I click on the name. Blocked. All I can see is their profile pic: a cartoon dog.
Whoever this person is, they live in Cincinnati. Or at least they’re in Cincinnati today, and happened to need groceries. They know who I am, they have a really stupid handle, and they’re probably feeling pretty damn powerful right now.
Within minutes the photos were shared hundreds of times. Now, little more than an hour after they were posted, they’re everywhere, shared thousands of times. They’ve even made their way to the influencer gossip sites.
My hands are trembling, causing the screen to shake, but my eyes refuse to go anywhere else.
#UnfollowCeCeRoss is trending. I’m losing followers by the second. 50,000 gone, in a finger snap.
I have more @s and direct messages than I ever have before. They’re accumulating like snowflakes in a blizzard; I can’t possibly process them all. And they’re all … so … mean.
Some are brutally long and detailed:
Others are remarkably short and to the point:
“Oh my god,” I whisper to my phone. “Oh my god. Oh my god.”
If you’re not visible, you’re forgotten.
Online, one spark can ignite an explosion.
Those were my words to live by. But this … this is all wrong. This isn’t how I’m supposed to be seen. Everywhere I look, people are turning against me. I feel each punch as if they’re physical.
“What is wrong?” Mom’s practically shouting in my face, and I realize she’s been trying to get me to talk to her for a while.
But I can’t look at her, can’t form words other than oh my god. I sit on the edge of the couch, my spine rigid. My trembling thumb keeps scrolling, my eyes and brain struggling to keep up. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mom thumbprint her own phone on.
The fire is spreading. Posters are feeding on each other’s anger. Each post, each message, each comment seems to be worse than the last.
I don’t understand. How is this happening? And how is it happening so fast?
I really am going to throw up.
Thrusting my phone at Mom, I bolt down the hall and slam the bathroom door. But instead of leaning over the toilet, I turn on the shower. I don’t know why. My whole body is shaking, and nothing makes sense. Without waiting for the water to heat up properly, I strip down and step in, then sink down to the tub floor and sit there as the water pounds down on top of me.
I can’t hear anything except water, can’t feel anything except water. But I don’t see the water at all. The scrolling messages are imprinted on my corneas, taunting me whether I open or close my eyes.
Not really gay.
Lying to us.
I never said I was gay! I wouldn’t have! I’ve always been bi; that was never a secret. Why is everyone acting like I duped them? Why is no one stepping up to say “Um, hey, CeCe’s bi, remember?” or even “Let’s give her a chance to explain, okay?” I haven’t seen a single message like that.
Mom pounds on the bathroom door. “CeCe?”
I don’t answer. My mind is still folding in half and turning itself over like a ball of dough.
“Are you all right in there?”
“No,” I whisper. But there’s no way Mom can hear it.
“I’m coming in!” she shouts, and a burst of cold air hits me as the door opens. She sees me sitting there, arms around my knees, shivering, water dripping from my nose, and runs over.
“Cevie,” I say through shivering lips.
“What?” Mom turns off the water and wraps a big, fluffy towel around me. With her help, I stand. Step out of the tub.
“I thought no one would like me anymore. After Cevie.”
“Okay?” Mom says, treading carefully.
“I was worried. I didn’t want to disappoint them. But … they were nice. They understood.” I look up at her, blinking away the moisture clinging to my lashes. “People can be nice online sometimes too, you know.”
“I know, honey.” Mom’s walking me across the hall into my room.
“And with the om thing. People called her out, but there was a reason for it. They weren’t bullying her. They weren’t being mean. They were trying to help.”
“What’s the om thing?” Mom asks.
I’m not in the mood to explain. “But this … this is mean. Why are they being so mean?”
It’s not a rhetorical question. I really want to know. But Mom either doesn’t realize that, or doesn’t have the answer. She digs through my closet and comes up with an old bathrobe I got as a Christmas present from my grandparents, like, three years ago. I’ve never worn it, but I shrug into it now and pull the belt tight around my middle. Mom sits in my desk chair and faces me.
“Did you see it?” I ask after a minute.
She nods, but hesitates before saying anything. I can practically see the words she’s thinking, floating around in space around her head. I told you so.
“This was what I was worried about, CeCe,” Mom says with a sigh. “There’s so much room for error online.”
The word pierces my skin.
“Error?” I shriek. “You think this is my fault? You think I did something wrong?”
She’s waving her hands in front of her face, shaking her head. “No, that’s not what I meant! I meant there’s so much room for things to go wrong. For misunderstandings to happen, or lies to be spread, or people to turn against each other. It’s not real life, CeCe! It’s words and pictures on a screen.”
“Yeah, but they’re words and pictures I’ve been able to control,” I say, teeth chattering.
This is the exact thing I was scared of. It’s why I didn’t get the tattoo I wanted. It’s why guilt burrowed deep inside me when I started to date Josh. I knew admitting to the world that I liked a cisgender guy could get my queer card revoked. It’s why I haven’t owned up to my new relationship to my friends in the GSA, and it’s one of the main reasons I’ve tried so hard to keep my app life and my Josh life separate. I wasn’t only scared of what he’d think; I was scared of what they’d think. And now I know.
