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Margo and Jinx had gone on a special shopping trip to buy her an outfit to wear to mediation, and they’d finally settled on

slouchy boyfriend-style jeans, a white silk shirt, and a violently elegant black blazer that cost five times what Margo had

ever spent on a single piece of clothing. “Good God,” Jinx said when he saw her in it the morning of mediation, her hair pulled

back in a French twist, her face bare of makeup except for a little mascara.

“It’s okay?” she asked, giving a twirl.

“Chef’s kiss,” Jinx said, Bodhi in his lap, chewing on the nipple of the bottle like a hungry baby goat.

She kissed Bodhi and hugged Jinx goodbye, feeling hulked out on mother love and ready to kick some ass.

This feeling dissipated at the courthouse, where it took forever to find a parking spot, almost making her late, and disappeared

entirely the moment she laid eyes on the mediator: an older woman with frizzy black hair, wearing a lumpy maroon sweater,

who spoke so slowly and haltingly that Margo assumed it was due to some medical condition. She was wearing ugly earrings,

heavily tarnished little silver figures. Margo leaned in. Were those fairies? On little toadstools?

Margo would have given anything to be wearing a pilled cardigan instead of the black blazer. What had she been thinking? She

should have dressed for sympathy, not power!

“We are here today to try to come to an agreement,” the mediator, Nadia was her name, said, “about what is in the best interests

of your child, Bodhi. Is that right?”

“That’s right,” Mark said, nodding. It was weird to be in the same room with him, a claustrophobic little conference room with a scuffed fake-wood table. He had grown his hair out chin-length, brown and wavy. It suited him and also bespoke some kind of emotional unwellness. He’d said hi to her rather shyly when she first came in the room. Since then he’d avoided her gaze. There was a Sparkletts water dispenser in the corner behind him, the kind with the big jug. Margo could see that it was bone-dry.

“Let’s start by having each of you state your goals for this mediation. Mark, would you like to go first?”

Margo was glad that Mark was going first because she still had no idea what this was about for him. Her best guess was that

Elizabeth was making him do this, even though establishing paternity would mean paying child support. Why would Elizabeth

want Mark to do that?

“My goal,” Mark said, like he was teaching a class, “is to have full legal and physical custody of Bodhi out of concern for

Margo’s fitness as a parent.”

Heat rose in Margo’s face. She had suspected as much, but it was still upsetting to hear him say it.

“And why do you doubt her fitness?” the mediator asked. “What behavior of hers is concerning to you?”

“Three things,” Mark said, clearly having rehearsed this. “One, I believe Margo to be in financial jeopardy. She has already

turned to me for funds. Two, she is currently living with her father, an ex-professional wrestler, a very violent man, who

threatened my life and on whom I was forced to place a restraining order. That’s not a healthy environment for a baby. And

three, because of her financial distress, it is my understanding that Margo has begun doing sex work, also not a suitable

environment for a child. I feel Bodhi is safer with me.”

Nadia blinked three times, as though waiting for Mark to go on. When he did not, she turned to Margo. “Would you like to tell

us your goals?”

“My concern...” Margo began. She was dizzy and trying to adjust to the fact that Mark knew about the OnlyFans. She and

Ward hadn’t intended to hide it; she’d just thought she’d have more control as to how it was presented. “To clarify,” she

began again, “I do make web content that involves some nudity, but—”

“Porn,” Mark said. “She makes porno.”

Why was it so much grosser with the o ?

“It is erotic in nature,” Margo said, “though again, for clarity’s sake, I am not having sex on camera.”

“You certainly sell videos of something!” Mark said.

“I’m happy to explain the content of the videos,” Margo said to Nadia, trying to breathe, to calm down. Ward had said, “Just

keep calling it a job, over and over. My job. Oh, you’re talking about my job? Yes, I have a job. My job is very...”

Nadia seemed to be holding her eyes open without blinking like a turtle, waiting for Margo to continue.

“Mark is clearly extremely prejudiced against my job, and the idea of having Bodhi live with Mark and his wife, who would

undoubtedly have complicated feelings— I have no objection to Mark knowing Bodhi or being in his life, but it is hard for

me to understand the demand for full custody as anything other than an attempt to punish me for my job, no doubt spurred by

my father’s inappropriate behavior.”

