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In Mark’s course on narrative, I spoke during exactly one class period. It was the week we read Gogol’s “The Nose.”

“What exactly does this story have to do with narrative perspective?” Derek asked. “Isn’t it third-person omniscient?”

“That’s a good question,” Mark said. “What do you think?”

Mark had gestured to the class as a whole, but Derek responded as though Mark were talking only to him. “I just told you—it’s

third person about some guy whose nose runs away.”

Mark nodded, as if conceding this was true. He was much more patient than I would have been. “Let me ask you,” he said, “when

Gogol describes the nose walking around Saint Petersburg, what did you picture? Was it still nose-sized, scurrying around

like a mouse? Was it the size of a person? How exactly was it capable of wearing an officer’s uniform?”

“I pictured a giant nose with legs,” a girl named Brittany said.

There were some murmurs of assent, people who pictured a giant nose; others had pictured a man who just was the nose while looking like a normal man, and some had pictured a man’s body with a giant nose for a head. Everyone had pictured

the nose a different way, but no matter how they pictured it, Mark pointed out a place in the text that contradicted what

they had imagined. If the nose was big, how could it be baked into a loaf of bread? If the nose was small, how could it wear

an officer’s uniform or exit a tram car?

“The point here,” Mark said, “is that it is possible to form sentences that make sense syntactically but still don’t make

meaning. Words can be made hollow, and once they are hollow, anything can be done with them.”

“I still don’t understand,” Derek said. “How is this related to point of view?”

“That’s because you didn’t read to the end,” I said, not even aware I was speaking out loud.

Mark barked out a laugh, then covered his mouth with his fist, his happy eyes watching, excited to see what would come next.

“I read to the end,” Derek said uncertainly.

“Then you are aware that the story is actually in first person?”

“Wait, what?”

“At the end, the narrator begins addressing the reader in first person, about how he doesn’t even understand the story he’s

been telling, which you know can’t be true or else why would he be telling it?”

“I’m not sure that negates my point, though,” Derek said. “I mean, it was in third person for most of the story.”

Really, he was remarkable. Mark looked at me and grinned, hopeful perhaps that I would tear Derek apart. Personally, I wasn’t

sure it was worth my time.

“Well,” I said, “you have to think outside the box when you’re confronted with this kind of perfect storm of a can of worms.”

Mark laughed so hard and loud it made Derek jump a little.

“But you have to keep in mind,” I said, “what comes around goes around and you can take it or leave it, but every rose has

its thorn.”

“Uh... okay?” Derek said.

Mark was still losing it, giggling in a girlish way, his face covered with both hands.

“Really,” the boy next to me said, catching on to the joke, “I think this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.”

“What is going on?!” Derek whined, aware we were making fun of him even if he still didn’t get the joke. His instincts were

so bizarre. I could only guess he was the youngest of a group of siblings.

It went on that way for a bit longer, with people telling Derek to buck up, that he could cross that bridge when he came to

it. Later, when Mark and I started sleeping together, we would speak nonsense to each other as a weird kind of love language.

“The ace up my sleeve keeps adding insult to injury,” he would say. “You air your dirty laundry against all odds,” I would

reply.

It felt like that, the custody battle. Like all the words had stopped being attached to anything. We were reduced to “Petitioner” and “Respondent.” And maybe Mark would be able to stack up his meaningless words higher than mine, even though I was the only one who loved Bodhi. But there were no words on any of these forms for love. Nowhere did it ask you how the baby’s head smelled or whether you would be willing to die for the baby.

When we retained Ward, we decided to move forward with mediation. I was hoping the courts would be so backed up we wouldn’t

get an appointment for months, but our appointment was only two weeks away. And so each day was converted from normal life

into a countdown to unthinkable loss.

Meanwhile, there was still more work than I could possibly do, and for hours and hours each day I was looking at pictures

of dicks and writing things like, Whoa! That is a Bulbasaur that would leave any lady sore! Each penis was so isolated, the only thing in the frame, and they seemed like a series of blind, hairless, oddly defiant

little critters. Would it be so different if these men were sending me pictures of their noses? Close-ups of oily pores, isolated

little snouts. It felt that strange and dislocated.

I saw my mother’s wedding as a series of Facebook posts. Her account was totally public, so I could view them from my HungryGhost

account even though I’d deleted my personal one. She wore the Diane von Furstenberg. I had written her right after the doxxing

saying I was sorry, sorry for lying to her and sorry for making trouble with Kenny. When she didn’t respond, I was a little

relieved.