But I have to defend the app. I have to. It’s part of me. “This is some jerk who took and posted pictures without permission. It should be illegal.”
“It should,” Mom agrees. “But it isn’t. And that’s part of why the app is dangerous.”
I circle the terry-cloth belt around my wrist, then unravel it and do it again. It’s soft. Soft is good. I wonder if they make pants and shirts and underwear out of terry cloth. I’d buy it. “It’s not dangerous,” I mumble, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary.
My relationship with Silvie was one of the realest, most important, most defining things in my life. Do they really think I was faking it all?
“Where’s my phone?” I ask Mom.
She doesn’t reply right away. She just looks at me shiftily, pursing her lips.
I blink at her. “What?”
“What have we always said? If things on the app ever take a turn, and your self-confidence begins to suffer, you’re out.”
“No way.” I shake my head wildly and hold out my hand, palm up. “Give me the phone.”
“CeCe …”
“I won’t go on the app, okay?” Not right this second, at least. “I need to text Mackenzie back.”
Two, three, four seconds tick by. Then Mom sighs. Reaches into her back jeans pocket and reluctantly produces the phone. I grab it from her.
Just saw, I text Mackenzie. Freaking out. What do I do??????
She texts back immediately. Who is that guy???
He’s just a guy. That guy I got donuts with that time, remember? His name is Josh.
You’re dating him? Why didn’t you tell me??
It hasn’t been that long. He was just a friend at first.
He seems cute. Hard to tell because his face was all over your face.
I ignore that. I know the internet loves a pile-on. But I tried REALLY hard to not ever be at the bottom of one of those piles, Mack.
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You’ve done great, babes. Look at how far you’ve come from Little Newbie CeCe.
So then why do people keep saying I LIED to them?? I never kept the fact that I was bi secret.
Mackenzie’s typing bubble goes and goes and goes. Finally: People see what they want to see. They think they’ve read the news when they’ve really only read a headline. They see a photoshopped picture of a celebrity, and believe that person has gained fifty pounds. You know?
Yeah … but how does that apply to me?
Your relationship with Silvie was OTP epicness. It spoke louder than words.
I think about that. It sort of makes sense. People may have heard me say B, but they saw me and Silvie, and saw the Pride announcement, and they decided that meant L or G.
But what was I supposed to do instead? I type.
Mackenzie sends three shrug emojis all in a row. I don’t know, she says. Reminded people more often that you swing both ways?
I hate that term. Especially when used by straight people.
Sorry. You know what I mean, though. The app is visual. They needed visual reminders.
Like what?
Hmmm … like maybe pics of you with hot dudes?
That’s stupid. While I was with Silvie??? I text. No way. And anyway, I’ve never even LIKED a guy before Josh.
Not true, Mackenzie counters. Noah Lim.
He’s not a real person!
He totally is a real person.
You know what I mean—not a real person in my life. Not an actual possibility.
Still though. Maybe if you’d posted more about your not-a-real-person crush on him, this wouldn’t be happening now?
That’s insane, Mack.
This is an insane life we lead, CeCe.
I read back through the text thread. I love Mackenzie, but her world is hot yoga and clean eating and Icelandic mud baths. She doesn’t get it.
So you’re saying it’s my fault. For not being more “visibly bi,” whatever that means.
NO! I’m saying your followers just need a chance to get used to it. This is new for them.
It’s new for me too, I remind her.
It WILL blow over, I promise. Drink some water and get some rest. Tomorrow is a new day!
I send her back a heart, and click the phone off.
Mom is still here, sitting at my desk, watching me, concern shaping her features. I hold out my arms. Immediately, she crosses the room to me, and I allow myself to sink into her hug and close my eyes. We stay like that for a long time.
I’m so tired. All I want to do is crawl into bed. But I can’t go to sleep yet. I need to post a response.
After Mom leaves my room, I sit on my bedroom floor with my phone in my hands. Maybe this is a “don’t engage with the haters” situation. I don’t know. I also don’t care. If I stay quiet, won’t it be interpreted as a guilty plea? Yup, I’ve been faking my queerness all along! Ya got me!
Problem is, I can’t exactly give clarifying details about my relationship with Josh either. People are already trying to find out who he is; any additional information from me would only amp up their motivation. And thanks to me and my idiotic birthday request, he now has an online presence.
Josh didn’t choose this. He’s entitled to his privacy.
I open the app.
Down another 60,000 followers. Don’t think about it, I tell myself.
I start a new post. Text only.
Y’all, I’m bisexual, remember? That little “B” between the “G” and the “T”? Search through my page. I’ve never pretended otherwise.
I’m not in the mood for sugarcoating. And I don’t think I’ve ever used the word y’all in my life, but it’s better than guys, which I’d written at first but then deleted because it might be taken as gender exclusive, and that’s the last thing I want right now. I hit POST.
I’m about to shove my phone under my pillow, hopefully for the rest of the night, when a new text message comes through.
Can’t wait to see you Friday! It’s from Josh.
