Lara only existed on WhatsApp for one person. Although they weren't friends on here, he had given her his number, so when she sheepishly typed in his name, could see when he was 'last seen'. Her picture here was one that she knew he would like, of her holding her friends ginger Tom. She assumed his favourite felines were of this kind because he liked redheads, she knew this because his two last love interests were of this category. Not that he would see her photo, although she hoped one day he might look her up, maybe after just seeing one of her Facebook posts or something. She imagined him smiling when he did this because he had once said to her in person "you're a laugh". Sometimes she rubbed herself whilst imagining him saying this again, while in her mind they had sex, this fantasy was then only half untrue.
When she awoke every morning with sleep-ridden eyes, like a blind person reaching out for a familiar shape, she would grab her phone and look at when he was 'last seen'.
Whether it was past 1:00 or not, would determine whether her chest would tighten. If this sensation happened the next thing she would do was reach for a cigarette, which she would smoke in bed in a damp fury.
She would concur he was obviously whatsapping a female friend late at night, most likely a red haired. If, however, he had been 'last seen' anytime before 1:00, she would imagine him having been reading or watching Game Of Thrones-like her in bed, and would feel safe with this thought and would be able to eat something as hard as muesli and would not be locked into nicotine for the whole day. If when she looked at his 'last seen' and he was 'online' she would often spill her tea down herself and quickly come off it slightly flushed. This would echo to her ego that she had foolish tendencies, and she could not look at him again there until her tea was a tepid temperature.
Lara only existed on Facebook to maintain a sense of order in the world.
Here, with her sound number of 756 friends, who she had met at least once, (even if they never spoke in real life), she would be careful to never look too hasty. Her posts were determined with different people in mind. Sometimes she would post something for one of her left-leaning groups, come away and then imagine one of her mum's friends seeing it and would then have to delete it immediately. She didn't want her mum's group to think that she was becoming a layabout, believing that the world owed her a free ride.
Here she felt measured, yet trapped, she knew that she wasn't the most interesting Facebook person but it allowed her not to have any burning regrets.
When she scrolled all the way down to when she was born there was nothing posted that made her feel not like herself, she had done this many times and felt warm with the knowledge that she had had some great moments.
Like when she posted the picture of herself with her rabbit Ned outside the butchers and it got 42 likes, quite provocative really. Or that time when she posted a picture with the really hot guy at the club and her friends had written stuff underneath telling her network inadvertently that he was fit, giving Lara the thumbs up; that got 24 likes, mostly from the girls out with her that night.
When Lara looked at her photos on Facebook she knew she wasn't attractive but most of them were taken on her best days, which she felt was a lot to live up to in the real world. Many of the photos were only accidentally good ones, she had never mastered selfies since her nose was bigger than average and this technique was not good for girls of her type. One photo she liked best was when she was a teenager and had Gastroenteritis and went down two dress sizes and her cheekbones looked quite jutting. She wondered why this had only got 3 likes, she gathered that it was because it occurred when she only had 94 Facebook friends so it made statistical sense. She had tried reposting it as a memory, but again, it wasn't popular only picking up one like from an old classmate, it puzzled her since she looked really good here.
Lara's existence on Tinder had a lot more potential since she seemed to have a high match rate. Her age here was five years younger, which didn't matter since she'd never mustered the courage to meet any of her matches. This was just to validate to herself that she could do so if she ever wanted. Her main photo was the Gastroenteritis one, and a bikini picture of her sister for the long-shot; from such a distance it was impossible to tell unless of course, she did happen to meet one of them and then it would then be obvious. Sometimes this made her feel fake and in reaction, she would go on swiping and swiping to the left and with tears in her eyes try and wipe that thought out of her.
In real life, Lara was very likeable, which meant she could be all things all at once. If she was in the office with the girls she didn't have to say much since she always got coffees and was always on time. Nobody really questioned her here, which made it easier to get out of bed. She imagined that when she went out to go Starbucks people never really talked about her much, unlike the louder girls, which gave her a combination of feelings that sometimes made her unconsciously shout horrible things to herself out loud on the street.