––––––––
It was settled.
I’d signed up to enter the talent show. I had no idea what I was going to sing yet, but I would do it. I would sing in front of an audience for the first time since Mom died.
The thought was both exciting and terrifying. After all, this was not a church. The people in this crowd wouldn’t cheer for me regardless of if I was terrible or not. The kids at my school were brutal. I imagined them pelting me with tomatoes, the red pulpy insides soaking through my clothes.
I could not suck.
I clicked through my music collection, searching for a song to sing. I dragged each one that I liked in a folder labeled, Talent Show. So far, I’d added Sussudio, Walking on Sunshine and, just because I was feeling super brave in that moment, Bohemian Rhapsody.
My mom always said that I sang with soul, so I started to look for more soulful music. Alicia Keyes. Amy Winehouse. I could probably struggle through Beyonce’s, If I Was a Boy, but it was too slow. I wanted something more upbeat and fun.
It’d never sang for a contest before. For the most part, it was just for fun. A way to say the words that I couldn’t say in my day to day life.
When I was mad, I screamed the lyrics to old rock songs. I loved the feeling of the artist’s anger in my mouth. I’d bellowed those songs until my face turned a shade of red as furious as my mood and, when I was done, I’d lay sprawled and breathless on my floor, my demons purged. Old bands like Linkin Park and Metallica were great for angry days.
When I was sad, I sang the blues while lying in my bed, hugging an old pillow and wishing that I was old enough to drink whiskey just because it seemed appropriate to do so in that moment.
Pop songs were great for expressing my happiness, and I sang old hymns when I especially wanted to feel closer to God.
Music was my voice. An outlet in which my soul spoke words that my mind could not form. It was a shame that I didn’t sing that much anymore. Maybe that was why I felt so sad sometimes. Because my soul had no outlet in which to speak. Perhaps with a little more song, I could be the person that I wanted to be. Strong. Confident. Happy.
I’d just Google searched Soul Singers when my phone exploded in a flurry of text and social media messages.
Ariel: Eric just invited me to spend the day with him at South Street Seaport. Sooo excited. What should I wear?
Jasmine: Where are you? Have you checked Facebook lately?
Jasmine: Oh My God. Go on Facebook right now.
Ariel: We are going to kill Dana.
Ariel: This is bullying. We should call the cops.
What were they talking about?
I opened Facebook. One hundred and fifty-two friend requests.
What?
I clicked through the list. Who were these people? Not one face looked familiar. Why would they all choose to friend me?
I clicked out of the screen and looked at my wall.
Ugly words looked back at me.
Slut.
Whore.
Are you pregnant?
I had to speed scroll for a good ten seconds to get to the bottom of all of it, anger filling me with each swipe. My hands shook with rage. The comments were all about me or Jake or both of us. Some people even tagged him, though he hadn’t responded to anything yet.
Did he see the awful words? Did he care?
The friend request jumped to one hundred and sixty. Who were all these people? How had they heard of me? Was someone making fake profiles to stalk me? Who would do something like that?
My blood boiled. There was only one person that it could possibly be. Dana. She was behind it. She had to be. She’d enlisted her cronies to create fake Facebook profiles just to call me names and harass me.
I called her a very unchristian name. She could have just said that she wanted Jake back. Why did girls always make the next girlfriend the enemy instead of the guy? It wasn’t as if I’d stolen Jake from her. Did she forget that she’d dumped him?
I tried not to let the comments hurt me, but they did. They talked about my frizzy hair, my breasts, my clothes, my face. The attacks were personal, like tiny missiles, each aimed at a different piece of my heart. I sniffed back the tears. I would not cry.
Taking a deep breath, I allowed the logical side of me to take over. I changed my privacy settings so that only friends could post on my wall, then, one by one, I deleted the ugly words.
Hot tears threatened, but I kept them at bay. I would not give Dana and her dumb friends my tears. They didn’t deserve them.
Each word deleted and profile blocked fueled the angry fire that built within me. I was friends with family from back home on this profile. I’d even friended my father, though he rarely used Facebook. How could they do something like this? I’d never done anything to anyone, and now they were calling me names like slut and whore? I was a virgin. I’d only kissed two boys, including Jake. They had gotten me totally and completely wrong.
I growled.
This was all because of Jake. Jake and his stupid plan. The worst part was, he wasn’t even man enough to defend me in the posts, even though he was tagged in them. Just like he hadn’t defended me at lunch during the food fight with his sister.
The urge to find out every sordid detail of his life and turn it over to the cops rose strong. I couldn’t wait to get this deal over with and go back to my regularly scheduled life.
My profile now cleaned, I laid in bed, put on my headphones, and blasted, Mean by Taylor Swift. At the end of the song, I allowed a single tear to fall, closed my eyes, and fell in to a restless sleep.