by A. V. Geiger
Password: TEXASjf97bv
“The license plate number from the van?”
Eric glanced at her sideways. “Totally unhackable, right? No one else could guess that but you and me.”
The next prompt came up on the screen before she could respond. Their account still needed a handle. “I’ll make it look like a fan account,” Eric told her as he typed. “Nobody pays attention to those.”
Username: @Snowflake734
Tessa recognized the title of his most recent single, “Snowflake.” Eric’s label had released it a week before his disappearance. With the publicity generated by the crime, the song had ended up with more downloads than any other single he’d ever recorded.
“Why 734?” she asked. “Does that mean something?”
Eric shrugged. “Snowflakes 1 through 733 were taken,” he said with a dry laugh. “See? Just another snowflake. I blend.”
He hit Create Account, and the new profile sprang to life.
Just Another Snowflake @Snowflake734
TWEETS FOLLOWING FOLLOWERS
0 0 0
Tessa’s stomach did a somersault. She quickly looked away. Her eyes darted toward the window of the van, but night had fallen. It was pitch-black outside. She only saw the pale oval of her own face reflected in the glass, echoing the same expression Eric had worn a moment ago.
Haunted. Spooked.
“Please don’t tweet anything,” she whispered. “Please, Eric. He could be watching. He’s still out there somewhere.”
• • •
Blair sat in the coffee shop, hunched forward over the table with his phone hidden in his lap. He could feel a crick forming in his neck, but he didn’t straighten up. He liked the way the tabletop shielded his screen from the view of nosy onlookers.
Some people… Always inserting themselves into everyone else’s business. Maybe Tessa had the right idea, hiding out in her room for months on end. People could be such troublemakers. Why couldn’t they keep their eyes to themselves?
Blair hated logging on from a public place, but he had no choice. He needed the free Wi-Fi. At least the staff here left him alone, as long as he refilled his coffee every few hours.
He inserted his earbuds and tapped the Twitter app open, entering the same search term he input every day.
#EricThorn
He’d been following the news coverage ever since the police let him out of custody. The Texas police had him extradited to Louisiana, but the DA there declined to prosecute. They didn’t consider it a priority to press stalking charges when the victim was a murderer herself.
Of course, Blair didn’t buy for a second that Tessa had actually offed Eric Thorn. He knew her better than that. She was nothing if not conniving. Blair’s biggest mistake in Texas had been underestimating her capacity for deceit. She’d gotten the better of him, and the memory still rankled. He’d have a few things to say when he found her.
She and her beloved Eric had obviously faked the crime and run away together. They’d turn up eventually. Blair would be watching when they did. He had new accounts on every social media app in existence, and he spent all day, every day refreshing…and refreshing…and refreshing…
It was only a matter of time before they poked their heads out from wherever they were hiding. Then Blair would get her back. He didn’t know what she saw in that talentless pretty boy anyway. Eric Thorn… Blair let out a snort. Someday, he and Eric Thorn were going to have a serious score to settle.
For now, Blair returned his attention to Twitter’s current list of trending topics.
Interesting.
A shadow fell across the table, and Blair sensed someone standing on the other side. He leaned farther forward, hoping the stranger would take the hint, but he heard the sound of a girl clearing her throat. With a grunt, Blair glanced up.
“Hey, are you using this chair?” The girl didn’t wait for an answer. Wooden chair legs scraped across the floor. Blair darted a glance around the coffee shop, but all the other seats were full. “Are you saving it for someone?” she asked, as she set her drink down on the table.
Blair shook his head. He stuffed his phone in his pocket, and his chair clattered as he thrust himself to his feet.
“Take it,” he said without meeting her eyes. He left his half-empty coffee cup where it stood and headed for the door.
He’d come back later. After the lunch rush. No point raising a fuss. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself.
And most of all, he didn’t want an audience for what he had in mind.
