B00B9FX0MA EBOK (3 page)

“No, was just … doing stuff….” I studied a spot on the gleaming linoleum floor and waited for my insane blushing to subside. How was it that I could win a gold medal in debate, onstage in a packed auditorium, but I couldn’t come up with one remotely flirtatious one-liner?

“What about you? How’s soccer going? Make any goals?”
Make any goals?
This was getting worse and worse. Soon, I’d be asking him if he’d
felt up any future opportunities
, which was the ridiculously embarrassing phrase Mr. Klish always used when he meant to ask whether or not we’d researched colleges.

“Doing stuff with
who
?” Matt grinned.

“No one! I mean, like, studying and watching movies!” I said quickly. I mashed my lips together, ensuring I’d shut up and not share the fact that instead of hanging out at the lake, status updating, or doing anything remotely normal, I spent the rare free time I had watching cheesy movies like
Notting Hill
,
Love Actually
, and
Sixteen Candles
. No one knew that, and I wanted to keep it that way. But one more question from Matt and I’d most likely be blabbing all about it.

He shot me a look, but before he could say anything I spotted Jess scurrying out of the guidance office. I narrowed my eyes. Had she been talking about me? It was likely, and I was going to find out.

“I have to go. Bye!” I practically sprinted toward the guidance office, eager to pump Miss Marsted for Jess details before my Mr. Klish meeting. I was also kind of relieved to excuse myself from the awkward Matt conversation.

“Mr. Klish will just be a moment. He said to wait for him in his office,” Miss Marsted said, waving me past the desk without looking up from the mountain of course schedule switch requests on her desk. The one day I actually wanted to linger at the desk and talk to Miss Marsted, and she was busy. Great. What could Jess have been
doing
in here?

I headed into Mr. Klish’s corner office and sat down at a pockmarked oval table in the corner, piled high with precarious stacks of college pamphlets. The yellow paint-chipped walls were covered with posters from various elite institutions and summer programs. As always, I examined the UPenn one that was posted directly above Mr. Klish’s desk. The largest poster in the room, the main photograph featured a group of students walking across a leaf-strewn campus at twilight.
UNIVERSITY OF
PENNSYLVANIA
:
ACCESS THE WORLD
, the text screamed in forty-eight-point Calibri font. As always, my eyes zeroed in on one specific photo subject: the guy wearing rectangular glasses, his curly dark hair floppy on his forehead. A checkered blue scarf was tied at his neck and he was holding a copy of Plato’s
Republic
in one hand. He looked like he could be an Ian or a Morris. And while I wouldn’t say Ian-or-Morris-or-whoever was the
whole
reason I wanted to go to the University of Pennsylvania, I would have been lying if I said he wasn’t a contributing factor. Mostly, it was because he represented the type of person I wanted to meet in college: intense, committed, focused. Ian-or-Morris would have toiled away thanklessly in high school. Ian-or-Morris would understand where I was coming from. He wouldn’t be like the guys at Bainbridge, who only wanted to copy my Calc homework, or the guys at debate camp, who’d see me as competition as soon as I defeated them in a practice round. He’d understand me, even if I didn’t do the Emily hair flip or laugh in that
heh heh
way at lame comments, the way Ingrid always seemed to whenever a guy tried to crack a joke. In college, I wouldn’t have to pretend to be anyone I wasn’t.

“Miss Westin?” Mr. Klish entered the room and settled heavily in the leather club chair behind his desk. He was wearing a corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows in that non-ironic way that only college professors and grandfathers — both of which he was — could get away with. He emitted a large sigh before clasping his hands over his expansive belly. I tore my eyes away from Morris.

“Sir?” I asked. I didn’t like the sound of his sigh.

“I just spoke with Mrs. Ross.” He squinted down at a thick file folder that I realized was a three-inch-thick record of all my
accomplishments from the past year. “I realize you’re editor in chief of the yearbook as well as working on the newspaper. Are you sure you’ll be able to do both and keep up your academic record? Because the committee for the Ainsworth will be picking through your activities and résumé with a fine-tooth comb, and it would be far better to drop one of the positions now than resign later. I know Jessica Adamson had expressed interest in the yearbook position, so if you wanted to step down, you could help her in an advisory capacity.”

Fear sliced through my stomach. So
that
was why Jessica had run out of the meeting — to reignite last spring’s controversy. Since when had overachieving been a crime? “Have I ever quit anything, Mr. Klish?” I asked in a low, measured voice.

