Internet Trial novel · Chapter 1 of 12
Chapter 1: Big Surprise
At six in the morning I was already at the airport, my suitcase at my feet and two printed tickets in my hand.
Flight to San Andrés, eleven twenty.
One seat was mine.
The other was Yasmín's.
She'd told me the day before that she was going to be late because she wanted to "look perfect."
I pictured the white dress.
A month ago she'd whispered to me, wrapped in the sheet, that as soon as we graduated she'd put on a wedding dress and marry me.
I believed her.
We'd been together four years, since the first semester of architecture.
I'd paid her tuition when her scholarship was delayed.
I'd paid three months of her rent when she lost her job.
I'd put the keys to my apartment on her keychain since the second year.
At ten to seven I texted her.
"Where are you? The counter opens at seven."
She didn't answer.
At seven I texted her again.
Nothing.
At seven fifteen I called her.
Voicemail picked up.
I stared at the screen, my stomach tight.
Then I got a private message from a classmate.
"Anselmo, calm down. You're about to get a big surprise."
I read it the way I wanted to read it.
A surprise from Yasmín.
A ring.
A dress.
I smiled, alone, in the middle of the airport.
I breathed a sigh of relief and sat down to wait, my hands between my knees.
At seven thirty my phone rang again, and it was the class group, "Architecture Class," with thirty-eight members.
The class representative had sent a long message with lots of emojis.
"Thanks to the professors and classmates who came to Yasmín Corrales and Efraín Villacorta's party last night. Three years together and they finally took the step."
I read the name twice.
Efraín Villacorta.
He was a guy I knew by sight, son of a construction family, who showed up at faculty parties every now and then.
Below, the messages started pouring in one after another.
"Congratulations to the couple!"
"So cute!"
"They deserved it!"
My face was burning.
Below, among the hearts, someone wrote:
"Oh no. Didn't anyone remove Anselmo from this chat?"
The messages stopped.
I held my breath, staring at the screen.
The typing dots appeared and disappeared.
Then, one by one, they started tagging me.
"@Anselmo don't make a scene now."
"@Anselmo they had to hide for three years to get this far."
"@Anselmo because you're so possessive, Efraín didn't dare show his face. He suffered too."
"@Anselmo think about everyone and calm down."
Even my thesis advisor, a fifty-five-year-old professor I'd admired, wrote:
"Anselmo, I ask you to be mature. Don't tarnish the couple's day or the university's name."
I couldn't breathe.
I felt the airport chair swallowing me.
Everything I'd lived through in those four years crumbled on a six-inch screen.
The Sunday breakfasts.
The late nights working on models.
The bracelet she gave me for my birthday.
A whole lie, with thirty-seven witnesses.
I could have screamed.
I could have smashed my phone against the tile floor.
Instead, I did something I didn't even expect from myself.
I opened the group, held my finger over each message, and took screenshots of all of them.
One by one.
With the time, the name, the profile icon.
When I finished, I had forty-two screenshots.
Then I wrote a single message.
"Understood. I'm not going to make a scene."
I sent it.
I put my phone away, stood up, and walked to the airline counter.
"Good morning. I want to cancel two tickets."
The employee looked at me with pity.
"Both?"
"Both."
I walked out to the street with my suitcase.
Dawn was breaking over the mountains of Rionegro.
As I looked for a taxi, my phone buzzed with a different notification.
Yasmín had posted a video.
I opened it with my thumb.
She appeared on screen, in a white room, eyes swollen, hair pulled back, voice breaking.
"I need to tell you something," she said. "I've been silent for years out of fear. My ex controls me, checks my phone, forbids me from going out with my friends. Today he threatened to show up at my engagement and destroy everything."
It already had forty thousand views.
Below the image, her caption: "I don't want any other woman to go through what I went through."
I hadn't said a single word.
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