Page 2
Barbara
T he video made me nauseous even though I barely understood what happened in it. I blinked at the phone my mother held in front of my face, the skin around her blood-red nails pale from how hard she gripped it. She just woke me up with a rough shake and showed me the screen.
The woman in the video—who looked exactly like me, not a hair out of place, even though I didn’t remember any of this—just finished talking. I didn’t fully understand what she said, my eyes still bleary. My mind reeled from the rough wakeup, desperately trying to understand what this was.
I watched as she stuffed food in her mouth. Handfuls of breakfast cereals that she swallowed half-chewed, making greedy moans of pleasure. She washed it down with soda and ripped two chocolate bars open, holding each in one hand as she bit off huge pieces, her eyelids fluttering as she moaned with her mouth full.
The video ended with her grinning into the camera, her face covered with goopy chocolate, her clothes ruined. I breathed a sigh of relief that it was over. My mother took her phone for a moment and shoved it in front of my face. It played again.
I sat up straighter, covering my mouth to hold back the urge to vomit.
“This has played in three major news stations this morning,” she said, her voice cool and mechanical, like it always got when she was furious. “It’s all over the internet. Viral, I believe, is the word. Apparently, no piece of media has spread this fast ever in the history of this country. You broke a record.”
When I looked up, her face was distorted in a sneer. She pursed her lips and gritted out, “Eyes on the screen, Barbara. Have the decency to face the consequences of your actions.”
I considered pulling my hand away from my lips to tell her I didn’t remember any of it, but the contents of my stomach roiled unpleasantly, and I didn’t want to risk it.
“Everything I worked for, everything your father worked for, is now hanging by a thread because of your little stunt,” she said, her voice gaining a vicious edge.
I flinched. My mother perfected the tone of cold wrath over the years of my life, but never before did she sound like this. I shivered, my face growing hot as the me on screen belched heartily and laughed.
Had I ever belched in my life before? Or moaned, for the matter? I didn’t think so. This wasn’t me. The woman in the video had completely different mannerisms, a different way of speaking and interacting with the camera. I didn’t send coy little glances like her. I didn’t smile like her, showing all my teeth with obvious cheer, because I wasn’t allowed to. My mother and Madame Alicia had trained me to smile and move just the right way.
I was supposed to be elegant. Silent. Always controlled.
The person in the video didn’t behave like me. And yet… she was me. She wore the exact same clothes I wore last night, dark pants and a dusty rose silk shirt, her hair coiffed into a low chignon. She was in a nondescript room, sitting on a couch, a plain wall behind her.
Now that I was a bit more awake, I tried to remember what happened last night and how it was possible for the video to exist. Raw panic churned in my belly when I realized I didn’t remember how or when I got home. A huge chunk of my memories was missing.
The video ended and started again. My mother put it on a loop.
“Please,” I said through my palm, my voice shaky and pitiful. “I don’t understand.”
“You were supposed to stay at home!” she hissed, shouting without raising her voice. She was good at scolding me quietly like this. “You’re not some commoner, Barbara, to go out as you please. You were supposed to clear that outing with me and bring an escort! None of this would have happened then.”
I blinked, my eyes growing hot as I watched myself wave my hands freely on the screen, speaking with vivacity I was never allowed to show in real life. Guilt crashed into me, but anger followed on its wings.
I was twenty-three. It was high time I started living like an adult, and that was the reason why I went out without telling anyone. I didn’t do anything reckless, just visited an art gallery opening with one of my ballerina friends. We drank fake champagne and viewed the blown-up photographs, talking, and no one paid us any attention. There weren’t any paparazzi on site, which helped me relax and really enjoy it.
And then… I didn’t remember. The last thing that stuck out clearly in my mind was a large, blurry photo of a messy bedroom, and then… This morning.
“I don’t understand,” I said again, fighting against the nausea rising in my stomach like a wave.
“Oh, please!” Mother snapped. “Will you stop saying that? It’s simple! You went out without permission and got yourself snatched by a mind manipulator! Now your father’s career is threatened. What do you not understand?”
“A… a mind manipulator?” I asked, my heart beating faster and faster until dark spots danced in front of my eyes. I felt faint.
“Yes!” she hissed. “That’s why your eyes keep twitching in there. It’s a subtle sign, but it’s there, and thank God! At least this will give the PR team a way out of this mess you made.”