“No, Miss Westin. Your record is impeccable. And that’s why I want to make sure it stays that way. I wouldn’t want your extracurricular activities bogging you down from your academics, or from debate, or from your college search. I’m suggesting you think over your schedule, come up with a list of priorities, and then work together to shift anything around. You don’t need to feel like you’re taking on too much. Jessica could do a fine job as the editor, and it sounds like she’s quite keen for the position. You could still be on the committee, but I don’t want you to feel like you’re shouldering so many leadership positions. After all, even a seriously impressive young lady such as yourself can’t be in two places at once.”

“I appreciate your concern.” I smoothed a wrinkle in my red skirt. Mostly everyone wore jeans to school, but I preferred to dress more formally, drawing inspiration from style blogs geared toward professional twentysomethings. I believed in
dressing for the job you wanted. And the job I wanted was Ainsworth scholar. I looked back up at Mr. Klish.

“I’ve got everything under control. I want this, and I always get what I want.” I locked eyes with Mr. Klish, pleased to see a flicker of agreement in his eyes.

“I am concerned.” Mr. Klish continued to press the issue. “When will you sleep?”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” I said tightly, realizing after the words escaped my lips how clichéd the phrase was, especially for the yearbook editor in chief to admit. But the entire conversation had put me on edge. I hated being questioned, especially when I wasn’t doing anything wrong. After all, what else
should
I have been doing? Instagramming pictures of clouds with the Hacky Sack kids? Wandering around the mall with Keely and Emily?

Laugh lines crinkled around Mr. Klish’s eyes as his face cracked into a smile. “You’ll sleep when you’re dead, huh? Well, I hope you get a little shut-eye before then. And while we’re talking, I wanted to make sure you’re aware that the committee for the Ainsworth semifinals doesn’t only look at the application and recommendations. It does some background research on the World Wide Web. You know, looking into your FaceSpace, your Tweeter, any of that stuff,” he said, awkwardly tripping over the social networking terms.

“You don’t have to worry about that. I don’t do that stuff.” Yes, I occasionally creeped into Keely’s prom-dress-covered Pinterest page and Ingrid’s Instagram feed full of pictures of her, her nose piercing, and European landmarks. I checked Matt’s Twitter feed. It was mostly baseball stats, unintelligible
LOLing about inside jokes, and one time, a sentence that made me think maybe, wildly, that we could somehow be something together:
Psyched to make the yearbook’s sport section mad good!
It was stupid, one of his stream-of-consciousness comments. It wasn’t like he was trying to impress me. I
knew
that. And yet, I kept checking back, hoping for more comments that somehow, indirectly, related to me.

“Good. Keep it that way. I won’t have someone’s scholarship chances in jeopardy because of this so-called social media nonsense. Seems a lot more trouble than it’s worth.” He rose to his feet, a sign that our meeting was over. “And keep up the good work. They should announce the semifinalists for the state in a week. And then, it’ll be an interview in front of a board and your competition —”

“I know,” I interrupted. I’d studied the Ainsworth protocol for weeks. The semifinals were modeled after the interviews done at Oxford and Cambridge, where the interviewers would ask random questions that you were supposed to answer off the top of your head. Past topics had been connecting Lady Gaga’s music to Mozart’s, how
The Decameron
and
Jersey Shore
were similar, and the Ophelia trope as exemplified by Miley Cyrus. They were bizarre questions, and that was the point — if you were Ainsworth material, you’d figure out a way to answer them that drew on your knowledge from a broad range of subjects.

“All right, well, I’m glad to hear you’ve done your homework. Just don’t get cocky. Keep your head down and keep studying.”

“That’s what I always do,” I said, heading into the waiting area. There, sitting on a bench and eating a piece of pie, was
Adam. I immediately noticed the way he jiggled his foot up and down, as if he were a toddler who really, really had to pee.

“I see you’re enjoying your breakfast of champions.” I directed my gaze to his knee, which was still uncontrollably bouncing up and down. It was another trick, courtesy of debate:
Let your enemy see you know his weak spot.

Immediately, the jostling stopped. “And I see you’re still being Miss Congeniality. So, what’s up with the Ainsworth?”

“Do you honestly think I’m going to tell you?”