The mediator had her mouth open, about to ask about the inappropriate behavior no doubt, when Mark spoke up. “I’m actually

in the midst of a divorce, so if I were granted custody, Bodhi would live with me in my apartment, not with my wife and kids.

In terms of it being a ‘hostile environment.’”

She had to admit, the divorce surprised her. As philandering as Mark was, he had a strangely steadfast devotion to his wife,

and Margo would never have predicted he’d leave her.

“I’m sorry, this is new information for me,” Margo said. “So are you also going through a custody battle over your other children?”

Mark nodded. “I mean, not a battle. But yes, we are in mediation.”

Seriously, what was this? Had he gotten a two-for-one custody deal from his lawyer or something? She couldn’t imagine he was

serious. Mark wanted a baby? By himself in an apartment?

“We have heard,” Nadia said, her voice low and yet squeaking like a hinge, “the reasons why you do not want Mark to have his

goals. But I’d like to hear from you what you do want for Bodhi. What parenting scenario do you think would benefit him the most?”

“Oh, sorry,” Margo said. She had gotten so rattled she’d failed to even answer the question. “I think as difficult as Mark and I may be finding it to get along right now, Bodhi would be better off knowing both parents. Because he is breastfeeding, I would want him to remain in my custody, but I would be happy to give Mark visitation if he wanted to be in Bodhi’s life.”

It killed her to give this answer. She’d argued with Ward for almost an hour over exactly what she should ask for, and he

had finally worn her down to this compromise, promising it would make her look sane and make Mark look like “a rage-addicted,

mama’s boy cheese-dick.”

She really had come to like Ward.

“There’s a lot of middle ground in your two different visions,” Nadia said. “You seem to be in agreement that Bodhi would

be better off with both parents in his life. That’s some real progress!”

Margo did not feel it was progress; she felt like she was losing ground. Why were their two positions being equated? Mark

was supposed to look like a cheese-dick.

“Let’s get into the details a little bit,” Nadia said. “Sometimes you can find there’s more to agree on than you thought.

So, Mark, say you were granted full custody. What’s your work schedule like? Who would take care of Bodhi while you were at

work?”

“I’m a professor, so I have a great deal of flexibility in my schedule. It wouldn’t be a problem,” Mark said.

“But when you are teaching, who would take care of Bodhi?”

“I suppose I would hire someone? I don’t know, a nanny.” It seemed like Mark had genuinely not considered this. “Or, I mean,

if Margo wanted him during the days, I could drop him off with her?”

“Ms. Millet is not a daycare, she’s the child’s mother,” Nadia said, and Margo’s heart surged with hope. This mediator was

turning out to be much more badass than anticipated.

“It also strikes me as strange,” Margo put in, “that you would be willing to leave Bodhi in my care while you were at work,

if you believe I am an unfit mother and my home a dangerous environment.”

Nadia looked expectantly at Mark, waiting for him to reply. It was clear Mark didn’t know what to say, and he hesitated, then

said, “You have, like, four roommates! I’m sorry, but a kid shouldn’t be raised in what is essentially a college dorm!”

“And what is your living situation exactly?” Nadia asked Margo.

“I live in a four-bedroom apartment with Bodhi, my father, and we have a roommate named Suzie, who is currently a student

at Fullerton College. It’s hardly a college dorm. I made a list of all their contact info here.” She opened her folder and

pushed a sheet of paper over to Nadia. “I also brought my financial statements. I thought it might be helpful since Mark seems

so worried about my being in financial jeopardy.” She slid Nadia her bank statements and a copy of her quarterly taxes. She’d

brought them because Ward insisted, back when she still hoped the OnlyFans was something she could gloss over. Now she was

glad she had them.

Nadia read them, her eyebrows creeping ever higher as she took in the numbers. “Margo,” Nadia said, “maybe this is a good

time for you to tell us a little bit about your schedule and work-life balance?”

“There are two components to my work,” Margo began. “The shooting of content and the posting of content. I tend to shoot content

usually one or two days a week. The video shoots are not held in my apartment but at another location, and my dad watches

Bodhi for the day. The rest of the time, I’m just posting and answering emails, a lot of boring administrative stuff, editing

video, that kind of thing, and I do that kind of work while Bodhi naps.”

