Something Real

  Right now, they can’t touch me.

  * * *

  Diane Finchburg is pretty nice. I want to hate her, but it’s sort of hard to be against someone with an unlimited supply of Skittles. A half hour into our session, I’m still sitting in her sunny office, munching on my second Fun Pack, staring out the window behind the cluttered desk with the DIANE FINCHBURG, SCHOOL COUNSELOR nameplate on it. My punishment from Mom for ditching school yesterday is to start seeing the Skittle Lady so that I can, in her words, “learn healthier ways to cope with the show.” When I’d pointed out that Benny had been ditching just as much, Mom gave me a look that basically said, Benny’s not a nutcase like you. So I didn’t really pursue that line of questioning because there were two producers and a camera in the room at the time.

  Now I’m here, talking to a stranger about my problems. It’s a little less awful than I thought it would be. She’s wearing this cute sparkly headband I saw on the J.Crew website—it clashes with her rubber duckie socks, but I like that about her. Instead of being all clinical behind the desk, she’s in the chair next to mine. The fact that she’s not wearing any shoes somehow makes me forget we’re even at school.

  “So how do you think the taping will go on Thursday?” she asks in her chamomile tea voice.

  I shrug. “I mean, bad, probably. It’s live. Anything can happen.”

  “It must be hard to concentrate in class with all this going on at home.”

  “A little, I guess. But it’s okay.”

  I wonder if my responses are frustrating because I’m not the spaz Mom probably made me out to be.

  “Chloe, I want you to know that anything we say here stays in this room. I’m not gonna pick up the phone and call your mom. There are no cameras, no MetaReel. It’s just me and you, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Still. I’m not going to be telling her my deepest, darkest secrets anytime soon.

  “Mr. Schwartz says you’re really bright. One of his best students. Have you thought about helping out with student government? He’s in charge of that, you know. I could talk to him.”

  “I don’t do clubs or anything like that. It’s…”

  I trail off because I don’t want to answer, and I don’t owe her one. It feels like every random person I come into contact with wants me to bare my soul. I know Skittle Lady’s trying to be nice, but at the end of the day, she’s just another Lacey Production Assistant without a cameraman by her side.

  “Are you afraid people won’t accept you for who you are? That they’ll only see you as Bonnie™?”

  I roll a purple Skittle around in my mouth. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Clubs are for people who belong. I don’t. It’s almost as simple as that. Almost.

  She makes a steeple with her fingertips. “What about your dad? What does he have to say about all this?”

  “Kirk?”

  “No. Your biological father.”

  “He’s not on the show anymore.”

  If one of us died, we’d probably say it like that. Oh, so-and-so’s not on the show anymore. Didn’t you see episode twenty, the One with the Funeral?

  “Your mother mentioned you might want to talk about him.”

  “Why? She never does. Unless it’s in a book half the country’s going to read.”

  Ms. Finchburg nods like she understands, which, let me tell you, she most certainly does not.

  “How does that make you feel?” she asks.

  Psych 101 rears its ugly head.

  “It makes me feel like she’s glad he’s gone.”

  “Are you glad he’s gone?”

  How many times have I asked myself that question? The answer changes every day. Yes. No. I don’t know. I hate him. I hate her. I hate me.

  “I’m glad they’re not screaming at each other all the time.” I point to a picture on her wall. “That’s really cool.” Patrick would like it, I think. It’s a black-and-white photograph of a bunch of guys eating lunch on this tiny beam high above New York City. It makes my hands sweat, just looking at it.

  Diane Finchburg glances at the print for a second. “Thanks.” Pause, then, “So have you spoken to your father recently?”

  She’s good about not letting me change the subject, I’ll give her that.

  “Okay. Ms. Finchburg—”

  “Diane.”

  “Diane. I really appreciate that you’re, like, trying to aid delinquent youth and everything, but I’m just not comfortable talking to you about my dad. He’s not around, he hasn’t been for a long time. That’s really all you need to know.”

  “Okay, sure.” She shifts in her chair, crosses her legs. “Why don’t we talk a bit about the panic attacks. Your mom said you used to get them a lot. Had any lately?”

  I shrug.

  “I used to get them in college,” she says. “I have a little trick that gets rid of one before it starts—wanna hear it?”

  “I guess.”

  She tells me that as soon as I get that heart attack feeling in my chest, I should close my eyes and take a deep breath while counting to ten.

  “When you get to ten,” she says, “exhale and imagine all that panic leaving you.”

  “Simple as that?” I say. My old shrink made me read self-help books and suggested I get in touch with my spirit guide. I’m not holding out much hope for deep breathing.

  She smiles. “It’s all up to you. I’m guessing by now you know that there isn’t really much about life that’s simple.”

  I snort. “You could say that.”

  The bell rings, and I get up.

  “Have a good lunch, Chloe,” she says.

  “Yeah. Uh. Thanks for these,” I say, holding up the Skittles.

  “Anytime.”

  I slip out of her room, thankful that no one in the front office sees me come out of there. All it takes is one person, and the tabloids will be all, BONNIE™ BAKER: Unstable Already? Or something like that. When I step into the hallway, Patrick is waiting for me.

  “Did you Apparate here or something? The bell rang two seconds ago.”

  He laughs. “I have class across the hall.” He puts an arm around my shoulders as we start walking toward my locker, and I love how this broadcasts our togetherness to the world. “How was it?”

  “Sugary,” I say. “Taste the rainbow?” I shake the bag of Skittles.

  He holds out his hand, and I pour a few onto his palm. “I hope we’re eating more than this for lunch.”

  “Can lunch happen far away from my peers?”

  “Chloe!”

  I turn around, and Tessa’s eyes kind of widen as she notices Patrick’s arm around my shoulders.

  “Okay, we don’t hang out for one day, and you guys are PDA’ing?”

  “Um…”

  She looks from me to Patrick. “So is this an official thing or a we’re-taking-it-slow thing?”

  I look up at Patrick. “Excuse her frankness. She’s a journalist,” I say.

  “Official,” Patrick says, squeezing my shoulder. “Unless you’ve already left me for another man?”

  I shake my head. “A movie star tried to sweep me off my feet last night, but I turned him down.”

  For a second, it’s just Patrick’s sandy eyes and my arm tightening around his waist and—

  “I’m still here,” Tessa says. “Just in case you guys are going to start making out or something.”

  I blush, and Tessa grins, holding up a key. “Schwartz said the gov classroom can be ours every day during lunch, as long as we open it back up five minutes before class.”

  “Whoa,” I say. “How’d you manage that?”

  I know Schwartz likes us, but this is all kinds of favoritism. Not that I’m opposed to it.

  “I told him I was a terrible friend, that I had deserted you in your time of need, and that I could maybe buy back your trust with a place to have lunch without everyone snapping pictures of you with their phones. And I threw in a Snickers to sweeten the deal.”


  I smile, suddenly lighter than air. “Thanks, friend.”

  She squeezes my arm. “I really am sorry.”

  “Me too.” It feels so good to stop lying to my best friend.

  I turn to Patrick. “Do you want to come, or are you gonna hang out with Max and Derrick?”

  They’re his closest friends at Taft, but I see Patrick driving alone off campus almost as much as I see him eating with them. Not that I’ve been keeping track of him or anything.

  He grabs my hand. “Lead the way.”

  After lunch, I can hardly concentrate in gov.

  I’m actually really into Schwartz’s lecture on dictatorships, but all I can think about is that my family’s shooting our live episode in less than forty-eight hours, and I want nothing more than to contract a horrible contagious disease. I wish My Life Sucks wasn’t my brain’s default.

  “So who can relate the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that we discussed yesterday to 1984?” Schwartz asks.

  Tessa’s hand is up in half a second, of course. He nods. “Lee?”

  “The whole Heisenberg thing is basically saying that once something is observed, it changes. So if we apply it to 1984, we could say that since Big Brother is watching everyone twenty-four-seven, this would mean that the characters in the book are changing how they would normally act—like, if they weren’t being watched, they’d probably behave differently. There are cameras on them all the time—er.”

