Chapter 7
“TWO ICED VANILLA LATTES for Suzy!” the barista calls. I grab our drinks and meet Suzy at the table we secured at Bee’s, nestled in the corner between cozy yellow walls and chestnut bookshelves. She tinkers with her laptop, editing some footage of me for the doc that she refuses to let me see.
It’s just past eleven, and my shift at Monte’s was supposed to begin at noon. I called in sick the second I woke up, throwing in a few fake coughs here and there. Do I think Wilson bought the performance? No. He hung up on me mid-cough, which is incredibly rude on a multitude of levels. At least the anxiety that had been twisting my stomach into knots all night has settled down.
“Your latte.” It barely hits the table before Suzy grabs it and gulps half of it down.
“I need this in an IV,” she says, kicking at the chair across from her. “Sit down, I want to show you something.” Suzy turns the laptop to face me, and I’m staring at some sort of online forum. The title is “Top Five Films of the Past Two Decades.” There are twenty-seven comments.
I sip my latte. “What is this?”
“A film club I joined for school. I posted my top five movies on this thread, and look at the comment some moron left.” Her finger taps the screen, pointing at a comment from user @shawnofthedead. They wrote: ESotSM at #1? That movie put me straight to sleep .
“What does that stand for?”
“ Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ,” Suzy says.
Oh, right. We watched it a few weeks ago. “I thought it was a great movie.”
“Because it is a great movie, Jackie. It’s a heart-wrenching masterpiece that explores the intricacies of human nature—what it means to love someone and the bravery in experiencing heartbreak and still trying to love again afterward. It’s one of the wisest, most self-reflective movies of our time, and this moron with a shitty username fell asleep during it!”
Suzy is smashing her fingers into the keyboard, undoubtedly firing back a very rude but grammatically correct response.
“There. That’ll show him,” she says, flexing her fingers when the damage has been done.
“What did you write?”
“I told Shawn that his Dawn of the Dead username is very accurate, considering he would most likely survive a zombie apocalypse. Zombies eat brains, and he clearly does not have one.”
I high-five her above the table. “Does this mean we both have mortal enemies?”
Suzy laughs. “Maybe. Let’s hope the other students I meet are a lot better than this guy.” She scans through the rest of the comments on the thread. “This one girl just listed the entire Twilight franchise.”
“Valid,” I say.
“This film club is kind of cool,” Suzy continues. “They host weekly watch parties on campus and alternate snack days. One girl suggested marathon nights, where we watch as many movies as we can before everyone’s asleep. I’m going to suggest we start off strong with the James Bond franchise.”
I hate the way my heart plummets the moment Suzy gets excited about her future. To her, the idea of someday is exciting because she has a passion, she has goals. I can’t wrap my mind around how comforting that must be, to know exactly where you are going to end up four years from now.
To me, someday just feels unsettling. It stops me in my tracks, makes it a little difficult to breathe if I spend too long thinking about it. It’s the blinding reminder that I feel stuck in a world where everyone around me seems to be moving forward: Julie is moving out and getting married; Suzy is moving across the country; even Wilson is beginning his career. And I’m here, with no direction, no goals, nothing to aim for or aspire to be.
When everyone moves forward but you, isn’t being left behind inevitable?
Suzy is snapping her fingers in front of my face. I’ve spiraled, and now she’s reeling me back in. “Come back to me, Jackie,” she says like a hypnotist.
“Sorry. Hi, I’m alive.” I take a long sip of the latte, the coldness rooting me in place.
“Everything okay?” she asks, her face taking on the kind of concern I’m used to seeing from Julie.
“Just my daily existential life crisis. No biggie,” I say.
Suzy frowns across the table. “No one has their life figured out by eighteen.”
“I guess.” The knowledge that millions of people also feel this way doesn’t ease the anxiety. It doesn’t stop me from not wanting to feel this way. I guess it’s nice to not feel alone, but I’d rather not feel this at all.
“Would a chocolate chunk cookie make this better or worse?” she asks.
I pause. “Better. Definitely better.”
She is up from her chair, ordering at the counter, and back with cookie in hand in under a minute. It’s very impressive and makes me think that acquiring baked goods under a time restraint should be an Olympic sport.
I munch on the still-warm cookie as I skim through my emails. When I see an article Jill sent me about feminism in the workplace and how to “dismantle the patriarchy and be taken seriously,” I remember the events that led up to me falling asleep last night.
“By the way, I got another job,” I say.
Suzy nearly chokes on her half of the cookie. “We’ve been sitting here for half an hour, and you bring that up now ?”
“I was distracted by caffeine, sugar, and existential dread. Sue me.”
“What’s the job?”
“Receptionist at The Rundown ,” I explain. “Jill said it’s nothing glamorous, but the pay is good and it’s extra money toward our road trip.”
Suzy grins. “California, here we come.”
We settle into a few more minutes of quiet work. I received an email from Jillian with a few new-hire forms I need to sign. There are a few documents attached that explain office protocol in fancy cursive fonts and an array of pastel colors. Even the dress code section is crossed off, replaced with “freedom of self-expression is our highest priority.” I’m skimming the rest of the document when an email comes in from iDiary , reminding me that I have new notifications to check.
“I forgot to tell you,” I say while the site loads. “I got the weirdest message last night on iDiary . Someone asked me for advice on breaking up with their boyfriend.”
“Breakup advice? Isn’t it usually the opposite?”
“I think so— Hey!”
Suzy grabs my laptop and begins tapping away. “I have to see this for myself.”
“There’s nothing to see. The person who asked the question probably already forgot about it and—”
Suzy’s eyes widen. “You have thirty-seven notifications.”
I scoot my chair to Suzy’s side of the table so quickly I nearly tip over. People have been liking my response to @mirrorball03, leaving comments, and have even started following me. “They loved your advice. One girl called it ‘low-key good.’”
“It wasn’t even my advice. It was Jillian’s.” But Suzy is right, people did seem to love it. I’ve never posted anything that has gotten this much traction. “It doesn’t even matter. It was a onetime thing. No one is going to ask me for breakup advice again.”
Suzy points at the screen. “Someone else just did.”
“No way.”
A new message appears from user @livelaughloathe. I read it out loud.
Last week, my boyfriend came over and flooded my toilet. It gave me the biggest ick, and I literally cannot look at him the same way anymore. Everything he does is so gross now! Is it insane to dump him over this?
Suzy and I burst out laughing at the same time.
“I have so many questions,” Suzy says, gasping for breath.
“How do you tell someone you’re breaking up with them because they pooped ?” I say, causing us to giggle all over again. “I’d never go to the bathroom again.”
When our laughter subsides, Suzy asks, “So what do we respond?”
“ Should I even respond?” That earns me a gentle slap on my upper arm.
“Of course you should, Jackie! These people clearly need you. You can’t leave them hanging. Geez, you’re always so iDiary obsessed. Now, the second it actually gets interesting, you want to quit?”
“The advice I gave last night was from Jillian,” I repeat, pretending to look around the café. “As far as I can tell, she isn’t here right now to ask again.”
Suzy taps on my head. “We don’t need Jillian, goof. Everything Jill went through lives right here in your head. You’re always saying how your sisters overshared all their relationship drama with you over the years. What advice can Jill offer now that she hasn’t already told you?”
That makes me pause. Suzy is right. The original advice I gave Anita came from me. Sure, it was reused advice from Jillian, but it was my words, my memories.
I tug my laptop over, stretching my fingers above the keyboard. “Give me a second to think.” My mind immediately latches on to a memory I had nearly forgotten about. “Four or five years ago, Jill and I were on the couch watching cartoons. It was a weekend morning, maybe Saturday? Anyway, Julie and this guy she was dating at the time—Mark, I think—walked into the kitchen. He straight up opened the fridge and chugged our bottle of orange juice. Like, drank it right out of the carton. I remember Julie had this look on her face, like shock mixed with disgust and complete embarrassment. Jill made a comment that we’d never see Mark again after that. When I asked why, she said Julie has gotten the ick.”
“And the ick is irreversible,” Suzy says, catching on.
I smile back. “Exactly.”
Suzy watches over my shoulder as I type out the response. When I’m done, I read it over:
Sounds like you’ve caught a case of The Ick! The cure? Well, there isn’t one! As your doctor, I’m prescribing you one final phone call with your boyfriend to pull the plug on this relationSHIT—Sorry, I had to! Remember that your feelings are valid, the ick is very much real, and millions of women before you have fallen victim to it. Future advice? Reinforce the rule to all new partners that the toilet must be flushed. You’ve got this!
“Relation shit ?” Suzy reads out loud, laughing. “That’s genius. It’s perfect, but I’d lose some of the exclamation marks.”
I feel oddly offended. “How come?”
“Don’t you think it may come off too childish? I think you should try to sound more mature, right? If you’re giving off the image that you have all this relationship experience, people would probably expect you to be older.”
She makes a good point. I doubt most people would trust heartbreak advice that comes from a teenager. I replace all the exclamation marks with periods, and it reads way better, way more mature. I post it.
Suzy rests her chin on her hands, her eyes lit with excitement. “What if this blows up? By next week, maybe you’ll have hundreds of messages. Even your sisters don’t have enough advice to cover all that.”
No, they don’t. And even if they did, Jill is so busy with work and Julie with wedding plans that I doubt they’re available to offer me advice when I need it. I may need to do this on my own. But as Suzy just pointed out, it seems like I can.
Plus, iDiary has always been mine. I never shared the account with my sisters. It’s always been a safe space for me—somewhere I can be myself without anyone’s judgment. I don’t think I want to lose that.
