“Yeah.” I’d forgotten all about Caitlin. “I should have called Artie Zucker sooner. You were right.”
He smiles stiffly. “I was thinking about what you said, about how someone made fake social media accounts for you. That’s a lot of work. I mean, that seems very deliberate.”
“And then there’s the whole T-shirt thing.”
“T-shirt thing?”
I glance at him, annoyed, but the open look on his face tells me he has forgotten about the T-shirt. “You know, how I found Cole wearing an Overton T-shirt the other day?”
“Right.” He nods slowly. “Maybe I’m missing something, but that just doesn’t seem like such a big deal compared to everything else that’s going on.”
You are missing something! I think. This is my moment to tell him about Overton and Paul Adamson, the picture on MySpace and the arrest.
“I think it might be someone from Overton who’s doing all this.”
“You think someone from your prep school is involved with Rob Avery’s death?” His deliberate tone makes me feel crazy.
I shake my head. I know it sounds nuts. “I’m not sure. I had a boyfriend my senior year. It didn’t end well.”
“And you think he’s the one making these social media accounts?”
I shrug. “I’m not sure. Maybe.”
“What did the police say, exactly?”
“They were asking me all sorts of weird questions about Ambien. It was awful.”
“Ambien?”
“Yeah, liquid Ambien. Had I ever used it. Did I have it delivered to the house.”
“And have you?”
“No. I didn’t even know they made liquid Ambien. And now there’s a story on the Eastbrook Facebook page saying the police were talking to a woman, a person of interest. And pretty much everyone on the page thinks that’s me. You know, I want to run my own studio one day, and I can’t have this kind of garbage about me floating around online. Right now, Valerie Simmons’s people are probably vetting me. I’m supposed to talk with her tomorrow to set up the shoot. What if she finds out about this Rob Avery stuff? What if my boss finds out?”
“Shhh, calm down, honey. No one’s going to find anything out. We’re going to put a stop to this.” He runs his hands through the sides of his hair, where there are enough grays among the dark brown to merit the label salt and pepper. “We’ll talk to the lawyer. He’ll know what to do. If anybody can shed some light on this, he can. He’s a local guy, went to Maryland for law school, was a prosecutor for a while, and is extremely well connected.”
“That sounds good.” I feel a little better.
“I trust this guy, Allie. That’s our plan. Hire the best, and let him deal with it. And as for Valerie Simmons—she’d be lucky to have you shoot her.”
I can barely manage a smile.
“In a year, you’re going to be the go-to photographer for all the D.C. hotshots, and she’ll be the one begging you to get back to her.” He gives me a kiss and pulls on his pajama top before grabbing the remote and turning on the game.
I lean up next to him and will myself to absorb some of my husband’s faith in the world. But for the first time in our relationship, I think Mark’s optimism is misplaced.
I want to believe that this will all blow over. That the lawyer that Mark knows will swoop in and fix it all. That nothing worse is coming down the pike.
But I cannot shake the certainty that the worst is yet to come.
I don’t know why, but someone is trying to destroy my life.
And I don’t know how to tell my husband that I think the person who might be behind it all is the first man I ever fell in love with, the first I ever made love to.
* * *
I am toasting a bagel for Cole the next morning when Mark wanders in from outside, smiling triumphantly.
“This look familiar?” he asks, holding up a small white post office mailing box.
“No. Should it?” The toaster oven pings. “Cream cheese or butter, Cole?”
“Cream cheese.”
“It’s a box from Overton,” Mark says, as proud of himself as a terrier who’s dragged in a rat. “I found it in the recycling.”
I freeze.
Mark puts the box on the counter in front of me. The return address is Overton Academy in Connecticut. Alexis “Lexi” Ross is written in block print on the front. I stare at the word Lexi until the letters swim before my eyes. This is no accident. This is someone who knew me. I push it back at him, bile rising in me. “I didn’t order that.”
