“Yes!” Aunt Tracy bounced on her chair.
“Wait what?” My other aunt, Elle, poked her head around the corner, her red hair brighter than the card aisle for the over-emphasized holiday some celebrate, called Valentine’s Day. “Is this theboyfriendpics?” Elle hurried to Tracy’s side.
“The boyfriend?” Another shriek, and my third and fourth aunts—who were twins and in their thirties—leapt from the couch in the open concept living room and charged me.
“Okay, okay, okay!” I held my phone over my head. Aunts are like rabid raccoons around a garbage can. Or maybe more like chickens when you throw grain into their coop. It’s madness. Whatever it is, it’s madness.
“What’s his name?” Elle insisted.
“Brooks,” I answered because I had to, and this time, thankfully, I was prepared. I guess most girls at sixteen have a boyfriend. My aunts had been telling me for months now that book boyfriends don’t count. “His name is Brooks.”
I found the folder I created in my photos just for this moment, breathed a prayer that this didn’t qualify as lying, and flipped my phone around to show the aunts my “boyfriend.”
“Oh my gosh!” Aunt Tracy clapped her hand over her mouth.
“He’s cute!” the twins cried.
Elle’s smile was delighted. “I mean,” she waved her hand in the air, “I don’t mean to be weird, but if I were in high school, I’d want to date him.”
“That’s weird,” I confirmed.
“Fine.” Elle shrugged. “Does he play baseball like Reece?”
I nodded. Thanks to my older brother, I knew a lot about one thing regarding life outside of books. “He’s a catcher.”
“Acatcher!” Aunt Tracy had a way of exclaiming things in such a shrill tone that it made me want to go far, far away.
“Yep,” I nodded. I didn’t have much else to say. I didn’t usually go on about boys, so aside from the fact that my AI-generated photos had passed the test andmy aunts believed me, the only thing left was to establish that Brooks lived far enough away that they would never meet him. “He lives in North Carolina.”
“Where in North Carolina?” Twin #1 demanded.
“Umm—Asheville.” I hoped Asheville was in North Carolina.
“You met on vacation?” Twin #2 confirmed.
“Mm-hmm,” I answered. I’d learned enough from watching crime shows that the least amount of details was best when trying to keep a fake story straight.
“Where on vacation?” Aunt Tracy seemed more than just slightly unconvinced. Did she know I was making this up?
“At family camp,” I supplied.
“When you were in Texas?” She was trying to connect the dots.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “People from North Carolina go to family camp in Texas just like people from Wisconsin do.”
“Oh.” Tracy shrugged. Apparently, I’d convinced her.
“And he asked you out?” Elle’s smile almost stretched off her face. She was so pleased. It was like I’d won a million dollars or something. For a second, I felt bad. It was lying. It really was. I think. And lying was a whole Ten Commandments thing that was a big no, but… a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. And if my aunts were this annoying, then my friends were even more so.
Necessity required that I practice AI-deception. I created a boyfriend. He was fake. I’d fake date him through my sophomore year, and then, hopefully, everyone here would leave me alone, and I could go back to talking to Lia.
Who was in my jeans’ back pocket.
I call her my Pocket Bestie. We’re always on video chat. Always. How else am I supposed to get through life? Coffee is not always enough, you know.
“Mmmmpfffpffff!” I could hear Lia’s muffled voice in my pocket right now.
I mentally begged her to stay quiet. I’d fill her in on the aunts in a few minutes, but the chaos of their constant chattering and ecstatic glee was making my anxiety increase. And I wasn’t about to see a therapist for it. I could imagine how that conversation would go.