“I… I made?” I asked, clenching my fists to keep myself upright. Hot and cold waves crashed down my spine, and the room seemed to spin.
Mind manipulator. Snatched. Mess I made.
“Yes, you!” she screamed, no longer bothering to keep her voice down. “You were out without an escort, Barbara! Don’t you get it? You let them do this! You gave them the opportunity to take over full control and make this disgusting video!”
“What…” I began, swallowing convulsively to keep back the contents of my stomach that threatened to spill. “What else? What else… did they do? I don’t remember.”
She reared back, confused, and finally took her phone away, shutting up my voice that sounded way cheekier than I’d ever allowed myself to sound when I was myself.
“Nothing that we know of,” she said stiffly, eyeing me with a frown. “You came back home after midnight. Norma was still up, she talked to you. Your clothes were stained, but apart from that, you seemed normal.”
She broke off, her posture growing rigid as she watched me. Her face did a strange thing, morphing through a sequence of expressions from worry, through annoyance, to impatience.
“Well, do you think anything is wrong with you?” she asked brusquely, clutching her phone.
I shook my head. My body felt normal apart from being bloated. I didn’t hurt anywhere. I didn’t even have a headache. The only thing that was wrong with me was the nausea, but that was caused by everything I just learned.
My mother huffed, rolling her eyes. “So you’re fine. Good. Pull yourself together. You’re going riding, I already let Maria in the stables know. When anyone asks you questions, you know what to say.”
I nodded, whispering, “No comment.”
She gave me one last once-over and nodded sharply. “Compose yourself, Barbara. You have to be strong, now more than ever. Ashfords and Kingsleys don’t bow before terrorists.”
She left my bedroom, and I ran to the bathroom to hurl.
I spent a long time hugging the toilet bowl and shaking as vile stuff came out of my mouth, burning my throat with acid. It was a good thing that it hurt, I thought, heaving as beads of sweat rolled down my spine. Pain was good. It helped me not to think.
Yet, when my stomach was finally empty, I had to stand up and face the music.
It still didn’t fully register with me. I’d been controlled by someone else, forced to say and do things I didn’t mean or want. I was recorded, and it was so utterly humiliating, I had no idea how I would force myself to leave the house. How did my mother expect me to go out there and face the paparazzi? It was beyond cruel.
The whole world saw me making rude comments about my father’s important work, smear chocolate all over my face, and belch. Everyone heard me moan sensually as I ate, and my heart wrenched at that. Somehow, it seemed even worse than the rest.
I could have handled belching alone. But the moans? It was just so unfair that the intimate sounds that should have been reserved for my first lover were public property now.
I felt stripped naked in ways that could never be undone.
My stomach heaved again, and I shook my head, throwing off my pajamas and stepping into the shower on shaky legs. I washed fast, knowing what I had to do next. When sudsy water swirled down the drain, I explored my body, looking for memories that weren’t in my head but might have been left on my skin.
With hesitant fingers, terrified of what I might discover, I traced every inch of me. I ran my fingers down my tender stomach, up my burning throat, down my hips and thighs, looking for bruises or sensitive spots.
Finally, I buried my fingers between my legs, certain I’d discover signs of intrusion, but everything felt normal. Untouched. It made me feel perversely disappointed, as if my mother was right. Since nothing happened to my body, it meant I was fine, didn’t it?
Who cared that my mind was raped?
I shut off the shower when tears crowded my eyes. I swallowed them back, every single one. I couldn’t cry. It would be visible even under makeup, and my mother wanted me to appear strong.
Ashfords and Kingsleys don’t cry.
No, we didn’t. And so I dried myself off, tightening all my muscles to stop them from trembling, and wrapped myself in a bathrobe.
I stopped in the threshold of my bedroom, taking in the space as my chest tightened. My room was too bright. It hurt my eyes with its light, and my soul—with its innocence. Decorated in creams and soft pinks, it used to be my haven, pure and full of light. But I was no longer safe, was I? Nor innocent.
I took my phone from where it lay on the bedside table and darted back in the bathroom. I settled in the dry bathtub and curled my spine against the cool porcelain. I found the video quickly, forcing myself not to look at the comments. They would be vile, and they’d make me fall apart, I knew. Even watching the video again was risky, but I had to see it without my mother looming above me. I had to know.
The woman on the screen looked at the person holding the camera, grinning loopily, but not in a way that suggested she was drunk. It was an open, genuine smile, the kind I very rarely wore, because it wasn’t the right type of smile. It wasn’t sufficiently demure.
