Fake Halo - Piper Lennox Page 0,1

across the car notices my glances, but stops fidgeting when I show him the page: I’m drawing his checkered Vans, where he’s filled in every white square with glitter glue.

For the next few minutes, until his mother pulls him into their station, he holds perfectly still.

My stop is next: Nassau in Greenpoint.

Brooklyn wasn’t my first choice. Then again, neither was New York. Georgia took the reins on our relocation, and I caved when I got tired of arguing over responsible rent budgets and necessary square footage. Our one and only compromise was choosing a non-waterfront building. Georgia got her hip neighborhood, and I got a rent amount I could live with, for a while.

“You’re pessimistic,” she told me, when I said our income streams could, in theory, dry up at any moment, and we needed to invest more than we spent.

“I’m not pessimistic,” I countered, “just practical.” Internet fame is a fickle, flickering spotlight. One slip, and you can lose it all.

It wasn’t just the prices that put me off. Georgia picked one of the trendiest spots possible. Not that trendy is bad…just predictable. In fact, I’m not so sure she didn’t pick our apartment based off other influencers’ location tags.

Proof: our building has at least two other video bloggers, and the one next door houses four Instagram moms. Granted, they are all friends, and businesses like ours are contagious. But still.

I know Ari Bakers of the Ari LoveX Channel lives in our neighborhood, because I see her doing her “Woman on the Street” bits (giving strangers free makeovers, right there on the sidewalk) every time I walk to yoga. And then there’s the guys from Winged—also identical twins—and Halley Isles. And for every recognizable name, there are tons of newbies trying to claw to the top, I guess by posting the same tutorials and skylines and CBD-infused coffees as everyone else.

Not that I can talk. Check out my Instagram and you’ll find sunsets and lattes for days.

That’s the way it goes, though. We copy each other. Trends emerge without much thought, even where we live. Our profession can be done anywhere on this earth, but turns out most of us want to do it in the same spots.

Above ground, I shiver under the stinging rain and stick as close to the buildings as I can, making use of awnings until I reach the scaffolding tunnel that careens around the corner and onto my street.

Days like now, when the city is wet and the gutters look slimy, rainbow streaks of oil bending to the storm grates, I miss Santa Barbara more than ever.

We didn’t grow up there, but it carries that same kind of significance for me: the place I’ll always think of as home.

I didn’t want to leave. Georgia looked like she couldn’t hop on a plane fast enough.

“All our friends are here,” I’d sniffed, nearly every day after we decided to transplant ourselves to the opposite coast.

“Video chats. Visits.” Georgia wrapped her Funko Pops in the pages we’d torn from last September’s Vogue and gave me a sad smile. I think she was mostly sad for me, being so sentimental. “And we’ll come back for Walt’s wedding. You know: whenever he and Mark finally agree on a venue.”

This was a shitty consolation prize, considering Walt had asked us to be his groomsmaids. I didn’t want to just be another guest in the crowd. I didn’t want video chats and occasional visits.

I didn’t want to fade into the background of our friends’ lives until, inevitably, we reached a point where these people we saw every single day could go weeks without thinking of us, simply because we were out of sight.

Still, I knew Georgia was right. Rue Royale, Inc., preferred we move closer to their offices, and with product launches scheduled for the next year and some change, it didn’t make sense for us to keep that ocean-to-ocean commute.

Besides: I really do love it here.

Things move faster. Every little detail is interesting, if you get close enough. You can pass a hundred lives in a matter of minutes, and linger and wonder about whichever ones you want.

And ignore the ones you don’t.

Outside my building, I study the chalk drawings weeping off the sidewalk. One is a melted purple cat, probably by the little girl on the second floor. The knees of her leggings always have purple dust.

There’s a pineapple with sunglasses, most likely by the nanny. I’ve seen her pineapple purse, earrings, and sundress in the elevator enough to