4
COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS
Eric dismissed Tessa’s warning with an absentminded nod. He didn’t hit the button to compose a tweet. Instead, he toggled to the trending list. He hated causing Tessa anxiety, but he needed to see what people were saying. Had they believed it when Dorian outed him? Or were they dismissing it as Dorian’s desperate attempt to deflect attention from himself?
The trending list popped up, and Eric let out the breath he’d been holding. His name was nowhere to be seen.
Trends for you
#DorianIsAlive
1.2M tweets
#TupacIsProbablyDead
383K tweets
#KurtCobainIsDefinitelyDead
28.9K tweets
“Kurt Cobain?” Tessa asked. “What makes them so sure?”
Eric shrugged. “I guess because he had an autopsy?”
“Well, so did Dorian Cromwell!”
Crap, Eric thought. That was true. How the hell had Dorian pulled it off, anyway?
Tessa reached around him and flicked to refresh the list. Eric’s relief evaporated as he saw a new hashtag pop up in the third spot:
#EricIsAliveToo
29.3K tweets
“Dammit!” He shut his eyes to block out the words. When he reopened them, Tessa had already clicked to bring up the Top Tweets.
MET @MrsEricThorn
WE FORGIVE YOU @ERICTHORN! COME BACK TO US BABY! #EricIsAliveToo
1.6K 3.2K
Eric snarled softly at the screen. He recognized the handle of his old Twitter superfan. Of course it would be MET. She was still up to her old tricks, riling up his fandom into their latest frenzy.
Judging from the retweet count, she wasn’t the only one who’d latched on to Dorian’s claim.
Wishful thinking, Eric told himself. They didn’t actually know that he was alive. “What about #EricIsDead?” he murmured. Maybe that was trending too.
He entered the words into the search bar, but the results didn’t do much to soothe his nerves.
MET @MrsEricThorn
Does anyone still believe #EricIsDead? Nah. Me neither. #EricIsAliveToo
63 354
That was the top tweet? Wow, he was screwed.
Eric scrubbed a hand down the length of his face. Obviously, the Twitterverse had arrived at its final verdict. It was only a matter of time before his label hunted him down. He and Tessa were a few hours south of the border, but they might have to keep running. Central America, maybe? He’d heard Costa Rica was pretty nice…
But it was no use, and Eric knew it. He’d be no safer in Costa Rica than anywhere else. He had fans all over the world. All he needed was for one person to spot him and stream a video, and then the game was up.
Maybe it wasn’t too late. MET wasn’t the only fangirl he knew with a knack for social media. He glanced at Tessa. “You made that #EricThornObsessed thing take off last summer, right? Can you get something going with #EricIsDead?”
“You know it doesn’t work that way.” She clicked back onto the #EricIsAliveToo hashtag and scrolled through the results. MET had tweeted another one with an embedded video clip from Dorian’s press conference. It began playing automatically, and Tessa moved to click it off, but Eric stopped her. Something else had caught his attention—a different part of Dorian’s statement. Not his own name. The words that Dorian had spoken just before:
“If you’re out there somewhere, watching this b
roadcast, then I beg you. Please. I’m in trouble. I need your help…”
What was that all about? He had to admit he was curious. Eric took the phone back from Tessa and input Dorian’s username.
Dorian Cromwell @DorianCromwell
FOLLOWING FOLLOWERS
1,947 25.3M
Twitter had deactivated Dorian’s account after his murder, but apparently it was never truly dead. It must have lingered somewhere—buried in the bowels of some internal server or hovering in the ether on some cloud. It hadn’t taken long to resurrect, with Dorian’s list of 25 million followers still intact.
“Look,” Eric said, pointing to the checkmark next to Dorian’s name. “Alive and Twitter verified.”
He tapped the button to Follow. That way, if Dorian wanted to talk, he’d be able to send Eric a private direct message.
Eric knew it was useless though. He wasn’t @EricThorn at the moment. He was @Snowflake734. There was no way he’d get Dorian’s attention amid the flood of other fans. And he couldn’t send a direct message himself unless @DorianCromwell followed him back.
