Dear Girls Above Me: Inspired by a True Story (15 page)

“Screw you, Claire. The only reason you have more Facebook friends is because you accept everyone.” Subtext: You’re a whore.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“I’ve had a horrible day and now I gotta learn this new Facebook timeline?! Life is out to get me!” Apparently so is the Internet.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“He totally drunk friend requested me at 3 am! Should I reject it and sober add him tomorrow?” Don’t, he’ll hangover ignore you.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“It’s official, I deleted my Facebook.” Nice, I have a lot of respect—“Luke and Sara went to Cancun!? Reactivate!” 14 seconds.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“I don’t even want a boyfriend, I just wanna be ‘in a relationship’ with someone on Facebook.” My teenage cousin is looking …

Dear Girls Above Me,

“I had to leave the gym early to detag a photo Jess posted of me where I look fat!” Maybe if you worked out more …

CHAPTER TWELVE

I awoke the next morning, dangling sideways off my bed, to the thunderous sound of somebody snoring behind me. For a moment I believed I was living my worst nightmare: a burly burglar had broken into my apartment to steal my television but decided to just lie with me instead. Once my brain began functioning properly, I remembered that a girl had actually spent the night (that makes it sound way cooler than it was). The fact that Bridget, a girl so petite, could produce that much nasal noise was more impressive than annoying. I then wondered what might happen when Bridget awakened. There’s nothing more awkward than waking up in the sunlight to a stranger in your bed after a fake night romp. As I rolled over and pretended to cough in order to wake her up, I was taken aback by the fact that she wasn’t there. The source of the heavy breathing was Marvin, who lay horizontally against me, fast asleep on Bridget’s sweater.

I cleared my throat of morning mucus. “Bridget?” I called out.

This woke Marvin, but I got no human response. My room was
eerily silent; not even the girls above could be heard. It finally hit me that Bridget had taken off. So, not only had I not had sex with her, and I’m talking about real sex here, but she also had left me in the wee hours of the morning without saying good-bye. Had I been fake-used? What a real bitch!

I checked my phone and found a text message from Luke that read, “I went to breakfast with the girls above you. It’s weird, I remember Cathy’s name but can’t remember the name of the girl I fucked. Help!” I didn’t find this weird. I could tell from listening to him last night that he never knew her name, especially when they were having sex and she was yelling at him, “Say my name, bitch!” to which he responded, “You’re the bitch, bitch!” And for whatever twisted reason, this turned her on even more. Luke clearly had many skills. Nothing practical that could, say, land him a job, but he knew some stuff.

I began typing out Claire’s name but decided to delete it after I pictured Luke trying to figure it out on his own. I started to wonder why Bridget had left her sweater. Was this done on purpose or was she so regretful of the fake one-night stand that she left it in a hurry? My thoughts on most things in the past had always been very straightforward. For example, if I had seen a sweater at my apartment that didn’t belong to me, then I would’ve thought that someone had left it by accident. Now, with the recent addition of the girls above me, I’d started to become more of a conspiracy theorist. Apparently not everything is what it seems.…

“When I left Will’s house, I
so
wasn’t looking my cutest and I was afraid he’d never want to see me again. So, when he wasn’t paying attention, I snuck his cell into my purse and said good-bye. Then I came home, ran a bath, changed into cute clothes, and put makeup on. By the time he contacted me to see if I had accidentally taken it,
I was looking all hot and ready to see him again.” Cathy, a mastermind, had said this to Claire a few weeks prior.

I had no idea that brains could even function this way. No girl had ever “accidentally” taken my cell phone before, but was Bridget’s sweater her version of this? If so, I decided I should probably get it dry-cleaned; Marvin had slept on it. I figured I would just have to wait and see if she contacted me about it. Then I remembered she never got my number, nor did I have hers. Huh, she really did use me, didn’t she? And it wasn’t even for something that benefited me. Instead, it was to make another girl jealous. Which isn’t the worst thing, as it does make me an object of lust used to manufacture mental trauma in an unsuspecting recipient. That’s almost like sex.

Regardless of the morning’s outcome, I had a bit of pep in my step. There was a slight possibility it was a cramp in my foot, but for the purposes of my self-worth I was going to stick with my being in high spirits. The last girl to have lain down in my bed was my ex, so at the very least, I was moving in the right direction. It was time for me to make something of my day. I pulled the curtains open to greet the world, and the world welcomed me back with … pouring rain.

Before I could take the day by storm in my Wellington rain boots, the events of last night inspired me to do a little Facebook-profile renovation. I had been dreading this moment for quite a while, but it was time to make the big change from “in a relationship” to “single.” The only problem with this momentous decision was the baggage that came with it. Clicking “single” on your status was just another way of saying “I got dumped and I’m letting you know in the most pathetic way humanly possible.” And on top of that, I knew my entire Facebook “family” would have something to say about it. I could hear the responses now.…

What happened?! Do I need to kill her? You know I will. I’m not afraid.

—Aunt Nancy

Saweeeeeeeeet.

—Childhood male friend

OMG :(:(:~).

—My teenage cousin

Want a hooker? My treat.

—My dad’s friend (has been arrested)

I’m really sorry, Charlie.

—An ex-girlfriend who isn’t sorry

I guess that’s another year I don’t have to buy baby clothes for grandchildren.

