Little White Lies (6 page)

Come on, Mike
, I silently pleaded.
Step up
.

Mrs. Cornelius smirked. “Coretta, I know you and Michael spend quite a bit of time volunteering at SKOOLS 4 ALL. How would you say that is going?”

Oh my God, this is how I die: embarrassment. My boyfriend’s mother knows we make out under the guise of helping children. “Umm, I like it?”

“I know it must be a lot for you to volunteer for so many hours after school in addition to keeping up with your schoolwork and extracurricular activities.”

Was this entrapment? I decided to play stupid by playing smart. “You know, it does seem like a lot on paper, but it all just seems to work.” A cheese-eating grin sprang across my face, like I’d just won the blue ribbon at the county fair.

Esther looked at Douglas, and he nodded back at her. “Coretta, I want to cut to the chase—Douglas and I are on the board at Pulse TV, and we talked to them about you. They are very interested in your blog.”

Of course I knew that they were on the board of Pulse TV. It was how I’d hooked up with—er, “met”—their son in the first place. Esther and Cornelius were there at that very first SKOOLS 4 ALL fundraiser over the summer. They’d seen Mike flirt with me. And they’d clearly approved. So the whole fake formality of this interrogation had now officially put me on edge.
Who
exactly was interested in my blog? Who were
they
, other than Mike’s parents?

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:

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.

“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.