I stay long enough to help Amy clear away the worst of the mess. I even take the greasy pizza boxes with me to the communal dumpster on my way out. I can tell Amy would like me to stay, but she’s being gallant about it, trying to be encouraging, asking where my “special someone” lives and whether I’m going to meet them.
When I tell her I’m not sure exactly where Tori lives, she seems a bit shocked but doesn’t say anything, and suddenly it does strike me as a little bit odd. Maybe I should have asked by now.
When I leave, Amy gives me a big hug and tells me, yet again, to take care. This time I don’t hesitate in hugging her back; it feels nice, and quite frankly, I wish I could stay here, warm and secure in the arms of another human. But I can’t, so when I leave, I give Amy a proper smile—not a smirk or one of those carefully-constructed half-smiles designed to minimize chinnage, but a proper, unguarded grin. I want Amy to be someone I can grin at, chins and all.
She grins back at me, all wrinkle-nosed and crinkly-eyed, and I feel a rush of affection for her, because she’s my friend. There, I’ve said it. The F word. The really important one.
I actually feel pretty good when I get on the bus. It’s on time, and it’s one of those cold-but-clear days that make late autumn my favorite time of year. I get home just after 10:30, which is excellent; on a usual Saturday I’d try to sleep in till now, so in reality, I haven’t really lost any time with Tori at all.
There isn’t any sign of anyone when I get in, so I fix myself a cuppa, and lo and behold, there’s food in the fridge, so I make myself some cheese on toast, too.
I text Amy as the cheese is melting under the grill, just to let her know I’ve gotten home safe. She pings back a Thnx for lettin me no! xx ♥ xx, and I find myself smiling at the terrible spelling rather than being irritated by it.
Upstairs, I change out of last night’s clothing and into my lovely, comfy pajamas, fling open the curtains to let the weak winter sun in, and log on to my computer. A Metachat login is waiting for me.
It doesn’t take Tori long to show up.
You’re home now?
Yeah. Just got in.
had to help do a bit of tidying up,
but got back asap. are you still mad at me?
Tori doesn’t reply immediately, and my mood drops a notch.
I wasn’t mad. Just concerned. You had me worried.
Yeah, I know. You’ve already told me, like, a thousand times already. Jesus.
I know. I’m sorry.
A wild idea strikes me.
Wanna skype?
Again, a horrible pause stretches out, further and further, chaining seconds into minutes. A fluttery feeling starts up in my chest. Have I pushed this too far?
Sorry—I don’t do skype.
You might as well hand the feds your life on a silver platter.
It’s my turn to pause.
Oh, ok. Just an idea.
I can’t deny it—I’m disappointed. I’d hoped we’d get beyond worrying about security issues and the nebulous “them” that patrol the internet. Plus, whether I like it or not, Amy’s words keep playing back in my head, and a small but irritatingly insistent voice keeps saying, Is this normal? Really? This doesn’t feel normal. Is it normal?
It’s okay. I don’t skype anyone.
Not worth the hassle.
That’s how people get caught.
Anyway, we have fun here, right?
While you were out with that dozy bitch yesterday,
I found some new victims.
You’ll love them. Come on, let’s play!
And it strikes me: I don’t want to play. Is this all we’ve got? Being horrible to other people on the internet? That’s it? No skyping, no arranging to meet, no trying to organize a future together—just bile and spite and a constant stream of insults. Like calling Amy a dozy bitch. I don’t want Amy called a dozy bitch. She’s neither dozy nor a bitch. She’s my friend, one who will eat pizza with me and watch movies with me and go out drinking with me . . .
I massage my temples with my fingertips to try and ease the headache that’s building there.
Nah. Not in the mood. Would rather just chat.
What?? Come on, Beth,
you bailed on me last night,
don’t bail on me now, babe!
I lean back from the screen. What is her problem? Why is she so keen for us to go trolling? There’s more to us than that. There has to be. I try a different tack.
There’s a new Banshee strip. You seen it?
