The Pretty App (2 page)

J
oanna cut the line and I followed, too out of sorts to think about anything except Audrey. We paid for matching tofu scrambles and cut through the students hovering around the new Public Corporation vending machines. The first one sold tech gadgets for cash at 10 percent off. The second one streamed music videos and concerts, and you could plug in your buyPhone to download songs. Built-in screens on top of the vending machines lit up with
BREAKING NEWS
banners. The image faded, replaced by a shot of Times Square in New York City. A skyscraper emblazoned with a Coca-Cola ad reached toward the heavens. Billboards advertising Broadway musicals curved around buildings.

Joanna and I ignored the screens and made our way through the cafeteria. I tried not to get upset when I saw Xander sitting near the Dumpster at a table with Mindy
and Audrey’s crew. Audrey and her boyfriend, Aidan, stared at Audrey’s Infinitum laptop. Audrey wouldn’t be caught dead with a Public computer—she only used products made by Infinitum, their biggest rival.

Aidan was a shy kind of cute—hands shoved in his pockets, tall and blue-eyed with a mop of black hair. Not my type, but perfect for Audrey. And he was nice to her. I kept an eye on them from a distance, and I could just tell.

Audrey’s cousin Lindsay sat next to them with her computer-nerd boyfriend, Nigit. Nigit and I used to be friends growing up, but then our dads had a big blowout fight, and I think that’s when he started hating me. And now I was having some kind of weird second-semester-senior-year melancholy that was making me wish more than ever that we could somehow erase every bad thing that had happened between us and start over. But I certainly couldn’t be the one to initiate it: None of them would ever trust me.

I watched as Lindsay and Nigit craned to see Audrey’s computer. The glow made Nigit’s smooth brown skin look golden. Xander and Mindy stared at each other like they were the only ones in the cafeteria.

“Happy birthday, Blake,” Woody Ames said from his seat at the end of our lunch table. Woody is the co-captain of the lacrosse team (and taker of my virginity), and he usually sat with us when he wasn’t actively trying to sleep with someone new.

I smiled at him. “Thanks, Woody,” I said. His brown hair matched his eyes and sweater. All that brown, plus his too-long canines, reminded me of a fox.

“We have something
amazing
planned for you tonight,” Jolene said from her spot across from Woody. Her blue eyes matched Joanna’s; so did her honey-blond highlights. Jolene was one year younger than us, but she and her sister could pass for twins.

“So how does eighteen look on me?” I asked, craving a compliment. I needed to stay afloat today.

“Gorgeous, as usual,” Woody said with a smirk. Jolene nodded her agreement.

I slid into a seat next to Woody and watched him power on his laptop. I wanted to ask him about Xander and Mindy, but there was no point. He’d never tell me anything. “So who has a guess about what the app is?” I asked, pulling my tablet from my satchel. Tiny blue hearts from my sister’s old sticker collection lined its white edge.

“Something life changing,” Woody said sarcastically. He cared about apps about as much as I did.

“Do you
really
not know anything about it?” Jolene asked me, arching an eyebrow.

I didn’t, but I gave them a half-smile like maybe I did. My dad had been in business with Public since grad school at MIT. He was one of Public’s biggest investors right from the start—it was how he made his fortune—and he and Public CEO Alec Pierce were thick as thieves.

I pushed a smooth round button. An ivory glow warmed the screen as my tablet came to life. I tapped the Public Party Network icon.

Hello, Blake Andrea Dawkins. Ready to start the party? Enter Your Password.

I typed
nicoledawkins
. My sister and I always used each other’s names for passwords. I wondered if I was still hers.

Welcome, Blake Andrea. Happy birthday from your friends at Public! You have three messages.

Only three?

I scrolled through the messages from Xander, Joanna, and Jolene. Then I checked my phone. Nic still hadn’t called or even texted. Things hadn’t been okay between us for a long time, but she still usually called to wish me a happy birthday.

“Are you seeing this?” Jolene asked, her pink fingernail tapping her tablet’s screen. Joanna glanced over her sister’s shoulder. Woody ate his salami sandwich and half-watched a pretty sophomore. I saw Jolene track the path of his stare and wished that just once she’d confide one of her secret crushes to me. When Audrey and I were best friends, there was nothing we kept from each other.

