liked.

  It was a pair of black pants, tight but stretchy enough to go up the stairs two at a time. Veronica had paired it with a black silk tank and a black blazer that defied all definitions of what I knew a blazer to be. I associated them with my mother—boxy, frumpy, an envelope in clothing form. So when I put this one on, I was surprised by how it sharpened all of my angles, like an analog version of a photo editor. My shoulders looked sharper, my posture straighter, even my face looked somehow . . . smarter, like I was a more confident version of myself.

  When I opened the door and stepped outside, Mitzy and Veronica went quiet.

  “I look . . . taller.”

  Mitzy grinned. “I told you it could be done.”

  Veronica angled a bright fluorescent lamp at me, making me wince. “It’s always best to see what you look like in both daylight and office light.”

  Satisfied, she motioned to the chair in the middle of the room, where her assistant, Lillian was waiting for me with a pair of shears. “Just one more finishing touch left.”

  Reluctantly, I let her sweep a smock over me.

  “Let’s do a bob,” Veronica said. “Shoulder length, light on the layers, less schoolgirl and more dominatrix. I want it to look a little severe.”

  “Severe?” I said. “Do you really think that’s the right look for me?”

  “Of course it is,” Veronica said.

  Lillian wet my hair with a spray bottle and combed it out. There was no mirror so all I could do was watch as hair slid down my smock onto the floor.

  “Shorter,” Veronica said.

  I envisioned myself being reborn into my ten-year-old body, moments after my mother had given me a mortifying bowl cut, straight across the middle of the ears.

  “Even shorter.”

  Everyone would mistake me for a prepubescent boy. The well-meaning chefs in the dining hall would offer me the kids’ menu. When we went on corporate visits, the tour guides would assume I was someone’s little brother and give me stickers and ask if I needed to use the potty.

  “A smidge more.”

  I would be known as the first preteen to ever be admitted to the Foundry. They would print stories about me, asking me to comment on the state of the youth, on the effect of violent video games on developing minds, on screen time and whether or not it was good for young children.

  Veronica stepped back and studied me. “Perfect.”

  Before letting me out of the chair, Lillian opened a small trunk and produced a series of makeup palettes.

  “Let’s try a dark eye,” Veronica said to Lillian.

  I would look like a child in a Renaissance picture, simultaneously too old and too young, forced to marry and bear children by the ripe age of thirteen.

  “A little bit of color on the cheek,” Veronica said.

  I’d henceforth be known as Xia, pale and sickly, with an accordion collar and pink circles painted on my cheeks. A sad, tubercular clown.

  Lillian removed the smock and I ventured toward the mirror.

  The person I found staring back at me was nothing like I’d imag
ined. She was elegant and sleek, her hair cut cleanly at her shoulders, her face thoughtful, smart. I touched the blazer, which made the girl in the mirror look perfectly packaged, a neat triangle. She furrowed her brow as I studied her. She looked familiar—not just like me, but like someone else, someone I’d known before—but I couldn’t figure out who.

  “What do you think?” Mitzy said.

  “It’s me,” I said, “only better.”

  “Only Wiser?” Mitzy said.

  My eyes widened. She was right. That was exactly who I looked like: Wiser.

  While Veronica picked out a handful of new outfits like the one I was wearing, I wondered how this worked. None of the clothes had price tags on them and no one had mentioned money, but surely Veronica’s services couldn’t be free. I remembered what Gina had told me when I’d first gotten accepted to the Foundry: When restaurants didn’t include prices on their menus it meant they were too expensive to print.

  “How much is this going to cost?” I whispered to Mitzy.

  “Don’t worry about the price. It’s an investment in your company. What do you think that Vault money is for?”

  “Business travel? Hardware? A new desktop?”

  But Mitzy brushed me off. “Think of it as renting office space or hiring an assistant. Everyone does this, even men. Anyway, you don’t pay now; Veronica will send you an invoice. It’s very discreet. And often she gets clothes at a discount because she buys directly from the designer.”

  I took a breath and tried not to worry. If everyone did this, then it had to be okay.

  While Veronica handed me armfuls of shopping bags, Mitzy held out her phone to take a selfie, then nudged me. “You take one, too.”

  She tilted her head until she found the right lighting. “Look Wiser.”

  I gazed into her camera, then mine, with a serene look that I imagined Wiser would have.

  “Perfect,” Mitzy said. “Post it by the time you get back to the dorm. And make sure the caption is short and charming. You want people to wish they had your life.”

  As I scooped up my clothes and followed Mitzy downstairs, I felt my phone vibrate. Mitzy had already posted her photo and tagged me. I didn’t know how she’d done it so quickly, but she’d already edited our photo or added some kind of filter that made our faces gleam. We looked happy, glamorous. There was just enough of the background to make people wonder where we were and what we were doing. Beneath us, her caption read, Control + N.

  It was exactly how I felt. New.

  Sixteen

  When I got back to the dorm, I threw my things on the bed and took out my phone. To my surprise, dozens of strangers had already liked the photo I’d posted of me and Mitzy, and a lot of them had commented and started to follow me. I scanned the comments.

  >Wow! So cute!

  >Mitzy’s mystery girl finally started posting

  >You’re my idol!

  >Where do you think they are?

  >It looks like a house

  >It doesn’t look like Mitzy’s house

  >If you cross-reference it with Mitzy’s post, it looks like there’s a tree in the background through the window, which looks like a tree near University Ave

  I felt a tingle of excitement as I watched the notifications pop up on my phone. More strangers, more likes, more followers. They knew my name and where I was from and what high school I’d gone to; someone even knew the name of the street I grew up on, which was troubling but also impressive. More importantly, they all seemed to love me.

