Chương 4
Caroline Mercer looked up.
“The university emailed.”
Ryan stopped.
“What?”
“The athletic department.”
His throat tightened.
“What did they say?”
“They want to meet tomorrow.”
“About a stupid video?”
Daniel came into the room behind him.
“It stopped being a stupid video when you put your university jersey in half your profile pictures and identified yourself as an athlete.”
“I wasn’t wearing the school jersey.”
“That will certainly solve everything.”
Ryan turned.
“You think I don’t know I screwed up?”
“I have no idea what you know. You keep calling it a stupid video.”
“Because it is a stupid video.”
Caroline lowered her phone.
“Ryan.”
He looked at her.
“Everybody is acting like I attacked her.”
“No,” Caroline said. “A lot of people are acting like you humiliated her.”
“She humiliated me.”
Silence.
The sentence landed before Ryan could catch it.
His mother’s face changed.
Daniel looked away first.
Ryan sat on the edge of the dresser.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It probably is,” Daniel said.
Ryan’s jaw tightened.
“Great.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Turn this into everyone else being unfair to you.”
“I’m not.”
“You just did.”
Caroline stood.
“Enough.”
Daniel stopped.
Ryan did not.
“Dad never liked Noah anyway, so this is perfect for him.”
“This has nothing to do with Noah.”
“He posted it.”
“You said the words.”
“He posted it.”
“And you said the words.”
“So he gets eighty thousand followers and I get dragged by the entire internet?”
Caroline closed her eyes.
Ryan heard himself breathing.
He suddenly wanted to be anywhere else.
Training.
A gas station.
Standing alone in the middle of a parking lot.
Anywhere that did not contain the frozen red car on three different phones.
His mother sat again.
“Did you apologize to her?”
Ryan looked at the floor.
“No.”
“Do you know her name?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Everybody knows her name.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Ryan swallowed.
“I found her account.”
“Did you message her?”
“No.”
Daniel crossed his arms.
“Why?”
Ryan did not answer.
The real answer was embarrassing.
Because he had typed an apology six times.
Because every version sounded like something a publicist had written.
Because the first had begun Sorry if I embarrassed you, and even Ryan had known the word if was cowardly.
Because the second said I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful, which was plainly false.
Because the third blamed Noah without technically blaming Noah.
Because the fourth was eleven sentences long and somehow made Ryan the main victim.
Because the fifth sounded sarcastic.
Because the sixth was simply I’m sorry.
He had stared at those two words for almost ten minutes.
Then deleted them too.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said.
His father’s face softened slightly.
It was the first useful thing Ryan had said all evening.
“Start there,” Daniel said.
The next morning, Maya woke to a woman from a national morning show asking if she would join them remotely.
She deleted the email.
A sports drink company wanted to send her “queen energy merch.”
Deleted.
A luxury car rental business offered $2,000 if she would say the car had come from them.
She read that one twice.
Then showed Denise.
Her mother stared at the email.
“They want you to lie?”
“Professionally.”
“For two thousand dollars?”
“They probably negotiate.”
Denise handed the phone back.
“I hate everybody.”
“Broad policy.”
“It’s new.”
Maya made coffee while Denise searched her purse for keys that were in her hand.
At the shop, they found six people waiting outside.
Two had cars needing repairs.
Four did not.
A young man asked Maya for a photograph.
“No, thanks.”
He blinked.
“What?”
“I don’t do pictures.”
“But you’re the car girl.”
“I fix cars.”
“Yeah, that.”
“No.”
He looked personally offended.
“You went viral.”
“I noticed.”
Denise stepped between them.
“We open at eight. If you need an estimate, take a number from the desk. If you are here because of the internet, there’s a coffee shop three blocks east with Wi-Fi.”
One of the actual customers laughed.
The others drifted away slowly.
Maya unlocked the bay.
The red car remained under its cover.
She had covered it before leaving because looking at it on the security camera from home had made her feel ridiculous.
That morning she left it covered.
At ten-thirty, Beth Collier arrived carrying iced coffee and the expression of someone who had been called into a family problem she expected to dislike.
Beth had been Denise’s friend since community college and handled divorces, small civil disputes, and once, disastrously, a neighborhood association case involving six chickens.
She listened to the whole story.
Then she said, “Legally, the internet remains annoying.”
“Helpful,” Maya said.
“I bill three hundred dollars an hour for that conclusion.”
Denise pushed one of the coffees toward her.
Beth took it.
“The realistic problem is privacy. Nobody has threatened you?”
“No.”
“Directly?”
“No.”
“Any messages mentioning your house?”
Maya hesitated.
Denise turned.
“What?”
“One.”
“Maya.”
“It said they knew what neighborhood I lived in.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“You told me no threats.”
“It wasn’t a threat.”
Beth held out her hand.
“Show me.”
Maya found the message.
Beth read it.
The wording was vague.
WE KNOW WHAT PART OF TOWN YOU’RE IN. LOVE THE CAR. HOPE TO SEE IT IRL.
Beth’s face remained neutral.
“Could be a fan.”
“Exactly.”
“Could be someone with no boundaries.”
“Also exactly.”
Denise looked at Maya as if considering whether nineteen was too old to be grounded.
Beth forwarded the screenshot to herself.
“Save everything that makes you uncomfortable. Don’t respond. Tighten your privacy settings. Get the plate blurred if you talk to any repost accounts.”
“I’m not talking to them.”
“Good.”
“What about the fake reviews?” Denise asked.
Beth looked at her.
“I handle divorces.”
“You also handle chickens.”
“That was one time.”
Maya smiled.
Beth pointed at her.
“And you. No sarcastic public statement.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were thinking about it.”
May you like
Maya took a sip of coffee.
Beth looked at Denise.