For comfort I wrote JB a three-page email about when I’d thrown up shrimp at the eighth-grade dance because I didn’t know

you weren’t supposed to eat the tails. Once it was sent, I reread it two times to luxuriate in imagining him reading it, lingering

on the places I hoped he would laugh.

Then I watched videos of people jumping out of planes in wing suits, their tiny forms gliding over fantastic landscapes. There

was something about the wrongness of it I found soothing, the fact that they’d snuck out of the world and gotten into a place

they were never supposed to be: the sky. It was like if a period had climbed off its sentence and begun flying over the page.

This is definitely one of those sections I will have to tell in third person:

Margo was eating Crunch Berries in the dark when her phone rang. Jinx had relented about the healthy cereal only out of pity

for her and guilt over threatening Mark. It was midnight.

“Hello?” she said, though she knew who it was. She had given JB her number as soon as she got his message. He had written:

So you’re from California and you don’t have a brother named Timmy and your mom is named Shyanne and you have a baby? On Instagram,

someone said, ‘@MargoMillet, this you?’ and I clicked, and sure enough, it was you! Margo. Such a mango of a name! Why would

you call yourself Suzie of all things? It doesn’t suit you. Jesus. Margo, why am I so gut punched? I’m not even mad, I just

feel like an idiot. Like, of course you were lying. I was stupid to think that you weren’t. I was paying a girl to pretend

to fall in love with me, and I got confused and fell in love instead. I’m an idiot.

She had written back without thinking: You are not an idiot.

Then she had given him her number and told him to call her right then. “Hey, it’s JB.” His voice was lower, more raspy than

she would have guessed.

“Hey,” she said. “Are you okay?”

He gave a brittle laugh. “Not really.”

She wasn’t sure if he sounded drunk or like he’d been crying.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“No,” he said. “Fantasy production is your whole job. Like, it’s what you are paid to do. You didn’t do anything wrong. I

was the one who got lost in it.”

“I think I got lost in it too, though.”

“Don’t say that,” he said, his tone suddenly sharp. “I can’t— Like, don’t try to make me feel better. It makes it worse. Because

I can’t tell what’s real. I need to wake up from it, you know?”

Margo hesitated. She didn’t want to throw it all away simply because it wasn’t true. That would be a waste. “JB, the big parts were a lie, but you should know the little parts were true. Like I really did throw up shrimp at the eighth-grade dance. And I loved writing those messages, none of that was fake. I need you to know that.”

He sighed and his breath was ragged. She could tell he was moving, pacing around his house.

“You have a fucking kid, Margo! Like sure, the little things were true, I can see that, but having a kid is a pretty big thing

to lie about!”

“I know,” she said, and slumped back in the hard wooden dining chair. Because it was the biggest thing, a thing so magnificent

and huge and altering she wasn’t even sure how it could be truly communicated to someone who had never experienced it. And

he was a young guy. Kids weren’t even on his radar yet.

“Look, Margo, I don’t have any idea who you are now. You know every single little thing about me, and I don’t know anything

about you.”

“Listen, JB, obviously this is not how I wanted you to find out. But you have to look at it from my side. When you first

wrote to me, like, if you could even see my inbox you would understand. Right next to your message is, like, guys telling

me they are going to use a cheese grater on my vagina. Lying was a self-protective thing, like, it would have been reckless

for me to spill my guts to you.”

“I get that,” he said. “But there have been so many points since the beginning! You could have said, ‘Hey, I lied to you,

and I want to tell you the truth now.’”

“I know, and I wanted to!”

“Even when I asked you for your name, you lied,” he said. “So you can’t go and say now, oh but really it was real. That’s

bullshit. Right? You can’t have it both ways.”

“Listen,” she said, struggling to regain control, “you’re a client. You are the coolest, funniest, most interesting client

I have. But you’re a client—and—”

“Exactly,” JB said. “Thank you for finally being honest.”

“JB,” Margo said, closing her eyes again, like she could find him there in the dark. Everything was getting all twisted around. “I mean, I have to prioritize my safety, I have to—JB?”

But there was only silence, not even the hum of connection: flat, dead silence. He was gone.

It was almost shocking, how difficult it was to keep going after that phone call. Margo had been unaware that JB had been

so central to her happiness. After all, sometimes she’d look at their situation and think they were strangers playing a game,

a kind of online poker of the heart, her lies no more morally problematic than a bluff in cards. Other times, she’d look at

their relationship and think it was too real, that what they were doing was bigger and deeper and stranger than real.

“All things that are genuinely interesting aren’t quite real,” Mark had said. It was almost frustrating, really, how right

that stupid little man had been about so many things. And now whatever was between her and JB, real or unreal, was over. It

felt like a portent. Like this was the beginning of things going horribly wrong.

