Made of Plastic | Becca & Sasha
“THIS IS FULL OF LIES,” Becca shouted, tossing her phone carelessly onto the counter.
There was still an hour until close at AKF, but no one was in the store and, Becca had commented earlier, no one was likely to. It was cold and rainy and you weren’t going to go out in this weather unless you had to. So Becca had spent the downtime doing what she always did: stalking people on social media.
Today, it had been Rachel Lloyd.
She’d friended her several years ago for the sole purpose of stalking her. She’d once hoped that she’d find some dirt that she could pass on to Seth and shatter the perfect image he had of Rachel in his head.
So far, so such luck.
She’d been excited a few minutes ago, when she realized that Rachel had just been tagged in a bunch of photos at a bar. She knew that a bad picture wouldn’t change Seth’s mind, but it would make Becca feel better about herself. She’d eager scrolled through every single one, but not one was bad. Not one.
“How is she real?” Becca groaned, “She’s literally perfect in every. single. one. She’s like the Barney Stinson of Virginia Beach. Incapable of taking a bad picture. And I bet you she’s wasted in all of these. How is that possible to look that good, when you are completely drunk and in horrible lighting?”
She exhaled, frustrated, “Let’s just bring up some selfies I took from last night for a comparison,” She said, picking her phone up again and, standing close to Sasha, began to look through them. “I am an actual trash bag in all of these … “
Slow days were Sasha’s favorite days. Not that she didn’t love of job. She did. Sasha loved meeting new people and recommending her favorite books to them. She loved hearing the opinions of other reads. Mostly, she just loved talking about books.
But talking about books was second only to actually reading them. And on slow, rainy days, Sasha loved nothing more than curling up in one of the store’s many cozy arm chairs or sitting on the counter while she chatted with Becca.
On this particular slow day, Sasha had collected a stack of old Hemingways and was flipping through them, finding her favorite passages and reading them aloud. This seemed fun only for her as Becca was, yet again, torturing herself on Facebook.
She started at Becca’s first outburst. At her second, Sasha hopped off the counter, marking her place in A Farewell to Arms with a rumpled business card.
Patting Becca on the shoulder, Sasha looped an arm around her as she relieved her of her phone. “Why do you do this to yourself, Bex? Why do you torture yourself like this? If social media had been around in Jane Austen’s day, do you think Marianne Dashwood would’ve stalked Mr. Willoughby on Facebook?” She paused, realizing Marianne probably would’ve, before quickly adding, “That’s probably a bad example. But still.”
She sighed, looking through Becca’s photos. “You know what I see here? A cute, adorable, confident women who is better than Rachel Lloyd any day.”
Dropping her phone back into Becca’s hand, she squeezed her shoulder and hopping back onto the counter. “He’ll come around, Bex. He will. Just give him time. After all, Edmund Bertram wasn’t moved in a day. And Seth Connors likely won’t be either.”
She looked up suddenly, a new thought forming. “Or maybe we just need to find Mary Crawford a new target...”
