UNEDITED
Gemma Alder is used to being the unlucky one in the Alder family: from a nasty rumour about her back in high school to inexplicable mishaps, she seems to be the comical target for unfortunate situations. But if there's one thing she's good...
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Gemma
The next two weeks pass by within the blink of an eye; it's a collage of fake and real dates, work, hiking, and wondering how the hell I'm going to go to the high school reunion now that I'm dating Jake. If I considered my life to be busy before the camping trip, then I was clearly misguided as to what busy really meant.
Tossing my auburn-coloured wig onto the coffee table, I flop onto the couch, rubbing my tired eyes. I'm sure I've smudged about fifty per cent of the heavily applied makeup I was wearing to play the most recent role of fake girlfriend for a college student, but I'm so exhausted that I really don't care how I look. In the midst of all this chaos I call my life, I've barely gotten any time to myself lately. The kitchen is a disaster, the house needs to be vacuumed, and my rose garden in the backyard is a tangled mess of thorns, flowers, and weeds.
But those issues are tiny compared to the ones stewing in the forefront of my mind. During my early morning shift at the animal shelter, Parker bombarded me with question after question. Apparently, I'm different; he thinks something happened during the camping trip and he's hell-bent on finding out exactly what. I thought I had been doing a good job of playing this indifferent, grudge-holding version of myself, but I guess not. Which, in turn, makes me wonder if I'm still doing a good job at playing the fake girlfriend for random men. Today's session at a local bowling alley with Dean (the college man who asked for my help) did feel a little strange. For some reason, it was harder to fake being someone I'm not. Part of me wonders if the fact that Jake let me choose how to act when he hired me has something to do with the sudden revelation. The sudden revelation about how hard it is to fake being someone else.
I reach out, grab the wig, and mindlessly begin braiding it. Sometimes, I wonder what people would think if I continuously wore one of these wigs and then, after months of them getting used to me being a brunette or a red-head, I were to take it off and show them who I really am. I wonder what they would think if I told them I wasn't some Paige or Anabelle or Katelyn. I wonder what would happen if I showed them, I'm a platinum-blonde-haired woman with the name Gemma. A vegetarian, an animal-lover, a professional at holding grudges.
We've all had our fair share of faking it: a canned excited response when your eccentric aunt gives you an ugly Christmas sweater or flashing a friendly smile at someone you don't particularly like. In general, putting on a good face often seems like the socially appropriate thing to do. I can't count the times I've had to kill someone with kindness when they've been publicly rude to me. Or the times I've faked my own strength while people throw degrading names in my direction. How many times I've had to bite my lip to prevent myself from breaking out into tears.
In all honesty, as hard as those tasks of faking emotions are, they're doable. But faking a whole personality? Moulding myself into someone else entirely? That's a difficult task. Sometimes, it's hard to tell the difference between one version of myself and the other when the lines blur together so frequently. In each woman I've pretended to be, a small fraction of who I really am manages to bleed in, making the emotions I have to portray much harder to display. I also have to take into account body cues, what stimuli makes me respond, how I respond. I have to give myself some credit, though – I have managed to qualify as the best fake girlfriend on Vancouver Island over the past few years. Whatever choice my client makes, I've managed to perfect it.
