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  Marlow said nothing at the time. The statement did not seem outrageous. Floss talked about past fame and current fame and strategies for future fame as easily and as often as other mothers referenced being out of milk.

  After they were settled in their new home on Pitt Street, Marlow sat at the kitchen table with Stella, the rainbow-haired clown who tried to explain Constellation to its children. Everywhere in America, she told Marlow, people were watching her. Rooting for her. “Even people I don’t know?” Marlow asked, her stomach an uneasy jumble. Stella put down her star-topped wand and cupped Marlow’s face reassuringly. “You may not know them like you know your mom and dad,” she breathed, “but your followers are your friends—your very special friends. The happier and brighter you act, the more special friends you’ll get—and the more special friends you get, the happier and brighter your life will be.” Stella’s pancake makeup fractured into tiny white fissures as she smiled. “No one loves you more than your followers,” the clown said.

  * * *

  A few weeks after Marlow bit Honey, Floss came into her bedroom. Her face looked the same determined way it did when she came back to the motel years ago, to tell them they had made the cut for Constellation. “Get up,” she said to Marlow. Then she went into Marlow’s closet and chose an outfit: a starchy petal-pink dress Marlow had never worn, a white cardigan she had outgrown. When Marlow protested, Floss ignored her. She slid a white headband into Marlow’s hair. Marlow’s cowlicks rejected it instantly, pushing it back down her forehead.

  They drove to Mountain View and slowed at the guarded road for Antidote Pharmaceutical. A network exec and a writer met them in the parking lot. They didn’t look at Marlow; they wouldn’t stand too close. They profusely thanked the man from Antidote who joined them in the conference room. When Floss spoke, they took turns cutting her off.

  “Marlow’s never done anything like this before,” Floss said. “She’s never been angry. She’s never been violent. I mean, she, like, threw her helmet at a softball game, once, when she was younger, but I think she was just caught up in the vibe. Softball girls are like—” Floss held her arms out, curved at her sides, and made a guttural sound.

  The female executive, who wore her dark hair snipped short, leaned forward to block the Antidote rep’s view of Floss. “Marlow has always been an exemplary student,” she said. “And she’s made excellent content for us. Normally, to be frank, an incident like this would be grounds for terminating a talent contract.” The executive smiled at the rep, who was leaning back in his chair, fingers steepled and touching his lips. “But Antidote has always been such a valued partner. And when we heard about your troubles with marketing Hysteryl, we thought a bit of fate might be at play here.”

  The man’s chair squeaked as he leaned forward. He studied Marlow for a long time.

  “Hi, Marlow,” he said, as if she had just sat down. “So you like softball?”

  “No, I quit,” she said.

  “She does ballet,” Floss cut in.

  “I hate that, too,” Marlow said.

  The man smiled. “I get it,” he said. “Marlow, do you ever feel like—” He paused, as if searching for the right words. “Like life is just too much?”

  “What?” Marlow looked around the table. All the faces were carefully neutral, not willing to help her with the answer. Floss blinked at her almost pleasantly, like she was watching her play the piano.

  “I think I have a good life,” Marlow said slowly.

  The man nodded thoughtfully. “But even a good life can be so hard, can’t it?” he said. “Life will always be hard. We can’t do much about that. But you’re so lucky to live in this day and age: we can control how you feel about it.” He waved his hand over his shoulder. A screen on the wall behind him flicked on. Marlow watched as a boy her age clapped a capsule into his mouth, washed it down with a swig from his water bottle, and charged out onto a baseball field. His mother looked on sagely from the bleachers. A tagline layered over the image addressed the mother: “What if your son’s best self was his only one?”

  “This pill us grown-ups are talking about, Hysteryl,” the man said, “is like—Well, you know how you get upgrades for your device, for the system that runs your home functions? Think of Hysteryl as an upgrade for your feelings. And our feelings sure do have a lot of bugs, don’t they?”

  The adults laughed, and Marlow imagined clunking all their heads together. The headband slipped down to her eyebrows for the thousandth time since the day began. She pushed it back again.

