I can’t help but compare Josh to the other boy who stole a lot of my thoughts today. Could they be any more different? At least on the surface, Josh seems so bright and harmless and golden. And Levi is dark and scary and sexy. All I know about either one of these guys comes from rumors and distant observation, so of course I turn to a reliable source of teen information: Facebook.
Since they’re both in the group of 104 new friends, I go creeping. I’m pretty good at this, I have to say. I know how to sift through friends and family and find pictures and tags that tell me all about a person. And I’m not limited to the Vienna High crowd, either. I’ve learned how to stalk people who study classics at Columbia, even the professors who should be more private but aren’t. I’m always picking up little tips I think will help me on my application.
Stalking Levi and Josh should be more fun than that, especially because we’re Facebook friends now, so I can really dig beyond friend lists and pictures and see their posts. Except Levi rarely posts. His pictures are a couple of years old, and not very plentiful. Not a single picture of his family or his house. No activities, party pictures, or goofy shots. Guess he wasn’t allowed to post while he was in juvie.
Josh, on the other hand, posts kind of stupid sayings almost daily, like “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”—does he think he made that up?—and tons of pictures of him in football, basketball, and lacrosse uniforms and, of course, having fun with his legions of friends.
So, suddenly this popular boy is interested in an unremarkable Latin club geek like me? I know why, of course, but I’m not sure if I like it. Why wasn’t I good enough to talk to before this list came out? Did he need the approval of “votes,” or is he just simply seeing me for the first time? Should I give him the benefit of the doubt? Why not? What’s the harm in it?
Still curious, I find an album called “Christmas” on Josh’s page and dive in, ready to see his family. No siblings, it seems, and no pictures of his parents. Just more friends and an older man named Rex Collier, who I assume is his grandfather, with all that white hair.
I click through a few more photos, hearing the kitchen door open just as Pandora jumps to a commercial. I know I should call out to Mom, but I don’t want my solitude to end yet. And I really don’t want to deal with the discussion we’re going to have when I ask if I can go to the game.
Forget the fact that most kids my age wouldn’t even ask—they’d just go. But most kids didn’t bury their brother, so I’m different that way.
I spend more time clicking through Josh’s pictures, looking at one of him standing next to the brand-new sixty-thousand-dollar Audi he got for his sixteenth birthday. Someone has money in that family.
That reminds me of my old Accord, and I get off Facebook with a hard keystroke. I should call Dad and find out what the damage is going to be, but I don’t really want to know. Shutting off the music, I hear Mom in the kitchen and wait for her to call me. I know she won’t come up here; she never does.
I glance at my hand, which doesn’t really hurt anymore, but the injury will probably send her into a tizzy. How did it happen? Who did this to you? Why weren’t you more careful? Was the door rusty? Do you need a tetanus shot?
My throat closes and the weight presses down on my chest, familiar and unwelcome. The suffocation of Kenzie Summerall is about to begin, and it’s already making me freakishly tired.
It’s quiet downstairs, so I close my eyes, wondering why Mom hasn’t hollered up here yet. Bad day at the law firm? Sometimes the legal secretaries in the office make her nuts with all their gossiping, and I get the brunt of it in the form of a lousy mood. More often than not, though, she’s just anxious to hear about my day and make sure I survived it. Literally.
I’d already decided not to tell her about the Hottie List. My parents didn’t grow up in Vienna and don’t know anything about this particular high school tradition, and frankly, there’s