There had to be another way…
Eric hesitated. The phone went into sleep mode, and he stared at his dim reflection in the black rectangle of the screen. His face looked different from before he went into hiding. His record deal had a personal hygiene clause that required daily shaving, but he’d let that go since he ran away. His jawline was fringed with dark stubble. In another week, the growth would be thick enough to call a beard.
The sight of it gave Eric an idea. A fleeting smile quirked his lips. Maybe, he thought. Just maybe…
He flicked the phone back on and switched it into selfie mode.
Tessa let out a gasp at his side. She slapped her hand in front of the phone to block the camera lens before he could snap a pic. “What are you doing?”
“I have to tweet something at Dorian to show it’s really me,” Eric replied. “He’s never going to get in a message exchange with @Snowflake734.”
“But…but…”
“Don’t worry,” he argued, peeling her hand away from the phone. “I’ll delete it as soon as he follows me.”
“You can’t tweet it publicly, Eric!”
“No one will see it but Dorian. I have zero followers!”
Tessa gave up trying to block him. Her face had gone pale, and she clutched her head between her hands. Eric relented, flicking the camera app closed again. Maybe she was right. Her fears were not entirely unfounded. Eric was worried about his label catching wind, but Tessa had bigger concerns.
“Blair isn’t going to see it,” Eric said in a low voice. “I promise you, Tessa. I will never let that animal get anywhere near you again.”
She drew in her legs and hugged them, resting her forehead on her knees. Eric had to strain to understand her muffled voice. “That’s what happened last time. That’s how he found me.” She looked up. “You started some fake Twitter account, and the next thing you know… Boom. There he was in my living room.”
Her voice trembled, and Eric locked his arm around her waist to steady her. “That’s not going to happen this time.”
“If it happened once, it could happen again.”
Eric cocked his head, studying her face. “You know what you’re doing, right?” He didn’t wait for Tessa’s answer. Eric clicked off Twitter and brought up the iTherapy app that had taken the place of her former sessions with Dr. Regan. “Distorted thinking,” he said with a grim smile.
Tessa craned her neck to read over his shoulder:
15 Common Cognitive Distortions
Eric knew Tessa had the whole list memorized. He didn’t pause for her to read as he scrolled past the introduction:
A cognitive distortion is an inaccurate pattern of thought that can lead to false conclusions and negative emotions…
His thumb skimmed down the page, and he muttered the terms aloud as he went. “Personalizing…filtering…catastrophizing…polarizing…” He stopped short. “Polarizing maybe?”
Tessa shook her head. “Polarizing is when you see everything in absolutes. Black or white. Good or evil.”
Eric squinted at her.
Tessa’s voice gained confidence as she continued. “Like, for example, everyone at your record label is a horrible person? That might be considered a polarizing thought.”
Was she making fun of him? Eric grinned, but Tessa broke into a scowl.
“See, that’s the problem with therapy,” she said. “Dr. Regan would probably say I was polarizing, but some things really are black and white. Blair is evil. There’s nothing good about him. It’s not a distortion if it’s true!”
“No, no,” Eric reassured her, quickly scrolling down the page. “I wasn’t saying that. It must be one of these other ones.” He bent his head back to the phone. “Overgeneralizing, maybe?” He read the definition:
Focusing on an event in the past that had an unpleasant outcome, and assuming the same result will occur over and over again.
Eric pinched her lightly on the arm. “Bingo.”
“How is this overgeneralizing?”
He could see her trying to school her face into a skeptical expression, but she couldn’t help but smile back at him. They’d always played this game—pointing out each other’s psychological weaknesses—from the first day they’d started talking over DM.
He pecked her on the lips, and the smile broke free over her face. She slipped a hand around the back of his head to pull him toward her, but he stopped short of kissing her again. “Overgeneralizing,” he said, resting his forehead against hers.
“If you say so,” she replied with her eyes glued to his lips. “What were we talking about? I lost my train of thought.”
