Follow Me

by Kathleen Barber

  I should have known better.

  When I stepped through the doors of the bustling French bistro, I glanced instinctively toward the bar but didn’t see Audrey’s vibrant hair. My stomach sank; I was too late. I scanned the rest of the room quickly, and there she was: seated in a corner booth with two glamorous women with impossibly perfect makeup, and a man in round tortoiseshell glasses who had his arm thrown around her. They were talking animatedly, each of them clutching a cocktail glass. One of the women lifted her drink in a toast, and, over the din of the restaurant, I heard her say in a British accent, “To Audrey!”

  “Hi! How many are in your party?” the hostess asked me.

  I stared at the hostess dumbly. I didn’t know whether I should join Audrey’s group or whether I should turn around and walk out. Audrey obviously didn’t need me. I was a fool to think she ever did.

  “Miss?” the hostess pressed.

  “I’m just—” I began, backing away.

  “Cat!” Audrey shouted suddenly, half standing and waving me over.

  I felt impossibly unhip as I walked over to their table, suddenly very aware of the coffee stain on my faded Brooks Brothers shirt and the fact that my eyes were red and bleary from reviewing documents all day. I reached up to pat my hair into place and found a pen stuck behind my ear. Blushing furiously, I shoved it into my bag.

  “Hi,” I said, forcing brightness as I approached the table. “Sorry, I got stuck at work, and—”

  “Here,” Audrey said, grabbing a martini glass filled with pink liquid from the table and pushing it into my hand. “Catch up.”

  “Thanks,” I said uncertainly, checking the rim for lipstick marks.

  “Everyone, this is my friend Cat,” Audrey announced to the table. “Cat and I have been friends for, like, a million years. Cat, this is Lawrence, who works with me at the museum. And here’s Keisha and Georgia, who are travel bloggers visiting from London. We connected over Instagram this afternoon.”

  “I love London,” I said politely.

  One of them took that as her cue to begin telling me about the best places to shop in London. I nodded along, hoping she couldn’t tell I barely recognized any of the brand names she was dropping, and was glad when the conversation moved on to the bloggers’ American itinerary. When the conversation then shifted to posting schedules and Google analytics, I felt my mind drifting to the pile of work in my shoulder bag. I was plotting my exit when Lawrence leaned toward me, eyes twinkling behind his glasses, and asked, “Has Audrey told you about the president of her fan club?”

  I shot Audrey a glance. “You have a fan club?”

  “It’s a joke,” she said with a forced-sounding laugh.

  “There’s this gallery closed for installation, right?” Lawrence said. “And on Audrey’s first day, she found this rando in there. She kicked him out and gained a major fan in the process. Dude’s been back every single day since. He just lurks around the halls, hoping for a glimpse of her. The rest of us have made spotting him into a game.”

  I raised my eyebrows in alarm. “Has anyone alerted security?”

  “It’s okay, Cat,” Audrey said. “He’s not dangerous. Just a little weird.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  The table fell silent. Lawrence exchanged a look with one of the bloggers, a look that clearly implied I was no fun. Fine. Maybe I was no fun, but I also wasn’t going to stand by while my best friend fell victim to some stalker just because everyone thought it was a game. Women were murdered by seemingly harmless “admirers” all the time because they were conditioned to not make a fuss.

  “Promise me you’ll talk to security,” I insisted, ignoring Lawrence’s rolling eyes.

  Audrey patted my hand gently and effectively changed the subject by asking the bloggers when they planned to travel to New York. Twenty minutes later, Lawrence called it a night, giving Audrey a lingering kiss on the cheek, and Keisha and Georgia took off just after him. I was reaching for my bag, assuming Audrey would be ready to leave, too, but she flagged down the waiter and ordered us another round.

  “Thanks for coming, Cat.”

  I released my bag. “Well, it’s not every day your friend gets national recognition. Congratulations.”

