Fat Chance

The Tortured Artists Soul

I slide into my seat at the long table just as the bell rings. The stairwell was clear across the building, so I didn't blame myself for nearly being late. I was just glad Ms. Mortiello wasn't here to see my near tardy experience.

Like most days. Ms. Mortiello was off mingling with students and other staff members in the hallways. Normally if a teacher was late to class under those reasons, she would be fired immediately. But because everybody loves her, Ms. M was off the hook.

The whole class waited in silence for the teacher to come and give us instruction. 5 more minutes went by and some of us were starting to get a bit antsy.

"Where the fuck is Ms. M?" exclaimed Thomas, a slightly autistic boy who never shut up.

"Shut up, Thomas, she'll be here soon."

Thomas's best friend, Anthony, was the only one brave enough to tell him to shut up. And Anthony was the only one Thomas ever listened to.

After ten minutes of no teacher, more and more students started to become restless.

A girl named Angie, who was supposed to be in 11th grade but got held back because she missed too much school, started to pound on the table.

We were all anxious to get started on our projects, even the kids that normally didn't care about school. So we were all excited when the front door to the classroom opened.

Heads and bodies turned, the room suddenly quiet.

Shelly, one of the ladies in the main office, poked her head into the room.

"Excuse me, students," she yelled, trying to get our attention. "There will be no Ms. Mortiello today. Her son got into a tragic car accident, and she's on her way to Cincinnati to be with him. I just got a call from the sub that was arranged to take over her last two hours, and he's gotten tied up with other things, so if you all would just pull out a book or other school work you could do and be quiet, that would be great."

Everyone in the room groaned as Shelly slid the door shut behind her.

After a half an hour, the chaos started to die down. Books and homework assignments were being pulled out and worked on. Some students were sitting in small groups, talking quietly. The kids I never thought I would ever see sitting down and being quiet were doing just that. I guess the idea of being loud and disruptive gets old after a long period of time.

As for me, I was constantly checking my iPod to see if Wyatt had text me back. I had no such luck.

I tried multiple times to pull out my novel that I was forced to read for English class, but I just couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong with Wyatt. He must have found out something.

Finally, the bell rang, signaling that I had just wasted an entire hour doing nothing but thinking of my catfish operation being shut down.

It never used to be this bad. I would just talk to a few people from my fake accounts each day, not wanting to be swamped with message constantly.

But then, something changed. Maybe it was the fact that I had almost no friends as Quinn, or maybe it was just because I was bored, but one night, I started promoting Alicia's kik and Facebook all over the internet. In random chat sites, on Reddit, even in different Facebook groups. I was suddenly desperate to have hundreds of guys to talk too.

Nearly overnight, both of Alicia's social media accounts had completely blown the fuck up. With thousands of friend requests on Facebook and hundreds of new messages on Kik, I knew that my being a catfish just took on a totally different meaning.

I was now making thousands of people believe Alicia was a real girl. Over the time I have been a catfish, I've talked to thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of people. Whether it be on Facebook, Kik, random chat sites; I make them think I was a beautiful girl with a name that was not mine from a place I have never been to.

I was hurting people. I was deceiving them by the dozens.

But the saddest thing is,

I have no idea how to stop.