  “Hysteryl is made especially for people your age,” the man went on. “It’s made to grow with you. We here at Antidote envision a future in which your entire generation, having on-boarded Hysteryl as teenagers, becomes the happiest, most well-adjusted, most confident generation of Americans ever.”

  The network exec turned to Marlow and waggled her eyebrows happily, like the man was outlining dessert options.

  “But new things can seem scary,” the man went on. “People always have their reservations about change, even when change is the best thing for them.” He looked down for a reverent moment, pressing his lips together. He ticked off a list on his fingers: “My college roommate, the week before graduation. The youngest in the family I grew up down the street from. My mother’s favorite student.”

  Marlow straightened in her seat and tucked her chin down, the way children were taught to do when adults talked about the Spill.

  “If we’d had Hysteryl back in the twenty-teens, the twenty-twenties,” the man said, “they’d still be here.”

  From beneath her lowered lids, Marlow saw the exec jut her elbow into the writer’s. The writer nodded and rapped on the table.

  “Maybe all people need is a story,” the writer said. “To see the way this drug can help a child. A child they already know and love. To follow her journey from rage and insecurity to—” the writer waved one hand through the air “—happiness. By Hysteryl.”

  The man nodded. He thought about it. He smiled and swiveled his chair toward Marlow. “Has a nice ring,” he said. “Doesn’t it?”

  Marlow turned to her mother. She wondered what sort of deal Floss imagined they were coming here for. Not this, she had to believe—not her own veins as a venue for product placement. She sat back and waited for her mother to yell, to call them a pack of lunatics.

  But then she heard, to her horror, Floss reciting the sentence she had practiced in the bathroom that morning, as she brushed on what only she would call “a subtle look for day.”

  “We feel lucky you would even consider Marlow for such an opportunity,” her mother said, covering Marlow’s hand with hers. “I think it sounds amazing.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Orla

  New York, New York

  2016

  When Orla came into the living room, Craig was handing out bagels prepared in batshit combinations. He pressed a blueberry with scallion into Orla’s hands. Two everythings with raisin walnut sat on the couch, in the wide space between Floss and Aston, who had crept into 6D sometime after Orla went to bed.

  “What’s going on?” Orla said. “Who’s dead? What the fuck?”

  Melissa looked at Craig. “Craig, we have to tell them now,” she said. “Do you think you can stop with the bagels?”

  Craig was staring at a chocolate chip bagel with a neon strip of lox between its halves. “This isn’t right,” he muttered. “This isn’t what I ordered.”

  Melissa sighed and turned away from him. “We got word about an hour ago,” she said, “about a really unfortunate incident.” She looked at Floss and Aston and Orla. “What we all need to remember, as the next few days unfold, is that Floss intended her photos to be a celebration of the female form. An empowering message of real beauty to real girls everywhere. Right, Floss?”

  “Exactly.” Floss already sounded defensive. “Orla said—”
>
  “No.” Melissa held up her hand. “Orla had nothing to do with the idea. That’s gonna be important.”

  Orla set her bagel down next to the television. “Of course I did,” she said. The ideas were always hers. Didn’t they all know their roles by now?

  Three minutes. That was all it had taken for Floss’s naked pictures to crash Instagram. Floss wasn’t even dressed yet when Orla reloaded the feed on Floss’s phone and the screen gave her a gray, broken face. “Done,” she said. “You’re officially famous on your own. You didn’t need Aston. You didn’t even need clothes.”

  “Yay,” Floss had said. A moment later, a box popped up on Floss’s phone, telling her she’d been suspended from Instagram. So Orla gave Floss her laptop and her password. Floss logged into Instagram as Orla to watch the reaction unfold. When Orla went to bed, Floss was still up on the other side of the wall, drinking Moët and refreshing the mentions.

  * * *

  Now they sat in silence as Melissa read the reports out loud. No outlet seemed to have the full story, but each one was still breathlessly brandishing what they could find. It was up to them, in the quiet apartment, to put it all together.

  Anna Salgado was seventeen, and lived on Staten Island.

