Socially Awkward

Socially Awkward

Stephanie Haddad

Copyright 2012 Stephanie Haddad

Amazon Kindle
Edition

This book is also available in a print edition from most online retailers.

Discover other titles by
Stephanie Haddad
at
www.
amazon
.com
.

License Notes

This
eBook
is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This
eBook
may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Discover other titles by Stephanie Haddad.

NOVELS

A Previous Engagement

Love Regifted

Love Unlisted

----

SHORT STOR
I
ES

Other Kinds of Love: A Collection

****

For SMC, SPC, & SLC

Sisters are friends forever.

****

PROLOGUE

My name is Olivia Saunders, but my friends just call me Livy. If
you happen to stumble upon
my
Facebook profile, you’ll learn pretty much all
there is to know about me.
As the daughter of a US Army sergeant,
I spent my early yea
rs moving all around the world in an exciting blur of activity, new faces, and strange places
.  I’m an only child, a daddy’s girl, and
yet I
have no desire to join the military whatsoever. 
And yes, people ask me that question all the time.

G
rowing up,
I followed my dad and mom
from Boston
to
London,
Texas,
New York, and even
Germany. 
Thanks to all of the moving around,
I’v
e
acquired
a diverse range of skills, which include
hunt
ing
for quail, repair
ing
a
riding
lawn mower, and host
ing
a proper tea time
with real English scones
I can bake from scratch
. I speak three languages fluently, have extensive training in horseback riding, and almost made the Olympic women’s volleyball team
just after I graduated high school
. My interests are as
varied
as the places I’ve lived and
I always love to try new things, whether it’s knitting or base jumping
.

Looking back on my life
, now that I’m
an adult
, I’ve seen so many places and met so many people
that it sometimes seems there’s nothing left to explore. M
y one regret
, however,
is never
g
row
ing any
real roots anywhere.
It’s the one experience I’ve never had: to find somewhere I belong and learn to fit in.

That is, until I moved
back
to Boston
a few years ago
to pursue a career in modeling. I know, most people think
of
New York or Paris
as the only runways worth walking
.
H
aving been to both cities, I knew
neither
was the
right
scene for me. I gave up on my dream of turning on the big catwalks of the world in favor of a calmer, quieter modeling career
concentrated on
print advertisements and catalogs. Take a look at my p
rofile
photos and
think really hard about where you’ve seen me. Y
ou’ll probably have some distant memory of seeing me somewhere before.

Now
that I’ve
finally found someplace to call my
home city, I’m hoping to settle down.
Unfortunately, my m
odeling contacts aren’t exactly great marriage material, especially since most of the men I know are playing for the other team.
That’s why
I’ve turned to s
ocial networking
t
o meet new people, both close to home and overseas
, wherever the web takes me
.  I’ve
made hundreds of
virtual
new acquaintances
, some
with
similar interests
and some
with very different ways of looking at the world
.
Yet
they’re all my friends,
some with the potential to become more. M
aybe one of them is the lucky one
I’ve been waiting for
.

Currently, that list of friends is more than 800 strong—an impressive feat considering I have never actually met a single one of them in person. Some of them might try to argue that they
do
know me from their days at school or perhaps met me at that one party that time at that girl’s house. Maybe they think they recognize me from last fall’s catalog, or that billboard ad they drive past every day.

But they’d all be wrong, because Olivia Saunders doesn’t exist.

****

I
n real life, my name is Jennifer Smith, and I, like my name, am almost the perfect
picture of normalcy. In fact, I’m still a little angry with my parents
for giving me the
N
umber
O
ne most common name for girls during the year I was born. Paired with the
N
umber
O
ne most common surname in the United States, I’m as boring and invisible as a name can make a person. I’m the very image of the “girl next door,” American as apple pie.  With smooth skin, plain features, and a little too much weight around my middle, I look like almost every other girl I’ve ever met. Except for two tiny details: a pair of “accessories” I wish I didn’t need but cannot live without.

I guess that’s where this idea of Olivia Saunders came from. She’s exotic and special in every way I’m not. She’s unique and distinctive in the right ways… rather than because she wears hearing aids as a result of a
birth
defect to her hearing nerves. Not like the real me.