  “It’s more than that, though,” she said, swirling the dregs of her drink. “I really couldn’t stand the thought of being in that apartment alone another night, and I don’t want to have Nick over again. It’ll just inflate his ego, and you know it’s big enough as it is.”

  “Wait a second. You’ve had Nick over? Nick Nick?”

  Audrey tossed her hair and flashed me a devilish smirk. “That’s the one. He lives here, you know.”

  “So do half a million other people,” I said with a frown. I had never understood Audrey’s attraction to Nick. He was good-looking, sure, but he had never been any more interesting or engaging than any other beer-bonging, pot-smoking frat boy. Audrey could have done so much better.

  “Relax, Cat,” Audrey said as the waiter placed fresh drinks in front of us. She seized hers and lifted it. “Anyway, let’s not talk about Nick and my lack of love life. Let’s talk about yours instead.”

  “There’s not much to say about my lack of love life.”

  “Oh no?” she asked with a smirk. “What about Connor?”

  My cheeks burned. “I’ve already told you. Connor’s just a friend.”

  She laughed triumphantly. “Cat, you have the worst poker face! Every time you talk about him your eyes go heart-shaped. So what’s the story?”

  The story was that I had been helplessly enamored of Connor since first semester of law school. I’d just concluded an argument in torts class when this tall, handsome man in the back of the room raised his hand and began, “But to play devil’s advocate …” I met his warm hazel eyes across the room, and all reason left me. I stopped listening to his counterargument and started planning out the next few decades of our lives.

  But as long as I had been nurturing that crush, I’d never admitted it aloud, and so I automatically said, “There’s no story.”

  “Like hell there isn’t. Come on, Cat. If you can’t tell me, who can you tell?”

  I looked into Audrey’s open face and realized she was right. She was my best friend. Finally, I had someone I could confide in again.

  “We kissed once,” I admitted, a flush warming my chest as I remembered the soft pads of his fingers caressing my jawline, the wet warmth of his mouth.

  “Just once? What happened after that?”

  “We sobered up. It was at a party celebrating our law school graduation. We’d both had too much to drink and … it just happened. But then we were consumed with bar studying, and then Connor moved to Idaho for a clerkship.”

  “Okay, but now you’re both here. Working in the same office, even. And you’re obviously still into him.”

  “We’re just friends, Audrey.”

  “Yeah, currently,” she said with a giggle. “But did I tell you what he said about you?”

  “What?” I asked, heartbeat suddenly pounding in my ears. “No. When did you talk to Connor?”

  “I ran into him the other day on the street. We got to talking, and he said he thinks you’re great.”

  I sagged, pulse still racing. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It was the way he said it,” she said confidently. “Trust me. So what are you going to do about it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Cat! He clearly wants you. And you clearly want him.” She laughed and shook her head. “Hon, you are so lucky that we’re best friends.”

  Audrey began laying out a plan to help me “land” Connor, a plan that seemed hinged upon heavy spending at Nordstrom, Sephora, and the salon, but I was fixated on her word choice: best friends. I’d always considered Audrey my best friend, but she always reserved the honorific for her childhood friend Izzy. Hearing her say we were “best friends” warmed every corner of my heart.

  “Trust me,
Cat,” she said. “You’re going to be like a different person when I’m through with you.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  AUDREY

  Smudging a new home with a clump of burning sage was painfully trendy and more than a little woo-woo, but still I found myself circling the basket of smudge sticks at Urban Outfitters. I had spent an hour wandering around inside the Georgetown CB2, testing out different couches and lusting after light fixtures, but had walked away without purchasing anything. My lack of furniture was getting ridiculous, I knew, but I still couldn’t commit to a couch. It was an anchoring piece, something that set the tone for the entire room—and since I planned to escape my basement apartment as soon as possible, it would need to be something that wouldn’t look out of place in a larger apartment. Overcome with indecision, I put a pin in the furniture buying and popped into Urban, ostensibly to look at some patterned pillows I saw featured on another woman’s Instagram. I wouldn’t buy the same pillows, obviously—I was no follower—but I thought there might be something else I would like.