My tablet let out a series of
beep
s, and an alert flashed across the Public Party homepage.
BREAKING NEWS.
I clicked on the banner, and the screen showed Times Square again. A mob of girls screamed like banshees around a rectangular stage. Everyone else in the cafeteria must’ve been watching, too: Audio echoed across the lunchroom until the screaming sounded like it was coming from us.

I glanced back at the screen. The screaming girls’ faces lifted to the sky, and they pointed and waved as their screams were drowned out by a snarling motor. The noise got louder and louder until no one in the cafeteria was talking anymore. We were all staring at our laptops and
tablets blasting the video, while the lunch ladies looked at us like we’d gone insane.

On-screen, the legs of a helicopter came into view, followed by its hulking body. It trembled and teetered, then lowered slowly and touched down onto the stage. The Public logo blazed in orange letters on the tail. The door opened, and a guy swung his legs over the side of the chopper and jumped onto the stage. He was holding the sides of his helmet with small tan hands. Jolene and I caught each other’s glance over our tablets. “WTF?” Jolene mouthed. I shrugged and looked back at my screen as the guy yanked off his helmet.

Pop star and Public spokesperson Danny Beaton’s cherubic face emerged from beneath the helmet, and the crowd went nuts. The screaming wasn’t audible anymore over the helicopter, but you could tell it was going on because the screaming girls’ mouths were open and their neck muscles were strained. Except for the girl who had passed out. Someone was fanning her and trying to get her to drink from a plastic cup. Danny Beaton held his helmet beneath his arm and saluted the pilot. The pilot saluted back. Then the chopper lifted from the stage and took off into the sky. It looked a little wobbly again as it veered around a massive video screen.

A few kids looked over at me to see my reaction—like maybe I knew what was going on. I sat there smiling at my tablet, because I was supposed to be in favor of everything Public did. My dad liked to remind me that Public stock paid for my entire life, including my upcoming four years at Notre Dame. My grades aren’t good enough to get any
kind of scholarship—not even close. Audrey used to say that I was one of the smartest people she knew. But I just freeze up when it comes time to take tests—I can’t help it. It’s like every one of them is a trap, another reason for my father to seem disappointed and my mother to look smug, like she knew all along that I wasn’t as great as my father used to think I was. The only tests I do well on are the oral ones. And how often do we have those? Like, never.

I only got in to Notre Dame because of my dad, and sometimes I think he’s happy about that. It’s like his power over me or something, his way of making sure I need him. I got into Notre Dame Early Action. (So did Audrey.) I didn’t even apply to any other schools because I wanted to spare myself the humiliation of getting rejected.

Nic got into Notre Dame all by herself. She’s pretty
and
smart, like Audrey. I shuddered to think how smart the kids would be at Notre Dame. But I would figure out my plan once I got there. I would survive college just like I did high school. I had to.

Goth Girl Greta Fleming yelled from a few tables over, “Public consumerism funds global warming!”

“Your face funds global warming!” Joanna shouted back. But everyone was too busy watching the Public show to pay them any attention. Danny Beaton strode across my tablet’s screen, taking his place center stage. His hair-sprayed fauxhawk was crunched down from the helmet. The motoring sound had receded, and the screams were back. Peppy music trumpeted behind him as he tapped his thigh with a white microphone. A sexy lady dressed in a
low-cut suit paraded toward him holding a briefcase.

“The moment you’ve all been waiting for is here,”
Danny said into the microphone. He gave the woman a not-so-subtle once-over, and she blushed.

Danny Beaton was supposed to be the hottest thing for preteens and teenage girls. The sixteen-year-old pop star was cute, but he didn’t do it for me, not since I was twelve and already taller than him.

Danny opened the briefcase and stared at the contents like he was seeing them for the first time. The camera cut to show the interior: plush velvet cradled a buyPhone with a glittery gold case. The glowing screen displayed a black app with simple pink lettering:
THE PRETTY APP
.

Gold and pink streamers fluttered in front of the camera, and the live audience went wild. I’d never seen something like this for an app release—not even by Public. Danny Beaton screamed over the audience.
“On behalf of Public Corporation, I’d like to announce the Pretty App!”