Mark blows air loudly through his lips. “Maybe you ordered it a while ago and forgot about it.”
“No, Mark,” I turn to him. “I did not order a T-shirt from Overton and forget about it.”
“Jeez, you don’t have to yell at me.”
“I’m not yelling. But I think I would know if I ordered a T-shirt from Overton.”
Cole lets out a wail. “No more cream cheese?” He sticks an empty plastic tub in my face. I recoil at the residual smell.
“Hey, bud,” Mark says. “I’ll eat the bagel. How about Cheerios?”
I pick up the box, walk to the back door, and toss it outside.
“Whoa, that was a little unnecessary,” Mark says. “It goes in recycling.”
“How can you not get this? Someone sent that to me, Mark, to fuck with me.”
“Mommy!” Cole squeals. “You said the f-word.”
“Calm down, Allie.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down.”
“I thought you’d be happy.” Mark throws up his hands as if in surrender. “Heading to the shower.”
I bite into the bagel he left behind, feeling awful for having snapped. He was just trying to help. And he was right, I need to check with Susan. She probably opened the package and put the shirt in the wash, the box in recycling. Maybe the school is mailing them out to everyone in my year. Maybe they are part of some fundraising campaign.
There has to be an explanation.
But I know it won’t be a happy one.
Not with everything that’s been going on.
No happy explanation includes the use of the nickname Lexi.
* * *
Jeff Crosetti lives two blocks away from us. The walkway to his front door lies beneath languorous plants leaning in from either side. Bushwhacking as I go, I stop halfway up the path when I spot an older gentleman kneeling in the yard, half-hidden by a huge bush as orange as a flame.
“Hello,” I call out.
“Oh, I didn’t see you.” He stands up, cradling a clump of dirt-caked roots that give off an earthy scent. “Any use for Rudbeckia goldsturm in your yard, a.k.a. black-eyed Susans?”
“No, thank you.” I shake my head.
“Can’t interest you in Maryland’s state flower? Unfortunately, they like my yard a little too much.” When it becomes clear I’m not in the market for perennials, he drops the clump.
“I’m Allie Ross,” I say. “My friend Leah called last night and left a message. About taking down some posts?”
The old man purses his lips together in thought, wiping his dirty hands on his jeans. His skin is pink, as though he’s been scrubbed hard, and it sets off his bushy white eyebrows and crown of soft silver curls. “I’d shake, but you probably don’t love the feeling of compost under your nails as much as I do.”
“No problem. My hands are full anyway.” I hoist my travel coffee mug as evidence.
He brushes past me, removes a pair of clippers from his back pocket, and begins deadheading a plant. “So you’ve changed your mind about being on the Eastbrook Facebook page?” He examines the base of a plant. “Maybe I should leave these up for the birds.”
“No, that’s not it. Someone is impersonating me with a fake Facebook page. There are two Allie Rosses, the real me and the fake one.”
Crosetti’s white eyebrows bop up and down like two fuzzy caterpillars. “The real you and the fake one, eh? Sounds complicated.” His face lights up with a wide
smile and he points. “Look—goldfinches,” he whispers, and I turn to see two small yellow birds perched atop a half-dead clump of zinnias. I relax a little. At least this guy has not seen my Facebook page or the poll asking if I’ve still got it. But every face I passed this morning on the way to school with Cole had me wondering—had they seen the photo of me naked? Do they think I was sleeping with Rob Avery? And that I am involved in his murder?
“Mr. Crosetti, what I’m trying to tell you is someone made a fake Facebook page and joined the Eastbrook page under false pretenses.”
He frowns. I can tell he doesn’t get it.
“If you don’t want to post anymore, why not just stop posting?”
I open my mouth to answer, but just then my phone rings. It’s Artie Zucker, so I wave goodbye to Crosetti and answer as I begin the long walk to the metro, cursing yesterday’s decision to go with the police and leave my car at work.
