I screech and jump out of my chair. “What the fu—?”
“Where are they? Where are they?” My roommate staggers into the kitchen, wearing onesie pajamas and a Noam Chomsky sleep mask pulled up to her forehead. Also: swinging a plastic baseball bat like a madwoman. “Leave now or I’ll call 911! This is trespassing!”
“Cece—”
“A misdemeanor and a felony! You will be arrested for battery! My cousin is taking the bar this year, and she will sue you for millions of dollars—”
“Cece, no one’s in here.”
“Oh.” She windmills the bat a few more times, blinking owlishly. “Why are we screaming, then?”
“The fact that your porcupine decided to impersonate my mouse might be related.”
“Hedgehog—you know she’s a hedgehog.”
“Do I.”
She yawns, tossing the bat back into her room. It misses, bouncing emptily across the chipped linoleum floor. “Smaller. Cuter. Quillier. Also, Hedgizabeth Bennet? Not a porcupine name.”
“Right. Sorry.” I cradle my hand to my chest. “The searing pain had me a tad out of sorts.”
“It’s okay. Hedgie’s a kind soul—she forgives you.” Cece picks her up. “Do you? Do you forgive Elsie for misspeciesing you, baby?”
I glare at Hedgie, who stares back with beady, triumphant eyes. That malignant sentient pincushion. I’m going to fry you up with scallions, I mouth.
I swear to God, her spines puff up a little.
“Where were you last night?” Cece asks, blessedly unaware of our interspecies war. I wonder what it says of me that my best friend’s best friend is a hedgehog. “Faux? That Greg guy?”
“Yup.”
“How’d it go?”
“Good.” I suddenly recall not crushing Jack Smith like an egg. “Well, fine. Yours?”
Cece and I got into fake dating during the financial and emotional dark ages of our lives: graduate school. I was down to two pairs of non-mismatched socks, living off computational cosmology theorems and instant ramen. In hindsight, I was perilously close to developing scurvy. Then, on a dark and stormy night, as I contemplated selling a heart valve, my former friend J.J. texted me a link to Faux’s recruitment page. The caption was a laughing emoji, the one with tears shooting out of the eyes, and a simple Check this out! It’s like that thing we did in college.
I frowned, like I often do when reminded of J.J.’s existence, and never replied. But I did notice that the hourly rates were high. And in between TA’ing Multivariable Calculus, forming an opinion on loop quantum gravity, and trying not to punch my all-male fellow grads for constantly assuming that I should be the one making their coffee, I found myself making a profile. Then interviewing. Then being matched with my first client—a dorky twenty-year-old who gave me a pleading look and asked, “Can you pretend to be my age? And Canadian? We met in eighth grade at summer camp, and your name is Klarissa, with a K. Also, if anyone asks, I am not a virgin.”
“Are they likely to ask?”
He considered it. “If they don’t, could you casually bring it up?”
It turned out not to be that bad, so I asked Cece if she wanted to try it, too. I swear I don’t secretly hate her. It was just the only thing I could think of upon realizing that we’d both made the stupidest of career choices (i.e., academia). We’re overeducated and too poor to survive—as evidenced by our crappy apartment, full of exposed wiring and scary spiders that look like the love children of murder hornets and coconut crabs. If we had a sitcom-like group of friends, we’d hold an asbestos-removal party. Sadly, it’s just us. And the barely avoided scurvy.
“So.” She steals my tea mug and hops on the counter. I let her: no need for caffeine after the sheer agony of a thousand needles. “They sent me to this guy.”
“What’s his deal?” Meaning: What deep-seated, soul-scorching trauma dragged this poor sap out of the primordial swamp and made him shell out wads of cash to pretend he’s not alone?
“He’s one of yours.”
“Of mine?”
“A scientist.”
Cece is a linguist, finishing up her Ph.D. at Harvard. We first met when her former roommate moved out: apparently, Hedgie had chewed her way through his boxer briefs. Also apparently: blasting “Immigrant Song” while making poached eggs on Saturday mornings is not something normal people put up with. Cece was desperate for someone to help with rent. I felt as if I’d just been skinned alive, and was desperate not to be living with J.J. Two desperate souls, who found each other in desperate times and desperately bonded—over the fact that I could scrape together seven hundred dollars a month, was not attached to my underwear, and owned a set of noise-canceling headphones.
Frankly, I lucked out. Roommate feuds are a pain, what with the passive-aggressive notes and the aggressive-aggressive Windex poisoning. I was ready to bend, twist, and carve my personality a million different ways to get along with Cece. As it turns out, the Elsie that Cece wants is conveniently close to the Elsie I am: someone who’ll companionably pig out on cheese while she complains about academia; who, like her, chooses to use children’s Tylenol because it tastes like grape. I do have to fake an appreciation for avant-garde cinema, but it’s still a surprisingly relaxing friendship.
“What kind of scientist is he?”
“Is there more than one kind?”
I smile.
“Chemist. Or engineer? He was . . . handsome. Funny. He made a joke about mulch. My first mulch joke. Popped my mulch cherry.” Her tone is vaguely dreamy. “He just . . . seems like someone you’d want to date, you know?”
“I’d want to date?”
“Well”—she waves her hand—“not you you. You’d rather walk into the sea with stones in your pockets than date—though that’s because of your basic misconception that human romantic relationships can only succeed if you hide and shape yourself into what you think others want you to be—”
“Not a misconception.”
“—but other people would not ban Kirk from their chambers.”
“Kirk, huh?”
I initially feared that Cece would abysmally fail at fake-girlfriending. For one, she’s way too beautiful. Her wide-apart eyes, pointy chin, and Cupid’s-bowy lips might be unconventional, but she looks like the sexiest, most stunning bug in the universe. Secondly: she’s the opposite of a blank slate. A thing of nature who pees with the door open and eats Chex Mix as cereal, full of lurid anecdotes about dead linguists’ sex lives doled out with a charming lisp. I barely let any of my personality come through, but she bombards people.