Pretty Hate (New Adult Novel) (10 page)

“Nope,” Ivory-Lou said.

“Yes,” Rebel Love said.

“Well, I guess I better noogle it! Our mother is a fucking bitch, by the way,” I said as I walked past Rebel Love toward my room.

“That is nothing new,” she said and sighed.

I opened Facebook and sent Nicolas an email:
I miss you
, it said. And then I refreshed eighty times to see if he read it.

As my anxiety amped, I looked at his Facebook page and searched his friends for girls who were named Willow or Kim. I found Willow. She was gorgeous. There were twelve Kims to choose from and none of those options were good.

“Is he friends with every beautiful girl on the planet?” I said as I trolled through his friend list.

I then scrolled back and studied three years of posts: what did he have to say, who posted on his page, who commented and who “liked.” I then followed the paths...clicked on the girls who posted a lot, clicked on the girls who “liked” a lot, clicked on the beautiful girls and then scoured their pages if they were open. At the end of four hours, I had more tabs opened than Chili’s on a Friday night.

When I saw the message alert pop up on the screen, I held my breath as I read his response to my
I miss you
. It was only this:
Got your message. Really hot here. How’s the weather there?

No,
I miss you too
, no,
Can’t wait to see you
, no,
xoxo
. I did not respond.

And I lost it.

Back to his page, the deductive portion of my madness kicked in and I became a statistician. I tried to figure out who may or may not be on the trip with him. I narrowed the fifty or so girls I was most concerned about down to thirteen girls who were present most often on Nicolas’ page.

I bookmarked them. I clicked the links on their pages. I watched every YouTube video they posted, read every eCard, every event invitation and looked at every picture. I Googled, in quotes, their names. I stalked their Pinterest pages, MySpace, YouTube, Instagram and goddamned LinkedIn. I stalked their friends. I crossed out the ones who had boyfriends.

The ten candidates I was left with were all beautiful, all well-read and all well-traveled.

“Isn’t he friends with any poor people?” I said as I looked at my 59
^th
Zurich
vacay
picture.

They made homemade salt scrubs and bamboo wind chimes and quiches with chia seeds. They wore shawls and bathed in almond milk and did yoga. They all seemed to paint and sing and write and they had studios where they pursued their art. They were friends with authors and musicians and their
parents
. One was nearly indistinguishable from the other. Each one of these perfect specimens took perfect photos. Their outfits matched, their nail polish was not chipped and they had amazing taste in shoes. They seemed to have fun all the time. And they were not me.

I connected every post they made and every picture they posted to Nicolas. When Jessie Carter posted:
On a date with???
, the
???
was quite obviously Nicolas Miles. When Amanda Lawrence posted a YouTube video of Radiohead doing
Creep
, it was a dedication to Nicolas Miles. When Nicole Amodio posted a picture of a full moon with a caption that read:
Thinking of my lover...,
the
lover...
was Nicolas Miles.

When my laptop started burning my legs, I grabbed my phone and started in on Instagram. I went to Nicolas’ page first and scrolled through all his pictures. I then went to his friends’ pictures. I ran across a photo that a beautiful girl named India Zamani posted that evening. The setting looked tropical and it was a group of friends jumping off the ground. One of the guys in the pictures looked like Nicolas. I held my phone up to my face and couldn’t make out the face. I tapped on the screen to try to enlarge the photo and I ended up liking India Zamani’s Instagram picture. I freaked and closed Instagram.

My stomach creaked and groaned so much, it sounded like an old wooden ship. Ivory-Lou knocked on my door and came into my room.

“We’re going to breakfast. You coming?” he said as he looked around my room.

“Breakfast? What time is it?”

“Eleven. You been to bed yet?”

“Um, I didn’t think it was that late.”

“It is. Get some sleep. You look like shit,” he said and closed my door.

I called Stephanie and told her how I spent my evening.

“You’re crazy, Beth. You spent like seventeen
hours
stalking all those people?”

“Yes,” I said and shook my head. “And I’m no closer to any answers.”

“What answers are you looking for?”

“I want to know how he feels about me.”

“And you’re going to find this out by studying all these people’s lives? You don’t even know if there’s a connection.”

“There is,” I said and chewed on my fingernail. “I know there is. I haven’t told you the worst part yet.”

“It could not possibly get worse, Beth.”

“It does. I was on India Zamani’s Instagram and I ended up hearting one of her pictures.”

“Who the hell is India Zamani?”

“No idea. I thought she was in a picture with Nicolas. I thought I could blow the picture up and ended up hearting instead.”

“Did you unheart?” she said.

“You can unheart?”

“Yes! Unheart it!” she said.

“They all have perfect lives, Steph,” I said as I rested against my pillow and yawned. “I uncovered a group of people who I never knew existed. I should have been an archeologist.”

“No one’s life is perfect, Beth. Besides, people could be thinking that about you.”

“No one thinks that about me, Stephanie. These girls fly to Paris for hot chocolate and go surfing in Australia and discover fucking treehouses in forests and turn them into studios where they can paint and have photo shoots with their friends, while I, on the other hand, am the chick known as Garbage Girl that someone wants to hump in the dumpster.”

“Beth, you are not that girl. You just think you are. Nothing good comes from comparing yourself.”

“Well, it’s all I have. I thought he felt a certain way about me and now I’m not so sure. There’s a distance to his writing.”

