Page 3 of In a Pickle
Never having met Johnny, Liana wasn’t sure whether she could believe it, but she indulged Jessica. “Amazing.”
“I know, right? Johnny was just so lucky — he made some super smart investments. He has such a good eye for knowing what’s about to get big.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “He made a fortune on crypto. And he invested in NFTs in 2021 — you know the purple gorilla ones? — and he sold them before that whole market crashed. So we’ve been really fortunate.”
Some people did have all the luck, Liana thought. “And what does Johnny do?”
Jessica blinked, confused by the question. “He’s an investor, like I said. Anyway, once we got on the yacht, we drove out into the bay, and just as the sun was setting, Johnny got down on one knee and asked me to spend the rest of my life with him.”
“So romantic,” Liana said in what she hoped was the response Jessica was looking for.
“I know!” Jessica squealed. “Of course I had been dropping little hints to him about the ring I wanted, but he did such a good job picking the ring, don’t you think?”
“Definitely. Hey Jessica, sorry to cut this short, but my mom is waiting for me to pick her up. Let’s catch up really soon, though.”
“Yes! It was so good running into you! I’m so happy you’re back in town. You were always such a good influence on me in high school. My mom always said to stay close to you. She said you’ll go far in life. I’m sorry we fell out of touch these last couple of years, but now that you’re back, we can hang out again! Us career girls have to stick together.”
Liana gave a half-nod, trying to extricate herself from the conversation, but Jessica wasn’t done talking. “There are so many people from our high school who are just trying to be influencers, you know? Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” Jessica hastened to add, “I have 20,000 followers myself, but some of these people have like a thousand followers and they call themselves influencers. Like, what do you even do all day? I’d simply die if I didn’t have the pressure of a real job, you know?”
“Yeah, totally.” Liana was already opening her car door in an attempt to end the conversation. “See you really soon, Jessica. I’ll text you soon.” She hoped karma wouldn’t come back to get her for telling a lie.
???
Later, sitting on her childhood bed, Liana couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation with Jessica. Though she’dnever say something so rude out loud, Liana had secretly thought that Jessica was fairly unremarkable in high school. Jessica was pretty, but she didn’t particularly excel academically or athletically and wasn’t part of the popular group. But now, here she was, successful in a high-powered career at a top company, engaged and with a yacht at age twenty-six.
Liana opened up Instagram, resigned to spending the night in yet another social media doom spiral. She’d gone through many over the past year, unable to stop looking at her high school friends’ profiles and comparing herself unfavorably to them.
Less than eight years ago, Liana graduated high school as valedictorian, top of her class. She had been accepted to Yale, and her potential seemed limitless.
Two years ago, Liana had a boyfriend and a Hollywood job many would kill for.
Now, Liana had no job, no viable career prospects, no boyfriend, and little savings. She knew her mom would tell her to stop comparing herself to other people — “You run your own race,” Deb often said — but Liana simply couldn’t help it.
Dejectedly, Liana scrolled through her list of Instagram friends, looking to twist the knife a little deeper in her gut by finding some more people from high school who were winning at life. Naturally, the first person whose profile she sought was Mary Grace McMahon. Mary Grace was probably smarter than Liana in high school, and she also had several advantages in high school that Liana did not: Mary Grace was beautiful, popular, incredibly wealthy, and a star on the volleyball team.
She was also the twin sister of Liana’s best friend, Tori, though Tori and Mary Grace couldn’t be more different. Theywere fraternal twins, but nobody even guessed they were sisters. Tori kept her shoulder-length hair the twins’ natural dirty blonde, while Mary Grace wore hers platinum blonde with hair extensions past her waist. Mary Grace wore the latest designers and loved dressing in head-to-toe labels, while Tori shopped secondhand and favored a colorful, artsy aesthetic she called “punk-rock princess meets Miami.”