  Though I was normally skeptical of adulation, for the first time I found myself enjoying it. I thought back to when I was ten years old, taping newspaper articles of Mitzy above my bed. This was what it felt like to be on the other side.

  While my phone continued to vibrate, I hung my new clothes in the closet and tried to avoid looking at my desk. I’d put off worrying about my assignments because Mitzy had insisted they didn’t matter, but she wasn’t the one who had to answer for herself in class. The least I could do was read through the assignments, I told myself, when my phone dinged with a text from Gina.

  >REVEAL YOUR TRUE FORM

  >What?

  >I read somewhere that if you’re a shapeshifter, you have to reveal your true form if someone asks you to, and you’re clearly a shapeshifter because I’ve known Xia for over ten years and I’ve never seen her wear eyeshadow

  >First of all, shapeshifters don’t have to tell you anything. And second, I’m allowed to wear eyeshadow if I want to

  >That sounds like something a shapeshifter would say to throw me off

  >RIP

  >RIP to what??

  >This joke.

  >If you’re really Xia then what pioneering method of fashion maintenance did I invent in the seventh grade that I deserve recognition for?

  I rolled my eyes.

  >Spraying your tights with hairspray to prevent runs, though I’m pretty certain that was widely known before you “discovered” it

  >Yeah but I figured it out on my own without searching the internet, which is basically like inventing the light bulb at the same time as Edison

  >You’re right. You deserve the Nobel Prize

  >Thank you. Now that you’ve verified your identity, please accept my condolences on the tragic passing of your turtleneck. Where do I send flowers?

  >In lieu of flowers we’re accepting donations to the Gina E. Ricci comedy foundation. She doesn’t have a lot of fans, so she can use all the help she can get

  Gina was typing a response when someone knocked on my door.

  Amina did a double take when she saw me. “There’s a rumor going around that you have a secret identity. I had to see for myself.”

  “Here I am, in the flesh,” I said, standing up and spinning around theatrically. “Though it isn’t a secret identity if you post about it on the internet.”

  “So what superhero movie are you auditioning for?” Amina asked.

  “I’m hurt that you automatically assume I’m in costume and not an actual superhero.”

  “Superheroes spend all their free time training. From what I can tell, you sit in front of a computer all day and talk to your phone.”

  “Where do you think I was all day? Maybe I was training.”

  “Wow,” Amina said, pretending to be impressed. “You don’t even look sweaty.”

  I shrugged. “Superheroes never do.”

  Amina smirked and collapsed into my bed, where she looked through my new clothes. “So this is your new look now?”

  “Courtesy of Mitzy,” I said. “And this stylist named Veronica. I wish you could have seen her house. It was like walking into a private Neiman Marcus.”

  “Did you take pictures?”

  “I can’t take photos of a place like that. It would be rude.”

  “Not even secret photos?”

  “I was too nervous. It feels like all of this is happening to me by mistake, and if I do anything wrong, they’ll realize I’m not who they think I am and take it all away.”

  “I feel that way sometimes, too.”

  “Seriously? You of all people belong here. You made Squirrel. The only reason you shouldn’t be here is because you’re too professional. You’re basically already a CEO.”

  “Nothing about this place feels like it was built for me. It was built for Mikes and Joshes and Andrews. And maybe for Kates. But definitely not for a Black girl from Brooklyn.” Amina glanced out the window at the boys’ dormitory, where a group of boys were flying a drone around the lawn. “You think they’re over there stressing about their homework? Of course not. They were born for this place; they feel entitled to it.” Amina looked at me, and this time her face was serious. “People like us, we have to believe we belong here. We have to insist on it. Because if we don’t, no one will.”

  I woke up the next morning to a cascade of notifications on my phone. Over a thousand new followers. Hundreds of likes and comments. My stock had gone up to twenty, an unthinkable number. I blinke
d, bleary eyed, unable to believe it. I’d spent my day trying on clothes and getting a new haircut, and my stock had still gone up. Maybe Mitzy was right; maybe grades didn’t matter at all.

  I threw on a Veronica outfit—a slim pair of pants, a tight tank top, and a satin blazer—and attempted to re-create what Lillian had done to my hair with the four bottles of product she’d sent me home with. It wasn’t my best work but it was a decent approximation. Then I hurried across campus to the dining hall.

  I hadn’t forgotten that ObjectPermanence was going to be sitting in the dining hall in the flesh, which made me all the more nervous. I wanted to slip in without drawing too much attention to my new look, but when I opened the door, it slammed into Andy, spilling his open energy drink all over him and staining his shirt bright green, which in turn made him curse loudly. The entire room turned our way.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  He looked like he hadn’t slept in three weeks and had spent the last four nights at a rave.

  “Maximum spaghetti,” he mumbled inexplicably.

  “What?”

  I grabbed a bunch of napkins from a nearby table and handed them to him, but he waved them away. “Value false,” he muttered, and pushed past me toward the bathroom.

  By the time I turned to look for Amina, everyone in the dining hall had at least pretended to go back to their conversations, though I noticed Arun and Arthur steal glances at me and whisper to their table. Nearby, AJ nodded at me to Mike and muttered something with a chuckle. Any one of them could be ObjectPermanence, and I felt hyperaware of their presence. Was Arthur eating a banana? What was Arun typing into his phone? What were AJ and Mike saying? I hurried to the beverage counter and made myself a cup of coffee when I heard a familiar voice behind me.

  “Are you new here?” Mast said.

  I let out a breath of relief.

  “Pretty new,” I said, playing along. “Though I think we’ve met before.”

  He reached past me to grab a cup and brushed his arm against mine. He didn’t have to; there was plenty of space.

  “You do look familiar, but I can’t quite place you. You didn’t, by any chance, go to a party the other night? I met this girl there who looked sort of like you.”