When You're In Love with a girl

Chapter 18, My Mom Set Us Up

MY MOM SET US UP

I don't think I can tell him in person. I take the easy way out and I email him:

"Tom, I need a boy to model for me for my art project for art class. If you could miss two of your 3b period classes to model for me, that would be very kind of you. If yes, what days are you available?

Thanks, Alie."

I don't tell him that it is going to be a project in which his participation is vital—that it is not just a boy, but rather it has to be him. During lunch, I pull out my iPad and pretend to be reading an article. Tom doesn't notice when I take a picture of him as a reference, in case he declines my email.

"Alie, for the modeling..." says Tom, "I don't have to be naked, right?"

Now Tom says the awkward thing! "No, you don't," I say, blushing. "There are no nudes in high school art class."

"Okay, yeah, I can do that. I have animating class during that time, but it'll be okay to misss... I'm okay with missing class to please you."

I immediately protest: "You don't have to please me..."

"But I like pleasing you."

We spend some time in silence, and then Tom says, "What do you find pleasure in?"

I pause and think a moment before replying, "Art, practicing my saxophone, reading bookss..."

"Learning turns me on," he says.

"Um, what are you trying to imply?!" I say, scandalized.

*****

My mom's plan is going into effect today after school. While I'm walking out the doors of Worth-Marion, I receive a text from Mom reading, "walk to central park after school with sam."

Yesterday, Mom told me about her plan to gain more followers on social media. She was planning to link our families. I am going to be the girlfriend of Byron. Who is Byron? The Deerby's child. I have no idea who he is.

I don't want to date Byron. I want to date who I want to date. There's no way Byron will be a good person; anyone from another influencer family will be an awful person. Basically, influencers suck.

I text my mom back, "fin." Then I text back, "e."

I use my phone's GPS to find the walk to Central Park. It's quite a long walk, forty-five minutes. I need to use the bathroom, so I search around for a building with a public bathroom.

"Why do you need to use the bathroom? God, hurry up!" complains Sam.

At Central Park, after a lot of searching, Sam and I find my parents and the Deerbys.

They are standing around on the grass. There is a thin girl with long, luscious blonde locks that float along in the wind. She looks like she's twenty-seven at most. She stands with a tall man who looks like your classic American with blond hair and with a boy at least six foot tall but the face of a young boy, with too-wide brown, unintelligent eyes and not a hint of a hair on his chin. There's also a younger girl who looks maybe thirteen or twelve who absentmindedly kicks the fall leaves on the ground, an older boy who looks about Sam's age, and a young boy who looks five.

"I'm missing football practice for this meeting," Sam informs Mom.

"I'm missing work for this and my boss is angry," Dad tells Mom. A lie, because his boss is never angry at him, but I'm glad Dad is standing up to Mom's stupid social media ideas.

"I don't want to be here," I add to the list of complaints.

Mom glares at us. "Sorry Wanda, let me talk to my family quickly," she says to the Deerbys mom.

"Get it together, you all! We're here to meet the Deerbys! Wanda and I are good friends already." She smiles, and I notice a little smudge of red lipstick on her chin. Mom starts a vlog on her camera and we head back to the Deerbys group.

"Yep! This is Henry, Rosalin, Byron, and Jake," says the girl who looks twenty-seven. Then, the sun comes out from behind the clouds and I can see her wrinkles... maybe she's more like thirty-four. "And I'm Wanda."

"Go meet Byron," Mom urges me. "You know what I taught you yesterday," she adds under he breath.

Byron winks and waves me over. Mom walks behind us. "So you're Alie!" says Byron. His voice is high and he's definitely not beautiful up close. He has quite a few pimples and his breath smells bad.

Byron starts walking so I walk along. "Yeah," I say quietly.

"What?" says Byron.

"Can we try that again," says Mom. "You go again," she directs Byron.

This is how it goes. I watch as the cloudless sky forms a gradient of cadmium red, to nickel yellow, to cobalt blue. Slowly, it fades to ultramarine violet.

"Alright, that should be enough clips for the Byron X Alie video," says Mom. "Thank you Wanda, for going along with this collaboration."

Oh, my mom. Pretending to be kind and nice when she's with other socialites.

"No problem; it was fun working with you! Later!" Wanda, her husband, and four children walk away. As she walks away, I see a suggestive cutout on the upper-back fabric of her dress.

"Wanda is such a nightmare!" says Mom as soon as the Deerbys are out of earshot. "I can't believe..." She continues raving as we walk the streets back to our apartment. I shuffle my feet along and wish I hadn't been forced to come along in the first place.

I guess I agree with my mom, that Wanda is not my favorite person, but it's because I think she is a fake. And plus, she is too beautiful.

"Wanda is so pretty," says Dad.

I sigh internally as Mom turns her attack on him.

"Ahh, what a wonderful sunset!" says Mom, finally realizing the beauty of the night. Some people seem to look past things that are right in front of their eyes.

She takes out her iPhone and snaps a selfie of the family standing in front of a short brick restaurant, with the focus angled upwards so our chins look jutting and distorted. "Perfect! I'll just have to upload that to our insta. Oh yeah, we should do some vlogging...."

We walk and walk and walk until we find a premium luxury dining restaurant and Mom decides we should eat there. It's a horribly stuffy place, and the food is given in small portions and artfully arranged. The symmetry makes me want to throw up; I hate symmetry and perfection. Is it my mother?

My mom's obsession with her own image has started making me hate the indisputable elegance of perfection. All through the dinner, and all through the walk back to our apartment, Mom keeps the vlog going. She forces me to pretend that I love Byron, that I'm thinking of him.

I sure hope Tom and Arya do not see the video once she posts it.

Finally, we reach the apartment. I collapse on my bed.

Author's Note: A bit of a tangent from the plot, huh? Any thoughts on Byron and the Deerbys?

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Stay tuned for more updates. I know this chapter wasn't the most exciting, but we have exciting events in the plot coming up!

-Tara