by Sonia Hartl
Me: The adults are gone. Want to come over and get me naked?
Paxton: Would love nothing more, but I’m already at the fair. Needed to get here early for Matilda. Rain check?
Me: No problem.
I’d just seen him yesterday morning, but he’d already asked for two rain checks when I’d suggested we get together. I tried not to let that worry me. He had to get Matilda ready, and the Shelby County Fair was the biggest rabbit show of the season. But still. The timing of it all with Eric’s threats had left me with a certain amount of unease.
I hadn’t gone online since Elise had shown me Eric’s YouTube video, but she’d been keeping tabs on him. His likes and retweets had dropped significantly in the last week, and that worried me more than anything. Desperation made people do terrible things. He wasn’t willing to let the Baseball Babe thing go, and since I’d gone dark, I had to assume the public had either lost interest or turned against him. But apparently he and Jessica still intended to show up today around two. Elise said it looked like he was trying to get more coverage, tagging various news organizations daily for our big appearance together.
Maybe it was better for Paxton to keep his distance right now. I didn’t want him anywhere near Eric and Jessica, not when Jessica planned on live streaming for Instagram. If they ended up filming him, if people got curious, it could bring up everything that had happened with his sister all over again. The long-dead story—buried by years of People of Walmart, Tan Mom, and Yanny or Laurel—would be dragged out again. Though Paxton’s family had broken under the strain, and healed again in the only ways they knew how, I would not be part of ripping open that wound again.
I had a lot of hard decisions to make before I met up with Eric and Jessica, but one thing was certain: I was no longer willing to do whatever it took to boost my numbers. I had other options if I dared to explore them.
Millions of people who didn’t go to college had decent jobs and good lives. Maybe one day I could open my own store. I’d sell movies and cosplay costumes to go with them, and host watching parties, and have movie club discussions with fancy wine and cheese, and have birthday parties with Disney movies and princess dresses. I could make it a whole experience. Something to get people out of their homes and away from streaming services.
I didn’t have to keep giving away pieces of myself to survive. Maybe it had been that way for Gram and Mom, but I could break the cycle. It wasn’t too late. I could still be who I chose to be, not who Twitter wanted me to be.
With nothing better to do than sit around the house and stress, I grabbed the car keys and headed out to the fair. By the time I arrived, the parking lot was overflowing. Everyone and their dog had come out for the first day. Most of the businesses in the surrounding towns shut down.
The scents reminded me of a combination of the Royals game and Paxton’s backyard—fried bread and grilled sausages mixed with barnyard hay. Little kids with balloon animals and lemonade ran through the crowds. The whoosh of mechanical rides and the screams of terrified riders filled the air. A giant Ferris wheel loomed over the crowd, and just looking at it made my stomach pitch. I’d gone through a weird carnival horror stories phase after renting one of the Final Destination movies a few years ago, and there were now maybe five rides I didn’t think of as pretty little death traps.
I had exactly three dollars, mostly in dimes and nickels I’d picked out of various drawers in the house, and I was starving. I wandered around the concession stands, debating between cotton candy and candy apples, when I caught sight of Midnight and Elise. They sat at a picnic table sharing a half-grape–half-strawberry snow cone like a 1950s ad for a malt shop.
I sat at their table. “Aren’t you two love birds sickeningly cute?”
Elise flipped me off. “You’re just jealous we won’t share our snow cone.”
True. It looked delicious.
“Is Paxton showing Matilda today?” Elise asked.
I nodded. “At five. He’s with Gigi at the 4-H barn, if you want to stop over and see them. I guess they bring her in early so she gets accustomed to the crowd.”
At three, she’d be weighed, measured, and checked in. Then Paxton would groom her again before the posing. The rabbit shows weren’t really a spectator sport, but I planned on watching anyway. There were few things in this world cuter than a boy and his bunny.
A little girl with ribbons in her hair walked by, one hand in her mom’s and the other clutching a candy apple. My mouth watered. “I’m getting a candy apple.”