  Her face flushes red, and she casts an apologetic look my way. Suddenly I’m the elephant in the room.

  “Anyway,” Tess says, her words tumbling over one another in a flustered race, “Wilson and the other characters, they’re aware that Big Brother is tracking everything they do, so we don’t really know how they would act if they were just … living a normal life.”

  Schwartz catches my eye to see if I have something to say, and I shake my head, just a little, and he nods. I was hoping school would be an escape from the kind of crap I’m thinking about all the time, but apparently not. I sort of can’t wait until the 1984 unit is over. Bring on early colonial law or apartheid or something.

  “But the Heisenberg Principle applies to all of society,” Patrick adds.

  Schwartz leans against his desk. “Explain.”

  “I mean, you don’t need a camera on you to be observed, right? School, for example. We’re all probably different at home, but when we’re here, everyone’s under a social microscope. So our behavior alters to conform and fit in. We might not even know we’re changing the way we act. It just happens naturally. The trick is to be true to yourself, no matter who the hell—er, heck—is watching.”

  I reach my hand back, and he clasps it under his desk.

  “So everyone’s observing everyone all the time, which means we don’t really know who the real version of anyone is?” Mer asks.

  Patrick nods. “Yeah. And so, basically, Big Brother doesn’t have to watch us because we’re watching each other.”

  One of the slackers on the other side of the room, Michael Ingraham, gets this look on his face, very lightbulb-going-off.

  “So, like Facebook, right?” he says.

  Schwartz nods. “Care to elaborate a bit, Mr. Ingraham?”

  “I mean, like, we’re always saying who we’re with, where we are, what we’re doing. It’s like we’re spying on each other.”

  “Oh my God,” Mer says. “That’s legit creepy.”

  I so don’t have a Facebook. For obvious reasons.

  Someone in the back of the room groans. “This is hurting my brain.”

  Schwartz laughs. “Okay, okay. Good insights here. For homework tonight, I want a page on how the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle applies to one character in the novel. Give examples.”

  The bell rings, and I gather up my books.

  Tessa puts her hand on my arm. “Chlo, I’m sor—”

  I roll my eyes. “I’m not made of glass, Tess. It’s cool, don’t worry about it.”

  Patrick leans close to my ear. “There’s going to be a very important meeting in the janitor’s closet at precisely 2:47 P.M. Attendance is mandatory,” he whispers, planting a quick kiss on my cheek.

  Before I can answer him, he sweeps out of the room. If things like that could just keep happening, I would never have to think about the show again.

  “Janitor’s closet?” says Tessa. “Scandalous!”

  I laugh. For once, this is a scandal I am totally okay with.

  SEASON 17, EPISODE 15

  (The One That’s Live)

  “Bonnie™, we really need to see you in the blue dress. It’s one of the signature items from your new collection!”

  I look at Sandra, clasping my hands together in supplication. “Please don’t make me wear that thing. It makes me look like an American Girl doll.”

  It’s frilly and has black velvet ribbons and capped sleeves.

  “Nonsense. Now take off those jeans.”

  I sigh and do as she asks. Because I am spineless and nervous. And maybe Kirk is right—maybe to get through this in one piece, I’ll have to choose my battles. Sandra does stuff to my hair and face and then pronounces me gorgeous and ready to entertain twelve million viewers. I clutch at my stomach and try to eat a few more saltines. I don’t know if I’m actually coming down with something or if it’s just nerves, but I’ve been nauseous since I woke up this morning. I’ve never had stage fright before—being born on national television and then spending your childhood in front of a camera pretty much eliminates that possibility. But here I am, feeling like a total rookie. I still have no idea what Mom and Chuck are planning for this episode—it’s MetaReel, so anything can happen.

  Lacey Production Assistant sticks her head in my room. “Hey, Bonnie™. Oh! Cute dress.”

  I take in her jeans and T-shirt. “Trade you.”