  I was underwhelmed by the pillow selection but intrigued by the smudge sticks, imagining how dramatic the smoke would look on camera; it would make for a great series of photographs. The smudging itself would make good blog content, too—people were really into Wicca and other mystic shit. I got at least a dozen comments each week inquiring whether I had tried crystals or had my chakras aligned.

  Why not? I thought, picking up a smudge stick and carrying it to the register.

  I’d thus far avoided filming much inside the apartment. I didn’t want my followers to see how little progress I’d made on unpacking—especially after I’d done that Live where I talked about getting started on the boxes. I couldn’t bring myself to unpack, though, because I knew I could find someplace better as soon as I marshaled the resolve to spend a day sifting through ads on Craigslist and Zillow. Besides, style was the bedrock upon which I’d constructed my whole image, and I knew my followers expected me to live somewhere more chic than this bare basement apartment. With that in mind, I returned to CB2 and purchased a matte-black table lamp and a polished silver side table I had been eyeing.

  At home, I wiped down the walls and baseboards in the sunniest corner of my subterranean living room, arranged my new purchases, and topped the table with a bright bouquet of flowers from Whole Foods. The tableau made the apartment look charming and inviting … so long as you narrowed your field of vision to that one portion of the apartment. The rest remained crowded with boxes, but I would address that later. My more immediate concern was generating new content for my followers, an inclination that gave me pause. I’d watched so many of my online friends become fixated on polishing their lives to attract lucrative sponsorships only to lose their authenticity—and their followers. I was careful to remain myself online—an amplified version of myself, sure, but myself—and I was rewarded by a devoted fan base. I knew I could make bank if I started aggressively monetizing my online presence, but there was no way I was selling my soul to corporate sponsors. I wanted to remain true to myself, and, more important, I wanted to have a shred of dignity left when the influencer bubble inevitably burst.

  I cast an appraising eye over my handiwork. Something was still missing. I thought for a moment and then dug through a box until I’d found my grandmother’s ashtray. Granny Wanda had smoked like a chimney—as a girl I’d been convinced she was part dragon—and her beautiful cornflower-blue ashtray with its inside crisscrossed with delicate gold lines was always within arm’s reach. It was the only thing I had wanted after she had passed on, and I had kept it by my bed as a catchall ever since.

  I reverently placed the ashtray on the table in front of the flowers and then balanced the smudge stick on the ashtray. I snapped a few pictures with my DSLR, then ignited the stick and took a few more. I reviewed the images on the camera and smiled. I had been right; there was something alluring and beautiful about the smoke curling up from the shot. The brilliant blue of the ashtray provided a necessary pop of color in an otherwise monochrome setting. It was an arresting image.

  I put down my camera in favor of my iPhone and shot some video of myself wafting the smudge stick through the air—carefully keeping the angle tight so as not to reveal the mound of boxes. I checked the results. All good. I fluffed my hair and went live.

  “Hey, everyone! Guess what I’m doing!” I held up the smoldering sage and wafted it back and forth in front of my face. The smoke made my eyes water, and I blinked as I set it back down in the ashtray. “I’m smudging my new apartment. Have any of you ever smudged your homes? I’d love to hear about it!”

  I grinned as comments started rolling across the screen.

  Love smudging!

  Great lamp!

  hi audrey!

  “Shoot me a message and let me know if you have any great smudging tips!” I continued. “I’m a newbie.”

  I like the table. Much better choice than that marble one.

  I caught my breath. In the years I’d been sharing my life on the internet, I had received hundreds, if not thousands, of creepy, weird, and downright disgusting comments. I was largely immune to them, including the truly upsetting ones (even “your eyeballs would look perfect on my nightstand” had only bothered me for thirty minutes), but this one sent a real chill down my spine. I had been admiring a marble end table at CB2. Had someone been watching me?

