Page 38

????????

WTF FAWN!!!??

DID HE PAY YOU

SELL OUT SELL OUT SELL OUT SELL OUT

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:

Now I begin to falter, and thanks to the upgrades in my rig, my cartoon avatar displays my uncertainty in full color. “Give me a minute to show you why it's better,” I insist. The viewers are not having it. I open the box, try to show them it's lighter now, brighter, and when I insert some scribbles on paper the voice that reads it back does it in a pleasing, clear way. “There's even options for different voices, volume control...”

No one is paying attention. Cookie has covered her eyes. “Oh nooooo,” she sighs. “I warned you...”

Tips appear on my screen; small donations, just enough to trigger the pop up messages for others to see.

:

SELL OUT!!!!

YOU'RE SO FAKE

FAKE FAKE FAKE

FAWN IS FAKE

FAKER YOU SUCK

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

KILL URSELF

DIEDIEDIEDIE

:

It happens so fastthat I just... sit there. Stunned to the point of inaction, I try to get my brain to work. This isn't fight or flight. I'm shutting down mentally, the way you might if you realize you're in a plane about to crash.

There's no pulling out of this. Turning off my camera or bailing won't make them happy. I'm debating what to say when suddenly new things appear in the chat. Links... images... and as they pop up, and the chat goes crazier, I think I'm going to vomit.

“No,” I whisper. “How...?”

The photos and clips are of me—real life me—walking around with Mikel. There are links to articles about who he is, his company, his tax records, his address. My address.

Then comes a video of us talking when Mikel and I'd gone down to get Starbucks at his place the other day. A video of me crying at dinner with unfinished gnocchi on my plate. There I am running with him and Beanie on the beach.

I can't understand where this all came from. I try to think of who could have done this? Who even knew about Mikel and me? One of his staff... like that Gardenia girl? Didn't she act weird around me? She nearly caught us together in his condo, and I haven't seen her since that day.

Or what about one of his employees at Hause Industries? They had access to my info, could one of them have tracked me down? Or maybe a woman who had a crush on Mikel, someone scorned by his oblivious nature? It could be a furious member of his team who hated how Mikel didn't listen to them, someone who felt he wasn't fit to lead the company. Too many possibilities.

My chatroom becomes an investigation. Internet detectives are on me within seconds with my personal social media. My phone blows up on my desk with text messages that mirror the cruel ones in my chat.

Doxxing, a slang word for revealing someone's personal details and harassing them, is against the rules of the streaming site. That doesn't stop it, though.

Who gathered all of this, where did it begin and end?

A new tip pops up.