  She had been having a rough time anyway. Everyone, from her own crying parents to the sober-faced reporters, was quick to point this out. She had not been asked to the prom. She had tried to ask someone herself, a boy she had liked since freshman year. He told Anna he already had a date, then rushed to ask someone else: Anna’s best friend. He invited the girl over hasty text, accidentally copying Anna on the chain. But neither he nor Anna’s friend realized she was there, that she could see her best friend writing back But aren’t u going w Anna? and the boy responding Uh NO. He added an emoji, a little yellow face with full, rosy cheeks and a double chin. It was the shorthand kids were using to call each other fat.

  Anna told her parents she wasn’t going to prom because it was a tool of the patriarchy.

  When they asked her gently, the night of, if she wanted to go to California Pizza Kitchen—her favorite restaurant—she said no, thanks. She would read in her room. That evening, as Anna gripped her phone, scrolling through shots of her friends in their gowns and barrel curls, something arresting poked through all the posed shots: Floss, naked. Anna stared at the dimples on Floss’s thigh, at the outrageous curve of her hips, and felt a kinship. Floss looked nothing like the skinny girls at Anna’s school who monopolized the boys’ idea of hot.

  Anna was inspired. She must have decided she wanted to make a tribute, her own version of what Floss did. She stripped herself down, propped her phone on a stack of dystopian paperbacks, and stood as Floss had. She had never sucked her cheeks like that before, her mother pointed out later—for a second, she didn’t know it was her daughter in the picture. Anna hesitated, but only for a moment. Then she posted the photos on Instagram.

  Like every tragedy, it was all in the timing. Anna’s naked body lasted ten minutes online—longer than it should have, longer than Floss’s, perhaps because the chaos Floss set off had left the platform scrambling, behind. If everyone Anna knew hadn’t been in the same place, pausing from their sweaty, sex-adjacent dancing to hunch over their phones and laugh, the photos might not have spread so quickly. If her classmates hadn’t been wild from adrenaline and malt drinks bought by older cousins, their comments might not have been as harsh. If the school lock-in that followed the prom hadn’t been so boring, their teachers trying to tempt them with cornhole and Jenga, they might not have lingered on the story so long, ravaging Anna’s social-media accounts long after her shots had been wiped.

  And then there was the comment Floss made.

  “Comment?” Floss reeled her head back when Melissa said it. “I didn’t leave any comment.”

  Melissa was looking at the empty champagne bottle on the counter when she said, “Yes, you did.”

  Someone had screenshotted the picture of Anna before it had been pulled down. Loving Floss Natuzzi for repping REAL Latina bodies, Anna had captioned the shot. I want to meet her in person one day! #queen #naturallyperfect #womensrightsarehumanrights.

  There had been dozens of comments, but the screenshot homed in on two in a row.

  yungrebel2016: kill yourself THOT you look so fat

  orlajcadden: this is floss and i agree. you should!

  Orla stared at her name, sitting somewhere she had not put it, next to words that were not her own. She had forgotten that Floss had used her account the night before, after her own was suspended because of the nudes. The comment had been liked two hundred eight times.

  “‘I agree,’” Melissa quoted aloud. “‘You should.’”

  “I was talking about her caption,” Floss said. Color climbed from her clavicle upward. “That she should come meet me!”

  Craig was at the sink, tearing the bagels to pieces, forcing the pieces down the drain. He whirled toward her. “But that isn’t how she fucking took it, Floss,” he said, “is it?”

  Floss’s mouth was hanging open. She looked from each of them to the next. “It was a mistake,” she said, her voice trembling.

  “Balls,” Aston said quietly. He pulled his cap down over his eyes.

  “It wasn’t just about what Floss wrote,” Melissa said. “People just piled on after that. Kids she knew. Kids she didn’t know.” She showed them more comments, and Orla had to turn away.

