Page 86 of Borrow My Heart

When we reached the end of the table I looked around for my sister. I didn’t see her. Chad led me to a blanket that was spread out on the grass. A few other people were already sitting there, but it was a big blanket. We sat down.

“What have you been doing so far this weekend?” I popped a square of watermelon in my mouth.

“We were on the lake yesterday, boating.”

“Wren!” David came running toward us, then plopped stomach-first in front of us. “You totally know why I recognized you! You’re good!”

“What?” I asked.

“What?” he mimicked, and then laughed.

I felt my cheeks growing red and I didn’t even know why.

“What are you talking about?” Chad asked.

“She’s that TikTok girl.”

“TikTok girl?” I asked, looking at Chad, who seemed equally as confused.

“Yes, the catfish one,” David said. “It was staged, right? That’s the debate.”

“What?” I asked, something in my stomach becoming heavy and tight.

“Oh yeah,” one of the girls sitting on the blanket said. “Youareher. I wondered where I’d seen you before.”

“Someone fill me in here,” I said. “You’ve seen me on TikTok?”

“You honestly haven’t seen it?” the girl asked.

David playfully patted my shoulder, “No, come on, you must be the world’s best actress. This is why you made the video seem so real, these skills.”

The girl, not as convinced as David that I was faking, passed me her phone. A TikTok video was on the screen.

“Maybe you shouldn’t watch it here,” Chad said, and I became aware that everyone on the blanket and several people around us had gone still and were watching me. He was probably right.

The frozen image was a blurry face that I knew would become clear when I pushed Play. There would probably be sound too. Did I really want to watch this in front of a group of strangers and Chad? Darren made the decision for me when he reached over and pushed Play.

Dale’s face came into focus. The wordsPart 1were at the bottom of the video. Staring into the camera, Dale said, “So here we are out in front of the meeting place. We know she’s not showing. We think, since she refused to meet up every time he asked, refused to send pics, and wouldn’t even do a video call, that she is a catfish.”

“Youthink that,” Asher said from off camera.

“She ghosted you like two days ago when you gave her awe need to meet or this is overspeech, right?”

The camera panned over to Asher, who rolled his eyes. “Yes, she did. But I’m getting ready to play the sad sack.”

Next there was a montage of text messages. Probably the messages Asher and this girl had exchanged.

“Poor Asher,” Dale said. “But his loss is our gain, because you know what gets tons of views? Sad stories. We’re about to see Asher excited to meet his online crush and get crushed.”

“Are you really going to post this video?” Asher asked. “Spelling out the fact that we’re putting on an act?”

“No, this is just for fun,” Dale said. Then words came on the screen that I had to pause to read. They said:We were not going to post this video, but the following event made it necessary in order to tell the full story. Like for Part 2.

The video ended and started playing again from the beginning. The pit in my stomach grew. My eyes went to the view count. It had well over a hundred thousand. That wasn’t too bad as far as views went.

“He already told me that he knew I wasn’t her. That he knew he was probably getting catfished,” I felt the need to say out loud. I had assumed Asher didn’t know untilafterthe café, but it made sense that both he and Dale would want to attempt a viral post about it.

“There’s another video,” the girl said.

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