Evelyn

by C. L. Stone

  When we got to his house, Soma parked, and I stormed inside, heading up to the guest bedroom ahead of them both and shutting the door.

  I needed time to think. Anger was clouding my ability to be clear in what to do next.

  The room had changed slightly. There was now a notebook and a collection for paper on the desk, along with a new iPad. There was a small red bow on the iPad. The wardrobe door was open, as if it were Soma’s way of showing me he had hung up some of the clothing I had brought back from Gretta’s.

  On the bed was laid out a brand new pair of pajama pants and a loose T-shirt, a pair of fuzzy socks, and underwear. No labels. I imagined they were all from Gretta, but she hadn’t told me she was making loungewear.

  I didn’t want to be ungrateful for the work that Gretta put into the clothing, or the effort Soma had put into placing everything neatly.

  It was hard to appreciate everything they had done for me, and also be so angry. Maybe it was misdirected. Maybe it was from being under tense moments with Mrs. Harvey and still coming away feeling like we’d done nothing.

  I couldn’t forget that Ace was the one inviting me into his house to stay, and had gone to help me in Atlanta despite his own problems here.

  Or that Loïc, despite his methods tonight, had done what he said he would to help me in Atlanta, and stepped up to help when I had looked lost and Mrs. Harvey was attacking me. Now she couldn’t lie about what she was doing. People would want answers from her.

  Soma had said they would fight over a point. Ace and Loïc were rivals. I had put myself in the middle. Maybe too soon when I didn’t know the rules, didn’t understand the game, and my goals might have been different. Confession wasn’t enough.

  I went to the bathroom, where a small collection of soaps and bath bombs and shampoo bars had been placed in a white tray near the tub.

  I sighed.

  I drew my own bath, ready to soak and think about what it was I really wanted.

  I dropped in only two bath bombs into the large tub. I brought over the iPad, removing the bow. It was already loaded with a few apps, some of the latest novels, a couple of games, and streaming television.

  I got undressed and got into the tub, allowing myself to soak while I considered what I was going to look for.

  Out of habit, I ended up going to Instagram. Part of me wanted to calm myself by looking at vacation photos of interesting locations. I wanted a distraction.

  I wanted to get the images of those girls out of my mind.

  Out of a wild, weird, self-harm sort of therapy, I ended up searching for myself.

  I was tired of avoiding logging in or going to my own accounts and seeing what was going on. I wanted to see the truth.

  At first, I couldn’t find my own page. There had been fake Evelyn Lacroix accounts created—several of them. Some of them looked like exact duplicates, with my photos and everything. Some were obviously fake, with pictures of nothing but memes, or even advertisements.

  When I finally did find mine, I almost choked.

  Over a million followers.

  Absolutely insane. I couldn’t remember how many I’d had in the past, but I was pretty sure I had never broken twenty thousand.

  I couldn’t imagine all of them were interested in me. Most of them were probably lying in wait for me to say something, to be the first to hear when I did come back.

  To yell at me and send me death threats when they got a chance.

  Except when I scrolled further in, hovering over my posted pictures, I saw likes upward of a hundred thousand.

  Odd. Comments I expected, but likes...

  I clicked on one photo near the top of the page. It was a picture of just some shoes I’d found on a shopping trip. I hadn’t bought them at the time, but I really loved the aesthetic.

  The comments were a warzone. Some had a lot of hate and a lot of ‘kill yourself’ comments. Typical random hate spewing.

  However, those were outnumbered by the people who posted emoticons of hearts, some people yelling at the ones leaving mean comments.

  Not everything was rosy. Some were critical. It was akin to reading comments on a celebrity posting a photo.

  But more were on the positive than the negative.

  I put the tablet down on the edge of the basin. I leaned back, dipping deeper into the water, using it to soak away the makeup on my body. I absently washed myself, space-cased out, trying to put my thoughts together.