Though Tori and Mary Grace weren’t particularly close, Tori frequently gave Liana updates on Mary Grace’s life. After working at a top Wall Street investment firm, Mary Grace was now finishing her second year of business school at Wharton. Liana would never guess she went to school in Philly, though, based on the amount of posts geotagged from Miami and from travels in glamorous places around the world. If Instagram were any indication, Mary Grace appeared to still be with her high school boyfriend, James Alonso, now a professional tennis player. Mary Grace had tons of photos of her travels with James on the tennis circuit. Scrolling through Mary Grace’s feed, Liana found photos of the happy couple kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House, and the Statue of Liberty. They’d also been to the Met Gala together.
Mary Grace’s IG stories from the previous night featured Brock Templeton, the famed half-American, half-Australian “bad boy” of professional tennis. Liana supposed that Mary Grace had met Brock through James’ tennis circle.
Brock was something of a minor celebrity, having skyrocketed to fame after a U.S. Open run in which he’d posted viral videos roasting each of his opponents the night before he played them. The night before he was to play Rafael Nadal in the U.S. Open final, Brock posted a video of Nadal hobbling with a cane wearing an adult diaper. Most tennis players had called forhim to be kicked out of the Open. He’d been allowed to play and had trounced Nadal to win the U.S. Open.
Brock’s fame and notoriety had only grown since then, and now Mary Grace was partying with him in a Fort Lauderdale club in Valentino pumps and the latest Dior bag.
Liana knew, on an intellectual level, that people born into wealth were afforded certain privileges, and that Mary Grace would always have a leg up that Liana didn’t have. Liana was grateful for her upbringing in a beautiful Miami suburb. While her parents weren’t wealthy, their jobs as a schoolteacher and an IT manager meant that Liana had always lived comfortably. Liana knew she’d been immensely lucky to have the childhood she’d had. No, she certainly couldn’t complain about her upbringing or her parents’ financial situation. Still, she knew that she couldn’t really compare her life to Mary Grace’s, not when Mary Grace had grown up flying on a private plane to her family’s beachfront home in Saint Thomas.
Determined to torture herself by finding a more direct comparison to her own life, Liana kept scrolling Instagram to find someone whose good life couldn’t be attributed to inherited wealth. She found Cynthia Miller-Chan, whom she knew came from a middle-class family. The first photo on Cynthia’s feed was a selfie with Bill Gates. The caption read: “They say never meet your heroes, but if your hero is Bill Gates, 10/10 recommend meeting. Thanks for the honest heart to heart, Bill! #lifeatmicrosoft #ilovemicrosoft #teamPC.”
Indeed, a quick LinkedIn search confirmed that Cynthia lived in Seattle and had just been promoted for the second time in three years at Microsoft. Instagram also showed Cynthia smiling with a man who was presumably her partner, holding a cute pitbull (“Happy International Adopt a Pittie Day! #adoptdontshop #misunderstooddogsmakethebestdogs #whoadoptedwhom”).
Next Liana looked up one of her close friends in high school, Lucas, who was living it up in New York, his photos at Manhattan’s hottest clubs featuring a rotating cast of attractive socialites. Lucas was studying for his PhD in neuroscience at Columbia, and Liana knew he was living the life he’d always dreamed of.
There was Anika, who lived in London and had just gotten engaged to a hot British guy. Ruth had just been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for her “genius” mobile app. David and Mia were both about to graduate from med school. Eddie was at a top management consulting firm, and he made sure all of his Instagram followers knew he used his airline miles to maximum benefit, spending weekends everywhere from Hawaii to Saint Tropez. Even Mel, who’d been kind of a hanger-on to Liana’s friend group in high school, seemed to have a large group of attractive friends with whom she went out on yachts every weekend.
How had everyone sped past Liana in a race she’d been winning at 18?
The final straw was seeing Christian, who’d been made fun of in elementary school for being unathletic. Liana had befriended Christian in second grade after seeing a group of boys taunting him for coming last in a P.E. relay race. Liana and Christian had been good friends for many years, but Christian had ditched her during their senior year of high school after spending hours at the gym each day and getting his dream body. Girls started noticing him, and he achieved the popularity he’d so desperately sought as a little kid.
Now, Christian was a top Miami personal trainer with half a million TikTok followers and sponsorships from household-name athletic brands. He certainly wouldn’t qualify as one of those loser “so-called influencers” Jessica had derided. His most recent post showed him lifting weights with none other than Brock Templeton.