Socially Awkward (10 page)

“Thanks,” I said, absentmindedly adjusting the left one. “I appreciate that. More than you know.”

“I told you so,” Claire said, rejoining us.  She turned to me and signed ‘You’re welcome’—a circular motion over her heart.  I smirked at her, shaking my head, and signed ‘Thank you.’

Noah laughed lightly, looking between us. “You speak sign language?”

“Yeah,
ASL,
” answered Claire. “Our parents learned and taught us when we got Jen’s diagnosis. We used to have Family Signing Night once a week—no talking aloud—just for practice. They wanted Jen to be able to communicate with us no matter what.”

“Mostly it just became a way for us to talk about people right in front of them,” I laughed.

“Wow,” he said, impressed. “I always wanted to learn. I can spell my name…”

And he could, more or less, which he demonstrated clumsily. I bit back my laughter at his adorable attempt. Instead, I spelled mine back for him and then signed that I would teach him to sign.

He blinked a few times. “Sorry…didn’t catch anything after the letter J.”

“I guess you’ll just have to be my trainer more often, so you can pick up some signs,” I teased.

Claire signed to me: “I bet he’s picking one up right now, you
flir
t.”  Her eyes scolded me as her hands flew through the words.

“Totally lost,” Noah said, shaking his head. “But I’m looking forward to m
y
lessons.”

He winked at me and I really want
ed
to
stay and start those lessons right away
. If Claire hadn’t dragged me away, I probably wouldn’t have left. 

****

On the ride home, I finally worked up the nerve to ask Claire about the party.

“And why do you want me to go with you?” she asked, almost offended that I would ask her. “You’re a big girl; can’t you manage a social evening on your own?”

“Well, it’s not that so much as I just want some moral support…” I said, tiptoeing around the important information. I was afraid if she knew the party was Sean’s, she wouldn’t agree to go. I didn’t think I could convince her that things would be different this time. “I really like the guy that’s hosting and I was hoping you could just come along… You know, in case…”

As we cruised to a stop at the intersection’s red light, Claire turned on me with a look of disbelief.
“In case what? You want me to hold the video camera, Jen?”

“No!” I shrieked, feeling my face grow hot. “It’s not like that. I meant in case I panic and don’t know what to do. I’m not good at parties, Claire. That’s not my thing.”

“I don’t know…”

She was teetering on the edge, just waiting for another gentle nudge. I could sense her pending
yes
and I knew I had to be careful what I said.
Moving again, I let Claire drive a few more blocks before I decided to continue with my final desperate plea.

“When was the last time we went out together and did something fun?”

Claire stole a look over at me before shifting her attention back to the road. I could already see her mouth twitching into a reluctant smile. “Okay, okay. I’ll go.”

Nailed it.

And speaking of nails… “Thanks, Claire! I’ll even treat us both to
a pedicure
beforehand, okay?”

Two birds, one stone. Jennifer Smith is a genius.

CHAPTER
TEN

Of course, I couldn’t spend all my time running on a treadmill and daydreaming about my first meeting with Sean in over a decade.
There were still the matters of my project—you know, the
actual
purpose of Olivia’s profile—and my regular classwork.
Graduating seemed like such an inconvenience when there were more exciting things to do now.

Luckily, I kept busy enough that m
y days passed in a blur, featuring many rounds o
f mindless clicking through Olivia's profile
. It
was getting me nowhere, and boring me to tears, so I decided
one afternoon
to make a list of things to intentionally s
tudy instead. A plan of action to shake things up a bit. Dr. Chase would've been proud of
my commitment. So far, more than two months in, I'd gotten a good handle on how strangers reacted to random friend requests.  Looks seemed to factor prominently, given the difference between Olivia's staggering number of acceptances and my own miserable failure to attract
a sizable number of
“
stranger friends.
”
Outside of that, there had to be something else to study, but what?

My friends, obviously.

I decided to tackle the phenomenon of inclusion on the internet, beginning with a log-in to my own profile. I friended Olivia myself, hoping to establish at least one connection to her so that my friends might get her as a friend suggestion. Once a few of them friended her, the rest might follow suit, even though none of them knew her. If they thought they were supposed to, or wanted to, they would friend her just to be included.  At least, that was the theory. Time would tell if that w
orked or not. I decided to jump
start things by sending a few friend requests from Olivia herself and switched back to her profile to get started.