Yeah, course. Not as good as the earlier ones.
Getting too commercial. Left a review. ;)
A link appears. I copy and paste it into a new tab (no hyperlinks on Metachat, for obvious reasons), and there’s Tori’s “review”:
What is this? I used to love this strip, but it’s fallen into a well of shit recently. Seriously, do yourself a favor and step in front of a very fast train. I can’t believe you’d even think this was good enough. We deserve better, you hack. This is fucking crap. Sort it out, or give it the fuck up.
. . . Wow. Okay, so maybe the strip isn’t quite as fresh as it was a couple of years ago, but it’s one thing to say you don’t like it and quite another to advise the creators to kill themselves.
How do I respond to this? She’s obviously fishing for approval, but I don’t approve. At all.
Bit harsh. I thought Midnight Jim
devouring the chili-obsessed guy
was quite funny. Sure, it’s a bit lame,
but Banshee’s face when
Jim thinks he’s going to melt . . .
Are you fucking serious? It was SHITE.
I can’t believe you’d even say that.
Wow. What did you have for breakfast, basicmoronOs?
Uh, okay, what the fuck is her problem? I’m used to people being aggressive to me when I’m stirring up shit, but this—this is new, and I don’t like it. It’s like she wants to pick a fight with me.
Uh, are you ok, hun?
Very tentatively.
Yeah. Of course. Just feeling twitchy.
I’ve got some bitches that need a good spanking
and you’re giving me major blue balls.
Seriously? This is all my fault? She’s pissed off because I don’t want to troll. Or is it more that she’s pissed off because I won’t do what she wants me to do?
That is not a comforting thought.
I take in a deep breath. Time to take the bull by the horns.
Tori, look, I’m sorry. I know you want to go and play, but I need to take a break. Not from you—I want to be with you, of course I do—but I want to take a step back from the trolling. Had some trouble recently that really affected me and I need to get my head together. So can’t we just have a nice chat? I love chatting to you. You get me and that’s what I need right now. You. Not the Troll You, but the Real You—the one who likes to send me photos and cat memes and new AE fanfics, the adorable you that you hide from everyone else. xxxx
Another agonizing pause.
You had trouble?
That’s it? Three words? There’s no way it would have taken her that long to type three measly words. No acknowledgment that I’ve basically just poured my heart out to her. No comment whatsoever on how I’m feeling, on my mental state. Just the bit that might affect what she wants to do, the bit that might put a damper on her trolling plans. The rest of it obviously doesn’t count.
Yeah.
It’s hard to type, my hands are shaking so much—but not out of nervousness. Out of something I never thought I’d feel toward Tori—pure, simple anger.
You know that girl Dizzy? The one we took down the other night?
Yeah, I remember. The one you wanted taking down a peg cos she was giving you a hard time, if I remember right . . .
I may be many things, but I’m not an idiot. I can see someone setting up blame deflection from a mile off.
Yep, that one. Well, it turns out she’s not as bad as I thought. I’m not too proud to lay it out as it is—I was wrong. I’m sorry, cos I dragged you into it and I take full responsibility. But it’s made me think about things a bit, and how there’s always more to these things than we think.
Wait . . . what. The. Fuck? Are you telling me you feel bad about what we did? You saw her profile! So what if she’s okay in real life—she’s one of Them! Are you going soft or something?
Soft. Just because I have a shred of humanity left.
No. Just had a dose of reality. Tori . . . she hurt herself. Badly. As a direct result of what we did. I was there when the ambulance turned up. It was fucking brutal. Never seen anything like it, and tbh, I don’t want to see it again. Ever. That’s why I was out last night—we all wanted to try and forget it for a bit. As it turns out, Indigo is actually ok too. I mean, yeah, she’s still an insufferable Instagram whore, but she’s not a bad person. And neither was Dizzy. Turns out she wasn’t deliberately being nasty, she was just shy and so came across as a bit abrupt, cos she was bullied a lot before uni. The others said she came here hoping to make a new start, to get away from it all, and we just brought it all back. She probably thought her old bullies had found her and there really is no escape . . . and I guess that’s something I can relate to. Anyway, it made me think. Sure, having a pop at the beautiful people seems ok cos they seem bulletproof—but what if they’re not? After seeing Dizzy on that stretcher . . . I don’t want to do that to anyone else.