I’m disappointed when I realize that the person on the line is not the lawyer himself but a paralegal who wants only my basic information. I make an appointment to meet Zucker tomorrow after work, when I know Mark will be available, too.
“In the meantime,” she says, “do not speak to the police. If they bring you in, call us and do not say anything until Mr. Zucker arrives.” She gives me his personal cell phone number before saying goodbye.
By the time I am descending the steep escalator at the Friendship Heights station, I feel a little better knowing that I have set the wheels in motion with the lawyer. Maybe today, Tinder and Facebook will respond. Maybe they’ll shutter those accounts. It won’t answer the question of who is doing this or why, but it will stanch the bleeding.
But I still cannot figure out how that damn T-shirt got to my house.
* * *
Instead of taking the trolley that runs down H Street, I walk from the Union Station metro to the studio, using the time to call the Realtor in Westport whose name Daisy texted to me.
Barb DeSoto tells me fall is a tough time to put a house on the market. “Winters are slow. It really would be better if we wait for the spring market,” Barb says.
“I don’t want to leave it unoccupied the whole winter. That’s income we need.” Neither one of us bothers to say that we can’t rent the house with a leaky roof and a wonky septic tank. I turn down the street where I parked the car yesterday. It’s still there, but as I grow nearer I see there’s a pink slip of paper under the windshield wiper. “Damn it.”
“I know it’s not ideal,” Barb says.
“No, sorry. I just got a parking ticket. As far as selling the house, I have no choice. We need to do it now.”
“Got it. I’ll start running through the paperwork, making sure everything’s in order, that there are no liens against the house, et cetera.”
“There shouldn’t be. My mother didn’t even have a mortgage.” I stop outside the coffee shop, in desperate need of a caffeine fix.
“Lucky you,” Barb says. “That will make things easier.”
I stuff the ticket in my pocket, feeling anything but lucky.
After I grab my coffee, I head upstairs to the studio. No one is in yet, and I take advantage of the privacy to call the Overton alumni office. Of all the insanity of the past few days, that T-shirt showing up bugs me the most, for reasons I can’t really put my finger on. The phone rings four times, and I am about to give up when an exhausted-sounding woman answers.
“Overton Academy, please hold.” The sound of Pachelbel’s Canon wafts through the receiver. I use the time to practice what I am going to say. By the time the woman returns, I am ready.
“Now, how can I help you?” she asks.
“This is Alexis Healy,” I say, using my maiden name, “and I received the most wonderful surprise in the mail yesterday, an Overton T-shirt. The thing is, I didn’t order it, and I wanted to see if I could find out who did, so I could thank them.”
“I’m afraid we wouldn’t be able to help you, dear. All school merchandise is purchased through our online shop and billed through a third party.”
“I just thought maybe there was some kind of reunion thing going on? Where everyone from my class got a T-shirt?” I don’t add that I never made it to my graduation. The school mailed me my diploma because I had left in mid-May.
“No, hon. None that I know of. But maybe you should check with your alumni relations coordinator for your area. Where do you live now?”
“In Bethesda, Maryland. That’s just outside D.C.”
“Our National Capital Alumni Group is very active. If you give me your email address, I can send you the coordinator’s contact information. They might be able to help you with your reunion idea.”
I don’t bother to correct her misinterpretation of the situation. I just provide my info. Once we are off, I check my email and find an automated response from Tinder:
Dear Allie,
Each Tinder profile is tied to a unique Facebook account. If someone is impersonating you, please contact Facebook’s help center to file a report.
Kind regards,
Tinder Tech Support
I have contacted Facebook, I type back, teeth clenched. It’s all I can do to stop from screaming. I have filed a report. I hit Send, although I know there is zero point in doing so.
When I log on to the Eastbrook Neighborhood Facebook page, the posts from last night are gone. To my surprise, Jeff Crosetti has gotten right on it.
