TortoiseWinsTheRace: We’re sending you something. A little present. You should get it tomorrow. Keep an eye out.
PennySavedPennyEarned: How wonderful! The only thing is my neighborhood block party is tomorrow. The streets will be cordoned off. Did you mail it? Or were you going to drop it off?
HappilyEverAfter: We’ll get it to you somehow. We have our ways!
PennySavedPennyEarned: I’m on the verge of tears. You have no idea how much this means to me to be accepted into the pod. Thank you so so so much!
WhatYouSeeIsNotWhatYouGet: No, thank YOU! You’re going to be a fabulous addition to our group!
* * *
Ruth’s heart ricochets around in her chest. She tosses and turns, unable to sleep. Finally, the alarm goes off at seven thirty and she permits herself to get up. She showers, brushes her teeth, and puts on her Stella athleisure wear. A light dusting of powdered foundation and one coat of Glossier mascara.
She tiptoes down the hallway past Marley’s room. A part of her wants to wake her—Ruth’s dying to share her good news—but she had a fever last night. Let her darling daughter wake naturally.
She makes a full pot of coffee; screw the turmeric ginger tea. She needs a caffeine infusion. If she could, she’d open a vein and shoot it in.
She sits at the table, legs crossed, her left foot bouncing up and down. She’s helpless to stop it from jittering, it just moves on its own accord like it’s trying to make a run for it. Honestly, she doesn’t even need the caffeine. Her happiness is jet fuel. She doesn’t need sleep or oxygen or food or water. Just this—this fairy-tale future bearing down on her. Finally, after all these years.
The doorbell rings and Ruth practically jumps out of her chair.
“Good morning, sunshine,” crows Gemma. She and Bee stand on her doorstep and Ruth time travels back to the kindergarten party. Gemma, in her dowdy wraparound skirt and clogs, Bee, in her polyester Old Navy tracksuit.
Ruth darts forward and gives them both big hugs. “What a surprise! What are you doing here?”
“Marley said you needed help setting up for the block party,” says Bee. Bee looks like she just dragged herself out of bed.
“Oh, that’s so nice. I didn’t even know you guys were coming to the block party. I mean, I never heard back from you about it.” Shit. She keeps a smile plastered on her face as she thinks, Marley. Upstairs. Padlocked into her room.
“Aren’t you going to invite us in?” asks Gemma. “I smell coffee.”
“Of course.” Ruth opens the door wide.
* * *
Ruth puts a mug of coffee in front of Gemma. “I don’t have any soy milk, sorry. I have half and half?”
“Black is fine,” says Gemma.
“Do you want some?” Ruth asks Bee. “Just a titch.”
“I’m not supposed to have caffeine. It makes me—” Bee waves her hands over her head wildly.
“Oh, right. We have orange juice. Water?”
“I’m good,” says Bee.
Ruth sits down at the table. She glances at the stairs nervously. She’s got to find an excuse to get up there and unlock Marley’s door.
“Where’s Marley?” asks Bee.
“She wasn’t feeling well last night. She’s still sleeping,” says Ruth. “I’m going to wake her in a minute.”
Ping, ping, ping, ping. Gemma’s phone lights up.
Gemma glances at her phone. “My mom pod. It’s eight thirty on a Saturday morning. This better be good.”
Ping, ping, ping. IN ONE EAR AND OUT YOUR MOTHER is blowing up. Gemma looks at her phone and gasps.
“What?” asks Ruth. Gemma slides her phone over to Ruth.
HappilyEverAfter: OMG I found Cam!
Now Ruth gasps. What is HappilyEverAfter doing in Gemma’s pod?
HappilyEverAfter: Anybody there? I said I found Cam.
LoveYouMore: Who are you HappilyEverAfter? And how did you get access to this pod?
TotesAdorb: Wait, you found Cam? Bee’s Instagram boyfriend?
“She found Cam.” Gemma’s voice cracks.
“I don’t want to know,” Bee whimpers.
“Bee, living room. Put your earbuds in. Netflix, Spotify, that serial killer podcast. Whatevs. I don’t care, just listen to something,” says Gemma.
Bee exits the room quickly, her eyes wide with fear.