Once I start typing, it all floods out. I can’t help it. The guilt is literally eating me alive. Once, Dizzy was just like the others—a caricature, a cartoon character. Like all the others, she wasn’t real—until, of course, she was, in unmistakable ways. There’s nothing realer than blood, after all.
Still no reply from Tori, but I know she’s typing. There’s no way she’d just leave it at that. If we were on Messenger, I’m sure I’d be seeing that little dot dot dot, incoming message flag. I gnaw on my thumbnail. I know I’m right, but that doesn’t stop me from letting out a little involuntary squeak when the wall of text arrives. As I read, my eyes widen, and a yawning pit opens in my belly.
Are you fucking serious? Actually, genuinely serious? That whore was a total bitch to you, and she couldn’t handle it when you dished it back at her. That’s it. That’s all that’s going on here. Fucking hell! Don’t you get it? THIS IS WHAT THEY DO! Treat people like shit and then can’t handle any kind of criticism back! Oh, it’s perfectly ok for them to bitch and exclude and act like they own the place, giving you filthy looks and making sure everyone else knows you’re some kind of untouchable pleb, but the minute one of us fights back? Oh no, can’t cope, they’re so mean, must cut myself because that’s what all the cool kids are doing right now, to show that I’m a real human being rather than a vacuous twat with nothing to offer the world but pictures of my perfect hot-dog legs, oh waa waa, pity me pity me, I’m so fucking authentic. Fuck them! Fuck them all! I bet you a million quid that dozy bitch will be back online within a week, posting her sob story, capitalizing on all of this, telling the sheeple who follow her that she’s ok now and oh, don’t punish those who hurt her cos she’s so fucking magnanimous, and there will be loads of pictures of her looking a bit sad with some bandages round her arms and the sheeple will fawn over her, telling her she’s so brave, so forgiving, so fucking wonderful just because she’s pretty. What if it was us, huh? What if we’d decided to cut ourselves up because some knob shouted something at us in the street? Would we have hordes of people telling us how brave we are, and how wonderful and strong we are being? Fuck off! We wouldn’t get any of it cos we. don’t. matter. We don’t give people a boner when we put on a bikini, we can’t pull off the fucking scorpion pose, and we don’t look angelic whilst nibbling on vegan power balls that we simply whipped up that morning cos we’re oh-so-fucking-perfect. So don’t you feel bad about it. Don’t you even DARE. That bitch deserved everything she got.
I read the rant over and over, trying to twist it around so it computes. Once upon a time, that would have been no problem at all. A month ago, I could have written that. Hell, maybe even a week ago.
And there is still a little, vicious part of me that agrees with every word she says. The Beautiful People do have it easier.
But that doesn’t excuse what we did. What I did. It’s not their fault society is built that way, and it certainly doesn’t make them any less human. Okay, so they don’t have to document every single aspect of their lives online. They don’t have to go out of their way to make sure they have an adoring audience. They could just be hot and anonymous. But, hell, who am I kidding? I get it! I know how strong the lure of the internet is. Am I really any different? They post pictures to make themselves feel that someone cares and that they are someone who matters. I troll those girls because, in some twisted way, that means I can steal a little bit of that power from them.
When I troll, I am their equal. It makes me feel powerful and clever and dangerous—all the things I’m not in the real world. Where they have their physical perfection, I have my perfect anonymity. I’m as hopelessly caught up in the web as they are. Without the internet, their lives mean nothing. Without them, my life is nothing.
Or, at least, that’s what I once thought. But now Amy’s introduced me to another way. A way that doesn’t involve sitting on your own in the dark spitting venom at people.
