THE COMMENTS I’D SCROLLED through in the middle of the night still crawled beneath my skin, but I wouldn’t allow myself to be vulnerable again. I wouldn’t let another Jared put me down. Never again would I scrape quarters off the sidewalk or watch the Bees sell a piece of their soul for beef or see my mom soaking her feet in salt water after working a double just to keep the lights on. I’d been given a way out, and I was going to make the most of it.
@MacyAtTheMovies: BTW, I saw your @TODAYshow interview, @baseballbabe2020, and you looked just as cute as you did at the game #BaseballBabe
I closed Twitter, then went down to the basement. We still had a broken dryer, and the money from my latest views wouldn’t come in for another month. I’d just brought up the jams and canned tomatoes to bring over to Elise’s, when there was a knock. We weren’t expecting company.
I opened the door and a squat man with wire-rimmed glasses shoved his phone at me. “Fly Ball Girl, what’s the status on your relationship with Baseball Babe? Did you contact him because you saw him on TV? Are you really planning a date together?”
Panic seized my lungs. I slammed the door and locked it. And leaned against it for extra reinforcement. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d locked our door. He knocked again, and the sound pounded between my temples. How did he find out where I lived? I never posted my address online. Not even on the accounts I’d kept separate from R3ntal Wor1d.
I looked out the peephole. He wasn’t from around here. I would’ve recognized his face. He didn’t look like a reporter, and there was no news van, no real camera. He just had his shitty phone. A random stranger. Who showed up at my house because of Jessica Banks.
“Macy, what’s going on?” Gram came down the hall, holding an electric flyswatter.
“There’s a man at the door.” I could hardly talk, hardly draw a breath. “I don’t know him. He recorded me and asked me questions.”
“Step aside.” Her voice reminded me of thunder, the way clouds would boil and roll before unleashing cracks of lightning. Her expression pinched tight, deepening the lines in her face.
“What are you going to do?”
“Don’t you mind.” I’d never seen Gram so mad, and her mood was permanently set on mad. If yesterday’s evening news story was a six, she was now at an eleven. “Go on back to the dining room with the Bees.”
I would do no such thing. “You’re not going out there.”
“This is my property and I’m a grown woman. I’ll do what I want.” Before I could grab her arm, she flung open the door and marched outside.
The man had his phone raised, like he was taking pictures of our house. As soon as he caught sight of Gram, he turned his phone on her, and she swung the flyswatter right at his face. His scream split the air, and I winced at the angry crisscross pattern already taking shape on his right cheek from the electric shock.
“Get off my lawn.” Gram hit him with the flyswatter. “Get out of my town.” He tried to block her, and got another shock as the flyswatter zapped his hands. “And don’t you dare come near my granddaughter again.” The man ran, and Gram chased him all the way to the end of the driveway, hitting him on the back of the head. The electric flyswatter zinged as it singed his hair.
“What the hell?” Paxton stopped a few feet from the edge of our property. Quilting patterns fell from his arms and crinkled like autumn leaves across our dead lawn.
“Um. Small issue. No big deal.” I glanced from him to Gram, who was still after the stranger with her flyswatter. To my horror, I noticed a second person with the guy—a woman who had recorded the entire incident.
She swung her phone toward me. Paxton froze. All the color drained from his face, his lips turning to a chalky blush. He shook so hard, the single quilting pattern he’d held on to rattled like a flag in a windstorm. I blocked her view of Paxton and charged. Her eyes widened as her phone arm dropped. Both the man and woman dashed into a car parked on the other side of the street. Their tires squealed against the pavement as they drove away.
I turned around to check in with Paxton, and only caught sight of his back as he ran for the cover of the trees. He tripped over a root and went sprawling across the leafy wooded floor. Before I could take a single step forward to ask if he was okay, he was on his feet again and gone through a thick cluster of brush.
Gram chuckled as she scooped quilting patterns off our yard. “You sure can send them running. Still want to put that sex ad on the Craigslist?”
“Har, har.” I helped her gather up the rest of the scattered papers. “Was the flyswatter really necessary?”
Gram straightened her blouse, swept back her short gray hair, and gave me a grim nod as she headed into the house. “They need to learn they can’t invade other people’s privacy.”
I followed her in, shutting and locking the door behind me. “Did you see that woman with him? She was recording too. They’re going to post that video all over the Internet.”
“Good,” Gram said. “Let it be a warning for anyone else who wants to show up here.”
I had no response for that. Gram didn’t go online. She had no idea what she’d just unleashed. I followed her back to the dining room. Gram had literally fried a guy’s face for me, which was why I couldn’t tell her that she’d likely made things worse.