“Hey, you,” Paxton said.
I spun and threw my arms around him. My pockets jingled with all my change. He hugged me back, and I could feel the tension in his arms. Probably because of Matilda’s show and the prospect of Eric lurking around. At least that was what I kept telling myself.
“I’m surprised to see you,” I said. “Aren’t you prepping Matilda?”
“Gigi wanted cotton candy.” He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I can’t talk right now. I really shouldn’t even be out here.”
My heart twisted into a knot. “Oh. Okay. I have stuff to do too.”
I turned away before he could see how much his distance affected me, and made it five steps before I caught sight of a familiar profile: a ridiculously hot guy with a manipulative streak and a thirst for fame. And next to him, bobbing through the crowds, a perky woman with a pink bow in her hair.
Eric and Jessica had their backs to me. They didn’t notice as I weaved between people by the packed concession stands. Instinct had me pulling my phone out of my back pocket. I wasn’t close enough to hear them yet, but I started recording anyway. They veered to the right, toward the games on the midway. Maybe they planned on setting up a camera or meeting up with a news crew early? But they passed right by the milk jug toss, and there were no cameras, no one who looked like a reporter or blogger, and no one who took any interest in Eric and Jessica. Huh.
Still, I kept pace with them, far enough back so they wouldn’t see me, until they got to the end of the games row.
When they turned and went behind the tents, I crept to the side. The air vents and generators masked my steps, but they also made it hard to hear. I risked peeking around the corner, where they had their backs to me, both looking down. I held my phone, still recording, and thanks to all the background noise, they had no idea.
“Are you sure she’s even going to show?” Jessica asked.
“If she doesn’t come by 2:05, text this to her,” Eric said. They must’ve had their heads bent to look at his phone. I couldn’t see what it was she was supposed to text me. “I’ll send you the picture and her number. She has me blocked, so I can’t do it.”
“I’m worried this is going to make things worse for us,” Jessica said.
“It can’t get any worse.” The bite in Eric’s voice nearly made me take a step back. “Listen, I just need to see her, and I can get her back on track. I had Macy eating out of my hand before; I can do it again.”
“If I threaten her though?” Jessica’s voice got lower, and I chanced another step closer to make sure my phone picked up every word. “People already hate us. If she posts that text—”
“Don’t text anything but the pictures,” Eric said. “What is she going to do with those?”
My blood boiled, making the very air around me hot and tight. I’d heard enough. I didn’t even care whether I had enough ammunition recorded. This was going to end now.
“Aren’t you two just the cozy couple?” My voice had gone as soft as death. “What pictures are you planning to share without my consent this time?”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
JESSICA AND ERIC SPUN around, both with their eyes bulging in a cartoonish way.
“We’re not a couple,” Jessica sputtered. “He’s young enough to be my son.” Which hadn’t stopped her from adding a bunch of heart-eye emojis to his shirtless picture. “We’re friends, and we’re both here to see you.”
“Macy, you’re a little early.” Eric smiled, smoothly transitioning into game mode, like he hadn’t just been plotting to threaten me. “I’ve really missed you.”
“You can drop the act,” I said. “I have you blocked. This isn’t a happy reunion.”
Eric’s earnest expression flipped to vicious in an instant, like he could turn his looks on and off at will. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to us?”
It hit me then, how little I knew about Eric outside his interest in baseball. I had no idea about his state of mind or what he could be capable of. He was just some guy I’d sat next to at a baseball game. If he’d bought his ticket a day later, maybe he would’ve had a different seat. If Jessica had possessed a shred of decency, she wouldn’t have tweeted those pictures. The three of us didn’t belong in each other’s orbits, but here we were, and the collision was about to get ugly.
“There is no us. Please tell me you haven’t become that delusional,” I said.
