He Blocked the Wrong Girl

I sent my online boyfriend a selfie. He blocked me within seconds. I didn't see his post until the day I checked in for band camp.

He'd gone through every single freshman in our year and found exactly one named Skye. She was fat, and he decided she was me.

Then he called me out in public for stealing the photo of the hottest girl in the freshman class. I finished reading it just as I was pushing open my dorm room door.

A chubby girl stuck her hand out at me. "Hi, I'm Skye Denton." I took off my sunglasses and shook it. "What are the odds.

Skye's my nickname too." Chapter 1 Skye grabbed my hand, delighted. "Really? It's an honor to share a name with somebody this pretty.

But Everly, you're even better looking in person than in your pictures!" That threw me. "I think you've got me confused with someone.

I'm Thalia, not Everly." Skye took my face in both hands and turned it one way, then the other, insisting we looked exactly alike.

She dug out her phone, scrolled for a while, and held the screen up in front of me. "A month ago, the second Everly joined the class group chat, she posted a selfie, and everybody crowned her the hottest girl in the freshman class.

Half the guys sent her friend requests." "But she only accepted one of them, a junior. Supposedly he's not just goodlooking, his family's loaded too." I took the phone.

The girl in the photo really did look enough like me to be my sister. And then it hit me. CarteBlanche had started going cold on me exactly a month ago.

He'd still log on when I asked him to play, but after two rounds he'd be in a hurry to get offline.

His messages went from instant replies to one answer for every three or four things I sent. I looked back down at the photo, and honestly, it was almost funny.

Because we looked alike, Carter had decided I'd stolen Everly's picture and lied to him. I handed the phone back to Skye with more going on in my chest than I could sort out.

Then I heard footsteps, and when I looked up I found myself staring straight into the eyes of a girl standing in our doorway. Why did she look familiar?

Skye studied her for a few seconds before she said, carefully, "You're the real Everly, aren't you?" Everly had a full face of makeup on, and while it was a long way off from the photo, you could still see traces of the photo in her.

She pulled her eyes off my face, made a flat sound in her throat, and showed exactly none of the sweetgirl act she'd built up in the class group chat.

The second Everly was gone, Skye leaned in and muttered, "Are we dealing with a catfish here?" "If the two of you walked out that door together, everybody would think the photo she posted in the group chat was you, right?" Freshmen in the Braxton State marching band get called back about a month before classes start for preseason camp.

That afternoon Skye pulled me into a group chat for our block. Everyone in it was in the same rookie block as us.

The moment I joined, somebody reminded me to change my GroupMe display name to my real name.

I'd just finished fixing it when someone dropped a photo into the chat. [My name is Carter Wexford and I'm your block leader. Something came up, so I'll be a few days late.

Get familiar with my face in the meantime.] [If you need anything, just @ me here.] The chat filled up with gushing, one overthetop compliment stacked on the next.

Looking at that handsome, painfully familiar face in the photo, all I could think was: of course it's him. Of all the people on this campus. Chapter 2 I knew he went to this school.

I just never thought it would be this kind of coincidence. CarteBlanche and I met through a game.

We'd thrown together a temporary twoplayer partnership to get through one long quest chain.

Feelings grew out of it slowly, and we started dating online without either of us ever deciding to. Back then his avatar was an actual photo of himself.

Because he was goodlooking, CarteBlanche was always getting "harassed" by female players. More than once he bragged to me about it. "Skye better keep a close eye on me.

No telling when some other pretty girl comes along and steals me away." At the time I thought it was the kind of thing couples say to each other.

Turns out he just knew himself very well.

It took a while for the flattery to die down, and then Skye suddenly @'d Carter in the chat. [Carter, I have a doctor's note excusing me from training.

Can I stay in my dorm instead of going out to the practice field?] Carter answered fast. [You're already this fat and you still don't want to move around?

Trying to eat yourself to death?] [Don't count on anybody making an exception for you at camp.

Even if you're not training, you're going to be out there watching everyone else train!] Skye's face went red and her eyes filled up.

She explained to me, a little helplessly, "I got sick, and the steroids they put me on made me gain all this weight, so people have always looked down on me." "I'm really not being dramatic.

I'm not trying to get out of work." My nose stung before I could stop it. At the end of the day, she was only in this because of me.

