Socially Awkward Read Online Free PDF Page A

me busted in the first place—without even knowing it. I’d hidden the wrapper in the trash, down below a banana peel and an empty low-fat chip bag, just in case Claire spotted it. All of this I did regularly on autopilot, staring mindlessly at a computer screen or lost in thoughts about a life that wasn’t mine.
     
    The truth was, I just didn’t know how to be any other way.
     
    “Claire, please. I’m not…” Tears welled in my eyes but I fought to keep them contained.
     
    “I just want to help you,” she said, letting the gummy bears fall to the kitchen floor. “I didn’t want to upset you. It just hurts me to hear you talk about yourself like that when you could change it, and you don’t. Come here.”
     
    She held out her arms to me, my beautiful and loving big sister, and I went to her. I hugged her, signaling my forgiveness, and bit down on those tears until they stopped threatening to spill.
     
    “I know, Claire,” I said, when I was confident that my voice wouldn’t crack. “But I’m not ready to do this. I know it’s dumb, but I can’t stop it now, Claire. It’s too much. Just let me finish with school and maybe I’ll be ready then, okay? ”
     
    Claire let the topic drop for the time being, leaving the junk food wherever it had landed, strewn about my little galley kitchen. She released me from her embrace and shooed me back into the living room.
     
    Within mere minutes, I had gotten her out of rampage mode and back on track to help me. I knew she only wanted what she believed w as best for me, but she should know by now that pushing me does nothing. When I was ready, I’d let her know. In the meantime, there was a whole new person waiting to be crafted. Well, cropped, touched up, and airbrushed, anyway.
     
    So I made Claire take a picture of me with my back to the camera, my face turned to the side dramatically. She took it in black and white, so you couldn’t tell that my mousy brown hair wasn’t really dirty blonde or that my brown eyes weren’t green. 
     
    “I don’t think we should change this picture. It looks really good just as it is, you know?” Claire tried once again, more feebly this time, to dissuade me from my Photo Shop mission.
     
    “Look, Claire,” I said, exhaling. “Regardless of your feelings on my self-image problems, Olivia’s profile picture can’t look like me. If I’m going to try to friend the same people with two different Facebook accounts, the photos have to look different enough that no one is suspicious.”
     
    Mollified, at least for the time being, Claire pulled out her laptop to work her graphic design magic on the photo. I stood over her shoulder, giving her instructions for every single part of my body. We trimmed things away, enlarged some others (ahem), and put the curves in all the right places. Within an hour, dowdy and boring Jennifer Smith became hot, smoldering Olivia Saunders—a model/hopeful actress/diner waitress.  My sister, although resistant to do so, had shaved off about 3 0 pounds from my frame and basically added them all to my breasts.  Olivia looked nothing like me.
     
    She was perfect, at least to me.
     
    “Um, Jen,” Claire said, studying the finished product with her head tilted to the side. “You do know who this looks like, right?”
     
    I looked at the picture hard, squinting my eyes. All I could see was the image I’d crafted back in Dr. Brinkley’s exam room. The New Jennifer that I was going to aspire t o become, one day. Eventually. For now, t here she was, peeking at me from over her slender shoulder.
     
    “It looks like how I picture Olivia, Claire… W hat am I missing?”
     
    Claire shook her head, looking away. “Nothing. It just reminded me of somebody…”
     
    “Huh,” I shrugged my shoulders and nudged her off my desk chair. “Can I post it now?”
     
    “Yeah, sure. It’s all ready to go,” she said, still a bit distracted. I let it go, thinking she was just scrolling through