Page 72 of This Time It's Real
“Okay. Bye.”
But there’s a terrible ring of finality in her voice.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The day before school begins again, my life unravels.
Well, it doesn’t so muchunravelas completely implode: starting with the notification that pops up on my phone first thing in the morning.
I kNew You were Lying.
I stare at it for a long time, my heart beating out of control. It’s unnerving as hell, and not just because of the arbitrary capitalization.
If I’m being accused of lying, there’s only thing I could be lying about . . .
A sick feeling digs into my gut. I sit up fast and unlock my phone, heading straight over to Twitter. And that’s when all the other comments come flooding in, so similar to the first. Just as hostile. Just as ominous.
@blondie22:Liar.
@abigailsmithh:Lmao I guess ppl will do ANYTHING for clout these days. Girl bye.
@user1127:Caz Song deserves better.
@MayIsADog:talk about pathetic??? and here i was thinking we actually had a cute wholesome couple to root for . . . guess not.
@chengxiaoshi:I KNEW IT. i TOLD Y’ALL this was a publicity stunt!! I fucking CALLED IT.
@wenkexing520:This is why we can’t have nice things.
And it’s . . . I mean, I’ve received hate messages before. It’s inevitable for anyone who’s ever gone at least a little viral. So-called fans telling me I’m too ugly for Caz, or that I’m holding him back in his career. Random trolls going on about how I’m untalented and overrated. Anonymous users claiming it’s anti-feminist of me to fall in love. Racist assholes making the usual stereotypical jokes in the comments.
They’ve always stung, of course, and hit a little too close to home for comfort, but the obvious strategy was simply to ignore them.
But this. This is different.
My whole body is trembling as I search my own name on Google, and there’s a moment when nothing has loaded yet that I can feel my heartbeat thudding furiously in my ears, and I think I might throw up. Or maybe start crying. Then the results appear, and I’m too busy reading about why a bunch of strangers on the internet hate me to even muster the energy for tears.
The source of the problem quickly becomes evident.
Around midnight yesterday, while I was sound asleep, someone posted a long article speculating that my relationship with Caz was only a publicity stunt cooked up by his manager. The article noted some “discrepancies” between my personal essay and Caz’s schedule. Like how, on the day we supposedly went out for hot pot, Caz was busy doing promotional activities for his campus drama and couldn’t have possibly met up with me then. Or how, in one paragraph, I mentioned the stray cat hair clinging to his sweater, despite the fact that he’s allergic to cats.It’s what everyone in the entertainment industry does these days.Has anyone even seen them really kiss, apart from that one peck-on-a-cheek selfie the girl posted?
Maybe it would’ve been fine if, by the same strange, unpredictable alchemy of the internet that made my essay go viral in the first place, the article hadn’t shot up to number one on trending searches.
And it all fell apart from there.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, throwing my phone onto my bed, where it lands with a light, unsatisfying flop. I turn around. Squeeze my eyes shut. “Oh mygod.”
The worst part of all this is that I should’ve anticipated it. Because it feels like a total end-of-the-world disaster, yes, but it also feels like an inevitability.
Zoe’s words from the other day float back to me:It just seems like the kind of thing destined to blow up in your face . . .
And suddenly, with an ache so acute it feels like a cavity, I find myself missing Zoe. How I’d walk into a crowded classroom knowing she had saved a seat for me. How she’d always wait for me by the lockers in the morning and after school, an anchor to my day. More than that, I miss the person I always became around her: someone braver and better and stronger, someone who wasn’t afraid to crack dumb jokes and embarrass themselves a little and go after what they wanted.
If she were here, she wouldn’t know how to fix this either. But she’d know exactly what to say to calm me down, to make me feel okay.
Behind me, my phone chimes again.
No doubt more hate comments. And I know I shouldn’t read them, that there’s no point torturing myself any further, but it’s like telling yourself not to scratch an itch, or press an old bruise: As masochistic as it is, you can’t help doing it anyway.