“Don’t leave me,” Gemma says to Ruth. “I can’t do this alone.”
She shuffles her chair right next to Ruth’s so they can both see the conversation as it unfolds in real time.
HappilyEverAfter: Do you want to know who he really is?
SoccerMommy#1: YES.
HappilyEverAfter: KK! Weee! Here we go!
A screenshot of a Mac appears. Photos of Cam border the page. In the center is a Photoshopped pic of Bee in a bikini and Cam waxing his surfboard. The photo that made them Instagram Official. #mine.
On the top of the screen are the Mac’s stats: power 76%, Sunday, February 5, 12:58 p.m., Ruth Thorne.
“Huh?” Gemma says, bewildered. “What is this? Why does she have your computer?”
HappilyEverAfter continues to download screenshots from Ruth’s Mac. The rabbit hole of her search history. Teenage boy longish hair delicate features tall pretty. Which leads to Slick, a small modeling agency in San Diego, which leads to a seventeen-year-old boy named Cam Phillips who skateboards and plays the guitar and loves poetry.
DuckDuckGoose: I don’t understand. What are we looking at?
LoveYouMore: Holy hell!!!
TotesAdorb: Is this what I think it is?
DuckDuckGoose: I repeat. What are we looking at?
LoveYouMore: Ruth Thorne’s computer.
DuckDuckGoose: But why does she have pictures of Cam?
LoveYouMore: Because she IS Cam! Because she made him up.
Ruth hiccups. She burps. She can’t get enough air in. Her sweat smells of hay. Of barn. She’s disgusting. A cow. A thin cow, a practically anorexic cow, but bovine nonetheless.
Stop it. Pull it together. This is happening. You have to deal with this now.
Gemma’s mouth is open in a rictus of shock and disbelief. She’s trembling. She’s quaking. Is she going to collapse, or is she going to attack Ruth, beat her over the head with her fists?
“Gemma, please,” she begs.
Ruth gets up and tiptoes backward in terror.
GEMMA
“I have no idea what’s going on. You have to believe me, Gemma,” Ruth pleads.
Gemma is numb. She can only feel the outline of herself. She’s one of the stick figures Bee used to draw in kindergarten.
This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. The first time she felt this way, completely emptied in shock, she was standing at the top of the basement stairs looking down at Ash’s crumpled body. His left leg twisted beneath him at an impossible angle. The halo of blood encircling his head. The second time was barely a month ago, seeing her precious Bee splayed out on her bedroom floor, unconscious. The jump rope noose around her neck. Her cheeks stippled with tiny red dots. Petechiae. It wasn’t until later that she learned the proper name for the burst blood vessels.
And now this. She stares at her phone, blinking, still not completely taking it in. A trickle of sweat runs down her side. She feels light-headed. She wants to sleep. Do not faint, she berates herself.
Ruth has a file of Cam Phillips photos. She also has an account at Apps-R-Us. On December 28, she purchased twenty-two followers for Cam’s Instagram so he wouldn’t seem like a friendless stalker. On December 29, when Cam made first contact with beebee15, Ruth googled “teenage texting slang,” “emoji dictionary,” “how to flirt over text,” “what does slide into dms mean?” In her Dropbox is a Cam dossier.
A screenshot of Ruth’s notes:
Cam’s homeschooled, off the grid and analog, up until now, thus providing a valid explanation as to why there’s no sign of him online. His parents are free spirits. He spends every spring in Costa Ric
a on a pineapple farm. High EQ, he’s sensitive, honest, and open. A surfer, a cat lover. Fav foods Dragon Rolls and kimchi. He’s looking for a community of like-minded kids who don’t follow the pack. Not exactly Bee’s Instagram persona, but who she really is. He’ll pull the real, authentic Bee to the surface, and then when he’s reeled her in, he’ll take her down.
Gemma’s numbness lifts and in its place comes a boiling rage.
“Why?” she cries, bolting up from the table. She corners Ruth, traps her against the fridge. “Why would you do this to Bee? You love her!”
Ruth covers her eyes with her arm, and Gemma tears her arm away from her face. “No. You don’t get to hide!”