“Are you scared I’m going to win?” Adam countered. His tone was jokey, but the look in his eyes told me he was dead serious.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” I said, turning on my heel.

“Hayley Has-No-Fear Westin,” Adam mocked. “That doesn’t seem like an Ainsworth-worthy attitude.”

I ignored him and let the guidance door close behind me.

As I entered the crush of students in the hallway, I noticed that Matt Hartnett’s arm was casually slung across the bony shoulders of Erin Carlson, a pretty sophomore theater girl. I felt a sting of betrayal, as sharp and sudden as the snap of a rubber band against my wrist. He wasn’t
supposed
to have a girlfriend.

I shook my head. It didn’t matter. Soon, I’d have a UPenn boy — or maybe even a Parisian dude, if I wanted one. It’d be worth the wait.

T
hat evening, I walked out of school just as the sun was setting. I’d meant to make it an early day, but then I got caught up in a conversation with my debate instructor, Mr. Greenberg. Debate didn’t officially begin until December, when my fate with the Ainsworth and UPenn would be decided, so it wasn’t like it was essential to my college apps. But even though I’d never admit it, I was still psyched about it.

“I just want to have fun,” I’d explained to Mr. Greenberg. “I don’t think I’ll even care about winning. I just want to do it.”

“Whatever you say, Hayley,” he’d said drily, shaking his head. “You can’t turn off that competitive streak. Whether you like it or not, you’re a warrior. Trust me, when the season starts, you’ll want to win.”

Warrior.
I liked it. It sounded way better than
mathlete
or any of the stupid terms teachers used to make academic stuff sound hard. And it was accurate. To me, the Ainsworth
was
life or death — or at least the ticket to
having
an actual life in college, instead of another four years devoted to pushing myself.

Outside, the air smelled like burning leaves, and my car — the tan 1988 Cougar I’d bought from my eighty-five-year-old neighbor after he accidentally drove up the walkway of the town library, thinking it was the parking lot — was one of the few left in the lot.

I slid into the driver’s seat and made my way past the single-story Victorian-style shops and restaurants that surrounded the U. The farther I drove, the bumpier the road became. Houses were more spread out, and horses peered curiously over wooden fences at my car as I made my way to the ramshackle farmhouse my mom and I lived in. At one point, it had belonged to one of the owners of The Sound and the Story, the used bookstore where my mom worked. It was an unexpected inheritance from a relative who hadn’t had the time or the energy to give it the overhaul it needed. Or at least that’s what she said when she offered it to my mom as a rent-free place to live, but I was pretty sure it was because she felt sorry for her.

Or, not sorry. That was the wrong word. More like
entranced
. People always gave my mother things, but it wasn’t because she was a poor single mom. It was because she was still beautiful, and had an aura of fragility surrounding her. She could recite all of William Blake’s poems, but I wasn’t entirely sure she knew how to reset the circuit breaker or when to put out trash for collection. I always did that stuff. I didn’t mind. She was the dreamer, the one who’d first given me a sense of possibility. And I was a worker, the one who made everything fall into place.

I walked up the steps and put my key in the lock, jostling the door until it banged loudly against the wooden frame.

“Hello?” I called, my voice echoing in the drafty kitchen. Sadie, my dog, a poodle-and-terrier mix whose floppy body and oversized eyes made her look more Muppet than anything, nuzzled my knee.

“In here!” my mom yelled. I walked into the living room. My mom was curled up on the lumpy yellow sofa, a mug of tea
clutched in her hand. Her dark blond hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail, and her makeup-free skin made the smattering of sun-freckles on her nose and cheeks extra prominent. She was wearing an oversized button-down shirt and a pair of leggings, and looked interchangeable with any of the college students who hung out at the Ugly Mug. The only thing that made her different was the fact that her boyfriend, Geoff, was at her side. Overweight, red-faced, with salt-and-pepper hair, Geoff looked more like her dad than her boyfriend. He was a real-estate developer from Boston. He was pretty much the opposite of how I always pictured my father — James, the academic my mother had the misfortune of falling for all those years ago. I couldn’t stand Geoff, and also couldn’t understand what my mom saw in him.

“Hey,” I said to both of them, averting my eyes from Geoff’s beefy hand on Mom’s leg.

“Hayley bunny,” she said in her soft voice as she stood up from the couch and pulled me into an embrace. “Geoff was in town and decided to stop by to say hi. Wasn’t that nice of him?”