I close my eyes and let out a long, shaky breath. I’ve been so stupid. I was so caught up with Tori and her seductively dangerous ways that I didn’t even see Amy there, doing what friends are supposed to do, being what friends are supposed to be.
And now, that’s all at risk. If she discovers what I did to Dizzy, she’ll be gone and all I’ll be left with is a shell of a family and spite spewing from a computer screen.
I gasp. Now that I realize how huge this is, tears aren’t enough. I actually feel physically sick. Because even if I manage to keep all of this to myself, I still have to live with it. I still have to live with Dizzy and that bloke’s marriage and Freedomchick’s online disappearance and the unknown fates of countless others like her, other people who admitted defeat and quietly slipped away . . . maybe in more ways than one. Despite never picking up a weapon, I’ve got blood all over me. And it is never going to wash off.
Beth? You there?
I glance at the time. Shit. I’ve been sitting here, paralyzed, for nearly ten minutes.
Yeah.
I have no idea what to say next. I mean, how do you tell someone you love that you not only think they’re wrong, but that you now think they’ve been wrong all along, and that you were too, and you kind of wish you’d never started this whole sordid business in the first place, without seriously hurting them?
I need chocolate and I need it now, in vast quantities. I rummage through a treasure trove of empty wrappers, hoping my bedside cabinet holds at least one I’ve missed, but I come up empty. Even chocolate has deserted me. I am truly alone.
More minutes tick by. What do I say? What do I do? Agree with her and go along with whatever she wants to do? That would be the easiest option. Just pretend all of this was nothing more than a silly misunderstanding, sorry babe, don’t know what came over me, sure let’s do it, that bitch deserves everything she gets, btw that pic of you in that T-shirt is gorgeous, can I have a more private one later, if you know what I mean, wink wink . . .
Yeah, I could do that. I could take the easy way, the coward’s way.
But if I do, I may as well kiss my friendship with Amy goodbye, because there’s no way I’ll be able to look her in the eye ever again. What we did to Dizzy didn’t just hurt Dizzy—it hurt everyone around her, even me. And while self-sabotage is definitely another of my talents, even I realize that sticking my head in the sand and carrying on wouldn’t just be that, it would be full-on engage-self-destruct mode. Warning: radioactive person ahead.
Tori, I’m sorry, but I can’t agree. Not this time. I know we’ve been hurt by others in the past and punishing them was our way of dealing with it . . . but this time it’s different. You weren’t there. You didn’t see the blood, or how scared everyone was, how miserable and vulnerable Dizzy was. It made me realize that our targets are real ppl. Real women, with hopes and fears and insecurities that we don’t know about. Sure, what they’re doing is stupid and vain, but be honest. If you looked like them, wouldn’t *you* be doing it?
I take in a deep, shuddering breath. Time to lay my cards on the table.
Cos I know I would.
There’s a boom deep in my chest, like someone’s detonated a bomb in it. I start shaking as I continue trying to type, my head swimming at the enormity of my confession.
I punish those girls cos they are everyhtin Im not. I hate them cos I love them. I want to be them I want wat they have. I wanna do yoga on a beach and have millions of ppl fawnin all over me. We all do, deep down. Even, I think, you.
I have no idea if Tori is replying, but as far as I can tell she hasn’t logged out, so maybe she’s now doing a me: she’s questioning herself, and in reading my words, she might find a grain of truth in there. I really hope so, because I do love her, I do, and if we can just get over this, we can carry on as usual—well, not as usual, but as . . . as . . .
Beside me, my phone buzzes. I glance down. A Facebook notification from Amy. Yeah, I know. Even I can see that might be a sign.
My laptop screen flickers, heralding the arrival of Tori’s reply. Well, the moment of truth has arrived.