His smile changed into a smirk. “My new fake Twitter,” he answered.
Tessa closed her eyes and moaned.
“Listen to me, Tessa. Blair used Twitter to track you down one time, but it’s not going to happen again.” He placed a finger beneath her chin and tilted her face upward. “Don’t give him so much power. He’s not some psychic Twitter genius watching every new account that gets created.”
“I know, but if he did notice it—”
“If he noticed it, then what?” Eric asked. “He still wouldn’t be able to figure out your location.”
Tessa dropped her head onto his shoulder. Eric’s finger hung in midair, but he hesitated. For all his psychobabble talk, he couldn’t help but wonder if Tessa might be right. Tweeting publicly hadn’t gone so well the last time.
Eric couldn’t ignore the knot of tension in his throat. He had the strangest feeling of déjà vu. It wasn’t so long ago that he’d set up a fake handle and tweeted out a selfie from an account with zero followers. He’d deleted that tweet—the maiden tweet from @EricThornSucks, illustrated with a shot of him kissing himself in the mirror.
But deleted or not, a picture tweeted could never be untweeted. He’d learned that lesson the hard way. It hadn’t taken long for MET to poach that photo and tweet it from her own account. That girl spent every waking moment on Twitter, watching his every move.
And she was still out there.
Tessa was right. He couldn’t tweet a selfie. He couldn’t take the risk. There had to be a safer way to get Dorian’s attention…
Just then, another tweet popped up at the top of the screen.
MET @MrsEricThorn
Andddd this entire fandom is now stalking @DorianCromwell LOLOL. Here’s his not-so-secret Snapcode, folks ;) #DorianIsAlive #EricIsAliveToo
She’d attached the image of a white ghost cutout, surrounded by a yellow square. Beneath it was a username:
ShowYouTheDor
5
THE CURSE OF THE MALE CELEBRITY
“Snapchat?” Eric’s eyes narrowed. He’d never bothered to make an account himself. That was the last thing he needed—one more social media account for his fans to stalk. But it might not be the worst idea. “That’s more private than Twitter, right?”
“But Dorian would still have to follow me back, wouldn’t he?”
Tessa pressed her lips together, thinking. “Maybe not,” she said. “I can use this thingy MET tweeted to add Dorian as a friend.” She kneeled on the mattress beside him, bending over the phone. A small crease formed between her eyes as she concentrated. Eric couldn’t quite follow the stream of social-media-speak that tumbled from her lips. “It’s called a Snapcode. Kind of like a QR code. See the random dots around the edges? A lot of celebrities use Snapchat with secret usernames, but the fans find them eventually. I can’t believe MET just shared it publicly!”
Eric leaned back and rested his weight on his elbows. He didn’t need to know the details. Tessa would figure it out. He brushed his hand idly across the faded coverlet they shared at night, waiting for her to reemerge from whatever fangirlish rabbit hole she’d fallen down.
He had to admit, sleeping with a fangirl had its perks.
Not that they were doing anything other than sleeping. Tessa had made her boundaries clear, and Eric could respect that. They’d only been together for a month, and it felt right to take things slow. He’d fallen in love with Tessa’s words. Her mind. He could wait for the rest.
He glanced at her heart-shaped face. A lock of brown hair had come loose from her braid and dangled by her cheek. In a different mood, he might have reached out and brushed it back behind her ear, but he didn’t want to distract her.
“Got it!” A triumphant grin spread across her face. “Done.”
“What? You made us a Snapchat?”
“Yup, we’re Snowflake734, and we added Dorian as a friend. Now we can send him a Snap.” She flashed the screen in Eric’s direction. “If he notices it, we can open up a Chat.”
Tessa pointed the phone at Eric’s face, but he held up a hand to stop her. He could only imagine the flood of other accounts adding ShowYouTheDor at this very moment. They needed a pic that would grab Dorian’s attention, and Eric knew exactly what to do. He clutched the collar of his T-shirt with one hand and peeled it over his head.