Through Olivia's profile, I found myself and clicked on my Friends List to see who I wanted to start with. Aside from Claire
, my class study partner Lyla,
and Dr. Chase, no one knew a thing about this project. It was truly
the
ideal conditions to conduct a study like this, so I was proud of myself for not having a big mouth. I scrolled through the list, picking a couple of friends from high school that I hadn't seen in a while, and let Olivia send them a request. Maybe they'd think Olivia was another classmate, new to Facebook.

I kept going, trying to find a few from each walk of my life. College, work, random friends through friends. In total, I sent about a dozen requests, jotted down all the names to keep track of their responses, and had nothing to do but wait.  Of course, a thirteenth name caught my eye, all the way down at the bottom of my list under W.

Noah Wayland, trainer extraordinaire.

He looked so out of place amidst all my other friends. In fact, he was as out of place on my own friends list as Sean was on Olivia’s. The two could’ve easily swapped places, yet here they were. If this was true, shouldn’t I be able to friend them each in turn from my
other
profile?

I was starting to confuse myself with this tangled mess.

Anyway, I clicked on
Noah’s
name and spotted the Request Friendship button up in the top right corner of the screen. I could send one, just like that, and see what he does. Would he think Olivia was my hot roommate? Another sister? She looked enough like me
—
because she was me, after all
—
that she could easily be mistaken for a Smith family member. Or would
Noah
just blindly accept the request based on that smoking hot profile picture?

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and clicked it. When it was over, I didn't let myself dwell on it. I couldn't let myself think of this as
another social experiment
, as a way to
test his moral character
.
A
fter that nice session the other day, and the interest in learning ASL, I really didn’t know what to think about him. Using Olivia was a quick and easy way to see if he was like the rest of these guys.

Next,
I friended my sister Claire and
scrolled
through her
list of
friends for a similar study group. That's how I made the shocking discovery that Claire and Olivia already had one friend in common: Tom Payone.

Staring at his profile, it
finally
clicked. He was one of the first few guys to have targeted
Olivia
as a friend before I ever
requested it
. That's why Tom looked so familiar when I first met him at the gym. What was he doing, trolling the internet for hot girls and sending them friend requests
when he was supposed to be in some undefined relationship with my sister
?
I guess that’s the problem with undefined relationships, isn’t it?
I clicked on "See Friendship" to see what other interactions he and Olivia had been having. 
I couldn't believe how stupid I’d been
, not to connect this Tom with
the
Tom.

But lots of people are named Tom. Anyone could make that mistake.

Facebook spit back a long list of interactions that I'd been ignoring with the usual influx of dirty, disgusting messages from men through Olivia. Ugh. Messages on my wall from Tom, saying "Hey, how are things?" and "How's the family doing?" like we knew each other. Or, rather, like he and Olivia knew each other. Like he was keeping up appearances to make a friendship with her
look
legitimate. For who's benefit, I didn't know.

More disturbing than that, however, was what I found in my Messages history. There were several inappropriate one-line messages, just like the usual noise I received here, including a personal favorite: "That looks like a nice bra. Can I talk you out of it?"

Seriously, Tom?

His most recent message, sent just
before he disappeared for this mysterious “family stuff
,
”
was a bit more involved:

"Hey Olivia,

Heading out to a party in your area tonight. Want to meet up? I've got something *huge* to show you...
big enough to share with a friend if you like
. Message back if you want a piece.

XXX - Tom"

Cute
.
J
ust
…
adorable. Who was this maniac my sister was
kinda
dating? And why was she
even
kinda
dating him? She had to know; I had to tell her what kind of man she was dealing with. Granted,
they weren’t technically exclusive or anything, so Claire couldn’t really claim any kind of wrong-doing in this situation, not over some inappropriate messages online
. Single boys will be single boys, right?  I guess the most important thing was how he
would treat
my sister during their relationship
, if they ever made things more official
.

