Little White Lies (13 page)

The ramifications of this post were beyond my capacity to imagine. The Skools … well, I couldn’t even go there right now. I thought of the kids who read my Tumblr. They looked up to me. They would be hurt by this. The teachers and administrators who endorsed me would feel betrayed. The parents, oh God, the parents! Why didn’t Karl think of the parents?!

My hands were shaking as I read it. My eyes felt like they were coming out of my head. I
wished
my eyes were coming out of my head, because that might mean that I wasn’t actually awake to be experiencing the hell that was this blog post. I dialed his number, and took a deep breath.

He hung up on me.

Karl hung up on me
.

That just happened.

My cheeks were on fire. If I were lighter-skinned, I think you’d see that I was blushing. My throat had a grapefruit in it. My stomach left my body. What was I going to do? How was I going to fix this?

I stared at my computer and waited for the server to respond. As I watched the refresh wheel continually spin, I talked myself down. It was going to be all right. As soon as the server came up, I would simply take down the post, and it would be fine. Shit happens, right? Right. Maybe I could make up something. Like I was hacked. On the other hand, lying about being hacked didn’t turn out so well for Anthony Weiner aka Carlos Danger. Like me, he was another disgraced person my parents had once admired.

My cell phone started ringing. It was one of the Skool twins. I don’t know which one, because when they gave me their numbers, I put them in as “Skool 1” and “Skool 2.” Truth be told, it didn’t matter. Both were equally terrifying in this situation. I did not pick up.

My phone filled up with voicemails.

Listening to the messages was not an option. I could not face them. What would the Skools say? What did they know? Why were they still calling?
You left a voicemail; stop calling!

I closed my eyes, my phone still buzzing, and pictured my life swirling down the toilet.

There was only one thing to do. I told my mom I was too sick to go to school, then went back to bed and slept for nine hours. I woke up in a fog. Then I remembered my horrible morning. I had to call Rachel. Even with all of the resentment festering between us, the state of our friendship didn’t compare to the shit storm that I found myself in. I needed a safe place. I needed a safe person. I couldn’t go to my parents about this, not yet. It was too embarrassing. I declined another incoming call and dialed my friend.

It felt so comforting just to hear her voice. Like when you’re a little kid and you go to your first sleepover, and it’s all fun and games until it’s time to go to bed. At that point you realize that you want
your
bed, with your parents in the room down the hall—not sleeping on the floor next to all these other kids in someone else’s house. When your parents finally pick you up, you feel shame in leaving the party. But you don’t care. You’re going home.

By the time Rachel showed up, I was laid out on the bed, rubbing my bleary eyes at the computer. The server hadn’t come back up. The post was just sitting there, staring at me, mocking me.

She quietly closed the door. Then she sat on the edge of my mattress. Once she looked at my face, I think she deserted any plans to let me have it. I was already defeated. Knocking me down would feel like punching a kitten.

Funny, the last time Rachel and I had a heart-to-heart was the last time I broke down over this blog, and here we were
again. I wasn’t sure if Rachel knew anything about Karl. She’d only introduced me to AllYou™, after all. And the woman at AllYou™, Alex Melrose, made me sign several agreements promising never to reveal Karl’s identity or the nature of our relationship. So I figured I had to start from the beginning, for Rachel’s sake.

It all came out in a rush, just as it had before.

I told her that at first Karl was there just to
help
. As Rachel had promised. And he
had
been helpful. The original idea was that he would guide me, and maybe write a little post here and there. At least, that was
my
original idea. But then the tables turned a bit when my most popular post (Beyoncé) was his, which led to a shift in our dynamic. I thought Karl was jealous of the recognition that I was getting from his—well, to be fair, “our” work. Now he was out to get me, sabotage me, defame me. (I was going to say “crucify,” but that felt a bit much.)

I told her that by the time I met with the Skool twins I was determined to take charge of the blog again. They instilled this sense of power in me, and that I really thought everything was going to be okay. But when Karl found out about the Pulse TV deal, he responded with the pro-bullying post. He responded by getting pissed. At
me
. I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I was hoping he would be more … I wasn’t sure.
Grown-up
. But what did I know about grown-ups? My parents were unfathomable sometimes, too …

That’s where I ended.

I looked at Rachel. She didn’t say anything. I wanted her to tell me what to do. I half-expected her to tell me to get on a plane and leave the country. Sadly, that wasn’t feasible for several reasons: I had no passport, I had no money (yet), and they’d probably stop me at the gate for being a traitor.

All of a sudden, Rachel grabbed my hand. It felt good for the same reason it felt weird: we hadn’t spoken, much less hugged, in weeks.