CHAPTER
ONE

“How could you do this to me?” Gaping at my sister, the very
person
I’
ve
called my best friend for basically my entire life, these
a
re the only words I c
an
muster.

Claire st
ands
st
ill, staring back at me, but does
n’t say a word in her own defense.
She
just freezes
, hands on her slender hips, and focuses her blue eyes like laser beams at my skull. As her anger bubbles under the surface of her expression, I can see her little button nose twitching with frustration.

“I trusted you and now…”

Her eyes grow big at my words
, her anger spilling over the edge
.
“It’s this stupid project, Jen! It’s
taking over your entire life!
Y
ou don’t see things right anymore. You don’t get it, do you? Sean doesn’t love
you
, he
’s
in
love
with
Olivia.
It seems hardly fair that you’re mad at me about this.”

“
But I
am
Olivia,
Claire!” I blink
, biting back tears. I never thought, in all the years of being the victim of bully a
fter bully, that my own sister c
ould hurt me the deepest. Never.

“
No, you’re not. There is no Olivia!
I just don’t see what the problem is. He cares about me
now
,” she offer
s
, hands on her hips. Her tone soften
s, but her words do
n’t cut me any less deeply. “And I care about him. Can’t you just be happy for us?”

It’
s all my fault, of course. Or rather, Olivia’s fault. If only I’d just picked something else to
study for
my s
ociology
project,
things could have been so different. N
ow it’s far too late. The damage has
been done.

“You know damn well what you’re doing and how wrong it is!” I d
on’t want to yell, but I’m
starting to lose
both the
feeling in my face
and all
of my
vocal control
. “You’re stealing Sean because I showed you what kind of person Tom really is! It’s not my fault what he did to you, Claire.”

“This has nothing to do with that,” Claire says, her tone growing icy.

“I said I was sorry, Claire. I had no idea he would…”

“Why can’t you just mind your own business, Jen? Just go be with Noah and leave me the hell out of it!”

It’s my turn to turn icy, as my eyes narrow on my spiteful sister. “Leave Noah out of this, Claire. You know damn well there’s nothing going on between…”

“For the love of God, Jen! You just want them all for yourself, don’t you?”

“I’m not the one of us who’s a selfish bitch!”

As soon as the words explode from my mouth, I want to stuff them back in. Claire is not a bitch, she never has been. But I just don’t have a word to describe what she’s become in these past few weeks. There’s a pause between us, a mutual look of shock that divides us like steel bars down the center of the room. To cover up my embarrassment, I yell even louder. “Just get out!”

“Girls!” When my mother burst
s
through the side door, Claire and I fr
ee
ze.

We often forget how thin the walls are between my parents’ house and the in-law apartment I live in.
It’s just one of the pitfalls of living here, being so exposed all the time. I enjoy
the part
with low rent
and no utilities,
the
built-in laundry service, and
the access to
home-cooked meals when I want them, but it
’s annoying to have unannounced family visits at any time of the day.

“Great job, Jen. Now the authorities are involved,” Claire’s sarcasm f
a
ll
s
flat in the silent apartment. My mother stare
s
us down, each in turn, until Claire thr
o
w
s
her hands up into the air. “Forget it. I’m out of here.”

Mom and I watch Claire storm out the front door, leaving it open, wi
thout even putting her jacket
on.
The weather ha
s
been warming up late
ly, but the cold spring air blo
w
s
briskly into my
apartment. Still, what really gi
ve
s
me chills
i
s the
memory of
Claire’s
expression
when I mentioned Tom.

What the hell have
I done?

Eventually, Mom coaxes me onto the sofa with a cup of tea, wraps a blanket
around my shoulders to protect
against the chill, and sits down next to me. She gives me a speech about how she’s still our mother, even though her babies are all grown up now, and that we can come to her about anything, anytime.   These are all facts I’ve known all along, but confessing
to my mother, of all people,
the horrible things I’ve done just makes me feel even more
despicable
.