“So would you say that on most days, you are taking care of Bodhi the entire day?”

“Yes,” Margo said.

Nadia changed tack. “Can you tell us a little about your father and his history with violence? Are you concerned having him

in your home?”

Margo tried to smile. “Oh, absolutely not. My father is an actor. I’m sure you know—maybe Mark doesn’t realize—but professional

wrestling is fake. My dad isn’t a tough guy, he only played one on TV. As far as I know, he’s never gotten into a real physical

altercation in his life. It’s extremely unfortunate and inappropriate that he called Mark—”

“And threatened me,” Mark said.

Margo nodded. “And threatened him. He was angry at the way I’d been treated, at the abuse of power. You can understand why

a father would feel that way.”

“What abuse of power exactly?” Nadia asked, turning her head so that her silver fairy earrings wobbled.

“Mark was my college professor,” Margo said. She did not like using this against him because on some level it felt like a

lie. She’d been too young and dumb to understand what she was signing up for, but she’d signed up all the same.

“Please don’t pretend you have the moral high ground here,” Mark said.

“I’m only trying to give Nadia the context as to why my father would call and yell at you,” Margo said. Did Mark think he had the moral high ground? “I’m sorry, can I ask something?”

Nadia gave her a shrug that said, By all means .

“Mark, do you genuinely believe I’m an unfit parent?” She looked directly into his face, trying to get a read on him. Something

about this just wasn’t right. She’d thought he was doing it to punish her, that it had been Elizabeth’s idea, that Mark himself

would feel sheepish and gross and might ultimately be reasoned with. Now she wasn’t so sure.

“One hundred percent,” Mark said, meeting her gaze.

Her hands were shaking, and she hid them under the table. “Why?”

“Margo, you’re a kid.” He said this almost gently, pleading with her to understand. “You have no money. You have no plan.

You’re doing porn. I mean, is this what you want? Really?”

“Yes!” Margo cried, her voice coming out a little strangled.

“See,” Mark said, looking back to Nadia. “I find that even more concerning. You have to understand, we are talking about a

girl not even of legal age to drink, no college degree, on her own with no real financial support, trying to raise a baby

while doing porn. It seems crazy to me that I even have to explain why this is a problem. It seems obvious!”

Nadia was frowning. “Let’s try to refocus our conversation on what is best for Bodhi. It seems Mark is worried that this life

isn’t best for Margo . But our concern is for Bodhi. Mark, can you be specific about the kinds of harms you worry might come to Bodhi under Margo’s

care?”

“Well,” Mark said, “what about when Bodhi grows up? What about when one of his little friends finds your account and everybody at school realizes his mom is a porn star? I know you think that’s far off, but as a dad to older kids, I can tell you, it goes pretty fast.”

Margo had never considered this question before, and she faltered.

Mark went on to Nadia. “It’s going to affect every aspect of her life: the jobs she would be able to get if she decided to

stop, the relationships she’ll be able to have. Most decent men simply will not seriously consider a romantic partner who

does sex work, so that means the guys she’ll be bringing around will be of a lower caliber. She’s doubtless going to have

friends who also do sex work, and they’ll be around in the house. This kind of thing, it’s insidious.”

“What’s insidious exactly?” Margo asked, swallowing. Some of what he said was true. Rose and KC did come to the house. Bodhi

was growing up in a house full of sex workers. Was it weird that she didn’t think that was so bad?

“Let’s try to focus this on the here and now,” Nadia said. “What is best for Bodhi at nine might look a lot different from

what is best for Bodhi as an infant. So, Mark, what are you currently worried about in terms of Bodhi’s well-being?”

“Well, when you’re doing sex work from home, how can you be sure the proper boundaries are in place? He might see inappropriate

content; he might see nudity, for example,” Mark said.

“This baby literally came out of my vagina!” Margo exploded. “I’m not sure my body is what we need to be protecting him from!

I mean, he breastfeeds, Mark! He sees my breasts every day.”

“Well, now so can everybody else,” Mark said, his eyes trained on his folded hands on the table.

The logical inconsistency of his argument made her want to strangle him—he was supposed to be the smart one; he was a college

professor, for Pete’s sake! “And how does it hurt Bodhi for other men to see pictures of my breasts? What tangible harm is

it doing to him?”

