“Of me? Just me?” He nods. “Let me see.” She holds out her hand for Tucker’s phone. “Did you pull them up? Pull them up.”
“I don’t know if you really need to—”
“Let. Me. See.” She doesn’t recognize the sound she makes as one that could have come from her; it’s a low warning growl like a grizzly bear might make when a hiker has gotten too close. “Give. Me. The. Phone.”
Tucker gives her the phone. Sam looks at the photos only once, for fewer than ten seconds, and then she has to look away. No. No. But—maybe? When next she speaks, her voice is shaking. “Tucker? Did you take photos of me? Did someone get hold of your phone, or—” She gasps, horrified at the thought she’s just had. “Did you put these out there?” The photos are slightly blurry, like maybe they’re screenshots from a video. “Did you video us?”
He shakes his head, takes the phone back from her. “Of course not.I wouldn’t do that without your knowledge. You know that, right?” She shakes her head slowly. “Sam? You know that. Why would I do this, and then bring it to your attention?”
“But there’s no other explanation. I’m not naked in front of anyone else. I don’t even sleep naked.” She sleeps in a tank and Aerie short shorts in brushed cotton. She has them in four different colors.
“Sam. You know me. I wouldn’t do that. Are you sure there are no older photos of you out there?”
“What the hell, Tucker?” Did he really just ask her that? “Yes, I’m sure. I’m positive.”
“Okay,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“Can I see again?”
Tucker brings the photos back up and together they peer at the phone, and after she gives them a much longer look, she says, “That’s not me.”
“You sure?” says Tucker. “It looks like you.”
“I think I know what my own breasts look like! And if this is me, where’s the turtle tattoo on my ankle?” She lifts up the hem of her leggings and points at the turtle, then enlarges the right ankle in one of the photos. Nothing.
“Right,” agrees Tucker slowly. “The turtle.” He narrows his eyes. “But if this isn’t you, it’s somebody pretending to be you who looks a lot like you.”
They look at each other and say the same name at the same time, in a shared breath. “Alice.”
TikTok explodes with the news of Sam’s nude photos. “The Queen of TikTok Without Her Crown.” “Tarnished Golden Girl.” (Gold can’t tarnish, thinks Sam, so it doesn’t make any sense, but whoever said the Internet makes sense?) People say all kinds of things. Flattering things about her body (Alice’s body), unflattering things about Sam herself. She’s a slut; she’s a whore; she’s a goddess; a feminist; a victim; a perpetrator. Terrible, good, terrible, good: the pendulum swings back and forth, for three full days: the longest three days of Sam’s life.
“But it’s not even me!” Sam protests to anyone who will listen. Shewants to make a statement, but Tink says no, a statement will only make things worse. Tink cautions her against throwing another house member under the bus.“But Alice threwmeunder the bus!” says Sam.
Nobody seems to be listening. Nobody seems to care. It doesn’t matter what the truth is; it matters only what the Internet says.
Sam confronts Alice. Alice denies. What would Alice have to gain from faking nude photos of Sam? Alice asks. Alice has nothing against Sam! She smiles sweetly and asks Sam if she can get her something. A cup of lavender tea, maybe? To calm her down? Many people find lavender tea very soothing.
“You’re trying to drive me out,” suggests Sam. “So you can go after Tucker.”
“Go after Tucker?” Alice rolls her eyes. “I’m with Nathan. You know that.”
What is Sam supposed to do, ask Alice to remove her clothes so Sam can inspect her breasts and compare them with the photos?
“Please,” she whispers to Alice.
“Please what?”
“Please undo what you did.”
Alice folds her arms and says, “I didn’t do anything.”
Sam makes a video telling her fans and followers exactly what happened. She shows her ankle, with the turtle tattoo. She gets a lot of comments of support. Thousands. More. She also gets a lot of terrible comments. She only reads a few of them, but they sear themselves into her brain. Someone in the supportive comments calls Alice “Evil Alice” and the name sticks among Sam’s followers and fans.
It doesn’t much matter what the comments from the not-fans say: comments about her (not-her) body, about her morals, about her judgment or her skin-care routine or her diet. Sam can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Everywhere she goes now she imagines people not seeing her fully clothed, authentic self, but imagining her naked. Plus, for every three or four Sam fans there’s a fan for Evil Alice. That’s the way the world works.
Evil Alice’s fans turn on Sam with a vengeance. She is trying to “force Alice out.” She is “too embarrassed to admit the truth so settled on blaming Alice.” She is “a vengefull bitch”[sic];people in the comments often don’t know how to spell. Sam’s mother, besides being horrified by the comments for obvious reasons, if she’d seen them, would have been horrified by the spelling too.
Tweet upon tweet, post upon post upon post, comment upon comment upon comment. People in Sam’s camp; people in Evil Alice’s camp. People in neither camp who just want to hear themselves talk, who want to “be part of the conversation.” Not that it’s a conversation. It’s more like a shouting match. Everyone’s yelling, but nobody can hear anyone else.