  I suddenly realized I hadn’t said anything for several seconds and forced myself back into action. Smiling hard to conceal my uneasiness, I said, “All right, guys, I’ve got to go and drive the negative energy out of this place! But send me your smudging stories! Talk soon.”

  Hands shaking, I disconnected the livestream and watched the Stories I’d made about my shopping trip. There I was, meandering around the store without a care in the world—completely oblivious to someone who might have been following me—and giving a running commentary on pieces I liked. I relaxed when I saw myself trail fingertips along the smooth marble surface of a low-slung coffee table. So that was it. The commenter had seen it in my Stories.

  But I didn’t say anything about that table, I thought uneasily. How would they have known I was seriously considering it unless they’d been there to overhear my conversation with the salesman?

  I brushed the concerns aside, certain I was being paranoid. Just because I hadn’t specifically mentioned a table didn’t mean a commenter couldn’t have an opinion on it. Or, who knows, maybe that commenter really had seen me in the store—that didn’t mean they were watching me. I had followers all over the world; I was sure I had several thousand here in DC. Maybe one of them happened to be there at that moment.

  Maybe.

  I went to extinguish the smoldering sage but hesitated. I didn’t believe for a second that the bundle of herbs had mystical cleansing properties, but waving it around couldn’t hurt. Just in case. I carried it around the apartment, self-consciously exorcising any lurking bad vibes.

  * * *

  TWO HOURS LATER, I arrived home from a Reformer Pilates class feeling strong and energized. I loved working out on Reformer machines, but at around forty dollars per class, they weren’t part of my normal routine. After the weird comment about the table, I’d decided to treat myself and then bonded with the studio owner over the fact that we’d both lived in New York before moving to DC. I walked out with a verbal agreement for fifteen sessions in exchange for an Insta post featuring her studio and the possibility of additional classes for more publicity. Like the professional I was, I promised to send her a contract later that night.

  I was mentally modifying my standard contract as I unlocked my front door, and so I didn’t notice it at first. It wasn’t until I reached my bedroom that I smelled it.

  The sage.

  It was burning.

  I looked wildly around the room and spotted the smudge stick balancing precariously on a wineglass set atop the cardboard box beside my bed, smoke curling from the dwindling bundle. My heart leaped a
s I snatched it and rushed to the kitchen sink. I dropped the smoldering herbs inside and turned on the faucet, extinguishing it.

  Still shaking, I returned to the bedroom and stared at the small pile of ash beside the wineglass. On the cardboard Jesus Christ. I could have caused a fire. I could have burned down the entire fucking building. Why would I even leave the sage there in the first place?

  I hadn’t, had I?

  I tried to retrace my steps. After I turned off the livestream, I had carried the sage around the apartment, swirling the smoke in corners and generally acting like a loon. I had finished the bogus ritual in the bedroom; I remembered that. I also remembered setting the sage on the wineglass—momentarily—while I fielded a quick FaceTime from my mom, who’d wanted help deciding which shoes to wear to her book club.

  But then I had picked it up.

  Hadn’t I?

  I was sure I had. I was sure I had picked it up and carried it back into the living room, stubbing it out in Granny Wanda’s ashtray.

  At least I thought I had.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CAT

  I’ve often thought of myself as something of a Frankenstein’s monster. My individual pieces might be fine on their own—my thick hair, my long legs—but the overall effect is off-putting. I should be pretty, but I’m not.

  I used to assign blame to specific characteristics: my teeth weren’t straight enough; my skin was bad. My parents took me to an orthodontist and a dermatologist, as well as an aesthetician to address what my mother called my “masculine brows” (a feature I hadn’t thought to worry over until that moment), and I still wasn’t satisfied. When I hit a growth spurt the summer before ninth grade and rocketed up six inches in the span of three months, baby fat distributing in the process, I was relieved. My face might still have its flaws, but my newly conventionally attractive body would surely be my ticket to popularity. Boys would ask me out; girls would no longer torment me for sport.