“You know what you have to do,” she whispered.

“Could you be more specific?”

“You have to come clean. You have to tell people before they find out. Trust me on this.”

She was right. I knew she was right.

Besides, I had no choice but to trust her. She was the only person who knew the whole truth.

It took the two of us about a half hour of feverish back and forth to make the final decision.

I would write a confession. I would then email it out to the people in my life that would be most hurt by my lies. It was a small but vital list.

Moments later, I was sitting at my computer. Rachel stood over my shoulder, helping me craft the letter sentence by sentence.

As painful as it was to put it all into words, it was cleansing. What’s the word? Cathartic. That sounds very hippie-dippie, but it
was
cathartic and cleansing, so shut up about it. I was fragile. My blog should’ve been called
Big Fat Black Teenager Lies
. Not that I was fat, but the lies were fat. Not that it would matter if I was fat. Never mind.

I hit
SEND
. Rachel squeezed my shoulder. Then she left.

Then I waited.

To say that I had a sleepless night would be an understatement. I didn’t even bother getting under the covers. I was too twitchy. I felt gross, but also like a gross
person
. My subconscious wouldn’t let me forget it. I needed to start
being more of a warrior in my life and confronting my wrongs.

At around midnight, I grabbed my phone, that vessel for all things good and bad, and I listened to the voicemail from “Skool 1”—left right after the blog post from hell.

“Coretta, hello! It is Anders and Karin Skool here. We just wanted to ring you this morning to tell you that we loved your blog post on bullying!”

I’m sorry, what? Are they insane? Am I insane?

“We thought it was so funny! And to take such a satirical position on a serious subject affecting today’s youth? So clever! Cheers, darling!”

I wondered for a moment if I’d really gone off the deep end, if I was dreaming or hallucinating. I’d sent out a confession email so as to distance myself from an inflammatory and offensive pro-bullying post. And I’d just discovered that it was all for nothing? Maybe the universe was out to get me. I was whispered a string of words, some that I’d never said before, and most that I hope not to repeat.

I had another voicemail from “Skool 2.”

This one had just come in. Tonight. After I’d sent the confessional email. So this was it. I knew I was fired. I knew I was going down in flames. Hearing it would bring me back to reality.

“Coretta, thank you for your honesty. Karin and I wanted you to know that your secret is safe with us. We would also like to offer our reassurance that for the sake of our respective reputations—yours and ours, Coretta—we were able to take appropriate measures to prevent your confessional email from reaching either your parents, or your dear friend Michael and his parents. Just go back to writing your own material. Needless to say, we insist upon that. So don’t let it happen again. Cheers.”

Okay, something was seriously wrong here. That was it?
“Don’t let it happen again? Cheers?”
That was all they had to say about what I did? And how were they able to intercept my email before it reached my parents and the Corneliuses?

Their smug demeanor and apparent control over my email terrified me. My mind whirled into the wee hours of the morning.. Thinking about it all, I realized that maybe the Skool twins realized that my secret would make
them
look bad. After all, they did have quite a lot of benefit from
Little White Lies
taking off. I was still guilty and gross, yes. But at least I wasn’t going to be fired. At least my parents weren’t going to find out. And neither would Mike or his parents. Not sure how that worked exactly, but it was both a relief and a serious brain twister. I could stop having to worry about reading some disparaging press release. Unless Alex Melrose or Kranky Karl decided to go public, which seemed unlikely. As the heavy weight lifted from my shoulders, I might have even managed to doze off before the sun came up.

It was 7
A.M
. on Wednesday. Once I felt capable of at least
considering
putting on pants and leaving my room, I texted Rachel and told her to tell Alex Melrose to fire Karl.

Weirdly, I felt a surge of confidence. Maybe it was because Rachel and I were friends again. But I also thought,
what better time to write my first post for the TV show?
A nice fluffy celeb piece that would get people off my last post and on to thinking about someone else’s life that doesn’t concern them.

Little White Lies

True or false? Now more than ever, in the age of Internet democratization, the creation of celebrity and its power rests with us, the people
.

Pulse TV must have purchased exclusive rights to the word
truth
.

Ironic, given how I’d started my last post for Coretta. But fitting, too.

In the weeks leading up to the PULSE TV LIVE premier of
Little White Lies LIVE
, I had been bombarded with banner ads and pop-ups on every webpage, promising me “God’s Honest Truth” if I tuned in. (Okay, to be truthful, that was one of the few truth-related phrases that
wasn’t
used in the campaign.) But they trotted out nearly every other truth-based cliché:

It was a strictly word-based campaign. Black and white. Bold face. Sans serif. Helvetica, to be exact.