Page 31 of Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man)

First things first: She needs to resolve the whole Xan thing. But how? She can’t just keep hiding and posting content as though nothing has happened. That’s not going to work. She needs to acknowledge his death. What would she say about it? Aimes goes to the living room and sits at her coffee desk / dining table / writing desk. She finds a notebook—one of many that she’s been sent—a pretty one with a swirl of flowers on the cover and the wordsShe Will Move Mountainsin a beautiful cursive font. Aimes can barelymove the lint out of her apartment, but whatever. She opens it and starts writing.

Get on top of shit.

Xander—Make post about his death. How much detail to go into? Maybe the last time I saw him?

Aimes winces. The memory of the last time she saw Xan stabs into her like a jagged piece of glass. She wishes she could excise it from her mind, slice it out like a rotting appendix. She’ll have to make something up for her followers.

Maybe start up a fund for his family?

How much do I post about his family? Find out more about them?

With a sigh, Aimes crosses out numbers 2 and 3. If she starts up a fund for his family, people are bound to get curious about them. No, she needs to keep this contained, put all things Xan in a neat box so that she can shut it when the time comes and put it away where no one would ever think about him.

The small, hateful voice at the back of her mind says,You could spin it into a huge story.Aimes wants to hit herself at the very thought of it. She could not, would not, stoop so low as to profit from Xan’s death. She’s lost enough of herself online; she would not lose her soul as well. No, she wouldn’t post about his death to gain sympathy and followers. She would only post enough to make it seem believable, then she would move on. Forget about this whole mess. She’s not a ghoul.

Aimes catches sight of her framed diploma hanging on the wall and turns away sharply. She cannot stand the sight of the thing. A bachelor of arts in English Lit from Berkeley, like that was ever going to do anything in the real world. All it did was make her unemployable. They should tell you things like that in high school. That, actually, you can’t be anything you want to be, and that studying something like English Lit would only prepare you for disappointment in life.

Because for as long as Aimes can remember, she’s always preferred spending time with books rather than spending it in what her parents would call “real life.” As a kid, and then later as a teen, she never went anywhere without a book in her hand. During family meals, while her cousins chattered and giggled with one another, Aimes sat quietly with her book, looking up once in a while to spear a roasted potato or give a polite smile to someone. Her parents were somewhat bemused by this, but they were mostly proud of it.

“My little bookworm,” her dad would say, and her mom would roll her eyes with obvious affection. They were, in general, proud that unlike other kids, Aimes had her nose buried in a book rather than the phone screen. They failed to see that she was becoming someone ill-suited for the real world. That with her compositions, Aimes was spinning stories for herself to inhabit. And now she was still spending most of her time spinning fictitious stories, except she had, as it turned out, moved on from books to phones. What a disappointment she’d turned out to be. They’d expected her to be a writer; hell, Aimes herself thought she would become a writer too, but she’s queried enough agents to know that she doesn’t have what it takes to stand out, not in publishing, anyway. But coming up with catchy Instagram captions is a form of writing, isn’t it? And so what if it turns out that Aimes’s imagination is better suited to coming up with socialmedia content instead of books? That’s nothing to be ashamed of. She’s good at it. Good at spinning stories for people to consume.

Except now maybe the stories have gone too far. Now that Xan is dead, Aimes has no idea what to do with their story. She can’t tell the truth, that much she knows. She has to stick to fiction. She’s always been so good at fiction. While her Berkeley friends went on to do impressive internships after college, Aimes had spun more and more stories to try to keep up with seeming like she was keeping up with them. And the whole time, she retreated deeper into her isolation. Because if any of them actually spent enough time with her, they’d know. They’d find out what a pathetic life she was really leading.

I can’t go out Friday, I’m slammed with work. Yeah, my job at theSan Francisco Chronicleis ridiculous, but I hope I can see you guys soon!

Oh, I got offered a better position at this literary agency, so I left theChronicle.I know, what an amazing opportunity, right? So anyway, I can’t come to your housewarming. I’m so sorry, but I’m sending over a nice bottle of wine, okay?

I can’t join you guys for girls’ night, I have a really bad cold. I wouldn’t want to pass it to anyone. I’m making a gift basket for you girls though. I hope you have so much fun!

Aimes shakes her head. Snap out of it. She needs to focus. She needs to come up with a really good story now; otherwise, she risks losing everything she’s worked so hard for. No one can know the truth about her and Xan. She doesn’t want to profit off his death either. The best thing she can do is to shut this whole thing down.

After applying minimal makeup, Aimes sets up her phone on its ring light stand in front of her couch. She sits down, takes a deep breath, and hits Record.

“Hi, everyone. It’s me, Aimes. I just—”

No. It’s all wrong. She sounds so stilted. Everyone would know she’s a fake. She shakes her head once more, rakes her fingers through her hair, and takes another deep breath.

“Hi, everyone. By now, many of you have heard the devastating news about Xan. I—”

No. Too melodramatic. She doesn’t want to invite more attention. She needs to keep it as short as possible. But at the same time, she has to convey sadness—and she is sad, but she can’t be over the top with it. God, how the hell did she land herself in this mess?

“Hi, everyone. By now, many of you have heard about Xan. I just wanted to say that I see all of your messages and I’m grateful for all of your support, but I will be taking a hiatus from social media while I grieve Xan. Thanks.”

There. Succinct. Suitably sad, if there is such a thing. Definitely doesn’t invite more questions. Aimes watches it over, scrutinizing every minute expression her face makes. Does she look sincere? Sad enough? Too sad?

The thing about living your life on camera is it makes you question every single observable thing about you, to the point where Aimes no longer knows what she is truly feeling at any given time. Like now, for example. She is torn up over Xan. But she feels the grief as though it is hidden underneath a thick pane of glass, as though she were watching someone else, someone who looks exactly like her, go through it, and she can only sense the faint stirrings of the grief through this other person who looks like her. Did that thought even make any sense? Or like when she plans Instagrammable activities, like the time she made soba from scratch by following a YouTube tutorial. She thinks she had fun, but when she looks back on it, she can’t remember the actual sensation of fun. She remembers laughing and smiling, but she alsoremembers thinking,I am laughing, this is good, the camera likes it when I laugh.She remembers slurping up the noodles when they were done, but she doesn’t remember what they tasted like. She only remembers going, “Mmm, delicious!” so they must have been delicious. Her entire life feels like this, a murky mess of memories she can only remember through the eye of her phone camera. Is that sad, or is that just the new normal for everybody?

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