The phone rang and Gram yanked the cord out of the wall. “Those damned reporters have been nonstop all morning. I’m calling the phone company.”
“I’m sorry.” Useless words.
“This isn’t your fault.” Gram lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the fan. “We’ll change our number and get on with it. Bad timing with the fair coming up and all.” She patted my cheek. “Get those canned goods over to Elise’s momma.”
I put the boxes in Peg’s car, and Gram stood by the front door with her flyswatter in hand the entire time, but no one else came around. She said she’d use my cell phone later to get our number changed. If only I hadn’t sat next to Eric or ogled his abs so openly or let him walk me to the bathroom or a hundred other things Jessica had used to craft her story. It wasn’t my fault, and I’d keep telling myself that until I believed it, but I couldn’t deny this whole mess had upended our entire world.
I drove to Elise’s, Paxton’s reaction running through my mind the entire time. I’d never seen anyone so terrified in their life, including the time Elise’s pants got caught on Grumpy Gill’s barbed-wire fence when we’d cut through his farm behind her house for the first and last time. The scene outside my house was chaos, but Paxton acted like those people were coming after him with a chainsaw instead of Gram going after them with a flyswatter.
I pulled into Elise’s driveway and texted Paxton: Are you okay?
Paxton: Fine
Okay … Me: It just looked like something was going on there
Cool. I could tell when I was getting the brush-off. No need to spell it out.
I sat in Peg’s car, scrolling through Twitter. The woman who recorded Gram taking a flyswatter to her boyfriend didn’t waste any time trying to collect a piece of that viral fame. She’d posted it about ten minutes after pulling away from my house.
@EmilyPayneBlogLife: Check out #FlyBallGirl’s crazy grandma. I’d be careful if I were you #baseballbabe #flyswatter #fuckinginsane
@torontoraptors4life Replying to @EmilyPayneBlogLife: HOLY SHIT!!!
@MinaWillis Replying to @EmilyPayneBlogLife: I hope you’re filing charges.
@dogsbiteback22 Replying to @EmilyPayneBlogLife: Damnnnnnn, that old lady fucked him up. how embarrassing for your boy.
@trinanotnina Replying to @EmilyPayneBlogLife: How is no one talking about the slippers yet?
@fruitbythefoottt Replying to @EmilyPayneBlogLife @trinanotnina : Didn’t you hear? Dirty slippers are in this year #TrailerParkChic
Rage spotted my vision, pulsed in my veins, gnashed its teeth inside me. It was one thing to tear me apart and judge the Instagram pictures I’d willingly posted online, but Gram wasn’t even on Twitter to defend herself. She’d only been protecting me. They didn’t know her; they didn’t know a single thing about me and my family. I responded with shaking fingers.
@MacyAtTheMovies Replying to @EmilyPayneBlogLife: Maybe you should’ve stayed home then. Come to my house again and you’ll get worse than a flyswatter to the face.
Then I rolled down my window to get some air so I wouldn’t puke all over Peg’s dashboard. Gram’s pink quilting slippers were nearly as old as me, and more gray than pink now, but it’s not like she wore them to a fancy dinner party. She was at home. Minding her own business. Like Emily Payne Blog Life and her boyfriend should’ve been doing.
Elise tapped on the roof of the car, and I jumped. My phone flew out of my hand and landed at my feet. “Why are you sitting out here like a weirdo?” she asked.
“No reason. Gram wanted me to bring the jam and tomatoes for fixing our dryer, and she asked if your mom needs any sewing done.” I opened the door and got out. As I reached for my phone, Elise snatched it first.
“Are you on Twitter? No one goes on there anymore.” She scrolled through the thread I still had open. “Your grandma burned a dude with an electric flyswatter?”
“Yeah. That woman and her boyfriend showed up at the house this morning. I think they’re amateur journalists or bloggers or something. Gram chased them away.”
“Bizzy Evans is a motherfucking legend. Please, God, let me be that awesome when I’m old.” She closed the app before handing my phone back to me. “Stay off Twitter. No good will come of looking at those threads.”
“I know.” But I still couldn’t stay away. It had become an addiction. “Paxton brought over some of Gigi’s patterns while those bloggers were there. He seemed super freaked out.”
“Don’t stress over it—he’s just a really private dude. I have to get to work, but I’ll be by your place tomorrow with my tools and get that dryer fixed,” Elise said. “Momma’s inside. Just bring the box in to her.”
As soon as Elise drove away, I got back into the car and scrolled through Twitter again.