“Meow.”
Mabel doesn’t blink. “Did you tell him either can happen?”
“Meoooowwww.”
“And?”
“And he said I was stupid and didn’t know anything.”
“That’s what people who choose to stay ignorant will always say when presented with facts they don’t like.”
“That’s what I told the principal too.Ginny! Ginny, can you play with me? The naked lady punched Daddy and he needs to say words he doesn’t say in front of me.”
We’ve reached an eat-in kitchen with a tall ceiling, black-and-white mosaic tile floor, antique cabinets, vintageappliances, and a large table with high-back chairs at the back of the house.
And there’s Ginny—Ginny Rhodes, the woman who reached out to invite me here.
She’s loading a dishwasher.
I interviewed her once at my previous job for a story about reality TV child stars whose parents had mismanaged their money and left them broke, though she asked me to not name her specifically. We’re roughly the same age, but where I spent my teenage years doing normal things, she spent hers doing a homeschool-slash-travel show calledOn the Rhodeswith her mom and older twin siblings.
Her five minutes of internet infamy—as an adult—happened not long after our interview. Around the same time, I got downsized from the paper. After three months of unemployment, I took the first job I could find, doing video lifestyle segments for Cheeky-Cheeky—not real journalism, my family likes to say—and now, Ginny’s the closest thing I have to a friend who gets it.
My friends back home? Half of them think I should shake it off, and the other half think I did this to myself.
Sort of like one of my sisters thinks I should shake it off and get over myself, and the other thinks I did this to myself.
But Ginny—Ginny’s been kind and understanding.
She looks mostly the same—curly light brown hair, warm blue eyes, and an hourglass figure under a bright sundress—but I’m nothing like the professional quasi-journalist and content creator I was before my world fell apart.
I’ve lost myself.
The massive amounts of hate mail and comments and DMs judging me and yelling at me and telling me to do things to myself that no one should ever be told to do—well.
Whocouldhave the most embarrassing moment of her life broadcast around the world and then handle that much hate and feel like she even wants to still be herself?
Even the supportive comments didn’t help.
Except Ginny’s.
Ginny didn’t sayignore the haters, all of these trolls have small dicks and miserable livesoryour beaver is fire.
Ginny saidI get it, I know what you’re going through, please come to California and let me and my friends help you recover.
We’ve been in near-constant communication for the past five days, and her hug makes me feel like we’re family.
“Two minutes, Lav,” Ginny says to the young girl as she steps around the scarred wood table in the middle of the kitchen, and then she’s grabbing me in a hug like we’re besties who’ve been separated for years.
A shorter woman with bright green spiky hair, crow’s feet at her eyes, and a warm smile who introduced herself as Samantha welcomed me last night and showed me to the little house across the garden, so I hadn’t seen Ginny yet.
My towel starts slipping on my head again.
Ginny straightens it as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Oh my stars, Cricket, I’m so glad you’re here. And I’m so sorry we got our communications with Heath mixed up.”
I’m a crier.
I cry at weddings.