“I didn’t do it. I swear I didn’t. Gemma, you have to believe me! Somebody else did this!” Ruth’s face gnarls with anger. Her mouth is a dark slash. “Somebody who hates me. Who wants to ruin me. To tear us apart. Please, please, you’ve got to believe me!”
Gemma stares at her oldest friend incredulously. What a brilliant performance! Academy Award winning, really. How could she have been so fooled?
“Help me,” Ruth begs.
Bee runs into the kitchen and gestures up at the ceiling. They hear a pounding sound. “Marley,” she says.
Ruth slides to the floor in defeat. “Marley,” she repeats dully.
A muffled shriek. Bee runs up the stairs with Gemma at her heels.
They stop short of Marley’s door, stunned. “I can’t believe this,” pants Gemma. “She’s padlocked her in.”
Bee presses her face against the door. “It’s okay, Marls, we’re gonna get you out,” she croons.
“Come with me,” Gemma instructs Bee.
They go downstairs and confront Ruth. “Give me the key,” Gemma says.
Ruth cowers. “I don’t know where it is. Don’t hurt me, please.”
“Stop playing the victim. You’re a monster,” Gemma hisses.
Ruth gags then sprints to the bathroom and slams the door. Gemma and Bee hear her retching. They tear through the house, opening drawers and cupboards, looking for the key that will set Marley free.
MARLEY
Marley has stopped pounding on her door. She’s in the backseat of her mother’s car on a hot day in Sacramento. Desperate for her mother to release her into her father’s care.
Just wait until you get home, she’d said.
* * *
That summer between first and second grade, Marley did a stellar job of forgetting her mother’s warning. She was gloriously happy. She didn’t know there was a name for what she could do. Compartmentalize. Shunt bad things off to the side. Lock them away in a drawer for future contemplation. Or bury them so deeply they were irretrievable.
But as soon as Marley got back into her mother’s car in August, she remembered her mother’s—curse? Is that what it was? Marley was so young. She still thought of everything in fairy-tale terms. She prayed her mother had forgotten.
And it seemed she had. She showered her in kisses. Stopped by In-N-Out Burger on the way home and let her order a large vanilla milkshake. You deserve a treat, Marley bear. That’s what she said.
When they got back, the house was shining and clean. Marley, a little less so. Her mother sprayed her perfume in the air and Marley walked through the scent like it was a hallway. Never be so pedestrian as to spritz perfume directly on your skin, her mother told her.
That night, after her bath, after a glass of chocolate milk, Ruth tucked Marley in. She read her three books, one more than usual. Then she kissed her on the forehead and shut off the light. Marley fell asleep to the sound of her mother laughing softly downstairs. She was watching The Jeffersons.
Marley slept the sleep of princesses who had been slipped magic potions. And when she woke it was late. Why hadn’t her mother gotten her up? she wondered.
Because her mother was gone.
* * *
Marley washed her face, brushed her teeth, and combed her hair, just the way her mother had taught her. Nobody likes a slovenly little girl. She changed into a dress. Cotton eyelet. Fluttery sleeves. Embroidery at the neckline and hem.
She was hungry but didn’t eat—her mother hadn’t given her permission. She didn’t go to the bathroom; her mother hadn’t given her permission to relieve herself either. She sat on the couch in the living room, stiffly, upright, waiting for her mother to return. Perhaps she’d gone out for bagels. For La Farine almond croissants, her favorite. For steamed dumplings.
At noon, Marley couldn’t hold it in any longer. She belled her dress around her thighs so it wouldn’t get wet, and peed into the couch cushion. Relief and fear. The cushion absorbed the urine, but the fabric was wet. Frantic, she turned the cushion over. Would her mother be able to tell?
The hours dragged by. The sun moved through the house, bathing the rooms in a golden light. She followed the light, from the living room to the family room to the media room to the kitchen. And then all at once, night descended, and Marley understood she was being punished.
She’d betrayed her mother. She’d done something unforgiveable. She’d left her and now it was payback time. Or maybe, she had this all wrong. Maybe her mother had gotten in an accident. Driven her car over a cliff, just like her parents had. Maybe right now, this very minute, she was an orphan! Like Sara Crewe in The Little Princess. But wait, she had a father. She couldn’t be an orphan if her father was still alive, could she?
