“What’s going on?” I say. “Mark? Do you know?”
“Nothing’s going on, Sal. Kids, nothing’s going on, right?”
“Right.” Ree reaches over and pats my hand. “Everything’s fine, Mum. I mean, have I responded in a critical manner to some of Tess’s posts, and have many of my friends done the same? Yes, but—”
“Oh my God,” I wail.
“Butno one knows where we are. Me and Tobes haven’t given even the slightest hint—and our phones can’t be traced to us. So it’s fine.”
“‘Tobes and I,’” corrects Mark.
“It is not fine, Rhiannon,” I say. “You’re provoking an unstable girl who’s already out for blood. What’s she going to do to us next?”
“Mum, you’re not thinking straight,” Ree says patiently. “Tesshas been about as popular as a wet shite ever since she decided to try and bully me, but now? Everyone knows Champ didn’t bite her and that she’s lying—”
“How does everyone know that?” I talk over her.
“Because I’ve told them. And they’re not having it, which is great! Tess is starting to get a taste of just howhatedshe’s going to be if she sticks to her lying guns. And…I’m sorry, but it’s a beautiful thing. Wanna see some of it?” Ree waves her phone in the air.
I shake my head. “I have to pretend it isn’t happening. I can’t go there. Both of you, I’m begging you…please don’t engage.” I hate the internet. I wish it had never been invented.
“But, Mum, people are defending Champ,” says Tobes. “It’d cheer you up.”
“No!” I don’t care how many of my children’s friends are telling Tess Gavey what a bitch she is. The more Champ’s name is mentioned, the more danger he’s in.
“Kids, leave Mum be, will you?” says Mark. “I think she’s had about as much as she can take for one day.”
“Nothing bad has actually happened to any of us.” Toby sounds bemused.
“He’s got a point, Dad,” says Ree. “I do feel like we’re all kind of…trapped in an irrational, menopausal panic attack, maybe?”
“I’mfine,” I say. Am I making too much of this? I’m bound to be overreacting. A few teenagers bitching on the internet is neither here nor there. “Let’s just watch the movie, shall we? I want to know whether any of them survive the flight to Vegas.” In reality, I couldn’t give a toss. All I want is to be no longer the focus of my family’s attention. I need to adjust to this new world I’m in, the one inwhich Champ’s guilt or innocence is being fought about online as if he’s O. J. Simpson or something, and I can’t do that while people are watching me.
We’ll laugh about this one day.That’s what Mark often says to snap me out of a fuss I’m making about nothing. Will I laugh, at some point in the future, at how horrified I was to discover Tess Gavey had typed the words“a neighbor’s Welsh terrier”into her Snapchat box or whatever you call it in the hope of persuading God knows how many people to hate and blame and fear Champ?Only if I’m standing over her decomposing dead body at the time—that’s my honest answer. No one who sees my smiley face as it trots around the village knows I’m capable of thinking anything as violent as that, and I want to keep it that way. I certainly don’t want my family to know.
“Anyway, you can’t have it both ways, Tobes,” says Mark.
“Huh?”
“She must remind you of Vinie, or you wouldn’t have guessed it was Vinie she reminded Mum of.”
“Oh, have mercy.” Ree rolls her eyes. “Like, peace and love and I’m not being funny, but can this conversation end now, before it starts? I’m imagining how bored I’m going to be in about five minutes’ time—”
“Idon’t see any resemblance,” Tobes says through a mouthful of crisps, without taking his eyes off the screen. “Mum might do but I don’t.”
“Then how come you thought of Vinie as soon as Mum challenged you to—”
“I don’t know, Dad. I could easily have said someone else.”
“But you didn’t,” says Mark. “Which proves you must see some similarity between her and Vinie. I don’t, personally, so I wouldn’t have been able to guess.”
“I just thought, ‘What might someone who was wrong think?’” says Tobes.
“Why did you land on Vinie specifically, though?”
“Mark, stop,” I say.
“Why? I want to get to the bottom of this.”