“For now, let’s keep this between us.” I say it almost too easily. After all, it’s just some silly messages on the blog. This won’t amount to much, if anything.
Suzy nods, then sits upright. “Oh! Can this be included in the doc?”
“Suz, I literally just said this is going to be a secret.”
“Okay, but aside from Monte’s and going home... You don’t really do much. Don’t look at me like that! All I’m saying is, it would be nice to have a bit more material to work with.”
“Very interesting way to tell me to get a life,” I say, ignoring the sting of her words. I’m painfully aware that my life is a bit boring.
“What about this. I film it, but you have the final say whether I use it or not. That way, I can get this all on film just in case.”
“Fine,” I say, too tired to argue. I then watch in shock as Suzy reaches into her backpack and takes out her camera. “You brought your camera?”
“Duh,” she says, pressing a few buttons on it before pointing it at my face. “Okay, now go ahead and open the next message. We’re rolling.”
The only things that are rolling are my eyes. Still, I scroll to the next message. Before I can give it a read, I’m distracted by a bell chiming as the door to Bee’s swings open, blowing in a flash of hot air. I look up to glare at the culprit, expecting to see someone from high school or a customer I recognize from work. Instead, it’s Wilson.
Wilson, who thinks I’m currently at home sick, nursing a cold.
I sink down in my chair until my eyes are level with the tabletop.
“What— What is happening right now?” Suzy is asking, her face semihidden behind the camera.
“Wilson just walked in,” I say, panicking. Oh my gosh, he cannot see me. I am so fired.
Suzy spots Wilson at the counter, his back to us. She turns the camera toward him. “You weren’t kidding about the khakis,” she says.
“I know. He’s worse in person.” And in approximately ten seconds he’s going to turn around, spot me, and march over to terminate my employment in front of all these innocent bystanders.
“I can’t believe this person you talk about all the time is actually real,” she says. “It’s like seeing Santa Claus in person. Or Bigfoot.”
“Suzy.” I say her name very sternly. “I called in sick today.”
Now she looks confused. “I know that.”
“I called in sick, and my boss is here, about to see me being very much not sick .”
Her eyes double in size the second she understands. “Shit. Shit . What do we do? Okay, get under the table. Hide. Now.”
I’m in the process of wiggling farther beneath the table when Wilson is handed his drink, turns around, and immediately locks eyes with me.
There is a solid three seconds where I think the world stops spinning, time freezes entirely, and the whole human civilization ceases to exist except for the two of us, in this café, locked in a death glare. Wilson looks like the top of his head is going to pop off and steam will shoot out of it. I think I probably look borderline ridiculous with eighty percent of my body shoved beneath the table.
Suzy is whipping the camera back and forth between the two of us, desperately soaking up every second of the most awkward encounter of my life.
Then I wait. I wait for Wilson to walk over, scold me, fire me, tell me to never step foot in Monte’s again. But he doesn’t do any of that. He takes his coffee and the brown paper dessert bag and leaves.
Stunned and speechless, I turn to Suzy and whack my head right into her camera.
“Sorry,” she says. “The close-up got too close.” Thankfully, she pops the lens cap back on and returns the camera to her bag. “That was strange.”
“I really expected him to walk over here and yell at me,” I say. I keep looking out the window, waiting for Wilson to change his mind and return.
“I can’t believe I finally saw the infamous Wilson,” Suzy says.
“Yeah,” I say, not able to take my eyes off the window.
While chewing a bite of cookie, Suzy says, “You’ve been ranting about this guy for months, and you failed to mention how cute he is.”
Now that catches my attention. “Excuse me?” My voice comes out in a squeak.
Suzy is back to typing on her laptop, as if the words she’s speaking are not altering my world. “You made it seem like you were working with some maniac who was a total nerd.”
“Suzy, I am working for a maniac who is a total nerd. Did you see the outfit? The khakis? He had a freaking walkie-talkie clipped to his belt.”
“Sure, but I also saw the cheekbones, the full head of shiny hair, and the big brown eyes.”
“His face looks hollow, his hair is too moisturized, and as someone who has brown eyes, consider me not impressed,” I say.
And yeah, I cross my arms over my chest like a grumpy toddler.
“ Too moisturized?” she says. “How can something be too moisturized?”
“I just know he wakes up and spends way too much time on his hair. Suzy, it’s weird . And off-putting. Okay? Leave me alone.” Maybe these excuses sound better in my head.
“You’re off-putting,” she says with a smile. “And your boss is cute.”
It feels like my best friend has gone over to the dark side, completely abandoning me in my time of need. “I can’t believe you’re on Wilson’s side.”
She barks out a laugh. “I’m not choosing sides! All I’m saying is suffering through a job you hate doesn’t sound as unbearable when your boss is kind of nice to look at.”
The worst part is, now that she’s spoken those words into the universe, they exist. And now I have to live in a world where my best friend thinks my mortal enemy is attractive.