Treatment

                                    The New Anonymous Dream Girl Treatment

Kasey Fox

            Opens up with a man on a long board as he rides down the Boulevard. It’s sunset. He receives a message and stops for a second. The message pops up in a window next to him. “Hey J”. Cuts to another man receiving a similar message. And another. They ask for a picture and receive a selfie of a very attractive girl. They ask to hang out and they get an address. They find themselves and each other at a construction site. Another man stands there with his phone out. “I’m meeting someone here,” he says. “Me too,” says the first guy.  They all realize what has happened. He pulls out his phone. “I should have known you weren’t real” he angrily replies. Patrick, a pale introvert, laughs, types “Fuck boy” from the safety of his bed room. A broken frame of him and a girl sit next to him. It’s cracked and looks like it has a caked blood mark on it, matching the scab on his knuckle. He keeps looking at the picture. The men angrily march off. “Your selfie is totally fake. You can see the watermark. Fucking freak.” Dave, Patrick’s roommate, asks what’s so funny.

ACT I

            Patrick enjoys “catfishing” random men he meets. It’s a rush. He’s very entertained by it. Patrick introduces AM, an ANONYMOUS messaging app, to Dave. While Dave signs up, Patrick looks for another selfie to use as his fake persona. He comes across a stock photo of a young woman and stops dead in his tracks. She’s very beautiful. A noise grabs his attention. There’s a party going on at the house across the street. Patrick and Dave keep looking at it. Patrick tells Dave to say a certain thing on AM. Patrick responds. That’s where the catfishing begins. Dave is a lot nicer than the men Patrick was fishing earlier. Patrick doesn’t want the conversation to end. He sends the picture of the girl he found. He talks Dave into going over to the party to pick her up via AM. Patrick watches from the living room, anticipating something funny to happen.

PPI

            Dave walks out of the party— not alone. He’s with the girl from the picture. Patrick can’t believe it. He’s speechless as they walk through the door. Alice appears to be drunk. Dave tells Patrick that this girl, Alice, has a friend nearby with a hot tub and he’s invited. A montage begins of Dave and Alice spending time together as Patrick curiously tries to insert himself. Patrick then tries to avoid them. Patrick asks around on AM if anyone recognizes Alice. They hang out all the time at Patrick and Dave’s house. It becomes clear that they are in a relationship. As Patrick’s jealousy grows, so does his guilt. He realizes he’s made a huge mistake. At the end of the sequence, Patrick finally receives an answer from an anonymous user. They recognize Alice from the party a few nights before. They said she got angry and threw her phone and then minutes later, leaving with another man. Dave.

Act II

            Patrick continues to catfish to try and get his mind off of Dave and Alice. But he’s very distracted. Things change pace a little when Dave becomes very busy. Alice spends a lot of time at their apartment. She strikes up conversation with Patrick. He tries to get her to check her AM messages, but she tells him that her screen is broken and she can’t. He asks her when her screen broke. She says she doesn’t remember. She invites him to go eat with her. They go to a restaurant where a guy recognizes her face. He approaches her and asks if it was her that messaged him. She tells him she was drunk and doesn’t remember, but probably.  They exchange flirty glances, which makes Patrick uneasy. The level of commitment between Alice and Dave is under question by Patrick as she exchanges numbers with that man.

            Patrick seeks help from people he doesn’t know. He asks on AM for advice about the situation. These text boxes appear throughout the second act as he speaks to different people.

            Dave and Alice lie on the couch caressing each other. Dave tells her that she’s the perfect girl. He then makes a reference to the conversation HE THINKS THEY HAD on AM. Something funny that was said. She doesn’t understand the reference. At all. This strikes Dave as odd. He has a moment of clarity that he might be in denial about how perfect she is. Patrick tells him to pull up the conversation to show her. Maybe she’ll remember or get it if she read the conversation. Dave tells Patrick that Alice made him delete the app because she doesn’t want him talking to other girls.

            Alice leaves for the night. Patrick tells Dave later that he finds it strange that he’s not allowed to talk to anybody, when Alice can talk to whomever she wants. Dave gets defensive. He reminds Patrick that her phone is broken and that she can’t talk to anybody on there. Patrick brings up that she got another guy’s number at the restaurant a week before. Dave angrily proclaims that Patrick is jealous and has been acting desperate since Stacy dumped him. Patrick finally reveals to Dave that it was him talking to Dave that night—something that seems so unbelievable to Dave. He asks Patrick to show him the messages. Patrick attempts to scroll through the hundreds of conversations with complete strangers. He can’t find the conversation buried under all those equally incriminating messages. He gives up, feeling embarrassed. This only makes Dave doubt it more. After trying to pry the phone from him, Dave tells him he needs help.