She didn’t dare sleep. She didn’t dare turn on the lights. She sat on the floor in her drenched underwear, breathing through her mouth so she wouldn’t smell the stink of her pee.
At 2:00 a.m. she crawled under the kitchen table, a refrigerator full of food just three feet away. She cried out with hunger pains so sharp they made her curl up like a bug marooned on its back. On the island, a bowl of apples. A bunch of bananas. Not for her.
When Ruth finally came home at eight the next morning, with proclamations of love, with bagels and almond croissants, it was too late. Marley had transformed into something not quite human.
“Marley, Marley bear,” her mother had cried, holding her arms out wide for a hug. “Did you think I wasn’t coming back?”
She skittered away from her mother, across the floor like a rat, blinking in the light. A scuttling creature, not fit for this world.
* * *
Marley hears Bee and Gemma at her bedroom door, whispering. The sound of a key being inserted into the lock. The door swings open. They stand there, love and pity in their eyes, and something else—pride.
They think they’ve saved her, but she’s past the point of saving and has been for a long time. Still, she lets them embrace her.
“Come,” says Gemma. “Let’s get you out of here.”
PART FOUR
GEMMA
It’s been a week since Cam’s true identity was revealed and once again, the Howard family is in the headlines, only this time they’re the victim (aka the unidentified mother and daughter) not the perpetrator. It’s been all over the newspapers, as well as local and national TV. Gemma is pressing charges against Ruth. She found a young, eager lawyer who’s willing to represent her pro bono. More and more of these kinds of cyberbullying cases are being successfully prosecuted. Also, apparently, Marley had a text therapist named Soleil, who had filed a formal report of child abuse with CPS. That would help their case enormously.
Meanwhile, Ruth has gone underground. Gemma drove by her house the other day and it had clearly been vacated. All the shades were drawn, not a light on. There was a sign on the door. PLEASE RESPECT OUR PRIVACY DURING THIS DIFFICULT TIME. Somebody had scrawled FUCK YOU BITCH!! on the sign with a red Sharpie.
Both Gemma and Bee deeply felt the loss of the Ruth they thought they knew; it was like a death. They were also enraged. The lengths she’d gone to! The scheming! The manipulation! Gemma remembers telling Ruth about the VPN and Ruth pretending she had never heard of such a thing. So you’re just going to give up? she’d asked her.
The day after she�
�d exposed Ruth, HappilyEverAfter sent one last message to their pod.
HappilyEverAfter: Check out this link, ladies. #blessedDDs
The pod had been going crazy trying to figure out HappilyEverAfter’s identity and how she got access to Ruth’s computer. LoveYouMore had responded to her message within seconds.
LoveYouMore: Don’t open that link!! It could be spyware. It’s probably how she hacked into Ruth’s computer.
Who was HappilyEverAfter? She could be anyone; Ruth had plenty of enemies. But really, Gemma didn’t care who HappilyEverAfter was. She’d be forever grateful to her. Let her have her anonymity. That was the whole point of Momonymous, wasn’t it?
The question she’d ask Ruth, if she were ever to talk to Ruth again (which she decidedly will not) is why. Why did she go after Bee? But she’s starting to think that she was the intended victim; Bee was just collateral damage. Gemma was the true source of Ruth’s envy and rage.
* * *
Gemma’s just poured herself a cup of coffee when her phone rings.
“Hi there,” says Ed, Marley’s father. “How’s our girl doing?”
Gemma had called Ed as soon as she’d gotten Marley back to the house on that terrible morning. He made it to Oakland in record time. When Marley saw him standing on the doorstep, she flew into his arms. Gemma and Bee had gone upstairs to give them some space. When they came downstairs a little later, they found them snuggled on the couch. Marley in the crook of her father’s arm, looking so young and vulnerable.
“Thank you,” Ed had croaked, his voice thick with emotion.
He’d been with them for two nights, then he’d gone back to Sacramento to get the house ready for his daughter’s arrival. Soleil suggested Marley stay with them for a few more days; Gemma and Bee were a bridge between her past and her future and Marley wasn’t quite ready to cross over yet.
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