—My mother

Click
. I did it. I was officially single and letting the world know about it. My plan now: Wait ninety seconds and then hit the
REFRESH
button to see the flood of digital responses to my relationship (or lack thereof) status. I got a little excited, partly because waiting for anything causes some form of exhilaration, but mostly because I had jotted down a few “fun” retorts to people’s comments. My favorite being “She died horribly. I’m okay.”

Only ten seconds had gone by. The anticipation was killing me. I needed to stay active. Here’s what I did in the remaining eighty seconds:

Snapped at Marvin for snoring even though he wasn’t anymore.

Stuck a thumbtack in my wooden desk (three times).

Ignored two phone calls from my mother, plus a text (something about grandchildren).

Bam
.
REFRESH
. What?! No one? Really? Nobody had any thoughts, concerns, or pity about my sudden loss of relationship? I guess I didn’t know my “Facebook family” as well as I thought I did.
Or
, everyone was at lunch … at 10:23
A.M.
Okay, fine, I accepted the fact that people weren’t as interested in my life’s crumbling to pieces as I was. That may have been true. But I refused to believe that none of my friends cared. I hit
REFRESH
again, believing that I had possibly not given everyone an acceptable amount of time. I clicked it again.

A response
.

Success
.

Sort of …

It came from my eleventh-grade English teacher, Mrs. Kelley. Not the worst news in the world; it could’ve come from Mr. Olyer, my Intro to Greek professor (a cold shiver ran down my spine). Let’s see what Mrs. Kelley had to say: “APPLE Inc. is giving FREE 64 GB APPLE iPAD’s to ALL the US fans.” So not only did my one response come from my high school English teacher, but since she’d clearly been hacked, it was
spam
.

I checked my new friend requests. There were five people awaiting my approval. Two of them had no mutual friends in common with me, so that was an easy
NOT NOW. NOT NOW.
(Not never.) One of them was from my stalker, Star Epple, whom I reject every day but
like clockwork attempts to become a part of my Facebook family again the next day.
NOT NOW
, see you again tomorrow, Star. Another request was from my estranged uncle, whom I hadn’t seen since I was a young boy. In fact, it took me a few times of saying his name out loud to even remember who he was. I called my dad to ask him if I needed to accept his request, to which he replied, “Yes, you do. But make sure not to give him any of my contact information. Just tell him I keep changing it and it’s hard to keep up.” My dad, Mary Poppins.
CONFIRM
.

The final request was from a young gentleman I went to high school with, Graham King. I was never really good friends with Graham, but not enemies either. He was undoubtedly considered our “class clown,” and not only because he was humorous, but also because he actually looked like a clown. He would often wear jeans you could fit another person into, shoes that must’ve been a couple sizes too big, a red and white
Where’s Waldo
?–looking T-shirt, and a black bowler cap. This everyday outfit would complement his portly body to perfection. People would often laugh at his jokes, but I always wondered if we were just laughing at
him
.

By the looks of his profile picture, no one would have found Graham funny anymore. He now wore a tight Duran Duran T-shirt, skinny black jeans, and long stallion-like hair, and posed as if he were a Calvin Klein model. I guess that’s what almost ten years and escaping the brutal high school hierarchy will do to you. And,
CONFIRM
.

That got me thinking about how my fellow high school classmates would describe my current appearance. More attractive? Less attractive? The same? From my wallet I pulled out my first-ever driver’s license. Holy crap, I had a lot of hair! A sun-kissed golden color with naturally curled locks, and now … not so much. I don’t get it, why
does hair just stop growing in certain places? Who knew hair was suicidal? I wish I could sit my hair down and have a real heart-to-heart discussion:

To my community of Hair: This exodus must end. Entirely too many of you are fleeing the top headlands and seeking refuge in the back and buttock regions. I assure you, there is no reason to evacuate. Things are good on the top of the head. Maybe I have been too neglectful. I promise that in the future, I will use overpriced product at least once a week, and we can talk about why the Frosted Tips incident of ’99 will not happen again.

After finally convincing myself that I looked “the same-ish” as I did in high school, I started to think about the most beautiful girls from my class. But there was one UGGs wearer who stood out from the rest (or at least for the purposes of this story), and her name was Katie Rosenfeld. She was in a league of her own and completely embodied all aspects of the “perfect girl” cliché: not that smart, unwittingly funny, institutionally crazy—okay, wait, maybe she wasn’t the definition of the “perfect girl,” but she was for sure the hottest girl I had ever seen. Sandy blond hair, humongous blue eyes, and a set of pearly whites you’d normally only see on a piano.

So I did a search for Katie Rosenfeld, mostly out of curiosity, but also to please the sixteen-year-old Charlie’s hormones. And … 
ENTER
.

Great. There were twenty-two Katie Rosenfelds in my network. And to make matters worse, twenty of them had privacy settings, so stalking—I mean, reacquainting myself with—her was going to be somewhat difficult. But I had desperation and determination on my
side. I made myself a bowl of Quaker Oatmeal with fresh blueberries, as fuel for the hunt. “Okay, let’s do this.” I actually said those words out loud.

I decided to use an old tactic I learned in the schoolyard, called “the process of elimination.” Even though it had a negative connotation for me, meaning I had always been eliminated from everything, it still felt like the best way to identify Katie’s profile. So, I started with the cities. Athens, Georgia; Bloomington, Illinois; Raleigh, North Carolina; Casper, Wyoming—none of these places felt very “Katie” to me. I figured the best bet was that she’d stayed in the greater Los Angeles area, as most wealthy spoiled kids from my school did, including me. Up next, eliminate any girls I knew weren’t Katie, based on their profile pictures.