  Anna’s parents didn’t want to make her feel like they were checking on her, so Mrs. Salgado didn’t crack her daughter’s door till after 3:00 a.m., on her way to bed herself after dozing on the couch. Anna was in bed with the covers pulled up. Everything looked as it should, but a mother knows when things only seem right. Mrs. Salgado turned on the light and saw the empty bottles on the floor—the vodka that Anna, who never drank, was holding for a friend. Mr. Salgado’s post-root-canal Percocet. The doctor had prescribed more than Mr. Salgado needed.

  Melissa turned to Orla. She picked up the remote like it was ticking. “Sometimes when details are slow to come out,” she said, “the media focuses on stupid shit.” She turned the television on. She told them she had gotten an email from the producer of a morning news show. The producer wanted to give her a heads-up: they were doing a segment on Orla, “the woman behind” the Instagram handle that Floss Natuzzi used to tell a girl to kill herself. “They’re hitting it hard,” Melissa said, “the whole angle of you writing about Floss while you were at Lady-ish. Exploiting the site to make her famous. Not that this is new information.”

  Orla looked at the television, at the muted ad, innocent footage of an old man riding a chair lift up a flight of stairs. “It’s not new information,” she repeated. “Lots of people know this—people tweet me about it. Why is it a big deal now?”

  “I suppose because it speaks to your character,” Melissa sighed. “And because now a girl is dead. Now everything’s a big deal.” She glanced down at her phone. “They say they’ve booked three major players from your life,” she said. “Who could it be?”

  Orla had no idea. “I have to call my parents,” she said. But the show was already coming back from commercial.

  “Turn it up,” Craig said dully.

  On-screen, Ingrid and Yale Girl sat opposite a stern blonde anchor. Orla noticed that Ingrid had switched her bright lipsticks for tasteful nude, but Yale Girl seemed determined to stand out. She wore glittery eye shadow and a lime-colored blouse with a teardrop cutout above her cleavage.

  The chyron at the bottom of the screen read: TEEN NATUZZI WANNABE CYBERBULLYING SUICIDE.

  “This morning,” the anchor said, “in the wake of Anna Salgado’s suicide, Lady-ish published a statement saying that they will no longer cover Floss Natuzzi. Isn’t that a little like Weather.com swearing off thunderstorms?”

  “It is, Kate,” Yale Girl said, nodding earnestly. “But Floss Natuzzi—she h
asn’t released a statement yet, by the way, Kate—has, we feel, now proven beyond the pale to be damaging to young women out there. And that’s our core audience, Kate.”

  On the TV, Ingrid cleared her throat. “We feel we have a special duty to take a stand here,” she said. “You see, Lady-ish—” She faltered for a minute, her mouth tightening, then started up again. “Lady-ish, unfortunately, played a pivotal role in the Floss Natuzzi phenomenon.”

  Orla watched, feeling outside herself, as her own photo fell like grains of sand into place on the screen.

  “The woman you’re looking at,” said the anchor in voice-over, “is Orla Cadden, a former Lady-ish blogger who now, what, costars on the reality show? Recognize her name? It was her Instagram handle Natuzzi used to encourage the girl to kill herself.”

  “I think what she actually—” Ingrid began, at the same time Yale Girl said, “Exactly.”

  A millisecond’s flicker of annoyance crossed Ingrid’s face. “Orla used to write for us,” she went on. “She wrote for us about Floss Natuzzi when, unbeknownst to us, she had already befriended Natuzzi and was colluding with her to help her get famous. She used her platform as a blogger to give Floss press when Floss was just starting out. Orla now appears on Flosston Public. She’s sort of a sidekick.”

  “We fired her over it,” Yale Girl blurted. Ingrid put a hand down in front of Yale Girl on the desk.

  The anchor shook her head, the clipped ends of her hair swinging in perfect coordination. “So,” she said, as the camera cut to her alone, “what kind of person does a thing like that? Mmm.” She took a breath. “We have an old friend of Orla Cadden’s joining us now.”

  “Oh, God,” Orla said. “Danny.”

  But it wasn’t. The camera pulled out, revealing a third woman at the table. She pulled self-consciously at an ill-fitting blazer as the anchor nodded at her and said, “Thank you for being with us today.”