            While sulking in his room, Patrick finally receives a message from a stranger who tells him he sounds like he’s jealous of his friend. Patrick says that he’s not jealous of Dave. The stranger replies, “No. The other friend. The girl.” Patrick decides to let it go. There’s nothing else he feels he can do. Feeling ashamed, he deletes his entire inbox.

PPII

            “Hey. You up?” Patrick takes his phone out to find a text from Alice. He replies: “Yes. Working on my capstone. Why?” She tells him she needs to talk to someone. She asks him to go on a drive with her. It’s late. She picks him up and they drive to a secluded spot on the hill, overseeing the city.

            She begins subtly revealing her dissatisfaction with her and Dave’s recent relationship status. They talk about previous relationships and why they feel the way they do about relationships. Patrick periodically checks AM like it’s a crutch. He’s distracting himself. He sees a post about someone who finds themself in a difficult position. They are with a friend they really want to make a move on but they are unsure. He sends a message asking for details.

            Patrick notices Alice on her phone. Her screen is fixed. He asks how long it’s been fixed, unsure of her motives. Not long. This leads into a discussion about why her phone broke. She saw the message that made her angry enough to throw her phone. It was a text from her ex. Patrick asks about the conversation her and Dave had on AM. She doesn’t answer. She looks off into space and then picks her phone back up.

            Patrick gets a reply to his message. The person is a girl and she’s with her friend whom she has feelings for, but isn’t sure how he feels. She wants to make a move. Patrick encourages her to go for it and then update him with how it goes.

            Patrick puts down his phone to turn his attention back to Alice—just when she drops her phone and pulls him in for a kiss. Patrick sits there, stunned. Alice picks her phone back up and begins typing and then sets her phone back down. Patrick gets a message from the girl. She says that she made her move and now he’s just sitting there with a stupid look on his face.

Act. III

            Patrick feels sick as Alice drives him home. They don’t say much at all. Alice tries to hold his hand and follows him inside. Feeling uncomfortable and nervous, Patrick pulls his phone out to distract him some more.  Alice calls him over to the couch. Patrick stands there, desperate for it all to end. He reopens the message from earlier. He tells her he’s made a huge mistake and then sends her the selfie of herself. Patrick stands there for just a moment before her phone collides with the wall next to him. She gets up from the couch and shoves him. She screams at him and tells him how terrible he is. She now knows everything is a lie and she doesn’t know how to handle it. She reveals that the photo has been going around because her ex has been sending it around. That’s the main reason they were fighting. She tells him that he’s not the only one who’s been hurt. He’s not better than the perverts he’s been outing. She storms out the door.

            Dave finds Patrick sitting by himself on a swing set near their home. Dave tells Patrick he knew exactly what happened when Patrick told him the truth, he just thought it was one of Alice’s friends who messaged him instead of Patrick. Patrick asks how long he’s known she was fake. Dave tells him it was the moment they talked about their feelings. Patrick apologizes, almost in tears and Dave asks him why he did and how. He further explains that the things he was saying were in his head—they were his thoughts before they were words and that is scariest part. That Patrick vicariously lived through every fabrication he created. Patrick does not deny it. Dave asks why he was so jealous and Patrick tells him he doesn’t know whom he was jealous of, but he realized that all he needs is a friend. Because the idea of falling in love with the perfect girl is a damaging lie. They make up and promise to never let a girl come between them, real or fake. Patrick promises to delete the app as soon as they get home. Dave tells him not to. If he thinks it’s funny and also knows how it feels, then he should go ahead.

            Patrick gets home and throws away the picture of him and his ex. He takes out his phone and, before deleting the app, posts a personal apology on AM for being so cruel to them. He tells them his name, so it will no longer be anonymous. He gets bombarded by spiteful messages. He gets a text from Alice, thanking him for putting her in her place. He apologizes and smiles, knowing he made a friend. Just before deleting the app, he gets one more message—from someone claiming to be his ex, Stacy. She asks to meet him at the park because she wants to talk to him.

Ending

            Patrick has been waiting at the park for almost an hour. He keeps checking his phone. Nothing. He watches as the cars drive by. They slow down just as they are passing. Some of them roll their windows down and shout “fuck boy” and other familiar insults. He checks his phone again. Still nothing. It’s getting late and there is no sign at all from his ex. Being late and even wanting an apology from his ex is very uncharacteristic of her. He becomes very suspicious. There’s a house nearby with the lights on. He glances at the window. Someone is peaking out the blinds. Just as he looks, the blinds close. It finally hits Patrick of what just happened. He laughs really hard knowing that he had just been catfished by a complete stranger. He sits there and smiles because, at the end, it was all still very funny to him.