How dare you make those assumptions? You don’t know me. You want shitty fawners? Then fuck you. I thought you were different, but no, you’re just like the other superficial whores out there. I can’t believe I once thought you might be someone special, someone different, and that we might have something special, that we were together against the world, but it looks like I was wrong. You’re right—you are no different from them if that is what you truly aspire to. You led me on, letting me think that you were on my wavelength, when all along you were just taking me for a fucking ride, and now you think you’ve taken the higher road with your touchy-feely bullshit. I seriously cannot believe you would do this to me, like it’s my fault, like you’re blaming me, like I made you do it, cos I didn’t—YOU DID IT! And whatever happens, you will NEVER be like those girls. You’re never going to have their life, you’re never going to have their popularity, you’re never going to compare to them cos you don’t have it, you don’t have the bikini body or the diet or anything they have, bitch, GOD I cannot believe you, cannot believe this, FUCK YOU! FUCK THEM AND FUCK YOU!!!
I have to read it three times before I can even begin to make sense of it all. She’s jumping all over the place, throwing blame at everyone except herself. The backs of my eyes sting and my throat turns bitter. Is this what she really thinks? Is this how she truly views the world? That anyone who aspires to be, well, anything beyond being a stone-cold bitch to everyone is somehow a fraud?
The fact that her rant is so disjointed makes it clear that I’ve managed to really hurt her. That she doesn’t just do this for fun; she really believes she’s righteous—which is mental. I mean, even I knew what I was doing was wrong, when all is said and done.
Before I can even think of replying, Tori’s message disappears and Metachat shuts itself down. I stare at the screen, blinking furiously. Looks like Tori just left the building. Did Metachat always do that when she logged off? I can’t remember. I was always too full of thoughts of her to even think about how Metachat shuts down. Maybe I should have paid more attention.
I run both my hands through my hair. Oh shit. Oh shitty shitting shitty shit. What do I do now? Am I losing her? I literally have no idea. I don’t know how these things work. Sure, I’ve been bullied before and had shouting competitions with just about every member of my immediate family, but this is different. I hated my bullies. My family is, well, my family—you’re supposed to argue with them. But this? Is this just a tiff, or is this one of those I never want to see you again deals? I don’t know, and it’s making me want to puke. And maybe jump off a building. Or build a time machine so I can go back and erase the last hour. Or maybe the last week. The last month?
Oh, God, why did I say those things? I am such an idiot! Stupid stupid stupid! Why didn’t I just keep my mouth shut, or say I was busy, or that Mum had called me, or, let’s face it, found an anonymous Beautiful Person to torment just to keep her happy—okay, so I’d have to live with the guilt, but at least Tori would now be happy and would be sending me messages of love rather than . . . whatever that was. It’s all my fault. All of it. What the fuck is wrong with me?
My phone buzzes again and I jump about eight feet off the bed. Another notification from Amy. Shakily, I open up Facebook. She’s tagged me into a few things—a couple of memes, nothing serious, just Amy-stuff. And there’s a friend request.
From Indigo.
I stuff a hand into my mouth to stop the sob escaping.
A few months ago, I was alone and miserable. Now, miraculously, I have friends—and they’re judging me on what they think is my personality, my qualities as a fellow human being, and not a number sewn into the back of my shirt. This is utopian stuff! Or it would be, if it wasn’t all built on lies, the biggest of all being that I’m a good person, because I’m not, I’m a bad person, a very bad person, and I don’t know what to do about it. At all.
Well, Indigo is going to have to wait for a moment. And Amy—sorry, you too. I need to find Tori. I need to say whatever it is I need to say to make things right between us. I don’t care what it is or what I have to do—I just want things to go back to where they were, rewind to some arbitrary point where everything seemed okay and I can actually live with myself.
I click through my posts. Funny, I can’t find her.
Okay, contact list. Scroll scroll scroll . . .
She’s not there.
I check again.
Still not there.
Okay, forget the phone, stupid shitty phone, can never find anything on that. Check on the laptop. Aaaaaannnnd nothing.
In the few minutes since she pulled out of Metachat, Tori has unfriended me.
I think I’ve just been dumped.