“Hi,” I said shortly.

“Comet!” he said jovially, using the stupid nickname he’d come up with the first time he met me. Because my name is
Hayley
, and no one had ever thought of that before. His insistence on calling me that was almost as annoying as his insistence on using business acronyms, like EOD and ETA, all the time.

“Geoff and I were waiting for you to see if you wanted to grab dinner.”

I shook my head. I doubted Geoff wanted to rally the troops to get dinner, or whatever stupid catchphrase he’d use. He didn’t care about me. He wanted to spend time with my mom,
and even though I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, it was hard to grasp what she could possibly
see
in Geoff. I worried that her main motivation was his well-padded wallet, and I hated the idea of Mom dating guys based on their cash potential. She said that she found him
grounding
, especially after the string of philosophy PhD students, winter ski instructors, and professional baristas she’d dated. She said she needed to date a grown-up. But I wondered if it didn’t have more than a little bit to do with the fact that Geofferson could easily supply tuition money to anywhere in the country — and Mom knew he’d fallen for her enough to do it in a heartbeat, if she asked him.

“Hayley? What do you want for dinner?” Mom pressed.

“I’m fine. You guys go ahead. I’ll just make a sandwich or something,” I said.

“You sure, baby?” Mom asked, tilting her head quizzically. “It’s the first day of senior year. You should celebrate.
We
should celebrate,” she clarified.

There’s not much to celebrate,
I wanted to say. My Yearbook meeting had been shaky, Jess was attempting to undermine me, and I still allowed Keely, Ingrid, and Emily to get under my skin. I mashed my lips together to keep myself from saying anything. I’d stopped confiding in Mom in ninth grade, right after I’d stopped being friends with Keely, Ingrid, and Emily. I’d come home crying, and Mom had begun crying, too. It had terrified me.

“I just hate seeing you sad. I want your life to be as easy as possible,” she’d said, hugging me tightly. I felt like I’d let her down. And I didn’t want to feel like that ever again.

“I’m fine,” I said. I smiled brightly to try to ease the worry evident in Mom’s eyes.

“Great!” Geoff said. “See, I knew Comet would be wiped. The first day of school would kick anyone’s butt!”

I watched my mom’s face for any sign of annoyance. She loved
poetry
. How could she love a guy who used the phrase
kick butt
? It embarrassed me for him. But Mom was oblivious.

Instead of engaging in conversation, I hurried to the kitchen and made a PB and J sandwich. It was one of the few meals I could count on. PB and J was reliable, simple. Grabbing a soda from the fridge, I headed up the creaky stairs into my attic-turned-bedroom. I pulled off my black cardigan and red skirt and threw on a pair of old gray Bainbridge sweats and a white cotton tank. Then, I flopped onto my bed and exhaled. Sadie jumped up close to me, nosing her way toward my sandwich.

“No!” I pushed her away. I took a quick bite and picked up my laptop from the floor and turned it on. As it whirred to life, I thought back to Mr. Klish’s social media rant. Of course, he didn’t know that I Googled myself almost constantly, and I always knew exactly what would show up: lists of debate wins, honor roll mentions, and academic awards. I typed my name in the search box.

I scrolled through the first page — as expected, it was filled with debate transcripts, Bell Award for Excellence nominees, and absolutely nothing from Keely’s freshman year Tumblr. Then, something on the bottom of the third page caught my eye.

Hayley Kathryn Westin Facebook.

I clicked the link. Probably it was just another Hayley Kathryn.

I blinked.

It was a full-body picture of a girl covered in whipped cream, a rainbow-colored bikini barely visible beneath the white swirls
of frosting. She was smiling proudly at the camera, pleased to be caught in the act. Her eyes were slate gray, and her dark brown hair skimmed her angular shoulders. I clicked. Instantly, the picture magnified to fill the screen. I gasped, clasping my hand to my mouth. Sensing opportunity, Sadie grabbed the sandwich and jumped off the bed, but I didn’t stop her. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the chin dimple, the bangs-covered widow’s peak, the freckles dotting her long arms.
Monkey arms.
The phrase popped into my head. It was what Keely used to call me on the playground.

The profile was open to the public, so I frantically scrolled down, trying to figure out how this
image
, this girl who was me but was not — could not — be me, could exist. It didn’t make sense; it was like a philosophy problem that my mind couldn’t wrap itself around. There
had
to be an explanation.