I left Bodhi at home with Jinx for that week’s shoot at KC and Rose’s place. Bodhi had a Gymboree class, and Jinx agreed to

take him. Gymboree was a brightly lit space padded with blue tumbling mats where women were paid to sing songs to babies and

blow bubbles on them to... encourage them to crawl? I wasn’t certain, but it made me feel like an extremely good mother

whenever I took him there. Suzie called in sick to work so she could come with me as camerawoman. That was one thing I had

not appreciated or understood about Suzie before all of this. The girl was always aggressively down.

On the way to Huntington Beach we stopped for beef jerky and blue Slurpees. Suzie had her bare feet up on the dash as we listened to J Dilla beats, stuttering and doubled as our hearts. We were wearing sunglasses. I had been doxxed and lost both my mother and the client who made up a staggering proportion of my income, but I was also twenty years old, going seventy miles an hour on the freeway, hopped up on sugar and preserved meat, about to shoot TikToks that would hopefully make me thousands and thousands of dollars.

“Thanks for calling in sick again,” I said.

“About that,” Suzie said, “I’ve been fired.”

“Oh shit, Suzie! I’m so sorry!”

“I was just wondering, like”—Suzie hesitated, clearly nervous—“if I could be paid for the hours I work on the TikToks? Or

the hours I take care of Bodhi?”

“Of course,” I rushed to say. It suddenly seemed obscene that I hadn’t already been paying her. How had I not noticed that

Suzie was working almost as many hours as me and making nothing for it while I made thousands of dollars? “We’ll figure it

out, like I don’t know what’s fair, an hourly or some kind of percentage, but we’ll talk to Jinx when we get back.”

Suzie was visibly elated and that felt good. She rolled down her window, and I turned up the music, glad I wouldn’t have to

talk, because while I felt it was the right thing to do, I was getting awfully comfortable making financial commitments I

was in no way sure I could honor. The four hundred new fans I’d gotten from the KikiPilot video were a huge boon, but that

was still only five grand, and it hadn’t even cleared my bank account yet. I’d paid Ward’s $10k retainer, and who knew how

much more I’d have to pay if it went to court. I had more money than I’d ever had in my life, yet somehow it never seemed

to be enough. Still, I would make sure I had a way to pay Suzie. I would figure it out. We would shoot new TikToks and take

advantage of the momentum we’d already built.

When we arrived at KC and Rose’s, there was a dude there just chilling on their couch, Biotch curled like a hairy shrimp in

his lap. He was an extremely tall and pasty white boy who, when he smiled, revealed a huge gold grille. “This is Steve,” KC

said, before flopping back down on the couch, scooting her head in his lap next to Biotch.

“What it do?” Steve said, holding up a fist.

I reluctantly gave him knucks. “Are we not shooting today?”

“Were we shooting today?” KC asked. “Dude, I’m so out of it. We did mushrooms, like, all night, I don’t know if I can handle

it.”

“This is the day,” I said. “Jinx is watching Bodhi, like, this is the day.”

Steve looked up at me and smiled again. “Baby girl needs a nap, you feel me?” He was wearing a Dodgers hat and a thick gold

chain with a dangling gold pendant of a marijuana leaf. I went into the kitchen to find Rose, Suzie trailing behind me.

“What is the deal with Snoop Dork out there?” I asked, pitching my voice low. Rose had just put coffee on, and the pot gurgled

and hissed.

“Ugh, I know,” Rose said. “They’re driving me crazy. They have sex, like, eight times a day, it’s disgusting.”

“Are we still gonna shoot?” Suzie asked.

“We have to shoot something!” I said. We literally had no new content to post.

“Could we shoot stuff just you and me?” Rose asked.

“I mean, I wrote it for the three of us!” I sat down at their kitchen table and tried to think if I could rewrite some of

the skits so they didn’t involve KC. It was difficult to imagine. Rose’s character was great as a counterpoint to KC, but

KC was the one generating a lot of the conflict. I hadn’t written a single script that was me and Rose, and I was realizing

there might be a reason for that.

Rose sat at the table and set down massive pink mugs for all of us. She gestured for Suzie to sit.

“Now, don’t take this the wrong way,” Rose said, “but I just wonder if this isn’t a blessing in disguise—like maybe it will

give us a chance to think of some new ideas! When we got the scripts for this week, they were kind of blah, you know?”

“Blah?”

“Like, every single one was something we’ve done before in a way. Like Ghost eats something bad, KC and Rose are exasperated,

they try to teach her something human, it goes comically wrong.” She pulled her fingers like a rake through her long platinum

hair. “I think we need something fresh, something new.”