  Things weren’t that bad for me...for the real Eva. The hate I had expected was there. It was a little disturbing to see. Like little slivers of papercuts at your heart when someone wished you harm.

  I really wasn’t sure what to think of the over a million followers. Why? I was a no one before. Only doing my part within the fashion community to participate.

  Part of me was a little bitter about it. Why follow? Just because I was on the news and the situation I was in? People were following me for something I felt I hadn’t earned at all.

  And was agonizing about this helping? There were still kids in another country that needed help. I simply felt out of touch and without an answer.

  I gnawed on the idea while I washed my body and my hair. When I was in the prune stage, I drained the tub and got out.

  When I wrapped myself in a towel, there was a gentle knock at the door.

  “Yes?” I said.

  The door opened a crack. Soma appeared but cast his eyes down. “You left in the middle of dinner. I wondered if I could bring you...”

  “The chocolate marshmallow ice cream,” I said quietly. “Bring yourself the pistachio?” I turned to him. “If you don’t mind, I would like your opinion.”

  Soma picked up his head, his dark eyes meeting mine.

  The goatee and the lines of the beard around his jawline had been trimmed a little. He had changed into a pair of dark jeans and a black, formfitting T-shirt.

  He was incredibly good looking.

  The British, posh accent thickened. “I’ll always be honest with you, Eva.”

  I nodded, saying nothing. My anger had faded. I just wanted to get a clearer picture.

  Soma left me alone just long enough that I could get dressed in the clothes he had laid out for me. He had made a fine choice picking things out that were more comfortable.

  I’d just crawled on top of the bed with the iPad when Soma returned. He had another tray, with two bigger bowls of ice cream, a carafe of water with a couple of small tumbler glasses, and a plate of tiny cakes and brownie bites.

  “I think I’ve existed on mostly ice cream and scones since I’ve been here,” I said.

  “Maybe you’ve needed it,” he said. He placed the tray on the bed before he climbed up carefully. He placed it between us, the chocolate ice cream facing me. “What did you need my thoughts on?”

  I didn’t know where to start, so I simply went over the entire evening with him, going over everything that happened that he hadn’t been caught up on.

  “That’s pretty bold of Loïc,” he said. “Even for him.” He stared into his partially eaten bowl of pistachio, fiddling with the spoon. “And I honestly don’t like how he put you on the spot. She could have lashed out at you.”

  “I let him do this,” I said softly. “I didn’t even try to stop him. I think I was angry at Mrs. Harvey, so I suddenly didn’t care if she would be horrified or outed so badly in public.”

  “But she could have gone after you,” Soma said. “And she still might.”

  I sighed, rolling my head back. “I know. And worse, I don’t care.”

  Soma was silent for so long, I finally lowered my head to meet his gaze.

  He put is bowl down and pushed the tray aside. He sat cross-legged in front of me and closed the gap between us until our knees were touching.

  He place both of his palms on my knees and stared long and hard at me. “What do you care about?” he asked softly.

  “I don’t want to out her,” I said. “And I don’t care about her business and
what she does. I want...” I sighed. I was asking the impossible. “I want to fix what she isn’t willing to.”

  “How do you know she’s not going to fix it?”

  “Would you trust her to from this point?”

  There was a slight curl of his mouth and he nodded. “So, what would you rather do?”

  “Find out how to get those girls into a safe environment. Somehow.” I pressed my fingertips to my forehead, rubbing just over my brow. “But I don’t know how. I don’t have any money. I wouldn’t know where to begin. I don’t even know what I could do.” My voice started to shake.

  I had lied to myself. I was still angry, but it wasn’t at them and it wasn’t at Mrs. Harvey. In a way, I was angrier that she was right.

  Asking Mrs. Harvey to pull her money from that factory, she would just be replaced by someone else willing to pay. Asking her to change things...she didn’t own the factory. She may have had no control, but at least she was paying for work, and those children clearly needed some form of help. What could anyone do?