There was a status update written at 9:02 a.m., the same time I was in AP English, discussing the meaning of magic and superstition in
Macbeth
.

Below the status were two comments, including one from Keely.

That had been Keely’s contribution. My cheeks burned as I frantically clicked on photos. The same girl wearing a pair of red short shorts and a white furry crop top, a Santa hat perched on top of her shoulder-length hair, dark except for subtle streaks of blonde.
I’ve never used hair dye.
The girl canoodling with a muscly dude.
I’ve never been kissed.

But it didn’t matter, because it was me. I looked at the picture of her — me — making out with the guy again. Instead of looking at him, she was looking at the camera, her eyes wide, her smile toothpaste-commercial perfect. My tongue poked my own teeth, noticing the way that my own incisor stuck out, despite years of orthodontia.

It wasn’t me.
I knew that. I
knew
that. And yet …

I closed my eyes and massaged my temples. Then, my mind flashed to the image of Adam waiting outside Mr. Klish’s office. Of course. He’d gotten the same speech about the Ainsworth and the Internet and had come up with a way to sabotage me. He knew I didn’t have Facebook. He knew I probably never would have come across the page. And he knew that there was no way he’d have a chance at the Ainsworth if I were also a candidate.

My hands unclenched, and I realized I’d etched fingernail marks into my palms.
Breathe.
I’d print out the offending page, march it into Mr. Klish’s office, explain the situation, and demand Adam’s suspension. It would be
fine
.

Now that I knew exactly what was happening, I allowed myself to click through the entire profile. It had already amassed forty friends, and seventeen pictures had been uploaded. Fake Hayley at what seemed to be a frat party. Another image of her
and a guy kissing, her bra strap clearly visible as her tank top slipped off her shoulder.

Tears pricked my eyes. This wasn’t
funny
.

A memory sprang to my mind.

Ninth grade, the first day I’d gotten anything below a B. It was a C-minus on a geometry project, and I knew it was because I’d barely studied. I’d snuck a glance at Adam’s paper. He’d gotten an A.

And then, I’d known: I had to quit field hockey. I
needed
to focus on academics. It had already become clear that fall that I couldn’t compete with Keely, Ingrid, or Emily when it came to our social lives. Academics were all I had. And if it meant I had to give up social stuff entirely, then I would. I’d gone in to Coach Smith to discuss it with her, but instead of allowing me to quit privately, she’d made me come to Saturday practice and turn in my uniform. I’d tried to explain why I was quitting to Keely, Emily, and Ingrid — that I
needed
to focus on school, I couldn’t be okay with mediocre grades the way they were — but I don’t think they realized I was actually going to follow through.

Everything was fine until later that afternoon, when I realized I hadn’t heard from any of them. We always hung out on Saturday afternoons, either at the mall or the movies or walking aimlessly up and down Main Street. But I didn’t have any missed calls or texts, and when I checked my e-mail, the only messages I had were from the most popular guys in school, telling me just how much of a loser I was.

When I checked my Facebook page, I found out why. They’d scanned every single stupid HIKE list I’d ever written and put
them up as a note on my Facebook wall, under the heading
Guys I Love
. And the worst part was, I hadn’t even
liked
any of the guys I’d written about. I didn’t think Jon Weber was
hotter than a Hemsworth brother
, I didn’t believe Seth Koen was
first-kiss worthy
, and I certainly didn’t want to make out with Max White. I’d just written that because those were the guys Keely was always talking about, and I’d been trying to fit in.

Back then, I’d ran out of the house, gotten on my bike, and gone to Adam’s. He was the one who had managed to trace the IP address. The next morning, I’d taken down my Facebook, blocked my e-mail, and gradually scrubbed away any personality from my Internet presence.

I’d never let Keely see how much it bothered me.
That
would have given her satisfaction. Instead, I’d reinvented myself. I’d gotten rid of my brightly colored camisoles and skinny jeans. I’d ripped the pictures from my bulletin board. Even my handwriting had changed, from bubbly, oversized script often written in purple ink to small, neat print.

No one knew that I was vulnerable — except Adam. He’d been the only one to see me cry. The next day, I’d gone to school and ignored the comments flying around me. Eventually, they’d died down — but the anger and hurt hadn’t. I’d never be seen as normal. I’d always be a grade-grubbing freak that no guy would admit to liking — even if, by some miracle, they did.