She hesitated, then retrieved the phone again. "LakeshoreTea. It's like an anonymous gossip thing. People send stuff in, and whoever runs it posts it. Screenshots. Photos. Polls. DMs betweenpeople. Edited photos. AI videos. Rumors about teachers. About students. It gets mean."
I held out my hand. "Show me."
Reluctantly, she set the phone in my palm.
The screen glowed. The account's profile picture was a cartoon teacup, bright pink, with a tiny cartoon school drawn inside the teacup instead of tea. Handle: LakeshoreTea.
I scrolled as rows of posts flicked past my thumb. Text, images, and videos, many focused on Mia: Mia's yearbook photo, but with glowing red eyes and corpse-like skin. AI-generated videos of her laughing at Leah's funeral, which hadn't even happened yet. Faked screenshots of texts reportedly from Mia confessing to the murder. Another AI-generated image of Mia pushing Leah off a cliff with Mia's hands photoshopped, covered in blood.
Then the comments:
She wanted to be the main character SO bad she literally unalived her bff.
Ultimate pick me behavior is killing your best friend for attention.
Bet she thought the guys would feel sorry for her.
No literally she's a psychopath.
Her eyes are dead inside if you look close.
FR she needs to be in jail like 4ever.
I cursed under my breath. Outrage burned beneath my skin. I wanted to throw the phone into the lake, to confront these girls who would so callously destroy my child with their poisonous words. An ugly part of me wanted to make them hurt as much as they'd hurt Mia. "Oh, honey. I’m so sorry."
"They’re trying to make me look guilty." Her voice dropped. "That's what they do. Everyone believes it, too. They know it's fake, but it looks real, so they start to actually believe it."
I took a deep breath, trying to process what I was seeing, the awful things Mia had endured in silence. It was hard to believe kids could be so hateful so young. But then, maybe it wasn't. The entire world was bristling with hatred. "When did this start?"
"Since Leah died. I guess I got what I deserved."
"No one deserves to be treated like this. Ever. Not for any reason."
She gave a resigned shrug.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
She looked away. "I didn't want to bother you. You were so happy about this move. I didn't want to ruin it."
Guilt stabbed between my ribs. I fought back tears. "I want you to be happy. You're my priority, always."
She still didn't look at me. "Okay."
I pulled her into a hug. "I'm so sorry they're doing this to you."
She let me hold her for a moment, her body tense, then pulled away. "They were worse to Leah. Before she died, most of the posts were about her. Other girls, too, though. Last year, I heard it was all about Taylor."
I scrolled back. Mia was right. The posts about Leah were sadistic in a different way. AI-generated images showed her yearbook photo with her head placed on a pig's body, captioned "When the pig filter is an upgrade."
The comments were worse:
She ate the whole buffet, and it shows.
Genuinely a jump scare when she walks into class.
POV: you have to sit next to Leah in class. Followed by a vomiting emoji.
Another showed her Korean features distorted, eyes exaggerated into slits, skin yellowed, along with a photo of her eating food, captioned: "watch the whale feed." Body-morphing edits made her appear grotesquely overweight. There were sexually explicit images with her face superimposed on naked bodies in crude, degrading positions. The comments underneath were relentless:
