「故事·听力」I Stalked My Crush From A Fake Fb Account

I Stalked My Crush From A Fake Fb Account

Hi, everyone! I’m Eleanor. Do you know how brave somebody has to be to reveal his or her feelings to someone else? I don’t. I mean, I am definitely not that brave. Just see for yourselves.

To be honest, I had never in my life thought about romance before. My mom always said that I'd have better luck betting on my intellectual abilities than on my appearance, so I was pretty much focused on studying. I owned no heels and no cosmetics at all. But suddenly something happened inside me, and I couldn't do anything about it. I fell in love.

There is a guy in our school – Victor. And I think I really like him. I'm not sure if this is lucky or not but we basically don't have any reason to even have a conversation at all. I remember once he tried to ask me something about one of my classmates who was also a friend of his. But I was so afraid that he's catch me blushing and that I'd reveal my secret passion for him that I turned around and ran away in a hurry, saying I was neither his secretary, nor the help desk, and for him to be aware of things like that in the future.

But then one simple lunch at a school cafeteria changed everything. My best friend Alice told me an amazingly tricky story about how once, she had been checking on her boyfriend Kevin to see if he was cheating. So she created a fake Facebook account and started chatting with her boyfriend, pretending that she was another girl. Fortunately, he stayed strong and they are still dating, but this story gave me a hint of what to do with my secret crush.

Since then I started my new life, or rather my other life on Facebook. We were already FB friends, but I was too shy to message him as myself, so I created a fake account -- having uploaded various photos of a tall blonde athletic girl I called Sofia. I actively started visiting Victor’s page, leaving a trace of me by liking his photos and comments. He definitely noticed this blonde and sometimes we even had short conversations. I made sure that nobody, not even Alice, knew about my crush. I didn’t want to become a stalker, but I was gradually having this feeling that I was becoming one.

I knew I had to stop when I started failing my classes because I started forgetting what I should have done for homework. My grades got really low. My mom seemed to be worried, because, if you remember, she was totally for  me being a book nerd, right? I'd never lied to her before, but now I was making up some random circumstances that were preventing me from studying well. I guess these two months of obsession really did turn me into a different person. 

France saved me though. Somehow I knew that Victor was going to spend the next 6 months improving his language skills in Paris. I thought that was finally it, it was a sign from the universe that it was the perfect moment to stop my double life. In order to come clean about the whole situation and avoid a relapse, I told my mom about everything. I was slightly shocked when she said she felt a sense of guilt about my actions. “I am so sorry, I didn’t notice how low your confidence was, dear,” my mom said. In order to cheer me up she did something she’d normally never do – she took me shopping. It seemed to be the first time ever that I was having fun together with my mom. We practically ransacked the shop. When we got back home, I was a hundred percent sure that I would never get so obsessed with anyone else. I’d decided that I not only needed to delete that fake account immediately, but I also needed to unfollow Victor from my real page. And after I did this, I felt free.   

The next term at school was an “out of sight out of mind” period for me. I felt like my unhealthy love for Victor was almost over and I was gradually becoming myself again. Except for one thing – now I was starting to like how I looked. I don’t know whether it was my brand new clothes that my mom bought, but I had felt confident every moment since then. I had even gotten enough courage to tell my friend Alice my story, which now seemed hilarious to me. She said she was sorry because it was her who had actually given me the idea for creating that fake account. But I really was grateful for that.

Right before summer break I saw Victor again. It was a birthday party for one of my classmates who had invited practically the whole school to celebrate. When I arrived, there he was, standing with a glass of punch, looking a little more French than he was before. I felt a couple of butterflies try to tremble inside, but I didn’t let them grow. At some point I felt somebody touch my elbow. It was Victor.