I Am the Wallpaper (14 page)

That’s when the phone rang.

“You better come over and see this,” Wen’s voice said. It sounded urgent.

“Wen, you have no idea what my cousins did to me. I’m so mad I can hardly talk.”

“Did you hear me?” he asked.

“No. See what?”

“Uh … I really think it’s better if you see for yourself. You should probably come over here right away.”

“Don’t do this to me, Wen,” I said, trying to stay calm. On top of everything else, I still wasn’t completely finished being mad at him. “What do you want to show me? Why
are you acting so mysterious?” But when he wouldn’t tell me anything more, I started to get worried, so I gave in. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll be over as soon as I can. But this better be good.”

I set down the phone, closed my eyes and tried to project myself onto the beautiful Mexican beach from Lillian’s postcard. I was standing up to my waist in the warm, clear water, looking back at the grass huts and white sand, a cool breeze moving my hair around just slightly, the smooth, soft sand squishing between my toes. I leaned back and let the water surround me and lift me up on its gentle waves under the warm blue sky so far, far away from Rhode Island.

What could be worse than having my diary invaded, my privacy violated? It was only July and already I couldn’t wait for this horrible summer to end. My only comfort as I biked to Wen’s house was the certainty that things couldn’t possibly get worse.

Wrong.

“Okay,” I demanded as soon as Wen opened the door. “So what is it?”

His face was a study in gloom and doom. “You’re not going to be happy.”

“If you think that’s news, you don’t have a clue what I’ve been living with for the past week and a half.” But I could see from his eyes that he wasn’t interested in hearing my story just then, so I stopped. “Why not?”

He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Without saying a word, he unfolded it. Then he held it up.

It was a full-color photocopy of the infamous birthday picture.

I actually screamed.

“This is the picture Azra sent to your aunt, isn’t it?”

I blinked a few times to see if it would go away. It didn’t. “Oh … my … God! Where did you get this?”

“I found it under George’s bed.”

“What? I’m going to kill Azra! This isn’t funny!”

Wen looked at the picture again. “I don’t know. I think it’s kind of humorous. It’s eye-catching, anyway.” He was trying to make me feel better, but it wasn’t working. How could anybody see any humor in this?

I snatched it out of his hand and glared at him.

“There’s more,” he said. “Look, there’s a Web address at the bottom.”

Penciled below the picture was “
www.floeysprivatelife.com
.” The blood supply for the entire lower half of my body flooded into my face.

I screamed again.

Then I put my hands over my mouth and forced myself to stay calm. “So,” I said, “what did George say when you found this?”

“He doesn’t know. I only discovered it a little while ago. He’s out somewhere with my dad.”

The image was fuzzy. I could barely recognize it as me, but I knew it was. The bra was clearly too small. The cleavage was so obvious, I looked like Bubble Woman. What was I thinking, posing like that?

This was bad. Very bad.

“Turn on your computer, Wen. I have to see this Web site.”

“You’re not going to like it.”

His computer was already on with the Web page glowing from the screen. Obviously, he’d already checked it out. I sat down. Somebody had cropped my head from the picture so my own ridiculous grinning face was beaming
back at me. Written in big green flashing letters above my head was
IT’S FLOEY’S PRIVATE LIFE!
Below that was a button that read
ENTER
.

Horrified, I looked from the monitor to Wen and then back again.

This was beyond awful. It was absolutely, positively nuclear awful.

“Go on,” Wen said quietly.

I clicked the button. The next screen showed two more pictures, one of me sitting on the front steps with Richard’s fizzing firecracker, and the other of me wearing my Halloween costume—they’d scanned my shot and cropped out Wen and Azra. Incredibly, there was even a special offer:
Send $3 and get a special photo extra!
This must have been how George got the birthday picture.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. Something caught in my throat when I saw the last link, the main attraction of the site by the size of the letters. It said,
DAILY DIARY ENTRY
.

“Oh … my … God.”

I clicked it.

There it was for anybody to see: my private diary, my most personal, secret thoughts. It started with my thirteenth birthday and continued from there. Scanning ahead, I saw everything I’d written about Lillian’s wedding, the incident with Calvin’s butt, my cousins, the poetry reading—it went all the way up to my entry about Zen meditation. That was only the day before. God, it was all there, every humiliating detail of my life!

There was no question who had done this.

Yes, I’d been a little unfriendly to them at the beginning. Yes, I’d told them to stay out of my life and away from my private things just before searching through their stuff. But this was taking things way too far. This was way worse than anything else my cousins could have done to me.

I had to peek around my fingers because by then I’d covered my face. “How many people have read this, do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“What am I going to do?”

He just shifted his weight behind me.

Were they
both
involved? I felt upset enough about Richard, but for some reason I felt even more betrayed by Tish. Lately I’d almost started to think that she wasn’t the demon he was. But it didn’t matter now. Only one thing was certain: the Web site had to come down, and the sooner the better.

And then I suddenly remembered everything I’d written about Wen. I realized with horror that he might already have read every embarrassing word. He was still shifting his weight back and forth behind me. I couldn’t bring myself to turn around and face him.

I jumped out of the chair and ran for the door.

“Where are you going, Floey?”