I looked up from my screen at the rest of the cafeteria. Kids were either absorbed in the broadcast or reaching for their phones. I glanced quickly at Audrey. She wasn’t smiling like everyone else. Her lips made a thin, straight line, and her green eyes were distant, almost like she was watching something else.

“Check this out,” Joanna said, her fingers flying over her phone.

Xander caught my eye from his spot next to Mindy. I knew he was wondering if I’d known about this. I shook my head to tell him I hadn’t.

Joanna tilted her phone so we could all see. Her screen flashed black with the same simple pink lettering.

Welcome to the Pretty App, the one and only app that finds America’s prettiest teens and rewards them with fame, prizes, and a nationally recognized title.

An app that found America’s prettiest teens? Like some kind of modeling-scout thing?

To begin, upload one cover photo and at least three gallery photos. Your photos must meet the following requirements:

1) A photo taken head-on of your full body

2) A photo taken of your full body in profile

3) A photo of your face

4) A photo of your face in profile

Crowd-source with the Pretty App’s users for tips and secrets to become your prettiest self. Add the Pretty App’s exclusive filters to make yourself look even better. Hashtag your city, state, and high school, and upload your photos. Know someone who’s too shy to submit herself? Just snap the requisite photos of her and fill out the required details: Name, Age, Grade, High School*.

*The Pretty App is only for female students 16+ officially enrolled in high school in the United States of America. All others will be disqualified from participation.

I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t an app about prettiness. I cranked the volume on my tablet to hear Danny Beaton droning away.
“You—yes, you!—can be a part of the newest, hottest, most exciting app! The Public Pretty App is unlike any other.”
Static hit Danny’s microphone and drowned his words.
“A national beauty contest revealed in stages . . .”
Crackle.
“Stage One available today.”
Crackle. Crackle.
The static stopped and the camera pulled back to show the number 1 painted in yellow on the front of Danny’s portable stage. Music blared over the sound system, and Danny started singing.

“A queen pricks her finger on the thorn of a rose

Three drops of blood on the morning snow fall

Magic Mirror on the wall

Who’s the prettiest one of all?”

My heart raced, because the answer had to be me: it was the one thing that made me special.

“This app is just a beauty contest,” I heard Audrey say. “Aren’t we beyond that?”

Danny fixed the camera with his trademark steamy stare. Then he said:
“Stage One: Download the Pretty App and upload your photos.”
He ran a hand through his light brown hair.
“The Pretty App will upgrade itself to the next stage in two days.”
The screen went dark as he uttered his final words.

“Be ready.”

I
pulled into our circular driveway that afternoon and saw Nic’s Volkswagen Beetle. No wonder she hadn’t called: She’d come home to surprise me for my birthday, which was so much better.

Nic was a senior at Notre Dame. She was graduating in two months with a film, television, and theater degree. She wanted to write TV shows and screenplays in LA, though she didn’t dare tell my parents that. Notre Dame was five minutes from our house, but Nic had lived in a dorm all four years and never came home except for Thanksgiving and Christmas. She told us it was because she got so much done while the other kids were back home with their families on break. I believed her—for a little while.

I turned off the ignition, my mind racing ahead to tonight. If Nic wanted to stay, I could suggest a few games at South Bend Bowl & Arcade, or a movie at U.P. Mall if
she wasn’t up for too much talking. It didn’t really matter what we did; Nic was one of those people who could make anything fun, even a trip to CVS. I practically sprinted up the driveway. I went to stick my key in the lock, but the front door was cracked open. A chill ran over my skin. We always locked our doors.

I touched the wood, my fingers suddenly sweaty. I pushed the door, and light spilled into the foyer. My shadow stretched long and skinny across the marble tile.

“Nic?” I called, but there was no answer. Maybe she’d gone for a walk? I crept into the living room and saw a bunch of loose diary pages scattered across the floor. I knelt down and traced my fingertip over the writing scrawled in pencil.

Reasons:

We love each other

Mom and Dad will never understand, they don’t feel what I do

The page was dated four years ago. I scanned my memory—the fall of my eighth grade year: Nic was a senior.

I snatched up the next page. Maybe there was some kind of clue here to whatever was going on with Nic. I scanned the paper, but it was just a bunch of numbers with South Bend area codes, plus a number written in red pen at the bottom with a 310 area code: Los Angeles.

Next to the paper was a journal that appeared to be an old scrapbook. Nic’s handwritten block letters spelled
YOU AND ME
on the cover, and a lone movie ticket stub edged out from the side, dated years ago. Maybe it was something
she’d made for Bobby Crawford, who she’d dated briefly during her junior year of high school. (I’d spied on their breakup from my bedroom window—Nic had dumped him on Halloween while wearing a witch’s costume and straddling a broomstick.)

I put my hand on the scrapbook to trace the letters, but I couldn’t bring myself to open it. I suddenly felt way too guilty for looking at her stuff, and I was about to stand up when a door slammed.

Nic appeared at the edge of the living room. I hadn’t seen her in months.

In some ways looking at Nic was like looking into a mirror: Our clear complexions were identical shades of olive; our noses were the natural version of the tiny, perfect kind girls try for at the plastic surgeon’s office; and our eyes matched, too—dark like coffee beans and curved like almonds. But Nic had dyed her hair a few shades lighter than mine, to a deep chestnut, and it was pulled into a low, messy ponytail. And she’d stopped wearing makeup, too. It made us look different, but in some ways, she was almost prettier without it.

“Hey, Blake,” she said. She almost looked happy to see me. The tiny gold crucifix around her neck caught the light. A baggy gray sweater draped loosely around her waist. She used to wear snug-fitting stuff during high school, but not anymore.

“Nic,” I said, “I’m so glad you—”

But I stopped midsentence when her hand went to her mouth. Her eyes widened when she saw my fingers on the
scrapbook. “Why are you going through my stuff?” she asked.

“I wasn’t,” I said. “I mean, I was, but you left everything out in the living room, and I wasn’t sure where you were, and I . . .”

Nic crouched to the floor and started to shuffle all the notebook pages into a pile. Then she took the scrapbook and cradled it in her arms like it was the most precious thing she owned. Her big brown eyes were wide as she stared at me.

Guilt welled in my chest. “I was just worried because the door was open and I didn’t see you,” I tried. I leaned forward and made the mistake of trying to help her. I gathered a few pieces of paper, but Nic grabbed my hand. “Leave it alone,” she said. “Please, Blake.”

I stood up just as a car crunched over the driveway. Nic scooped away the scrapbook and the papers, and then the door swung open. My mother marched into the living room wearing a navy tailored suit and holding a leather briefcase even though she hadn’t worked in twenty years. It was just how she dressed, and she’d amped it up since my dad had started his campaign. Her silk blouse was tied at the neck, and her frosted blond hair was swept to one side. Audrey used to say it was like a tropical storm had blown into South Bend and coiffed her hairdo. It was so Audrey to use a word like
hairdo
.

My mom looked shocked to see Nic, but she quickly composed herself and turned to me. “Happy birthday, darling!” she trilled. “I wanted to surprise you, but you’ve beat me home.”

Nic looked at my mother and then at me. The look on her face told me she’d had no idea it was my birthday.

“Hi, Mom.” A hard lump lodged itself in my throat and made it hard to speak. I faked a smile.

“Everything all right in here?” my mom asked, looking from my sister to me.

Nic cleared her throat. “Fine,” she said, gesturing to the papers she’d stuffed into her bag. “I was just about to give Blake her birthday card, but I can’t find it in all of these papers.”

Her eyes softened and pleaded with me not to say anything. But I never would. I stared at my sister, trying not to let everything I felt show on my face. Audrey and I had had a major falling out, but with Nic and me, I couldn’t even put my finger on what had happened. There wasn’t a single event I could point to, and it drove me crazy trying to figure it out. Nic just all of a sudden seemed like she couldn’t stand being around any of us. She’d always had problems with my parents, but during her senior year of high school it magnified, and then I was suddenly on her list of people who couldn’t be trusted, even though I was only in eighth grade.

Growing up, I thought Nic was the most amazing person who’d ever lived—she was funny, she was
so
smart, and she was special in that way some girls just are. Almost everything Nic said or did was something you wouldn’t want to miss. Like when she was in fifth grade and convinced a teacher to hold a quiz until the next day because Mercury was in retrograde. Or in junior high, when she taped candy
worms to my mother’s bra and wore it outside her clothes while picketing the science lab with signs that read
EARTHWORMS HAVE FEELINGS, TOO. STOP DISSECTION NOW
!