  “Hey, hey,” Soma said. He reached out to me cupping my chin and lifted it until I was looking at him. He tilted his head and gazed at my face. “Don’t tell me what you can’t do. Tell me what we can do.”

  “I can’t ask you that.”

  “Try me,” he said softly. “Please. That frown of yours will drive me to my grave, I swear. But I can’t help if I don’t know what you want to do.”

  “I want to fix it,” I said. “I want to make sure those girls are safe. I want them in school. I want them to have food and shelter and to never be exploited like that again.”

  His eyes sparked and his smile returned. “Ten points to Gryffindor.”

  I snorted a little out my nose as I burst out a breath from my lungs. “Soma...”

  “Confession is only one of the ways we get what we want from people,” he said. He let go of my chin and returned his hand to warm my knee. “Sometimes that is all we need. Mrs. Harvey is a special case. Her problems involve more than just herself, and she clearly isn’t willing to do the right thing. We can’t solve the world’s problems, but in this case, I think we’ll make an exception.”

  “There’s no way I can do anything,” I said.

  “Ace can.”

  I shook my head. “It’s too much.”

  “Listen, we can’t expect you to play exactly the same as Ace or Loïc can.” His palms slid up my thighs just enough that he could tug me a little closer, until my knees were nested on top of his. He continued to hold on to them. “Ace and Loïc provide you, and me, with the opportunity to do way more than just shake our fingers at other people and ask them to behave. They give us the opportunity to do something about it.”

  “I can’t ask Ace to spend what would have to be...I can’t even imagine how much money...”

  Soma’s lips dipped into a frown. “Remember the kid from the street? The one trying to sell you a rose?”

  I nodded.

  He dipped his hand into his back pocket and brought out his cell phone. He touched a few buttons and then showed me a picture.

  It was the same kid, but he was with parents that clearly weren’t his, as they had very obviously different skin colors. The boy was beaming. The adults, a middle-aged couple, were smiling, too.

  “I found him,” he said. “Or at least, I used someone both Ace and I know, someone on Ace’s payroll, to find him. His name is Dominic, and he actually lived with an uncle who was homeless and living in the street. Dominic was stealing the sweetgrass blowing away from the basket makers and making the roses for money for food.”

  I took the phone from him, gazing at the boy’s happy expression. “Who is the couple?”

  “Foster parents,” he said. “Good ones. I asked around. We’ll try to find his parents. His uncle will be given the opportunity to stay in a shelter if he chooses. The boy, however, is going to be okay.” He pushed his palms against my knees again, warming my skin.

  I looked at him, unsure of what to say. “So do you score a point for that?”

  “A scorekeeper doesn’t collect points, but it doesn’t mean I sit idle.”

  This was very complicated to me. “I can’t ask Ace to save everyone I want.”

  “You can always ask. He can say no if he isn’t interested. And then you can ask Loïc.”

  “I thought we didn’t like Loïc.”

  “We trust him,” Soma said. “Maybe not as much as we shou—”

  A shout erupted from outside. It was followed closely like the sound of car...more than one car stopping near, honking. Doors slammed. Voices drifted up, more than a few.

  Soma stopped, gazing at the window, appearing puzzled. “I hadn’t heard a neighbor to be throwing a party.”

  It was a lot of noise. “Maybe you weren’t informed? Or it is impromptu?”

  Soma crawled away from me, heading to the window.

  I crept up behind him, gazing out.

  We had only a slim view of the side yard. It wasn’t enough to see what was going on.

  “Soma!” Ace shouted from downstairs.

  Soma bolted instantly. “Stay in here,” he said.

  “I’ll come help,” I said. I had nothing to hide anymore. I wasn’t about to stand back and watch whatever was going on.

  Overexposed

  Soma thundered down the rear stairs faster than I could.

  By the time I hit the bottom floor, Soma was at the front door with Ace, the two of them peeking out of a window nearby.

  Ace still wore the shirt and pants of the suit he had worn earlier. His shoulders were squared off, and he had a fist up against the wall. “That stupid Zoey blasted the address.”