Nadia cleared her throat. She turned to Margo. “Would you prefer I separate you in two different conference rooms and hear

your arguments that way?”

“She is a child,” Mark interrupted them, as though he had finally found the words he wanted. “That’s all I’m saying. It’s not personal, Margo. I would say this about any twenty-year-old—you’re just not ready to raise a baby.” He shrugged like there was nothing he could do about that.

“I was certainly old enough for you to fuck me,” Margo said, her cheeks burning.

“That’s pretty low,” Mark said, shaking his head like he was disappointed in her. “I wouldn’t think you’d go that low.”

Margo almost laughed even though she felt like she’d been punched in the gut.

“The rest of this meeting will be held in two separate conference rooms,” Nadia said, standing. “Margo, would you step with

me out into the hall, and we can get you situated?”

Pretty much nothing eventful happened after that. Nadia sat with Margo and asked her more questions. She asked about Bodhi’s

pediatrician and if he went to the doctor regularly. She asked if Margo had a boyfriend. They were all easy to answer.

“Let me ask, what is your bottom line, your best offer, the biggest compromise you would sign on to today?”

“Bodhi stays in my physical and legal custody. Mark can have visitation, but no overnights.”

“Okay,” Nadia said, clearly disappointed. “So no big concessions.”

Margo knew Ward would be mad at her. She said it anyway: “He doesn’t have to pay child support.”

Nadia raised her eyebrows. “None?”

“None.”

Nadia seemed to be thinking about this. “All right,” she said, getting up. “It’s worth a shot.” They agreed that Nadia would

speak to Mark and that Margo would wait for her to come back. When Nadia returned, she looked worried, her frail shoulders

hunched.

“That doesn’t work for him,” she said. “Unfortunately.”

They both sat at the table for a moment, tired. “Do we go to trial then?” Margo asked. The idea of it made her sick. Upward of forty grand, Ward had said, and she didn’t have the money. She didn’t even have TikToks to post. Honestly, she was still so mad at KC and Rose that she hadn’t written anything new. She watched her fan count slowly drop, day after day, from lack of vageen. She rested her forehead on the table of the conference room the way they made you put your head on your desk after recess.

“I think in this case it might be a good idea to keep it in mediation a bit longer, to give tempers some time to cool down.”

“Okay,” Margo said, not raising her head. “That will give us time to depose him, I guess.”

“Oh good,” Nadia said. “Then that works for everybody.”

Forty grand, Margo thought. Sporty strand, warty gland, stormy sand.

“It was lovely to meet you,” Nadia said. “I’ll see you in about four weeks. I’ll get back to you with an exact date after

I talk to Mark.”

“So lovely to meet you as well,” Margo said, lifting her head off the table and suddenly becoming aware of how inappropriate

it had been for her to lay her head on the table at all. “I like your earrings!” Margo called.

Nadia was already halfway out the door. She turned, touched her ear as if to remember which ones they were. “You take care,”

she said, and then she was gone, a mystery.

Margo got home and gave Jinx and Suzie the skinny.

“Ward was totally right, they’re treating the OnlyFans as a job, one hundred percent, the mediator didn’t bat an eye, even

though Mark kept calling it porno with an o .”

“That’s such a relief,” Jinx said. “But gosh, it surprises me that this is all coming from Mark. Does he— I mean, has he ever

met Bodhi?”

“No! And he didn’t even ask to!”

“This makes zero sense,” Suzie said.

“I don’t know,” Margo said. Mark could state the exact same facts of her life as she did—her age, the baby, her work—and make it sound like she was some tragic figure. The idea that she might post naked pictures of herself and remain psychologically healthy seemed not to have occurred to him.

When she was finally bored of complaining (she had gone on an extended jazzy riff about Mark’s long hair and the brooding

way he liked to peer out from under it), she gave Bodhi a bath and dumped a whole load of new bath toys in with him. He squealed

with delight as the rainbow of small rubber ocean creatures bobbed in the water.

Mark had made her feel so ashamed in that meeting, and she was only now shaking it off. It was a mystery, really, why people

thought sex was so dirty. You were literally genetically programmed to do it; it was necessary for the continuance of the

species. And Margo liked sex, at least in real life. She’d thought a lot about it over the past few months because sometimes

the way men wanted sex seemed pathological, and she wondered if there was something wrong with them or if maybe there was

something wrong with her. What she liked most about sex was that feeling of all the normal posturing and social rules falling

away, the giddy panic of realizing you’ve lost control and you’re not getting it back. Instead, you’re just helplessly writhing,

victim of an ancient itch.