Her pupils were blown wide, and there was a faint tick in the corner of her eye. Subtle signs of… the rape.
That was what it was. My mother would probably be appalled at me calling it that, but it was the only word that fit. I would use it, even if only in the privacy of my mind.
“I think my father’s current campaign is bullshit,” the mind-controlled me said, speaking with confidence and authority.
“He’s wasting time and money trying to regulate harmless foods millions of people in this country enjoy. He wants to overhaul the entire food production system because of a handful of falsified studies. Yes, they are all fake, and as his daughter, I know. He used to cheat at board games when I was a little girl, just so he’d win. I have no idea why so many Americans trust him!”
She rolled her eyes with exaggeration, like a spoiled teenage girl. All throughout this horrid speech, she waved her hands and gesticulated in a way I probably hadn’t done ever. Keeping my hands still and elegant had been drilled into me since age five.
When her left eyelid twitched hard, neither her smile nor her wildly gesticulating hands faltered. Whoever controlled her had her in a mental chokehold.
“He tells you it’s about the health of the nation, but it’s bullshit. All my father wants is to shut down companies that refuse to support him. And of course, since he’s a cheater, he had the data fabricated. What carcinogenic preservatives? Please! I eat products from Molson and I drink Fizzite soda every day!”
Dread pooled in my stomach as a small table laden with candy bars, sweet breakfast cereals, and purple cans of soda rolled in from the left, stopping against her knee. I knew what was coming, and it made me want to puke again even though my stomach was empty, everything already gone.
“But I have to do it in secret,” she continued with a conspiratorial smile, another expression I never wore. “My father is a snob and he doesn’t allow this type of food in the house. He has no idea how normal people eat, you know? He doesn’t even know how much food costs these days, and he wants to take away the cheapest, yummiest options on the American market. It’s a disgrace!”
She grabbed a handful of cookie-shaped cereal from an open bag and grinned into the camera. My insides twisted when she popped the entire fistful into her mouth, chewing crunchily as some spilled onto her blouse and gathered in her lap.
When she closed her eyes, releasing a sexual moan of pleasure, I cringed, my face burning from shame.
After the cereal came time for the chocolate bars. The me on screen wasn’t tidy or graceful while she ate. No, she stuffed fistfuls of chocolate in her mouth and washed it all down with loud gulps of soda, getting wet and dirty in the process. When she belched, I closed my eyes and hid my face in my knees, but thankfully, my eyes were dry.
When the video ended, I sat in the tub, biting the inside of my lip as I tried to figure out if there was anything I could do. I knew it was too late to stop the video from spreading, since it was already viral. And not just because of the things I said about my father. That alone would have made it breaking news, but the recording of me stuffing my face and belching was what must have made it spread like wildfire.
It went so hard against the image my mother and the PR team had worked on for years. Whenever I appeared in the media, everything was meticulously orchestrated to show me in just the right light. I was either riding Snowflake, dancing ballet for some kind of charity event, or standing demurely behind my father, an appropriate smile on my face.
I was always impeccable, always smiling, always silent. Just as my mother wanted.
Some magazines called me the it girl of the generation. They discussed my outfits every time I went out, theorized about what my morning routine looked like, published made-up Barbara Ashford diets and exercise regimens.
Well, all of that would end now. Starting today, all the media attention I got would be nasty and horrible. Every stumble, every mistake I made, would feed the hungry machine. I couldn’t stop it. I was the fallen princess.
Maybe there were some ways to mitigate it. The PR team would release a statement saying I was under the control of terrorists or something similar. There would be a huge, publicized investigation into whoever did this. But I couldn’t help with those things. All I was supposed to do was what I always did.
Smile. Wave. No comment.
When I slid quietly into the back seat of my car, I had myself under control so rigid, some of my muscles felt numb. When Victor, my driver, caught my eye in the rearview mirror, I gave him the best smile I could muster, which came out small and pitiful. All my resources were engaged, keeping the scream that lived in my chest from spilling.
“Are you all right, miss?” he asked, the lines around his brown eyes deepening in a worried frown.
I nodded, clenching my teeth as another wave of nausea swirled in my belly, still empty, because I couldn’t swallow even a bite of breakfast.
As we set out, slowly navigating through a horde of paparazzi camping in front of our gates, I bitterly thought how ironic it was.
My driver thought to ask me how I was, but my own mother didn’t.