Addie’s arrow hovered over the Post button. She steadied herself, then clicked. She was thrilled that R. J. Rosen didn’t hold her non-post against her. With the swipe of a finger, Rosen’s story zoomed through cyberspace and Addie’s GapLakeLove readers were going to flip.
It didn’t take long for the first message to hit.
CRYSTALFAN321: OMG.
Then, two more—
VALERIE4: Love this!
SEEULTR: Sooooooo creepy!
She plopped onto her bed, pulling her laptop onto her crossed legs. Her stomach continued its wild flutter, her shoulders breaking out in a damp sweat. R. J. Rosen was emailing her! It was almost like she was on a date with her idol—if only she knew what he looked like…
Thanks so much for the post, Addie! My publicity team is thrilled! Your post has tons of comments, and the page hit counter is going through the roof!
Addie fanned herself, glancing at the page counter at the bottom of her site. The new story already showed reads in the high hundreds, and the comments kept coming. She was beaming.
Now, the next part of the launch comes tomorrow and there’s a huge surprise in it for you too! I hope you’ll be as excited as I am.
Addie laid her fingers over her keys. “I love it!!!!” she started writing, before erasing the myriad of exclamation points. She didn’t want to seem like a rabid superfan or even a little girl. She wanted R. J. Rosen to think of her as his colleague, maybe even one day his equal.
“That sounds spectacular,” she spoke as she wrote. “Looking forward to it.”
“Knock, knock.”
Addie’s father stood in her doorway, doing that precursory knock thing that parents do before walking into your room without being asked. He shot Addie a warm smile and sat down at her desk chair, sighing.
“You getting ready for bed?”
“Yeah, Dad, in a minute.”
“You know I was thinking that maybe I could take you out driving this weekend.”
Addie shifted on her bed. She didn’t want to look at her father, especially the way he was staring at her like she was some animal in a zoo, like he was waiting for her to pounce.
“I’m actually working at the boutique this weekend. All weekend,” she clarified, keeping her eyes on her screen.
“Addie—”
“Sorry, Dad, but you always say that work is a priority.”
He nodded, sucking in a long breath and looking away. “What are you working on?”
Addie was too excited, too proud to lie. “A story. I just posted this on my site. Look at the comments!”
She handed over her laptop. Her dad scanned the comments and nodded appreciatively. “Lots of people seem to really like what you do here, Adds.”
He scrolled up, his eyes darting across the screen as he read. Even though it was R. J. Rosen’s work, not her own, Addie could feel her pulse ratchet up and the hum of nerves like bees in her brain. Would he like it? Would they actually have something in common—something besides that terrible night?
“Well,” Addie asked when he looked up from the screen. “What do you think?”
Mr. Gaines scratched at his chin, his eyes flitting back to the screen. “I think you should delete it.”
Addie gaped. “What?”
“It’s absolutely disrespectful, Addison. A girl in your class is dead and you post this murder story on your website? Delete it.”
“No, Dad, I can’t—it’s fiction anyway.”
He handed her the laptop. “Delete it.”
“I can’t. I won’t.”
He shook his head and stood up, opened his mouth to say something and then thought better of it.
“Dad, it’s just fiction and my readers are from all over the country. Hardly anyone in my school even knows that I’m the one who runs this site so no one is going to…to…” she thought of Lydia, laughing, head thrown back, and then the empty seat when Lydia sat in her AP bio class. She thought of the posters that had gone up, the candles, the memorial. Was she really a terrible person?
“No one is going to think that this story has anything to do with Lydia Stevenson,” she said.
Right?