“Get away from me or I’ll knee you in the balls.”
“I’ve been hard for you for so long, it feels like you’ve done that already.”
At those words, I stop struggling. I can’t overpower him physically, so it’s useless to keep spending energy on trying.
“Leave me alone,” I whisper, and miracle of miracles he releases me.
My phone buzzes again. And again. Not Wilbur’s pattern. They’re pings from different apps. As Caylon falls back a step, I check them.
“Such a racist.”
“I heard her dad’s a white supremacist.”
“Book her for makeup and she’ll probably give you blackface.”
My hands shake as the flood of insults keeps coming. What are they talking about?
Among the messages are two that affect me more than the others. Two cancellations. The appointments I took a week to generate, gone.
A doctored meme hits my inbox. Me dressed in white robes.
I try to find the originating post, whatever sparked all this, but it’s wiped. Links return a 404 error, but it shows me the originating account.
Lily Tanner.
“Em? You okay?”
No. Quite far from it, actually. Just because Lily deserves a free kick back at me, doesn’t make the effect any less devastating.
My business is ruined before it got off the ground.
Another message comes in. A daily summary from the forum I submitted my request to. I click it open, expecting to see the jocular advice and phony quotes similar to what it’s engendered already.
But this message is different.
This message just reads, “Em? Is that you?”
It must be Wilbur. There’s no one else who’d be able to pull together the disparate threads to create an accurate picture. I didn’t give away enough for anyone else to do the same.
How does he keep finding these things? Each time I think I’ve been smart it turns out I’ve been stupider than stupid. I should dye my hair blonde to match my brain.
Not that I have any hair left.
The phone buzzes with a check-in and my fumbling fingers drop it. Instead of reaching to pick it up, I stamp my heel onto it, shattering the screen until it drips viscous liquid.
My breathing is fast and choppy, close to hyperventilating as I pound my foot onto the phone, the device that’s meant to bring me pleasure, to entertain me, but somehow became the thing that controls me, monitors me, won’t leave me alone with my own thoughts for a single second.
A wailing sound rips out of me as I kick the phone, pick it up and hurl it at the ground again, stomp so hard that my heel wedges in its guts so I have to kick it free.
Stamping again and again until I know for sure it’s dead.
“Em?” Caylon puts his hand on my arm and before I can shake it off, before I can tell him no for the umpteenth time, I glance across at the street.
The taupe sedan. Squatting across the road like always. The driver staring straight across at the school. Straight across at me. Straight across at Caylon with his hand touching me the way I’m not meant to let any boy touch me.
I throw his arm off, but the panic already has its claws sunk in deep.
The last of my self-control shreds.
