M or F? (19 page)

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I couldn't resist. . . .

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What
did
I think of Glenn? Now, that was a two-part question. Part one: I think Glenn is a homophobic attention hog who should go back to Alaska and take Astrid with him while he's at it. Part two:

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Okay, how much was I loving Jeffrey right now? Talk about giving all the right answers. This was Not Alienating the Best Friend Jeffrey, my favorite so far. At the same time, though, I could feel myself slipping more and more of my own agenda, or thoughts, or whatever into the conversation. I needed to pull back a little, I thought. But before I could respond, Patricia interrupted.

“Knock, knock, knock.”

With a flick of the mouse, I switched the screen over to Word, then turned to see her standing in my door wearing a skirt and a blue lace bra.

“Patricia!” I looked away again.

“Oh, lighten up, sugar. It's just like a bikini top. You wouldn't get embarrassed about that.” I didn't bother to correct her. “Anyway, Frannie's on the phone.”

My chest tightened. “What? I didn't even hear it ring.”

“Doesn't mean it didn't happen. You want this?”

I looked over at Patricia just long enough to take the phone. “Thanks.” I waited for her to leave the room, then quickly nudged Jeffrey off.

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I closed my door, took a deep breath, and put the phone to my ear. “Hey.”

Frannie's voice was tinged with stress. “Jeffrey's talking to some other girl online.”

“How do you know?” I asked. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I recognized how ironically funny this would be . . . if it were happening to someone else.

“I was watching him in the chat room, but then he just dropped out,” she said. “Now he's been gone for a long time without logging off.”

“He could be doing anything.”

“Well, exactly.”

“Did you send him a message?” I asked, praying that the answer was no.

“Uh, hello? Not my department. That's why I'm calling you. Can you come over?”

Could I? Should I? It was hard to concentrate on anything but the problem itself:
Do not let Frannie find out that she has just been chatting with Jeffrey.

“Why don't we just do it over the phone, like always?” I said. Yes, that was good. “I'll try sending him a message right now if you want.”

Frannie paused. It was almost eerie. “I'll come to you,” she said. “See you in a second.” The click on the line was her goodbye. I sat there with the phone still on and my tongue against the roof of my mouth, which was as far as I had gotten toward saying, “NO!”

Factoring in the distance between Frannie's house and mine, along with her usual driving speed and the adrenaline that was no doubt pumping through her system, that meant I had . . . zero time to figure something out. A few options crossed my mind:

Option number three won out by default. Before you could say,
“Auuuughhhh! Help me, help me, somebody help me!”
Frannie was in my room and panting over my shoulder. I logged back into the RBHS chat room as slowly as I could without seeming weird about it.

“There he is.” She put her finger to his name on the screen. “See if you can find out who he was talking to.”

“You don't even know for sure that he was talking to someone,” I said, which was true but still felt like a lie.

“Just go,” she said, starting to rub my shoulders. “Go, go, go.”

I typed in Franno and hit enter.

“Um, okay, that's good,” she said. “Like Jeffo. Cute.”

“All right,” I said. “We're just going to ease in here.”

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“Welcome back?” Her fingers stopped rubbing. I held off a nervous laugh.

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“Oh, that's good, right?” she said. “Now ask him if he was talking to someone.”

“Not so fast,” I said.

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Frannie didn't say anything, but I could feel the gears turning in her head. I wished she would sit down and stop looking over my shoulder. I'm pretty sure my face was turning red.

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“Wha-at?” Frannie's voice had that faraway quality. So did my brain. I couldn't think of a thing to type and Jeffrey kept going.

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Any other time, I would have thought that was sweet. Right now, though, Frannie was staring at me in a way that could have blocked out the sun, much less any deluded little crushes in the room.

“What have you been. . . ?” She didn't have to finish asking. She already knew. “How much have you been talking to him?” she asked instead. Her face was perfectly still. I couldn't read her expression at all.

“Frannie,” I fumbled, “I . . . I'm sorry.”

“Has it been you the whole time . . . posing as me? Or something else?” Her voice got higher as she said it.

“It's always been me as you,” I said. “I would never—”

“Ha!” She cut me off. “Don't even.”

I turned in my chair to face her as she walked away from me. “No, I'm serious,” I said. Even now, it bothered me she would so quickly assume I had forgotten our friendship. “I know how this might sound,” I told her, “but I would never do anything against you.”