  She laughs. “We’re going live in fifteen minutes, okay? Your mom wants you downstairs.”

  “All right.”

  I take one more look in the mirror and then make my way to the nucleus of the Baker-Miller household. The chaos meter is at a ten, except we all look nicer than usual. I stop two fights and give three mini lectures before I get to the front hallway. It’s times like these that I’m thankful to be a big sister to ten siblings—it’s the best birth control out there. You won’t see me on MetaReel’s Sweet Sixteen Mom anytime soon.

  “Hey, hey,” says Benny, when I finally enter the kitchen. He’s wearing so-not-him clothes. He looks around, then lowers his voice. “Is Patrick watching?”

  I nod. “Yeah. I told him this is the only episode he’ll ever get to see. I just feel like … I need to know at least one person out there isn’t a hater, you know?”

  Lex saunters in, looking like a pop star. “So who’s this Patrick guy I keep hearing you two whispering about?”

  “Just a guy from school,” I say.

  She’d never understand my adoration of a boy with ratty T-shirts and unwashed hair. Lex goes through guys like they’re ChapStick, each of them variations on the Ken doll.

  “Right,” she says, unconvinced. But she doesn’t push it. Maybe the holiday season is bringing out the decent in her.

  “Anyone having fond memories of Thanksgivings past?” Benny asks, pointing at the turkey in the oven.

  “Are we talking season eleven?” I say.

  “Oh, God,” Lex moans. “That was a disaster.”

  Three words: Rachael Ray, Dad, wine. Basically, he got drunk and hit on Rachael Ray, celebrity chef, while she was trying to teach him to make a turkey. It probably would have gone over all our heads if he hadn’t tried to cop a feel. That was the year we ate McDonald’s for Thanksgiving.

  “What a bastard, huh?” says Benny.

  Mom comes in, holding a turkey baster in one hand and a glass of white wine in the other. Does she have the same memory every Thanksgiving? She must, right?

  “Oh, there you are!” she says.

  A frilly apron sets off her girlish figure, and her
hair is blow-dried to perfection. She has the kind of haircut that women all over America will be asking their hairstylists to give them for the next year, a shoulder-length deal with lots of layers.

  Mom pulls me against her for a hug that smells like chardonnay and gravy. “Truce?” she asks, her voice a whisper in my ear. When I don’t say anything, she pulls back and gives me a hangdog expression. “It’s Thanksgiving.”

  “Okay,” I say, feeling like a traitor to myself. I don’t want to pretend that everything’s fine, but even the bloodiest battles have a cease-fire now and then.

  Mom looks me up and down, then nods in approval. I feel like our little moment is something she had to cross off a list. “Why don’t you go in the dining room? Someone will tell you what to do.”

  I maneuver past a camera and practically bash my head into the wall when I trip over the same freaking cord. Finally I make it into the dining room, which has a few of the kids’ art projects on the walls: turkeys made out of construction paper hands, Pilgrim hats, and Native American headbands with feathers.

  “Okay, everyone, we’re about to start filming!” Chuck calls. He dabs at his face with a handkerchief and takes a swig of his Red Bull as he looks into the kitchen, one finger counting us off. We must all be present and accounted for because he nods, satisfied. “Remember, this is LIVE. No matter what happens … the show must go on. Break a leg!”

  “I find that foreboding, don’t you?” Benny whispers, sneaking a corn muffin off the table.

  “Right?”

  Sandra hands me some forks. “Just go slowly around the table with them. We want to get a shot of you helping set up.”

  “Okay.”

  “But don’t start until Chuck says we’re on air.”

  “Got it.” I smile as nicely as I can, and she rushes off to corral the little ones.

  A Christmas CD starts playing in the kitchen. “Someone has gotta tell Mom Christmas comes after Thanksgiving,” Benny says.

  “Are you kidding me? The woman listens to it in July.” Lex squeezes both our arms. “Merde,” she says, and flits away.

  I give Benny a look, and he says, “It’s what dancers say for luck. It means ‘shit’ in French. Don’t ask me how I know this.”