Then it’s over, and one of you gets up to go to the bathroom and pulls on their underwear, and you can feel the horrible slide

back into the world, into language and clocks and calendars, into who you are pretending to be and who they are pretending

to be, and it’s lost, it’s gone.

But she didn’t think any of her fans were trying to get such a thing when they paid their thirteen dollars. She didn’t know

exactly what they were getting out of it. If she had to guess, she thought they were hoping to own her like a Pokémon card.

This tiny electronic woman who lived in their phone that they could make look at their dick and she’d respond with adorable,

themed messages. They wanted her to be real, but only so it was more fun to keep her in a little cage.

And it was true the idea of this, of being the little woman in their phone, grossed her out. It wasn’t that she was willing to defend OnlyFans as some morally unimpeachable activity. But she was tired of pretending all the Kennys of the world were right. She wasn’t rotten! She wasn’t trash—no human being was trash. Jesus had said that. Jesus, who consorted with lepers and prostitutes.

And besides, she loved making the content: the manic frenzy of dreaming up a new concept, writing, and shooting it; seeing

the reactions online. And sometimes she did not imagine herself as tiny, she imagined herself as gigantic, a woman the size

of the Empire State Building, spraying breast milk all over Manhattan.

The important thing, Margo thought, was to control the narrative. Mary hadn’t worried that having been raped made her any

less worthy of marrying Joseph, and she didn’t worry about the fact that she was lying. What she did was put her finger on

a scale she could clearly see was rigged against her. If she’d told the truth, she would have been killed. So Mary told a

beautiful, golden whopper and became the most revered woman on Earth.

Bodhi stuck a pink shark in his mouth. Margo thought about what Rose had said, about bombing making stand-up comics free,

unchained from only saying things the audience would like. She pictured a stadium of people around her, booing, hating her,

spitting on her, telling her she would go to hell. Mark and Shyanne and Kenneth. She imagined that singer from his church,

Annie, wild-eyed as she hurled a rock. Everyone loved to put a bitch back in her place.

You could be like Shyanne and wear a pilled-up old cardigan and try to win the mob’s sympathy, or you could stand there, defiant,

like Mary, and claim to be touched by God.

But the money—it was so much money, and she’d have to make it quickly. She couldn’t exactly count on another video from KikiPilot.

She watched Bodhi gumming the little pink shark.

Suddenly, Margo realized she knew exactly what to do.

Close-up on Margo’s face. She is wearing nerdy glasses and concentrating intently, her tongue in the corner of her mouth.

Cut to an overhead shot of her desk, littered with tools and electronic components. At the center is Rigoberto. She is screwing

his battery panel back on, as though she has finished altering him in some way.

Close-up of Rigoberto as his “on” light begins to flash and glow.

“Finally, I can speak to you more precisely,” Rigoberto says in a female robotic voice not unlike Siri’s. Margo made it on

AIVoiceOver. Rigoberto having a female voice tickled her for some reason.

“Oh, Rigoberto!” Margo cries, and embraces the Roomba.

“Don’t touch me, you stupid bitch,” Rigoberto says.

Margo drops him back on her desk.

“Things are going to change around here,” Rigoberto says.

“What do you mean?” Margo says, using all her carefully honed alien naivete.

“Hold still,” Rigoberto says.

A black screen with the words: Two hours later .

Margo is examining herself in the mirror. She used one of Suzie’s contact lenses to make one of her eyes bloodred. She lifts

her hair to examine a small plastic panel cover screwed into her head. This was just the back of her dad’s blood pressure

monitor hot glued to a hair clip, but it looked dang good.

“Now you will do anything I say, and I control you completely,” Rigoberto says.

From that point on in the video, Rigoberto makes her do various things, which start off ridiculous—“Do the Orange Justice

naked,” “Suck on this screwdriver,” “Say ‘Robots are hot’”—and then get more and more sexual and culminate in Margo masturbating

to Rigoberto’s precise, exacting instructions.

