Influenced

by Eva Robinson

  “Sorry, you asked about Rowan,” she said at last. “She was everyone’s favorite target when she was alive. She was a disgusting, lying murderer, a monster. She was a drug addict, getting old. Then she wrote her confession, and it was rambling. She admitted to some of the things they’d said about her—what they all thought, that her family bought her place in Harvard. That she couldn’t really write; she plagiarized. But after she died, it was all just… forgiven. It’s a lovefest. The articles explain that she’d practically invented the role of Instagram influencer. The entire thread about her on TOI.com was deleted. There are podcasts and articles about internet bullying. Everyone loves her now, but she’s not here to see it.”

  Over the past few months, one of the few things to interrupt Hannah’s misery had been texting Daniel. Back and forth, all day. He’d send pictures of what he was doing throughout the day—his breakfast of fruit, his lunch of soup or sandwiches. The sculpture he was working on. And Hannah would try to stare at those instead of reading the comments on the Ivy League Killers articles. It stopped her from thinking about Rowan too much, and the guilt for being the one who’d lived.

  “Are you okay?” asked Daniel.

  “I’m a lot better here than I was at my mom’s house.” She smiled. “At least you don’t tell me I’m getting fat with broken legs.”

  “I would never.”

  She held up her gold bracelet, and the ruddy sunlight glinted off it. She thought maybe now she understood what had made Rowan’s commenters both so obsessed and so angry.

  None of them had an ounce of Rowan’s magic.

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