Googling fake Facebook account brings up page after page of results. I learn there are eighteen million fake Facebook accounts. That’s small comfort. According to one website, about one in eight Americans who have social media accounts has experienced revenge porn, the posting of nude pictures of them without their permission. The more I read, the more nauseated I become. It seems like so many women have experienced this and found little or no recourse from either the companies or the police.
I scan the comments below the article.
Help! Someone is using my name and photos on a multitude of casual-sex sites. I really need help on how to stop this! Tinder won’t help!
This is happening to me right now! It’s so scary … I feel like there’s nothing really to do about it. Hopefully this psycho closes the account, but I am freaking out. Getting tons of emails about casual-sex hookups.
Tinder and Facebook are no help! I even went to the police. Help! This is ruining my life.
Dustin’s words spring to mind.
The police won’t help you, but I can.
My phone trills, and I see it’s Valerie Simmons’s assistant. I shut down the tab of ghastly horror stories and answer. After a few pleasantries, Valerie herself comes on. She talks for a few minutes about her expectations for the shoot in her familiar sonorous voice, which I associate with doctor’s waiting rooms and other places where CNN is always on.
“Listen, Allie, I’ll be frank with you. I’m looking to reach a younger audience, and I want someone whose work is fresh and new and exciting, but—and this is important—I need someone who also understands that D.C. is a conservative place.”
“I totally get it. I’m talking with a senator who is putting out a children’s book and has many of the same concerns.” A small white lie. I haven’t spoken to Senator Fielding yet, but I’m confident Sarah Ramirez will come through with that introduction.
“Really? That’s exactly what I am talking about, straddling those two worlds. And I don’t mind saying that I love the idea of using a woman. More sensitivity. More discretion.”
Before getting off the phone, we make an appointment for me to meet her at her Kalorama town house on Monday morning. Finally, something is going right. After typing the details into the studio’s scheduler, I open my edits, newly energized.
There are fewer great shots of Sarah than I had hoped for, and I’ll be lucky to cull twenty good ones that are different enough from each other to justify the cost. I feel bad—Sarah is so sweet, but these photographs don’t capture how pretty she is.
In most pictures, her wide smile appears strained. Her mouth is frozen in a semi-grimace, and there’s panic in her eyes. In one, although her face looks pretty, her smile genuine and warm, the way her body contorts on the chaise compresses the flesh on the side of her bra into bulges of dreaded “armpit fat.”
I am tweaking a shot of Sarah lying on her side when Krystle calls.
“That is insanely fucked up,” my sister says, popping my good mood instantaneously. “Fake Facebook pages? A poll? I mean, that is so twisted. What does Mark say?”
“He says not to pay attention to online bullies.” I drag my little Photoshop paintbrush over to Sarah’s arm and magically do what no diet can: spot reduce.
She scoffs. “Typical guy bullshit advice.”
I scowl at the image on the screen. Sarah now resembles an alien, with an enormous head and sticklike limbs reminiscent of the praying mantis tattoo on my ankle.
“Holy shit,” Krystle says. “That’s the photo? God, you were so young.”
“You’re looking at it now?” A flush warms my face. That photo represents so much to me, a low point in my judgment and self-esteem. I actually thought my photography teacher was in love with me. That we would end up together, living happily ever after.
“Yeah, all the settings on your page are public.”
“It’s not my page, remember?”
“Sorry, fake page.”
With a few clicks, I restore Sarah’s armpit fat. Her boyfriend loves her. I’m sure he doesn’t care about a little superfluous pocket of flesh, even if Sarah does.
“You know, Allie, you should contact Facebook.”
I snort. “Thanks, Krystle, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“By the way, I am voting that you still got it.”
I grit my teeth. “That’s not funny. This is serious.”
“Do you think maybe, if it’s not Paul, it might be, you know, Madeline?”
The name startles me. “Do you mean Madeline Ashford? Why in the world would she do this?”
“Because she’s a little bitch, that’s why.”
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