“Oh.” I grab her cup and take a drink. “Who names a dog Elinor?”
“A proctologist and a psychic who live in Watertown and wanted a fake daughter for five months.”
“Do you even have a middle name?”
She takes back her cup and shrugs. “Not that I know of. I don’t even know how I have a last name. That’s weirder than a dog named Elinor. Remember, I got dropped at one of those safe-harbor haven thingies where you dump off babies without any questions, so I doubt there was a sticky note on my head with a full name. Hey! So, who named me? Who named us? You were left at a hospital, too!”
She’s right. This has never occurred to me before. “Yeah! Who named us? We should have been able to pick our names!”
“But you took Simon’s last name, so now you are Allison Dennis, and it suits you.” Her eyes light up. “Hey, I have an idea. Let’s play care-package Jenga!”
“Stop it.” I giggle.
“Come on. It’ll be fun. I take out a package near the bottom and hope the tower doesn’t tip.”
“We are not playing care-package Jenga!”
“Then you take one, then me . . . honestly, why haven’t you opened any of ’em? Simon probably got you good stuff. Ramen and cookies and lice treatment.”
“I don’t have lice!” I shriek.
She nods very seriously. “Not yet. But college campuses are notorious breeding grounds for lice.”
Maybe she’s right. Maybe Simon has sent me true necessities that I didn’t even realize I need. God, Steffi doesn’t have anyone sending her care packages, and she really deserves it. And maybe there are cookies in there . . . I should consider opening them. Or maybe just one.
I’m a little wobbly when I stand and start pouring a gin and tonic. Halfway through making it, I spin around and slosh gin on the carpet. “Heeeeeeey! Wait a minute. You are trying to distract me from the crucial subject at hand.”
“Which is crucially what?”
“The reason you are here.” After I manage to make my drink, I sit back down next to her. “Let’s have it.”
She gives me a blank look and says nothing.
I lightly shove her shoulder. “Do you have fabulous news or something? Oh, did you apply for that magazine internship you mentioned last summer? Did you get it? Oh, oh! Or there’s a boy. It’s a boy, isn’t it? Tell me, tell me!”
Steffi grins and claps her hands together. “Well, yes. There is a boy.”
I’m about to burst. Despite numerous and entertaining flings, Steff hasn’t had a true boyfriend in ages. “Tell me everything!”
She is still grinning and stares at me for way too long, and it’s only when I throw my arms up in frustration that she answers me. “The boy’s name is Esben Baylor, and you sucked face with him, became an Internet sensation, and you won’t talk about it. Something major happened! Something wonderful! This was totally unlike you and totally awesome. Cheers!”
I cross my arms with irritation and sneer. “No, no cheersing! We are not cheersing!”
“That’s not a word.”
“Whatever. I thought you had good news about yourself or something. I thought we were celebrating. This is totally disappointing. You’re actually here to make me talk about that Esben boy and the stupid thing I did?”
“Yes.” Steffi takes out her phone, taps the screen a few times, and faces it my way. “Look. Just look.” It’s a freeze-frame of Esben and me.
“It’s nothing.” But my denial sounds weak, and I take the phone in my hand and study the image.
“It is not nothing.”
I snap out of it. “He made my life hell this week! Do you know how many people were bothering me about this on campus? Wanting gory details and being all probing and whatnot? Ugh. It was awful. I finally got it to stop.”
She practically snorts. “Well, the Internet hasn’t stopped.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The tweets, the comments on every site that picked it up . . . people are still loving it.”
“There are comments?”
“Yeah, dummy! Like, thousands.” She squints at me. “We need to do something about your makeup. And hair.”
“Huh? Who cares about my makeup and hair? Thousands of comments? How are there thousands of comments?” The gin is not helping me feel less freaked out, and I barely notice Steffi pulling my hair loose or reaching into her purse to retrieve a makeup bag.
She has me close my eyes, and I feel her brushing eye shadow on my lids. “Sweetheart, Esben has over four hundred seventy-five thousand followers. And that’s just on Twitter. Then there’s Facebook, where he’s got over three hundred thousand. Plus, his live blog.”
I open my eyes and ignore her irritated expression at my interrupting her crash makeover. “Hundreds. Of. Thousands. Oh, Steff . . .”
“If you’d pay attention to the online world, you would’ve known. Esben Baylor is a social icon! And he’s right here on your campus! I’m so jealous I could scream.”
Yeah, I could scream, too.
She goes to her phone again and taps around. “Here. Read. These are the comments under his original Twitter post.”
Silently stewing, I begin what could be an endless process of scrolling while Steffi lines my eyes with dark-brown eyeliner, dusts blush over my cheekbones, and then turns on a big curling iron and starts fussing with my hair while I read.
Stunning. Heartfelt. Touching. Keep doing what you do, Esben.
You go! The entire montage is extraordinary. Thanx for sharing.
Showed this to my mom, and we both cried, lol!
Who’s the girl? She’s a babe! Right on, brother! Not a bad start to a romance, huh?
Plz come to Chicago! We want u! I’ll volunteer to do whatever u want! Kiss me!
Is the girl on Twitter? Want to follow her.
Now THAT was a kiss. But . . . then what? Did she come back? Have you talked to her?
I scoff and keep scrolling and reading. The tweets are, by and large, raving and supportive of the video. There are, of course, mean tweets, too: That girl doesn’t deserve you. Glad she bolted, and I hate all your lame stuff and UR a moron, and This is so corny and schmaltzy. Get a life.
They all make me sick.
Steffi gets the iron too close to my scalp, and I let out an “Ouch!” then take the last now-watery drink from my cup. “You know what?” I say too loudly. “What he did is not okay! I didn’t ask for this attention. Fine, if he likes being at the center of the universe, that’s his prerogative, but how dare he suck me and other unsuspecting people into his crap, right? He’s a horrible, horrible person!”
“Oh, well, yes. Horrible.” She pauses. “You should tell him that, don’t you think?”
I slap the phone down on the couch. “I should! I should, dammit!”
“Yes, right now!” Steffi is on board with this. She must be coming around to sharing my anger. “Let’s find out what dorm he’s in. The student directory is online?” she asks.
“I dunno. I guess. I haven’t looked anyone up before.”
We log on to the Andrews student portal, and it takes Steffi only seconds to learn that Esben lives in Wallace Hall, which is a dorm not far from mine. “Bingo!” she says before zooming in on his profile picture. “Good Lord, that boy is easy on the eyes . . .”