“Home!”

I pedaled as hard as I could. The wind whipped my hair back. When I reached my house our car still wasn’t in the driveway, but I threw open the front door anyway and looked around. There was nobody in the living room except Frank Sinatra, whose expression changed from bored to terrified as soon as he saw me. He jumped off the sofa and ran out of the room.

Great, even the ferret hated me now.

Nobody in the kitchen, the TV room, the bedrooms, the office or the basement. I checked out my window. Nobody in the backyard, either.

Then I saw the note on the kitchen table:
2:00 p.m.: Floey, Stopped by to see if you were here but you’re out. I’m taking the children to Roger Williams Park Zoo. Chinese takeout tonight?—Love, Ma
.

I dropped down onto the kitchen floor and held my head in my hands. I had an awful vision of Calvin reading the letter I’d sent him. On top of feeling embarrassed about the Web site and everything I’d written about Azra and about Wen, now I was feeling new pangs of guilt. I’d accused an innocent man.

That’s when I heard Wen’s voice from outside. “Floey?”

At first I didn’t move, but when I didn’t hear anything else I knew he was still there, waiting for me. Eventually I walked to the screen door. He stared back at me from the bottom of the steps.

“Are you okay?” he said finally.

I shook my head.

He stayed on his bike, straddling the crossbar. “Listen, do you want to go to the secret beach? We could talk.”

I shook my head again. I didn’t want to go anywhere. All I wanted to do was slip back into the wallpaper. Or maybe crawl under a rock.

“I’m too humiliated to talk right now,” I said almost under my breath. “Please go away.”

But he still didn’t leave. We both waited through an awkward silence that seemed to go on for hours. What had I been I thinking, writing all that stuff down? Why did I keep a diary at all? I wondered if anything this bad had ever happened to anybody else. Ever.

And how long was Wen going to stay down there looking at me?

Finally, I asked him the question that I dreaded the most. “How much …,” I began. I had a hard time getting the words out. “How much did you read?”

The look in his eyes said everything.

“Some of it. Enough.”

I felt like hiding under the sofa.

“I guess I was a jerk and didn’t even know it,” he said. “I’m sorry.” When I didn’t answer he said, “Look, Floey, you don’t need to be embarrassed. You
know
I really like you too. We’re buddies. You said it yourself right in your own diary, you’d hate to ruin our friendship. I’m glad you wouldn’t want that to change. And you wouldn’t, right?”

Cautiously, I shook my head.

“So I agree, that’s the best way. We’re friends and we shouldn’t screw it up. That’s good, isn’t it?”

I still didn’t know what to say, so I just said, “I guess so.”

He set down his bike, came up the steps and stood on
the other side of the screen. “You going to let me in, or are you coming out?”

After another long moment he opened the door and took my hand, and then we sat down together on the top step. He was wearing his black high-tops, the ones I liked. He massaged the back of my neck. “Besides, if you’re the wallpaper, you’d probably be better off with someone else, the carpet or the window or somebody like that. Oh, but I forgot, you’re all new now.”

Whatever he was doing to my neck, it felt good so I let him keep doing it for a while. I almost smiled. Almost.

“So,” I said, glancing sideways at him, “what are
you
, then?”

“Me? Oh, Floey of the Miserable Present, I’m surprised you need to ask me that.” He stopped rubbing my neck so he could pretend to look shocked. “I’m Bugle Boy, remember?”

He smiled and then I smiled and suddenly everything seemed almost okay.

Almost.

We stared down at our shoes, not saying anything. Eventually he put his arm around my shoulder. “Hey, things may look bad now …”

For the first time in this whole conversation I looked directly at him. I could see my face reflected in the glare of his glasses. “Bad, Wen? My life is ruined. My diary is up on the World Wide Web, for God’s sake. Who even knows how many ten-year-olds out there are regular readers?”

He nodded. “I guess you’re right. It’s just horrible.”

“No, this isn’t ‘just horrible’ either. There isn’t a word horrible enough for what this is.”

“You’ve got to admit,” he said, “there’s a side of it that’s pretty funny.” And then he started laughing. I’m not sure what he was laughing at, but whatever it was he certainly thought it was hilarious.

I socked him hard in the shoulder and he cried out. “Owwww!”

And then, out of nowhere, I started laughing too. I’d been feeling like everything was just so terrible for so long, maybe there was a part of me that was getting tired of it. I’m not sure. What I
do
know is that sitting on my front steps, Wen and I laughed pretty hard, and after that I felt a little better.

And that’s when an amazing new plan suddenly came to me. It was something ridiculous, something that the plain old unexceptional Floey would
never
have done in a
million
years.

“Listen,” I said, sitting up. “I might have an idea. It’s a little crazy. Want to hear it?”

He shook his head, still laughing. “No, not really.”

I ignored him. “How about if I let the Web site stay up?”

He stopped laughing and gave me a sideways glance like I was crazy.

Maybe I was.

But there’s a Zen saying: When cold, be thoroughly cold; when hot, be hot through and through.

“Wait, listen! My cousins don’t know that I know they’re reading my diary and putting it online, right? So,
what if I keep writing as if nothing had happened—except starting now I
make things up
?”