She practically snorts. “Well, the Internet hasn’t stopped.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The tweets, the comments on every site that picked it up... people are still loving it.”
“There are comments?”
“Yeah, dummy! Like, thousands.” She squints at me. “We need to do something about your makeup. And hair.”
“Huh? Who cares about my makeup and hair? Thousands of comments? How are there thousands of comments?” The gin is not helping me feel less freaked out, and I barely notice Steffi pulling my hair loose or reaching into her purse to retrieve a makeup bag.
She has me close my eyes, and I feel her brushing eye shadow on my lids. “Sweetheart, Esben has over four hundred seventy-five thousand followers. And that’s just on Twitter. Then there’s Facebook, where he’s got over three hundred thousand. Plus, his live blog.”
I open my eyes and ignore her irritated expression at my interrupting her crash makeover. “Hundreds. Of. Thousands. Oh, Steff...”
“If you’d pay attention to the online world, you would’ve known. Esben Baylor is a social icon! And he’s right here on your campus! I’m so jealous I could scream.”
Yeah, I could scream, too.
She goes to her phone again and taps around. “Here. Read. These are the comments under his original Twitter post.”
Silently stewing, I begin what could be an endless process of scrolling while Steffi lines my eyes with dark-brown eyeliner, dusts blush over my cheekbones, and then turns on a big curling iron and starts fussing with my hair while I read.
Stunning. Heartfelt. Touching. Keep doing what you do, Esben.
You go! The entire montage is extraordinary. Thanx for sharing.
Showed this to my mom, and we both cried, lol!
Who’s the girl? She’s a babe! Right on, brother! Not a bad start to a romance, huh?
Plz come to Chicago! We want u! I’ll volunteer to do whatever u want! Kiss me!
Is the girl on Twitter? Want to follow her.
Now THAT was a kiss. But ... then what? Did she come back? Have you talked to her?
I scoff and keep scrolling and reading. The tweets are, by and large, raving and supportive of the video. There are, of course, mean tweets, too:That girl doesn’t deserve you. Glad she bolted,andI hate all your lame stuff and UR a moron,andThis is so corny and schmaltzy. Get a life.
They all make me sick.
Steffi gets the iron too close to my scalp, and I let out an “Ouch!” then take the last now-watery drink from my cup. “You know what?” I say too loudly. “What he did is not okay! I didn’t ask for this attention. Fine, if he likes being at the center of the universe, that’s his prerogative, but how dare he suck me and other unsuspecting people into his crap, right? He’s a horrible, horrible person!”
“Oh, well, yes. Horrible.” She pauses. “You should tell him that, don’t you think?”
I slap the phone down on the couch. “I should! I should, dammit!”
“Yes, right now!” Steffi is on board with this. She must be coming around to sharing my anger. “Let’s find out what dorm he’s in. The student directory is online?” she asks.
“I dunno. I guess. I haven’t looked anyone up before.”
We log on to the Andrews student portal, and it takes Steffi only seconds to learn that Esben lives in Wallace Hall, which is a dorm not far from mine. “Bingo!” she says before zooming in on his profile picture. “Good Lord, that boy is easy on the eyes...”
“Hey! Knock it off!”
“I mean, he’s still a very bad person, of course, but he is one hot piece of ass.”
“Now you’re making me hate him more.”