Nic turning her back on me during her senior year was the most painful blow I could’ve imagined. That whole year there was a tightness in my chest, like I couldn’t ever suck down a real breath. A part of me was relieved when she left for Notre Dame, because it was too hard to see what I’d lost right in front of me.

That fall, when I started high school, I turned my focus to becoming Harrison High’s It Girl. I figured if I could rule Harrison High School like Nic had done while she was there, then I was someone to be reckoned with, too, just like her. I was someone who mattered.

There were casualties along the way—kids I’d hurt. But I was hurting so badly, how else was I supposed to act? Kind, caring, and perfect like Audrey?

That’s not me. And even if I wished I could be like her, I can’t. You have to watch your back in my family.

My mom moved to the kitchen, and I decided to try again with Nic. “If you don’t have rehearsal tonight, we could always do something before you go back to campus,” I said.

Nic’s dark eyes held mine, and I swear it was like she wanted to say something important to me. But then she looked away and I wondered if I was just imagining things. “I should get back,” she said. “I have rewrites to do.”

“Are they going well?” I asked, reaching for something we could talk about.

Nic nodded. She glanced over my shoulder into the kitchen and then back at me. “If you want to come to the show,” she said quietly, “I can definitely get you tickets.”

Everything inside of me lifted. “I’d really like that,” I said as Nic smiled, and then my mom came back into the living room.

“Who wants a turkey dinner at Gustavo’s tonight?” she asked, smiling like it was the best idea ever.

“I’m a vegetarian,” Nic said.

“Do vegetarians not eat turkey?” my mother asked with a sigh, as she finger-combed her blond bangs. “They’re birds. They don’t have feelings like cows do. I don’t even think they raise their own young.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Nic said. “Of course they do.”

The front door opened, and all three of us stood up straighter. I watched Nic suppress an eye roll when my dad called out, “I’m home!”

Yes, Dad. You are.

My dad’s nightly
I’m home!
was one of the only vestiges of the
Aren’t we all so normal?
behavior he displayed inside our house. Outside our house, in public, (and especially when we were at a campaign fund-raising event), he was the doting suburban father. He held our glances extra-long and smiled this strange smile when we talked, like he was just so proud of us he could hardly stand it.

But inside the house he was different. He wasn’t the politician running for governor as a capital-
C
Conservative—
“Let’s bring back traditional family values!”
—or the proud owner of R. Dawkins Tech. He was mercury
rising, threatening the atmosphere with his silvery climb.

“Hi, Dad,” I said, because he liked when we acknowledged him first. Nic once told me that was because his own father insisted on it when he was a young boy.

“How was your birthday, Blake?” he asked, kicking off his shoes next to a mirrored glass armoire stacked with interior design books that no one read.

“Great,” I lied. “And I’m really glad Nic came home.”

My dad turned to Nic, nodding. “And how’s school going?” my dad asked her, setting his briefcase down on a mahogany side table next to framed photos of Nic and me fake-smiling on a skiing trip to Vail. He sat on the black velvet sofa with gold armrests—one of my mother’s late-night internet shopping purchases. She was always upgrading.

“Fine,” Nic said. “Not too much to report. Rehearsals are going well.”

I saw my dad’s jaw tighten. Nic got away with declaring a film, television, and theater major a few years ago because she promised my father she wanted to be a movie executive. He approved of that. But all of her performances and the plays she wrote were starting to give away what she really wanted. And lately, she was dropping more and more hints about wanting to be a screenwriter, like she wanted to prepare my parents for her move to LA post-graduation.

But then my dad smiled, which almost made me more nervous. “I think it’s great that you’re getting all of this fun out of your system before the real world comes calling in May,” he said.

Nic smiled back fakely. “Plenty of people make their living in the real world as writers.”

“And plenty starve,” my dad said.

Please, stop. Not today.

My mother stood there silently. Sometimes that hurt more than anything—the way she never stuck up for us. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have parents who were actually on your team. I used to fantasize about being Audrey’s sister and living with her family in that tiny apartment, because then I’d know what it would feel like to be loved.