Chapter 9: Viral

By eight it was nine million.

Somebody had cut it to music.

Somebody else had zoomed in on my face as the sunglasses fell, and slowed it down, and looped it.

The comments were the same comment, a thousand times.

Psycho.

Get help.

Poor Shelby.

My mother took the tablet away and put a plate of eggs in front of me.

"Eat. Then don't go to class."

"I have a midterm."

"Then go and come straight home."

I went.

The walk across campus took nine minutes.

It felt like an hour.

A boy on the steps of the library held up his phone as I passed and didn't even pretend not to.

Two girls in the coffee line went quiet when I joined it, then started whispering the second I turned my back.

I heard the word sunglasses and then laughing.

In the exam room someone had written on the whiteboard in blue marker: NO STALKING DURING THE TEST.

The professor erased it without comment.

I finished the midterm in forty minutes and walked out.

My phone had eleven new emails.

The tenth was from the chair of the children's hospital gala committee.

Given recent events, the committee feels it would be best for everyone if you stepped back from your role as co-chair this year.

We are so grateful for your past support.

My grandmother had founded that gala.

The eleventh email was a link Shelby had posted at noon.

I shouldn't have opened it.

She sat on a white couch in soft light with no makeup, or makeup made to look like none.

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