After everything, it’s this that makes me burst into sobs.
Oh, and guess what! he continues. I’ve gotten 12 new song downloads already! People are really paying for my music, CeCe!! This is all your doing. I can’t thank you enough.
He has no idea. He thinks everything is as happy and perfect as it was this afternoon. How am I supposed to tell him the truth now? The prospect of coming clean to him about this part of my life was scary enough. But now I’m caught up in this firestorm, and as much as I tried to keep my app life and my Josh life separate, somehow he’s in it too. Am I really supposed to go, “Hey, Josh, surprise! Not only am I internet famous, but there’s an angry mob after me! And guess what? You’re the reason! Wheee! Play ball!”
Yeah, I don’t think so.
This is everything he hates. I can’t loop him into it. It’s too much.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I write back, Hey, I’m so sorry, but I think I need to cancel Friday. The prom decorations are getting delivered that day, and I need to help unpack everything.
Guilt grips me in its claws. But going to a very public baseball game, where followers of mine might be in the stands, or watching on TV, is definitely not what we need to be doing right now. I need time. I need to figure out how to get this all under control before I see Josh again. And it’s not a total lie—the decorations are being delivered that day. We’re just planning on unpacking them during the day, rather than after school.
Oh. Ok. I understand, he writes back immediately. Can I help?
Nah. Thanks though. Please apologize to your dad for me too.
A pause, then: Will do. Get some sleep. Talk tomorrow.
I start to reply xoxoxo but delete it. Yup! I send instead.
I check Josh’s app profile. The Brahms fan group must have stepped up, because he’s already got over seven hundred followers. And apparently twelve of them have bought his songs. And his photos have gotten a ton of likes.
It’s a stroke of luck that his face isn’t visible in the pictures of us kissing. Just to be safe, though, I log in to his account and set his profile to private. It’s better if he’s not findable right now. No one would expect me to be dating someone with no social media presence.
Once that’s done, I go back to my endless stream of notifications, just for a little while. It’s my birthday and I’ll cry if I want to.
* * *
I must manage to get some sleep because before I know it, the sun is up.
It’s a school day, but I can’t bring myself to get out of bed. Maybe if I stay just like this, under the covers, socked feet, no makeup, curtains closed, white noise machine whirring, everything else will stay the same too. If I don’t look at my phone, the notifications will stop coming. If I don’t talk to Josh, he won’t think about me. Like when you’re a baby and think the whole world disappears when you close your eyes.
A knock sounds at the door, and as I’m debating whether saying “go away” or saying nothing would be more effective, Mom peeks her head in.
“Good morning,” she says quietly.
“The good-est,” I mumble.
She comes into the room and sits on the edge of the bed on top of all the blankets and a little bit on top of my leg. “I thought the response you posted was great.”
“You read it?”
“Of course.”
“I haven’t checked my phone yet today. What’s the response been like?”
Silence.
With some effort, I push myself up on a little more of an incline and look at Mom. “Tell me.”
“It’s not all bad.”
“Meaning what?” My fingers inch toward the phone.
“Some people are defending you now. More than before, for sure.”
Okay, that’s good. “But …?”
Mom sighs. “I don’t know.”
Sitting up fully, I thumbprint the phone to life and quickly scan the comments. Mom’s right—the
re are more messages in my defense today than there were yesterday. I guess my rebuttal had some effect, at least. But I’m still shedding followers.
And there are a lot of comments to the effect of:
and
The comments that hit the hardest, though, are the ones that go something like this:
Silvie hasn’t responded to any of them. I wish she would. I turned off the “Silvie has viewed your post” notifications weeks ago, but there’s no way she hasn’t seen what’s going on.
Everything I’ve built is on the verge of being destroyed, no matter what I do. Silvie’s word means more than mine right now—if she defended me, it would help, I’m sure of it.
A probably-terrible idea occurs to me. A nothing-to-lose kind of idea. I push it back for now.
Meeting Mom’s gaze again, I nod, resigned. “I’m starting to see what you mean about the app.”
Her mouth drops open in shock.
But before she can get too excited, I amend that statement. “I’m not going off it, though,” I say resolutely. I’ll never leave it. Maybe I’m lacking a crucial survival gene, I don’t know.
Mom smiles. “I didn’t think you would.” She stands up. “Breakfast?”
“Just tea, please.” My insides are still all tied up, and if I’m going to follow the probably-terrible idea to its probably-terrible conclusion, I’d rather do it on an empty stomach.
* * *
With a deep breath and a second, third, fourth straightening of the bottom of my jean jacket, I ring the doorbell.
On the other side of the door, Silvie’s dogs start barking. I always thought it was funny, the way those two little monsters flipped out at the slightest change in their environment. But that was back when I was allowed to just walk in without ringing the bell. Now the barks feel ominous, even though I know they’re coming from two teeny Yorkies.
The door opens.
“Oh. Hi,” Silvie says, blinking as if to clear her vision and make sure it’s really me. She’s in her version of pj’s: oversized basketball shorts and an off-the-shoulder T-shirt. It’s early—seven a.m. But I wanted to catch her before school.
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