Free Fakebook by Dave Cicirelli Page B

eclectic student body. You had no way of knowing if the cute nineteen-year-old you were sitting next to in poly sci was actually a married mother of three about to celebrate her thirty-fifth birthday.
    Inevitably, my social life suffered, and downtime began to center around jogs on the winter boardwalk and watching repeats of Boy Meets World (which I found oddly poignant). It was an isolated time.
    But when summer finally arrived, it felt like a return to form. My friends were back. We were lifeguards and cashiers again, spending our nights hanging out and driving to parties before ending up at some diner. Just like always.
    One night, as the summer died down, we found ourselves on an empty beach.
    Every August seemed to have a night like this. We’d skip the diner and go to one of our beaches—the local spots that existed under the radar of the Staten Island and North Jersey BENNYs who migrate south. These beaches weren’t particularly hidden or especially pristine. The weather-worn sand fences and odd stacks of litter surrounding the “Swim at Your Own Risk” signs gave the beach a certain lived-in quality. It was lived in by us.
    I loved those nights. After a long summer of work and play, we Jersey Shore kids would get together and catch our breath one last time before the season ended and we had to return to real life. It always felt the same as every other year—except this time, it wasn’t.
    We weren’t chatting about preparing for another year of high school or facing the great unknowns of college life. They weren’t unknowns anymore. My friends were talking about returning to people I’d never met and places I’d never been. We were finally talking about experiences we hadn’t experienced together.
    We were the class of 2001, but this was 2002. People hadn’t entirely moved on yet, but they’d begun to move apart. Most of us had already learned that the world was bigger than the semicircle we’d formed in the sand.
    I didn’t have enough perspective yet; otherwise I might have been able to find some significance in the setting—a connection to the sound of the changing tide, or maybe a sense of purpose in the Manhattan skyline just over the horizon. Maybe. I don’t know.
    What I do know is that a week later I was sitting on the same beach, alone.

    Ted finally called back.
    â€œOh man, Cicirelli. You’re a mad genius!” he said. “People were arguing about Fakebook all night. Steve was loving it—he buried you every chance he got.”
    â€œSo people are talking about it?”
    â€œAbsolutely. I mean, everyone’s known about it for a while, but now they’re finally bringing it up. People wouldn’t stop bugging me about you.”
    â€œBut not a lot of people are posting.”
    â€œNo? I’m not sure…”
    â€œWell, it can be awkward. Like when my dad started leaving comments, people backed off—they weren’t sure if it was any of their business.”
    â€œYour dad is great! The bit about law school? Classic.”
    Ralph Cicirelli If you had gone to law school like I wanted, you could have ended up with the farm rather than just working on it.
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    â€œYeah, he’s crushing it,” I said. “Hey, I threw out some crazy stuff. I need to know, what are people thinking?”
    â€œWell, there’s a lot of debate.”
    Ted’s natural inclination toward diplomacy had served us well so far. Whenever someone asked him about Fakebook, he’d feign uncertainty about the things he’d heard, never painting either of us into a corner. He let people get comfortable with their own reactions and delicately swayed them to accept the uncertainty rather than dig