  I went to the window behind them, and I peeked out from behind Ace’s shoulder.

  More than a dozen people were out in the sidewalk. They all had cameras and they were all filming the front of the house. Security was there—only two guards—trying to hold them at bay off the porch and ask them to leave.

  Others were showing up, some with lawn chairs.

  I had witness something like this before, when a celebrity broadcasted his house address and then fans would show up to hang out together.

  Zoey stood in the center, a camera pointed at the house.

  “Whatever she published,” Ace said, “it got attention.”

  “What can we do?” I asked.

  “They are keeping to the sidewalk,” Soma said. He backed away from the window. He rubbed a palm over an eye. “Our security can’t push them off what’s public property. We’ll have to call police and see what they can do.”

  I backed up, pacing a little across the hallway. I kept my hands on my hips, trying to think. “There has to be something.”

  “Too much activity here and this makes the news,” Soma said. “We should turn the lights off. Be boring and uninteresting.”

  “This is Loïc’s problem,” Ace said. “He should be getting new lawn trolls, not me.”

  I paused in my pacing, considering. Loïc sent Zoey to Ace to be humbled in some way. She goes wild looking for attention. I tried to remember spoiled teens who would come by the boutiques I worked in and what their parents often did to correct them. Zoey wasn’t a teen, but maybe...

  “What would you say if we gave Zoey what she wants?” I asked.

  The guys turned to me, eyebrows cocked and doubt filling their expressions.

  “I’d rather you get out of here,” Ace said. “All of us should. Maybe we should hop a plane to Greece.”

  “I don’t have my passport,” I reminded him. “And that doesn’t stop her from coming back later.” I held out my hand. “And I don’t think that’s how you score a point, is it?”

  He smirked. “Nope.”

  “Can I borrow your phone?”

  He nodded and immediately passed it over. “What’s the plan, Stan? Calling in reinforcements?”

  I cracked a smile at his oddball humor and was also surprised how quickly he was willing to pass over his ow
n phone. He trusted me. It warmed me that he did.

  I focused on the phone, pulling up his Instagram app.

  It automatically went to my official blog. He had been looking at it.

  I picked up my head, a little puzzled. “Are you still keeping an eye on my profiles?”

  He shrugged sheepishly. “You’ve got a lot of pictures. I like them.”

  I logged him out of his account, and then plugged in my info.

  Once I confirmed myself, the phone immediately blasted off with dozens of updates on comments and likes and followers.

  “What are you doing to my phone?” he asked.

  I cut off notifications and passed him my phone, set to record a video. I found Zoey’s account, tagged her for this, and readied myself. “I’m giving her what she wants.”

  He seemed puzzled but nodded and held up the phone. “Do you want to keep it focused on you?”

  “Yes, thank you,” I said, and I turned to Ace. “Open the door, and ask security to bring Zoey here? Politely.”

  Ace jerked his head back. “Invite that wild thing in? Are you crazy? Maybe we should talk about this.”

  “You’re the one telling her to slow down?” Soma asked. “Think before leaping?”

  “If anyone other than Zoey comes at us, have security block them. We don’t want anyone else here.”

  Soma sent the message. Ace went to the door, counted to three, and then opened it wide, turning the porch light on.

  Voices rose. I couldn’t really hear what they were saying. The people outside weren’t really organized yet. It was mostly curiosity. Many of them looked young, early teens. Some even had their parents with them.

  Ace stood by the open door and motioned to the security guard. One of them came over. Ace whispered to him, pointed to Zoey, and relayed what I’d told him.

  “Don’t call the police unless she really is crazy and goes ballistic,” I said to Soma as the security guard went to collect her.

  I moved in next to Ace. I put an arm around his waist, and side hugged him.

  He wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and then kissed my forehead. “Are you sure you’ve got this?”

  I shrugged, tilting my head into his shoulder. I moved away from him as Zoey was let in the door.