“First of all, you cannot pull any emotion out of a short email. And second, why don’t you ask him?”

“I can’t ask him,” I said and closed my eyes. “I’m afraid of his answer. And I’m afraid she will be right.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

I woke up nine hours later and immediately went to Instagram to unheart India Zamani’s picture. And then I saw an email notification from India Zamani.

“Shit,” I said as I stared at her email.

It read:
Hi. Who are you
?

I sent her an email back an apologized and told her I had the wrong picture. She wrote back and told me she thought I was her ex-boyfriend stalking her.

And thus began my friendship with India Zamani.

India Zamani was exactly like the other girls I stalked that night only we had a lot more in common than I thought. Her ex-boyfriend dumped her and broke her heart and she started dating another guy named Devon. Devon lived in Denver and acted hot and cold toward India. India Zamani and I were missed connections bonding over missed connections.

She lived in Montauk in a big house with her mother Lucia, a former model, her sixth stepfather Baron Richter and India’s little sister Sahara. Lucia Zamani also had a lover named Adolfo. India had a brother named Kenneth Lee whose father was India’s second stepfather. Kenneth Lee decided to become a drag queen and had quite a large following in Manhattan performing as Kimmy Dickless.

India’s house was always filled with famous artists and photographers and authors and musicians. Her mother’s last husband before Baron Richter was the lead singer of the band Luckless, Declan White. They were only married for a few months, but he and the family are still very close. I freaked because they are one of Stephanie’s favorite bands and she freaked when I told her.

In between stalking Nicolas, his friends and their friends, India and I emailed back and forth all day long for a week. We became friends across multiple social networking platforms and she always tagged me in inspirational quotes and videos.

I instant messaged her one day after getting depressed over another unanswered email from Nicolas and she told me to Skype her. I put my laptop on my bed and laid on my stomach while I waited for her to pick up the annoying ring. I was nervous. It almost felt like a first date.

“Oh my God, it’s you!” India Zamani squealed as she looked into her monitor.

India’s hair was beautifully wild and blond. She had these cool dreads that looked chic rather than dirty hippy and she had stars tattooed on the inner wrist of her right hand and a half-moon on the inner wrist of her left. That day, she wore hardly any makeup and was exquisite.

“It’s me,” I said and laughed.

“Jesus, I’m surprised,” she said as she brought her face closer to the monitor.

I shifted a little on the bed and wished I was in diffused light.

“I didn’t sleep much last night,” I said and smoothed my hair. “I was upset.”

“No, I mean, your outsides don’t match your insides at all. You’re beautiful.”

“Oh,” I said and smiled. “Thank you.”

“So,” she said and sat back in a white, wrought iron chair, “what’s going on with Nicolas?”

“Where are you?” I said as I looked over her head and saw a beautiful arbor behind her. “I hear waves.”

“Oh, this is my veranda, take a look,” she said and picked up her laptop and walked around a beautiful stone patio. “The beach is right here.”

India turned her computer and scanned the beach below her and then to a long row of chaise lounge chairs where two women and three men sat having cocktails by her pool.

She walked back to the table and sat down.

“God, it’s incredible,” I said.

“Show me your place,” she said and lit a black cigarette.

“Uh, there’s nothing much to see. What kind of cigarette is that?”

“Dajarum. You’ve never had one?”

“No, never,” I said.

“They’re cloves. You will have one,” she said and smiled. “What are you drinking right now?”

“Can of Coke. What are you drinking?”

“A beer. One of Baron’s friends brought cases of beer with him. He’s visiting from Iceland. They have the best beer.”

“I’ve never had Icelandic beer before,” I said and looked at my Coke.

“You will have one. So, tell me about Nicolas. What did he do now?”

“I don’t know, India. He just seems distant. Kind of like he wants to disappear, which is ironic given the book he gave me.”

“The Stranger
! We had to read it for an exam last year. Which quote did Nicolas use again?”

“‘It was better to burn than disappear.’ Irony,” I said and shook my head.

“Exactly!” India said and blew smoke in the air. “You should tell him that. You should tell him: Nicolas, you are disappearing from my life, not burning into it.”

“Yeah, I’ll see. It just makes me sick, you know? Do you ever look at other girls’ pages? I mean, I feel stupid, but it’s become sort of an obsession of mine.”

“Duh, it’s how we met, is it? I do it too, Beth,” she said and laughed. “I think everyone does. You just got caught.”

“I’m glad I did in this case,” I said.

“Me too! I thought to myself that we are going to end up being best friends. You and I think alike about a lot of stuff, don’t we?”

“Why does it sound like you have an accent?”

“Oh, Kenneth and I were homeschooled. She was English so we picked up her accent a bit. Are you going to college?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I guess I have to do something. It just seems easier to do--”

“Nothing? I know. I told Lucia that I wanted to travel for a living, but not like a stewardess or anything nasty like that.”

“Wouldn’t that be a dream?” I said and sighed.

“Well, we need to come up with some kind of business...something where we can travel
and
get paid. We need to brainstorm!”

“That would be so cool. Do you think we can?”

“I know we can! Lucia’s guru says that as soon as you set an intention into the universe, the universe will help you to make it so.”

“My mother says all my wishing won’t ever amount to shit,” I said.

“That’s your first mistake. You need to stop listening to disbelievers who don’t support your path. You’re destined for greatness, Beth, I can tell. Stop listening to people with small dreams.”