Me being here is about more.
“You know what helped me most?” Samantha says.
I shake my head.
“Taking my power back. I got back on the internet, in my lumberjack costume, and I flipped off the whole world.”
Olivia grins. “More trolls came out of the woodwork, but we had a bottle of wine with Mabel and Ginny and did dramatic reenactments of the worst of the comments.”
“Facing it and realizing it only had as much power as I was willing to give it was incredibly healing.”
“So…I should video my own vagina?” I say dryly as I load the dishwasher.
“If it helps,” Olivia says.
“And then you can use it yourself on GrippaBeav.com instead of that asshole who?—”
Samantha cuts herself off, and I glance at them in time to see Olivia giving her azip itgesture.
“What asshole?” I ask.
“Honey, everyone’s an asshole on the internet,” Olivia says.
Heat streaks through my body, and while the alcohol didn’t make me want to toss my cookies, this conversation might make me toss my croissant. “Is someone using my video on GrippaBeav?”
“Don’t you worry about a thing,” Samantha says. “Mabel’s on it, and she’s getting it taken down for copyright infringement.”
The look on Olivia’s face—Mabel’s not having success.
I’ve been here for a month.
Avoiding the internet for a month.
Have they been making money off of my video for a full month?
“I have to report it,” I say. “It’s my video. I’m the owner. The report has to come from me. Not that I’d mind if Mabel pretended to be me, but I did a lifestyle segment once on a guy whose video was used without permission by a major corporation. I learned a lot about how this works.I have to report it.”
“We don’t have to talk about this,” Samantha says.
I straighten, something new flooding my veins.
Something I haven’t felt yet while I’ve been hiding.
Anger.
No, not anger.
Fury. Rage. Wrath.
And I suddenly need to knowexactlywhat they’re talking about. “Tell me.”
They share a look.
“What?” I’m gripping a scraper in one hand and a mixer paddle in the other. Both need to go in the dishwasher, but I can’t let them go. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Someone fed your video into AI to modify it, so it’s not materially identical to the original video, which calls into question if it’s copyright infringement or if it qualifies as satire.”
My eyelid twitches. She sounds like my sister Belle. “Were you a lawyer?”