I picked up my phone to stand up for her. [Carter, do you really think it's okay to humiliate a girl in your block in front of everyone?] I'd barely sent the one message before Skye grabbed my arm. "It's a month of camp, and after the coach, the block leader has all the power.

If you push back on him in the chat right now, he'll come after you for the rest of it." Skye wouldn't let go, so all I could do was sit there and watch Carter start in on me too. [Thalia Sinclair?

If you're two of a kind with a fat slob like Skye Denton, you're either fat or ugly yourself.] For a while the chat was nothing but Carter, one nasty line after another.

Then Everly posted out of nowhere. [Carter, it's that time of the month for me.

Could I sit out tomorrow and just watch?] Carter dropped me and Skye like we'd never existed and hurried to answer her. [I'll talk to the coach.

Rest up the next few days, there's no rush on training.] The first day of camp, our whole block stood out under the sun holding basic position.

I was born in the Pacific Northwest, where the sun barely comes out, and I'd never been baked like that in my life. The sweat just kept running down my face.

Even Skye, who was only watching, had to wear the camp uniform. Thanks to Carter's "special consideration," she sat outside the shade with the sun full on her.

Everly, meanwhile, sat in the shade in a pretty little sundress with a full face of makeup, holding a handheld fan and playing on her phone all morning.

At lunch, somebody posted a photo of Everly from that day in the class group chat. They made a point of @'ing Carter, too. I looked closer. Photoshopped again, heavily.

I don't know if it was because Everly had seen me by then, but that day's photo had been edited until it looked exactly like me.

A few seconds later, Carter answered with a photo of his own. [Now that's easy on the eyes. My girlfriend gets prettier every day.

She doesn't need anything next to her making her look good.] Whether it was an accident or not, the original photo had caught Skye in the frame too.

The photo Carter sent back had Skye deliberately cropped out. [Saw the hottest girl in the freshman class in person at camp today.

She kept her cap pulled way down and people still noticed her.] [She's even livelier and prettier in person.

A bunch of guys are working up the nerve to ask for her number.] Chapter 3 [Can't believe she's already Carter's girlfriend.] Everyone piled on, teasing Carter about how fast he'd moved.

One line got buried under all the praise for Carter: "But I could have sworn she was in camp uniform the whole time she was training.

When did she change clothes?" For the next two days, people kept posting photos in the class group chat. Some were candid shots of me.

Others were staged to look candid and then heavily retouched, and Everly had put people up to those. Not one person figured out they were looking at two different girls.

They all just kept teasing Carter about his luck. Then one time the person who'd photographed me posted my name along with the picture.

Carter fired off a row of question marks, asking what the guy meant by bringing up some ugly freak under a photo of his girlfriend. Everly finally smoothed it over with a joke.

My legs ached from standing all morning, so after lunch I went back to the dorm to lie down for an hour.

I'd just gotten to the door when I heard Everly's voice. "You're standing right behind Thalia.

This afternoon, at practice, stick your foot out and trip her." "As long as she goes down in front of everybody, I'll pull some strings for you, and then you can fake that time of the month like I did and skip a few days of training." I put the phone away with the recording on it without letting anything show on my face.

Then I didn't waste a second. I took the recording straight to the coach. That afternoon, the girl Everly had lined up never got the chance to put a foot anywhere near me.

Everly got hauled up to the front of the formation first and chewed out in front of the entire block. For faking an illness to skip training, she had to do thirty pushups.

Everly filed her complaint fast. The threat Carter made to me in the chat that night came true the next day.

Because I was late from walking a teammate over to the athletic trainer's tent, I got hit with ten laps around the practice field.

I tried to explain, and every extra word out of my mouth earned me another lap. By the time I finished fifteen, I looked like somebody had pulled me out of a lake.

Soaked through, hair plastered to my face. My head was swimming. It was probably heatstroke, and I nearly went down right there. A few of the guys in our block caught me in time.

They walked me over into the shade and held an open bottle of water up to my mouth.

I managed a smile for them. "Thank you, seriously." They flushed and stumbled over their words. "It's nothing… it's nothing." "Actually, Carter called the coach and told him the whole thing backwards.

That's the only reason you got punished." "We just can't stand watching a grown man push a girl around like that." Then one of them pulled out his phone and showed me what Carter had posted in the block chat ten minutes earlier. [Everybody please look after my girlfriend Everly and don't let certain people push her around.] [Dinner's on me when I get back.] There wasn't much mystery about who "certain people" meant.

I looked at it, cold all the way through. What was left to figure out? The teammate I'd walked to the trainer's tent had been Carter's setup.

I dated a guy online who turns other people's decency into a weapon. That is a permanent stain on my life.

It wasn't until I'd finished lunch that I realized I hadn't seen Skye at midday for two days running. She hadn't come back to the room, and she wasn't answering my messages.

I went all the way out to the practice field, and there she was, standing in basic position under the same tree she'd watched from that morning.

I got her sitting down and watched her drain half a bottle of water before she started to come back to herself. I didn't ask why. I already had a pretty good idea.

Skye couldn't hold it in anyway. She told me through tears, "Carter messaged me.

He said since I'd rested all morning, I should use the lunch break to get some exercise in." "And if I didn't do it, he'd have to give me a failing attendance and participation grade for band when camp ends." I was going to help Skye back to the dorm to rest, but Everly blocked our way.

Chapter 4 Everly played the voice message Carter had sent her, watching me and Skye the whole time with a smug look on her face. "Three hours isn't going to kill anybody.

It'll help her drop some weight, so the next guy she meets online doesn't have to be scared half to death." I knocked Everly's arm out of the way and shoved past her, hard. "If you've got this much time for other people's business, you should be thinking about what happens when your wonderful boyfriend gets to campus and sees how far your face is from those photoshopped pictures!" Once I'd explained the whole chain of events to Skye, it clicked for her. "None of this is your fault.

It's Carter's." Then, with a little too much enjoyment, she added, "Tally, you're this gorgeous, and Carter passed up the whole thing to go scrounge for scraps." "Honestly, I've been wanting to say it.

Everly's only got a faint resemblance to you, and that's with the makeup on. We've been sharing a triple for how many days now, and I've never once seen her without it.

There's probably a big difference underneath." Skye talked trash about her behind her back for a solid while, and only then did she feel better.

To make it up to her, I gave her a bag I'd never used. Just like that, she was back at full health. I had her send me the doctor's note and every message Carter had sent her.

The second camp let out that day, I took it all straight to the coach. The longer he read, the deeper his frown got. My stomach tightened and my palms went damp.

Was he going to cover for Carter too? "All I can do is report it to the band director's office.

Whether they act on it, and how, isn't up to me." I smiled and thanked him, and that was a weight off my chest. Before I could leave, the coach called me back.

He held out a bottle of electrolyte drink, his expression unusually uncomfortable. "When you get something wrong, you apologize.

I punished you on nothing but Carter's word, and that's a failure on my part as your coach.

I'm sorry." I took the bottle and lifted it toward him. "You're forgiven." The director's office moved fast. By noon the next day, Carter had left the group chat.

An older girl joined the block chat to take over from him.

Skye kept telling me how amazing I was. "He definitely won't dare come after us again." Clearly, Skye had underestimated how disgusting Carter was willing to be.

Over the next couple of weeks, it was obvious somebody had decided to make me a target. In the dining hall line, different people would bump into me, several times a meal.

Whatever table I'd picked out, someone would get to it a step ahead of me.

If I wasn't paying attention, I'd get back to the dorm at night and find the back of my shirt speckled with grease.

When I stopped for water, there was dirt or grit on the rim of my bottle.

Then Skye pulled me aside and showed me a Discord server, all mysterious about it. "I made a whole burner account for this.

It took forever to get in." There were only a dozen or so people in it.

Carter was in there posting a bounty. [Anybody who's been making life hard for Thalia lately gets a cut!] Scrolling up, it was mostly Carter and Everly being coupley in front of everyone.

The first few people to claim it got their Venmo transfers in about two taps, and then Carter started typing again. [She's got some damn nerve, snitching on me!

I'm back on campus in a few days, and when I get there I'm handling that ugly freak Thalia myself!] The chat went strangely quiet for a moment.

Somebody worked up the nerve to ask. [Carter, why do you think Thalia's ugly?] Carter answered like it was the most obvious thing in the world. [Birds of a feather.

If she gets along that well with a fat cow like Skye Denton, you can guess what she looks like.] One by one, people started speaking up to say I was actually pretty.

Carter tore into them for it