“Not you and me. I mean us.” Eric pointed between him and Jessica. “Ever since you deleted your tweets and videos, we’ve been going through hell. The entire Internet thinks I did something to you to make you shut down our interactions, and Jessica is being dragged harder than ever for creating that thread. We’re both getting death threats.”
“Spare me your tears,” I said. “Where were either of you when I got dragged for supposedly having sex in a bathroom? When strangers showed up at my house?”
Eric narrowed his eyes. “I set the record straight on that. Twice.”
“How much later?” I asked. Eric looked away, dismissing me completely. “That’s exactly what I thought.” I turned to Jessica. “Are you proud of all this? Did you feel good when you followed us to the bathroom after you encouraged us to go together? Did those likes and retweets fill that empty place where your soul should be? Why did you do it?”
Jessica’s lip trembled. “I didn’t mean for it to get so out of hand. At first I just meant to take that picture of you spilling your food and drink on him for laughs, but then I saw the way you looked at him when he took off his shirt, and—”
I held up my hand to cut her off. “Don’t you dare put this on me. Back up and think really hard about how you want to frame this story.”
“I screwed up, okay?” Her nostrils flared slightly. “I thought it would be a cute and fun thread, and I thought blurring out your faces would keep you anonymous. I was wrong.”
“When did you decide you were wrong?” I asked. “Just now? When Twitter turned on you? At any point when you took pictures of strangers and lied about them?”
Jessica opened her mouth and Eric put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. “We can go around and around on this all day,” he said. “It’s not like you’re innocent either. We all got caught up in the fame game and we lost. We just want you to help us make it right. If you log back onto Twitter, say things are going great with us, you’re not mad at Jessica, you’re just more of a private person and that’s why you deleted everything, this will all go away.”
“You can’t be serious.” Every single tweet I’d read in a cold sweat in the middle of the night boiled inside me. “I’m not doing either of you any favors.”
“I told everyone we didn’t have sex in the bathroom so they’d leave you alone,” he said. “Why can’t you do this so they stop harassing me?”
“Because I didn’t have sex with you in the bathroom!” I threw my hands in the air, careful to keep my grip on my phone. “You don’t get a fucking cookie for telling the truth.”
“We don’t want to start the Baseball Babe stuff again,” Jessica said. “We just want it to die. If you make it clear that you’re not a victim, then people will stop treating us like perpetrators and it ends there.”
“I’m not doing it.” I held my phone tighter, praying it was still recording, and that Eric and Jessica could be heard over the generators. “You made your bed. Lie in it.”
“Macy, please. We need you.” Eric switched back to sad dog. He had so many masks, I had no idea which was real. Forget blogging. He really should’ve gone into acting.
He reached for my hand. It happened so fast, I barely had time to flinch away from him.
Paxton stepped up beside me. Rage rolled off him like a relentless summer storm. He grabbed Eric’s wrist, and Eric’s fear tinged the air as he tried to yank his arm away.
“She didn’t give you permission to touch her,” Paxton said. He released Eric and shoved him back a step. “Don’t try that again.”
Half of my heart soared. Paxton had shown up for me. The other half was terrified. I didn’t want him anywhere near Eric and Jessica. What if they were lying and didn’t plan to let their viral fame go anytime soon?
“You can’t be here.” I reached for Paxton’s hand, prepared to drag him away, but he just shook his head. He wouldn’t budge.
“I’m not leaving you alone with them.” He bent closer to me so only I could hear him above the generators. “You’re a risk worth taking.”
“I really didn’t want to do this,” Eric said quietly. “But if you’re not going to help us, then we’re out of options.”
Eric opened his screen and turned it to me. Two pictures of me and Paxton popped up. One of me hugging him, from when I’d seen him earlier, and the other where I looked up at him with my heart in my eyes. I had no doubt in my mind what Eric planned to do with those pictures.
Horror slammed into my gut, and vomit threatened to climb in my throat. I gritted my teeth, willing it back down, mentally soothing the sickness. If Eric saw what those pictures did to me, I’d never get the upper hand. Paxton breathed in deep through his nose.