“I… can’t, Mom,” I m
anage to say
, stirring the spoon in my tea unconsciously.
We stare at each other in silence for several moments. Her thin lips pull into a tight line as she observes my expression, distorted with emotional turmoil, and the corners shift downward into a frown.
“It’s a really long story and I…”

“Jennifer,” she says, narrowing her eyes
—her eyes that are just like Claire’s, only much wiser
.
And far less judgmental.
“Do you have someplace better to be? Because your father fell asleep an hour ago watching golf and I’ve got a free evening
to occupy
.
Humor me.
”

I chuckle, despite myself
,
and try to steel my nerves. “If I tell you, just promise you won’t think any less of me… okay? I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. It’s all gotten out of hand and I’m… I don’t know what to do.”

Mom leans in and kisses my forehead, smoothing a strand of hair behind my hearing aid. It jostles a bit but doesn’t come out of place. I take a deep breath and begin.

****

T
o effectively tell my story, I should start a little closer to the beginning. Before Sean, Tom,
Noah,
and
even
Olivia came into ou
r lives. Before Claire and I
ever fought about anything
more serious than who got the bigger scoop of ice cream
. Before my mother was a frequent interrupter of key conflicts in my apartment. Before I’d ever created that
fake Facebook profile
.

This whole mess started as
a fleeting thought, inspired by a discussion in one of my
graduate
classes.
And now it’s threatening to destroy everything I love… just like Frankenstein’s monster. Why, oh why, didn’t I just get my degree in Literature?

All I needed was an idea for my final paper for my Master of Science in Sociology. Since it was already September of my final year in the program, I was a bit desperate.
I wasn’t in one of those Master’s programs where you just read a bunch of books, repackage
d some ideas, and mad
e it sound pretty in about
50 pages. Oh no. Instead, I was required
to conduct actual field research. 

But
I’ll admit it:
I was
completely
devoid of ideas
.
Except for those o
f
f
ered by
my sister Claire,
which were completely horrible: “S
tudy freshmen
at
the
l
aundromat and write about how clueless kids are away fro
m their mommies the first time” or, my favorite, “Study the social interactions between police officers and people getting speeding tickets.”  In hindsight, either one of those
might have been a more practical
choice of research project.
Even her idea about the social interactions of
gardeners and their plants
was better than this.

Bad idea after bad idea,
Dr. Chase, my advisor and the professor of my
Contemporary Issues in Sociology
course, just kept telling me not to panic.
In part, I blame her for not putting the kibosh on this thing right away.
If she had just
assigned
me a topic, may
be I wouldn’t have
jumped on the first “decent” idea I came across. Maybe.

I start my story for Mom on the
day this mess
really
began
.
T
he planets were all aligned
and
the moon was full… or something.  But still,
I was late for
my morning lecture
.

Dr. Chase
wa
s already
talking at rapid pace
when I slid into the back of the small room and join
ed
the rest of
the
class.
It was one of my last c
ourse requirements
, with just two semesters left to cr
e
at
e
the perfect research study.

My professor glance
d
up from her lecture notes
on
the podium and nod
ded
at me. A few students swivel
ed in their chairs to see who had
just cut into the middle of their class, but most of them probably assume
d
it
was me and did
n’t even flinch.
Two weeks into the semester, they should all be used to my tardiness by now.
Call it bad luck or just poor planning, but something always delayed me.

“You’ll be late for your own funeral, Jen,” my mother chuckles, interrupting my story. I groan and continue.

I took my usual seat in the back, pulled out my trusty iPad and started jotting some notes. Dr. Chase was talking about the relationships between friends and how they ha
ve
been altered in our present day, thanks to advances
in technology
. Advances l
ike the one I was definitely not using to surf the web in the middle of her class time.
Still… i
f I was Googl
ing
“modern sociology”
for
a
research
project topic, was that really a waste of said class time?

“How do you communicate with your closest friends today?” she asked the class,
breaking the
fast clip of her
own
lecture
. “Has it changed in the past few years? Your generation has experienced a huge shift in the way people keep in touch, so how has that affected your lives?”

I lifted my head
to acknowledge that I heard the question
but
didn
’
t have a response. Dr. Chase
looked around the room, eyebrows raised, waiting for the first hands to go up.

“Anyone?” she asked again.