I’m like, “Uh, yeah, that’s so exciting. And, um, how about we see the pics, like, later. Um, seriously, you can show me later.”
“No! I can’t wait!”
I try to tell her with my eyes that I really don’t want Aiden to see these pictures. But she is oblivious.
“Okay. Look! This is the one that is so amazing.”
On her screen is a picture of me and Dawson. We’re sitting on the bench under the tree. Dawson and I are looking in each other’s eyes. His eyes are tentative, like he’s trying to decide to kiss me or not, but he has sorta already decided because his body is leaned into mine; one big hand is cupping my waist.
It’s an extremely romantic and beautiful picture, and if I didn’t know the people in it and what was really going on in their minds at the time, I would have thought they were incredibly in love. And the picture is brutal proof to me of just how gorgeous Dawson is. His dark hair is falling perfectly into his eyes, his skin is tanned and gorgeous, his jawline is strong and his nose looks like it belongs on a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon’s nose chart for perfection.
I look surprisingly pretty too. There is a slight breeze, blowing my hair back. The lighting is soft. My skin is so perfect it almost looks airbrushed, and there are highlights perfectly glistening on my cheekbones.
It looks like a very tender moment caught on camera.
But I know what was really going on. I felt the emotions. I knew what he was thinking. What looks like tenderness and uncertainty in his eyes about should I kiss her is really uncertainty about kissing me when he’s in love with someone else. And I was thinking pretty much the same. Should I kiss a boy who I know is in love with someone else? But I can’t say any of that. She is too excited.
“Wow. That’s a really good photo,” I tell her, commenting on the lighting and the trees and ignoring the subject matter.
“Wait until you see the rest.” She starts clicking through picture after picture. Showing me a slow motion version of our kiss. Us moving closer toward each other. Our lips touching. His hand moving toward to my face. My hand running through his thick, dark hair. It’s like watching a slow motion video of a car wreck. I want to tell her to stop, but I can’t get the words out.
From behind me I hear a SLAM as Aiden gets his French textbook out of his backpack and slams it on his desk.
I’m thinking he doesn’t like the photos.
Annie looks at him, then at my cringing face, and says quietly, “Oh, um, class is about to start. I will just show you these later.”
We’ll be sneaky.
9:45pm
Annie and I study together in the library tonight. She tells me she’s going to spend the weekend at her parents’ house in upstate New York.
“Are a lot of people here from New York?”
“All over, really, but most are probably from the upper East Coast.”
I was thinking earlier about where I will go on school breaks and maybe even weekends when I just need to get away. This is something no one really thought about. Where am I supposed to go? I can’t go home. I can’t go with my family. So I’ve been thinking that New York would be the perfect place to go. I also realized today that even though we have a small walk-in closet, I seriously need somewhere else to keep my clothes.
What I need is a home.
A place of my own.
I decide that when I get back to my room, I’m going to look at some real estate sites online.
“So what are your plans for the weekend?” she asks me.
“I think I’m going to a surfing tournament on Long Beach. The guy I dated this summer is going to be there.”
“Why is he coming all the way from California for a surf tournament. Is he in it?”
“Uh,” Shit. “No, he’s just coming . . .” *&^%! Why is he coming?
“To watch?” she asks.
“Yes! To watch. He’s watching. He likes to watch surfing. He’s a big fan of surfing,” I ramble.
“Yeah, but can’t he watch surfing at home all the time?”
“Um, uh, yes, but, uh, it’s . . .”
“An excuse to see you?”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Yes. He’s coming to see me and the surfing.”
As we’re walking out of the library, she says, “We need to be Facebook friends.”
“I don’t have a Facebook.”
“Are you serious? Everyone has a Facebook. Even my grandma has Facebook.” Then she looks at me suspiciously. “Why don’t you?”
Shit. What did I tell Riley? That my parents deleted it? “Uh, I used to have one, but my parents deleted it.”
“Oh, that’s just awful! I would die if my parents did that to me. How are you going to keep in touch with your friends from home?”
Shit, again.
“I kinda got in trouble. I’m not really allowed to talk to my friends from home.”
She nods her head, accepting my answer. “So, everyone here uses Facebook. We’re gonna make you a new page.”
Fuck! Does this girl ever give up? Garrett told me no social media.
“I can’t. My, um, parents always check to see if I’ve made a new one. I’ll get in trouble again if they find it.”
“So you can never have one?”
“Pretty much.”
“Oh, that’s ridiculous. And what are they gonna do? They’re in France. It’s not like they can ground you from there.”
“Uh, true. But I really don’t want to find out, you know.”
She puts her hand under her chin and thinks. “Okay, so here’s what we’ll do. We’ll be sneaky, so they won’t be able to find you.”
“How are we gonna do that?”
“We won’t put it under your real name.” She hooks her arm through my elbow and drags me toward the door. “Come back in the library, and we’ll do it quick. I’ll set all the settings to private. Will that work?”
“Uh, maybe.”
Will it work? I can’t tell her I can’t be on social media because of Vincent. I know what she’s saying makes sense to her, but Garrett told me about facial recognition software. I can’t risk having a profile photo of me. But on the other hand, if I don’t have one, it’s sort of a red flag. Like there’s a reason I don’t want people to know about my past or something.
“So if we do a page, we can’t use a picture of my face. My, uh, parents might see that somehow.”
She looks at me funny. “Wow, they must be really strict and have a lot of time on their hands. But okay, we can do that.”
She whips out her laptop. “Okay, so give me your email.”
“We can’t use my email either. My parents know my password. They might see that I set it up.”
“Jeez. That’s practically invasion of privacy. Okay, so we’ll make you a new email, not using your name.” She taps away on the keyboard then gets a piece of paper out of her bag and writes down my log in information. Then she adds the Facebook app to my phone and gets me all set up. “Okay, so your name is just Kiki. Kiki Kiki to be exact. Let me look at the photos in your phone.”
She scrolls through my pictures. It doesn’t take long, as there are only two. One of me and Brooklyn kissing, where you can’t see our faces. And one us facing the ocean where all you see is our backs.
“Why don’t you have any pictures?”
“It’s a new phone and when I tried to sync it, it erased all the photos from my old phone,” I say. Hoping that is even possible.
“How horrible. Well, we’ll just use this one then.”
“What one?”
She points to one that Dallas must have taken when he had my phone. It’s me. Well, it’s sort of me. It’s a photo of my ass in the plaid uniform skirt, over the knee socks, and my platform Mary Janes. “Is it okay if I use this?”
I laugh. “Yeah, that will be fine.”
I’m still feeling a little nervous about this, but I think not having one would make me stick out more than having one. And I can’t imagine any way possible for Vincent to track me through this.
Unless he has some kind of special ass-recognition software.
I go back to my room, pull out my laptop, and search for a place in New York. I find a lot of beautiful places. Most a little stuffy for my taste. Then I decide to search just lofts.