“If you don’t tweet what I asked, then I’m going to make you the villain. I’m going to tell the entire world you screwed me over.” Eric tried to look remorseful. Tried, and failed miserably. He thought he had me again. I wanted to smack that smug undercoating off his face so bad, my entire arm was already vibrating from the impending contact. “If you thought the shaming was bad when everyone tweeted about you fucking me in the bathroom, wait until I tell them I only said you didn’t do it to protect you. Poor me. I was so in love. Until I found out you had a boyfriend the entire time. They will burn you alive.”
And they’d believe him. No matter what I said or did, they would believe him. The word of a sun-kissed boy with a pretty smile would always be worth more than that of a teenage girl.
Just like Eric and Jessica had brought every bit of hate down on themselves, I’d done this too. If I hadn’t played along, if I hadn’t wanted those YouTube subscribers so bad, Eric wouldn’t have anything to hold over me. I didn’t care what anyone said about me on Twitter. Not anymore. But if he posted those pictures, Paxton would be all over the Internet again. He’d go viral again. Amateur sleuths would uncover his real name and his entire past would be rehashed and chewed on by wolves again. Because of me. Because of the decisions I’d made when I’d been scared and hurt and worn down.
Eric put his phone away. “What’s it going to be, Macy?”
I still had one card left to play. And I prayed it would be enough. “Go ahead and do it.”
Paxton whipped his head toward me, and I silently begged him not to say anything. I couldn’t let Eric think those pictures had any weight. If he knew what I’d be willing to give to make sure Paxton never appeared on the Internet again, I’d never escape. Eric would never let those pictures go. He’d never let Fly Ball Girl go.
“But if you do that, then this is going up on YouTube.” I stopped recording, turned my own phone toward him and Jessica, and hit play. “It sucks when people invade your privacy and film you without your consent, doesn’t it?”
Paxton relaxed beside me as Eric and Jessica both paled at the sound of their voices, their threats to use those pictures against me, which could be heard loud and clear above the generator. Bless modern technology. And as we glared at each other over my phone, we entered into a new game. One with bigger stakes. I
t was only a matter of who would fold first.
Eric had his blog and I had YouTube. Desperation to grow our numbers had brought us both to this point. Eric was right about one thing: I wasn’t innocent either. I’d hurt and lied to people I genuinely cared about who genuinely cared about me, because I didn’t believe in myself enough to think I could be anything other than Internet famous. While I couldn’t go back and change my mistakes, I could still make better choices going forward.
Those tough decisions were now my only option if I wanted a clean break. I held up my phone so Eric could get a front-row view, opened up Twitter, and shut the whole thing down. Bye-bye thirty-five thousand followers. I never knew you, and you certainly never knew me. Next, I flipped over to YouTube. This one was way harder, but I needed all the leverage I could get. With a few clicks, they were gone. Every single one of my reviews.
“There. It’s done. I have nothing to lose if you post those pictures,” I said. “Sure, strangers will drag me, but it’ll be like a tree falling in the forest, and I won’t be around to hear it. But you will be.”
“If you don’t care, then you won’t mind if I upload these pictures so people will leave me alone.” Eric sneered, but his lip wobbled too much for it to be anything other than comical.
“I care about strangers showing up at my house again. I care about my grandma having to change our number again.” I also cared about keeping Paxton out of this mess. “But you care a whole lot more about online hate than I do. I wonder if the Royals will still let you into the locker room? Don’t they revoke press credentials for manipulative, abusive assholes?”
“You wouldn’t dare.” Eric turned so red, if he’d been a cartoon, steam would’ve poured out of his ears. “I will fucking ruin you.”
“True.” I gave him my sweetest smile, the one where I showed all my teeth. I could practically taste his blood on them. “But not nearly as bad as I’ll ruin you.”
“What do you want?” Jessica asked.
“I want your phones,” I said. “Both of them.”