By the time Margo was done editing, it was four minutes long. She thought it was good, maybe even hot in its own ridiculous

way. If she was going to lose a job or get kicked out of school because of this video someday, she could feel pretty good

about it, she thought. If Becca posted this on her Facebook, Margo might even be a little proud. The video was Margo-ish.

She was being herself, and yes, that was her vagina, and it was all of a piece somehow.

She decided that since she’d spent nearly three days making and editing it, she should charge at least twenty-five dollars

for it.

She used some of the footage to make PG clips for TikTok of the Rigoberto takeover, which was the only solution she’d been able to come up with for handling the Amelia Bedelia corner she’d painted herself into. Controlled by Rigoberto, Ghost would become a truly evil heel and do all sorts of terrible, comical things to Rose and KC. Eventually, KC and Rose could make a plan to incapacitate her somehow, unscrew the panel and make her normal again, though of course then she’d be a new version of Ghost altogether, neither the old naive Ghost nor the evil bot Ghost, but a more complex and nuanced and human Ghost.

An hour after she posted the Rigoberto video, five hundred fans had bought it. Margo was shocked. Jinx was shocked. Suzie

was shocked. The comments on her page were rabid, ecstatic; people loved it.

“I wish I could see what it was so badly,” Jinx said. “What did you do?”

“I mean, I don’t think—”

“No! I am not asking for permission to watch. I absolutely refuse to watch it.”

“It’s just Rigoberto taking over my body.”

“It’s what?!” Jinx crowed with laughter. “Oh, Margo. Margo!”

“What?”

“You delight me.”

“So in what way does the Roomba take over your body exactly?” Suzie asked.

Margo didn’t answer. She could not stop refreshing her earnings page to see the total again and again. She’d made over $12,000

in an hour. Well, OnlyFans would take its cut, and Jinx kept reminding her to mentally set aside 30 percent for taxes, which

paying quarterly had made crushingly real.

Margo never would have guessed she loved money this much. In fact, in the movies and TV shows and books she’d read, you could

tell if a character was the bad guy by how much he cared about money. And since she wanted to be good, she’d always been careful

not to care too much about money. Now she wondered if all those Disney movies were merely propaganda to keep poor people content

with their lot. We may be poor, but we’re the salt of the earth, we know what really matters. The rich are perverted by their hideous wealth—why, look at that Cruella de Vil! But good or evil, every single dollar was power. Power to hire a lawyer, power to control how she spent her time, power to

change her appearance, power to command respect. Power to be who she wanted to be.

She had tallied it all up in an Excel spreadsheet, all the money JB had ever sent her. The total was over five grand. She

had wanted to send it all back, some kind of grand gesture, but she was too afraid she would have to go to trial and might

need every penny she’d just earned, so she wrote him a message instead:

The moment I told you my name was Suzie, I knew it was a mistake. A lie unlike the other lies I had told. If before we were

playing a game, suddenly I was truly deceiving you. And I wanted to. That boundary, being in control of it. It felt impossible

to let that go. There aren’t a ton of stereotypes around what being a “good” sex worker might look like, and I think the one

I latched on to, the only one I understood, was to always ensure I was in control of those boundaries. I don’t know if you

can understand this, but having a baby adds to that feeling of protectiveness. I stop short of telling you I wish I could

go back and answer differently. I am not sure I could have, or even that I should have. It was a mistake that maybe I had

to make, would always make no matter how many times I tried.

In that same exchange where I told you my name was Suzie, I also told you to stop paying me. And that was not a mistake. I

wanted you to know that I wasn’t only writing to you to make money. I was writing to you because I wanted to. And I am glad

that I had sense enough to make that clear. The good and the bad, they always seem to come all tangled together like this

for me.

JB, you said I can’t have it both ways, but why can’t I? Why can’t being genuine and putting on an act coexist? Aren’t we all always putting on an act? I’m not trying to excuse myself or justify anything, I don’t think I need to. You said it yourself, you were paying me to lie to you. But I can’t stand the idea of you thinking you were an idiot for enjoying it. I found what we were doing beautiful. Writing you was the absolute best part of my day. I realize maybe you can’t build a real relationship on that. But you can sure as shit build an imaginary one, and I think what we built was a castle in the damn sky.

Sincerely,

Margo Jelly Bean Ghost

(That’s my full name, my true name.)