For now, there wasn’t much to do about it
.
As far as I knew, Tom was long since out of the picture anyway. Why hurt Claire further by telling her about all of this noise too?
I kept the messages—just in case—and put it out of my mind.

****

The day of Sean’s party arrived without any fanfare, as I almost hoped it would. Instead, it was a rainy, nasty day in November
and I felt like I’d been hit by an 18-wheeler truck. Fighting off a terrible headache and some sinus congestion, I dragged myself from my bed and into the shower. As I plucked, shaved, exfoliated, and moisturized every part of my body, I was starting to feel better. It wasn’t the best day ever, but I could still hold out hope that it would end on a high note.

Fully buffed from head to toe, I towel dried my hair and stared at my changing body in the full-length mirror.
We’re getting there
, I thought to myself, very proud of how much I’d achieved in just over two months of hard work. My body was starting to shape itself into something more feminine, less… I don’t know. Less… blobby? I wasn’t a blob, but there were parts of me that just kind of spilled over, you know? They were going away, leaving some disconcerting extra skin behind, but nothing some Spanx couldn’t fix.

As I thought of it, I reached for my brand new Spanx—a size smaller than my previous set—and slid them on, reveling in the smoother look of my body beneath them. Yes, this would do nicely. I would look perfect, or as perfect as possible. There was still the matter of 12 annoying pounds to lose, but I could flatten some parts and Miracle-Bra some other parts until I got pretty damn close indeed.

See?
Becoming Olivia
was just like playing dress up.

I met Claire at our favorite nail place, just down the street from her apartment, and handed her the coffee I’d picked up along the way. It was nice to sit and relax with her again, without any gym appointments to keep or parental obligations to uphold.

“So where is this party tonight, anyway?” she asked, handing over a bottle of violet-hued nail polish to the pedicurist. Claire pointed to a pink bottle on the shelf in front of me. “That one, Jen. It’s feminine and sexy. Perfect.”

I took her advice, passing the bottle over to the pedicurist waiting for me to climb into the bubbling foot bath. Once settled into the massage chair, coffee at my side, I let myself relax a little bit.

“It’s an old friend from school,” I shrugged, flipping through the magazine at the top of the pile between our two chairs. It was outdated and faded from too much use, but
it was a big improvement from my usual dry reading material for class.
“You probably wouldn’t remember him. He was in my year.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, taking a sip of coffee. “So… you like him, huh?”

I tried not to blush, burying my attention deep into the pages of the magazine. “Yeah, I guess. We’ve been catching up online recently and I’m hoping there’s something between us in person.” 

I stole a quick glance at her and saw she was watching me carefully. I could see it on her face: she thought she was coming with me tonight to help pick up the pieces when this guy—like all the others before him—broke my heart. She didn’t believe he was interested in me any
more than I did. Why was I even going to this thing?

“Well, I can’t wait to meet him,” Claire smiled, changing her tactics. “I wonder if I’ll recognize him…”

With that, we let the conversation drop and resigned ourselves to reading side by side in silence. Claire laughed a little when the pedicurist scrubbed her feet, but otherwise, made no sound. I was too happy about the massage chair to care much about talking.

All too soon, though, our pampering was over and it was time for me to
go home and begin a pointless
wrestl
ing match
with my wardrobe. Finding something to wear was never easy for me, not even when I had nowhere special to go and no one special to impress. I was totally doomed.

“Um, Claire?” I asked, as we walked back to our cars. “Do you think you could help me pick something to wear?”

If anyone knew what Olivia would wear, it was Claire. Her style was always impeccable, and far superior to my own.
I also knew that getting her hands on my wardrobe was another secret wish of my sister’s. She responded only too quickly with a
yes
, dragged me through the mall on a dizzying shopping spree, and dropping me squarely into my living room with a stack of apparel and accessories I didn’t remember buying.

“Well, that was interesting…” I muttered, sorting through the pile on the couch, not sure where to begin. “So what am I supposed to do now?”

“This is just some basic everyday stuff here, Jen,” she said, taking on her authoritative voice. “You’ll want to wear these things to class and out shopping and stuff. It was time for you to replace those frumpy clothes you’re too small for, anyway…”