Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [70]
“What is the facebook?” Bastian asked.
“An online dating service for college students,” I answered.
“Networking service,” William corrected. “It provides users with connections of both the platonic and romantic varieties.”
“I think it is sad that even flirting is now done by computer,” Bastian said. “So much of courtship is the unspoken.”
“So true,” I said, with a serious nod.
William flicked his tongue stud at me. “That must be why your profile is missing from the site.”
He was right, my profile was missing. The reason I was hesitant to join the facebook (or CNet or myspace or any similar site for that matter) is because I didn't want to be poked all day long by people asking me to be their “friend.” I didn't want any friends in quotation marks. And I certainly didn't want to get all huffy and hurt when that same “friend” snubbed me a week later by terminating our “friendship.” It seemed to me that too many people joined these sites to collect “friends” and improve their social capital in a way that didn't require them to leave their dorm rooms, like Dexy, who had “friends” that she'd never even met listed on the facebook. (Then again, she has been equally adept at turning electronic pokes into, uh, literal ones.) And yet, despite my skepticism, I was open-minded about the possibility of signing up.
That is, until I recently checked out Hope Weaver's profile.
Hope Weaver was a flame-haired, alabaster stunner wearing a brilliant smile and an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt dipping dangerously down to her elbow. Hope Weaver belonged to more than a dozen nonsensical-sounding groups including Super Totally Awesome Chicks & Dudes, Mary-Kate Is Better Than Ashley, Gnomes Are Gneat, and I Hate the Word Panties. Her wall was filled with cryptic messages from names I'd never heard her mention. And no wonder—Hope Weaver had 491 “friends,” through whom she was connected to 4,236 other college students across the country. Looking at the evidence of her life without me at RISD, and now in France, I felt like I wasn't Hope Weaver's friend at all. With or without quotation marks.
“I guess you don't need electronic intervention like the rest of us,” William continued. “But we all can't be like you, Darling, Jessica. Juggling two, three guys at once.”
Bastian sat up in his beach chair. “Really?”
“No,” I said.
“Oh, don't be modest,” William said, enjoying my discomfort. “You want to hear a story? I've got a story . . .”
“You can't tell a story about me!” I said, instantly knowing what he was up to.
“Why can't I?” he asked. “It says, TELL US A STORY. There's no qualifiers on it saying, TELL US A STORY, BUT IT CAN'T BE ABOUT JESSICA DARLING.”
I pleaded with Bastian. “I don't really see how this is helpful.”
Bastian looked at William, then returned his eyes to me. “He is right. He can tell whatever story it is he wants to tell.”
“Gracias, amigo,” William said.
And so, for the next, oh, I don't know, bizillion years or so, William told, in excruciating detail, the story about how we had come up with the Barnard T-shirt bet and how he was relieved when he was wrong and I was right because it meant that guys had bought me many drinks and that I had gotten drunk enough to let down my defenses and finally act on the sexual tension that had been building between us and stop being so sanctimonious about the purity of my relationship with my long-distance boyfriend, whom I only spoke of with worshipful reverence when it sounded like this guy was as flawed as every other guy, if not more, and how it was so like me as a typically needy, love-hungry girlie girl to blame William for the subsequent breakup between me and the long-distance boyfriend, when I really should have been looking inward, and so much more that I can't bring myself to write it down because it's just so disturbing that this asshole has a better