“Oh, really?” she said. She looked over at the computer for a second and then right into my eyes. “And you told him things are
sketchy
between us? Why would you do that?”

The fact was that I hadn't said that to Jeffrey. He had interpreted it from our conversation, but somehow that distinction felt meaningless right now. This was only getting more complicated as it went on.

Then the computer toned with another line of chat coming in.

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Frannie groaned with frustration. “Just tell him—” but then she changed her mind. “Just . . . get up for a second.” The bossiness of it hurt, and she sat down at the computer like I wasn't even there anymore. The lump in my throat started to ache.

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Even Jeffrey's little XO—the one she never would have seen if this hadn't happened—felt incriminating. I said the only thing I could think of.

“I'm sorry.”

She ignored the apology. “Tell me something. How many times have you talked to him?”

“Not that many.”

I had to think about it, and she saw that right away.

“More than you can say. Unbelievable.” She went to the door but stopped with her hand on the knob. “I feel so stupid,” she said. “I feel so, so stupid.”

“Why?” I asked.

Maybe it was a dumb question, but I honestly didn't know the answer.

“Mostly because I trusted you,” she said. “But also because this makes me even more of a . . . whatever. An idiot, as far as Jeffrey is concerned.”

“He doesn't think that, Frannie. He likes you. A lot.”

“Thanks for the update. Anything else I should know?”

“I didn't do this to hurt you,” I said, trying not to sound aggressive.

“Yet look what happened. Funny how that works out.” She was getting heavy into the sarcasm, and it was starting to piss me off. I think more than anything, I was mad at the situation, but right now it felt a lot like being mad at Frannie.

“For the record,” I said, “this all started with you.”

“What does
that
have to do it?”

“Maybe not everything, but it does have something to do with it.”

“It's got
nothing
to do with it. For the record.” She practically spit it at me.

“You're not even trying to understand where I'm coming from,” I told her.

She pointed at the computer again, as if that closed her case. “Understand what? I didn't make you have those conversations behind my back, Marcus.”

“That's right, Frannie, you didn't,” I told her. It was all starting to spill out of me, including some things I hadn't realized until I said them. “You stayed at your usual safe distance and did everything you could to make sure I'd help you without ever
really
being responsible for anything yourself. Just like always.”

Frannie looked stung, and I got a jolt of guilt, but it just blended with the anger. “I only wish I had your problems,” I went on. My voice was shaking. “I'd trade places with you in a minute, and the thing is, you'd never want to be me. Has that ever occurred to you?”

“Don't try to change the subject,” she said. “That's not what this is about.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “It's about you. How could I forget? Okay, fine. Let me tell you something else, then. You don't even know Jeffrey.”

“What are you talking about?” she said. I was all over the map and we both knew it. I couldn't help myself, like everything I had never said was going to come out all at once or not at all.

“You don't know him—you don't
really
know him,” I told her. “And that's because you've never really tried, and
that's
because you've never had to, as long as I've been around.”

“Or maybe you've never given me the chance,” she shot back. “Maybe . . . no, not even maybe. You've been keeping him to yourself. Don't you see that? You tell me I don't know Jeffrey; well, guess what? You don't even know
yourself
. You can't even see what you're doing here.”

“What I see is how much of this you take for granted. Just like you take everything for granted.” And because I just wasn't going to have any crying right now, I fought it back by yelling even louder. “This was all about you! Why do you think I'm even doing this?!”

“Right, Marcus,” I snapped, “why
are
you doing this?”

 

We just stood there, staring at each other for a full minute, the words hanging in the air like a strange scent. Everything was silent. From its place on Marcus's desk in the corner of the room, I could hear his computer hum and whir. Marcus's chest rose and fell with his breathing.

“I'm—I'm doing this for you.” Marcus's voice had a strange, strangled quality. “Of course.”

“You don't actually believe that, do you?” My voice was quiet. I hardly knew what I was saying, what I was feeling. I was furious, sure. And sad. Marcus was my friend. But he'd been hitting on my boyfriend . . . pretending to be me? My throat tightened. The whole situation had this ugly quality—like Marcus had been making fun of me, laughing at me behind my back. But there was another feeling washing over me too, taking over the others. Was it—pity? What for? I felt dizzy; I couldn't think straight.