I do not know how to explain this or justify it or make myself seem like less of a baby, but when she said this, I started

crying.

“I’m sorry!” I said, covering my face with my hands.

“Sweetheart, this is not a criticism of you!” Rose said.

“I know,” I said, my face still hidden in my hands. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get my chin to stop shaking.

“We don’t expect you to be some TikTok genius who never gets it wrong!”

“I know,” I said, and gulped. But I had wanted to be a TikTok genius more than anything.

“We’ll all try to think of ideas,” Rose said. “It shouldn’t have to be you all the time.”

“I’ve gotta go pee,” I said, standing before she could say anything more, scurrying down the hall and locking myself in their

bathroom.

There was a used condom floating in the toilet. I put the lid down and sat anyway. They didn’t want me to even write the TikToks

anymore. I couldn’t breathe. They had all known. Even fucking Snoop Dork had probably read that script and said, “Yo, these

TikToks are kinda whack!”

Everyone had always known, could see that there was something about me that wasn’t worth investing in. The way they could

so easily throw me away. Mark, Becca, my old boss Tessa. My own mother, who must have once loved me as much as I loved Bodhi—a

few naked photos and I was out of her life. And why shouldn’t I be? I was a liar and a whore. I’d alienated literally everyone

in my life except my ex-addict pro wrestler dad, who was like, “Attagirl, keep selling those nudes!”

And JB. Precious, neurotic, Rocky Road–loving JB in his pearl necklace with his wild mane of dark hair and clerk-befriending

mother. “You can’t have it both ways,” he’d said. But both ways was sometimes the truth, wasn’t it? I couldn’t tell if I was

trying to keep lying to him or to myself. Either way, I had fucked it all up, and now he was gone.

I stared at myself in the mirror, being dramatic as hell, for a solid ninety seconds, but then I had to blow my nose because

snot was dripping down my upper lip. I needed to pee, but I couldn’t stand the idea of a sea turtle dying because it tried

to eat Snoop Dork’s used condom, and in order to use their toilet I’d have to fish it out. So I decided to just pee when we

got home. Although then someone else would flush it. Finally, I gave in and fished it out with the toilet brush and peed.

When I went back to the kitchen, I swung my purse up onto my shoulder. “So Suzie and I will drive back then, and I’ll come up with some new ideas!” I said. I knew my voice sounded fake happy. It was the best I could do.

“Sweetie, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” Rose cooed. Sometimes her saccharine nature really made my teeth itch.

“Not at all,” I said. “It’s important to get constructive feedback like that. I don’t want to post a bunch of crappy TikToks

and ruin what we’ve got going on!”

“Yeah.” Rose nodded. “Okay.”

“I’ll let you know,” I said. Suzie was up and ready by my side.

“And I’ll try to think of ideas too!” Rose said. “It shouldn’t be just you!”

I tried not to flinch. “Please do!” I said, grabbing my sunglasses from my purse and putting them on.

And then Suzie and I drove home, the salt drying tight on my face beneath my sunglasses in the car’s AC.

“I don’t know if this helps,” Suzie said after twenty minutes of silence. “But I think I’m in a position to be fairly objective,

and about eighty percent of what Rose was saying was to shift blame off of herself and KC and onto you, and maybe only twenty

percent because the TikToks were lackluster.”

“No,” I said reflexively. “I doubt it was that.”

“For real,” she said. “The TikToks were fine. Maybe not explosively new, but they were totally fine.”

“I didn’t think they were so bad,” I said, “that it would be better to have no TikToks than those TikToks.”

“It would have been way better to film the ones you wrote. I mean, they were better than ninety-nine percent of the shit that

gets posted on there. They just weren’t, like, a step up. They weren’t mind-blowing.”

I nodded. It hurt, though I could see now that they were repetitions of gags we’d already done, dynamics we’d already explored.

“It’s hard,” Suzie said. “You’ve set the bar pretty damn high.”

“You are so nice to me.” I sighed, because frankly I wasn’t sure I deserved to have someone be this nice to me.

We made it back in time for Jinx and me to take Bodhi to Gymboree together. We clapped Bodhi’s little hands as ladies blew bubbles on us and dropped silk scarves so they floated beautifully down, and Bodhi screeched in delight.

The sadness from the morning didn’t exactly go away; it dried on me and slowly crumbled, leaving me covered in little flakes,

like if you eat a glazed donut in a black shirt. That was how it was being a grown-up. We were all moving through the world

like that, like those river dolphins that look pink only because they’re so covered in scars.