Page 11

Eleven

AIMES

Aimes can’t sleep that night. To be fair, it’s been a while since she’s been able to sleep naturally; these days, she has to take a melatonin pill if she wants to not lie awake in bed for at least an hour before drifting off to sleep, and twice a week, she makes sure she goes to sleep quickly by polishing off a cheeky glass of wine, or two. She likes to think of it as a “cheeky” glass, even though she’s nowhere near British enough to pull off the word “cheeky.” But it makes it sound cuter rather than the beginnings of a potential drinking problem.

Tonight, Aimes has opted for the melatonin pill instead of wine. She’s eaten so much at dinner that two glasses won’t do a thing now, and she really can’t afford to go for a third glass. She’s got enough problems as it is. Like the fact that Vera is connected to Officer Gray. What are the chances of that? Just her luck that the random old lady who had randomly found her at a café happens to be Officer Gray’s mother-in-law. Or mother-in-law-to-be. Whatever, same thing.

Aimes turns around in her bed and buries her face in her pillow, willing the memories to stay away. Except, of course, they do the exact opposite of that. She recalls the day that Officer Gray paid her a visit. The horrible, sinking feeling when she saw Officer Gray standing there at her doorstep. They’d connected her with Xander. Of course they had, even though in her wildest dreams she’d hoped against hope that they might’ve missed that connection. How could they have? She and Xander had wanted the whole world to know that they were dating. It was their thing. The smart thing to do, she had said, and he had agreed. Not so smart now, are you? a small, awful voice says in her head.

More memories. Her and Xander propping her phone up on a stand and posing in front of it, laughing. Her surprise at how natural it all felt, how real. Even their banter with each other felt natural. Him donning a long blond wig and pretending to act like her, strutting everywhere and going, “OMG it’s fall season! Give me a PSL, STAT!” until she laughed so hard that a drop of pee came out. They’d had fun, hadn’t they? They weren’t just lies, there had been something real underneath it all, no matter how flimsy.

With a groan, Aimes gives up trying to fall asleep and reaches out to turn the bedside lamp on. She knocks a couple of trinkets onto the floor before finding the light switch. Aimes’s room, like the rest of her tiny apartment, is filled with useless knickknacks. Promotional material sent over by sponsors for her to peddle to her followers. There are so many of the damn things, it’s overwhelming. Even the table lamp is a free gift from a clay potter who has fifty thousand followers online and wants her to help promote him. It’s in the shape of a hand holding an umbrella. Aimes hates it, but her followers had gone crazy over it when she posted it to her Stories, so it’s here to stay. Every time she gropes around in the dark to turn it on, though, she shudders when her fingers brush the lamp’s fingers. Blergh . It’s like having someone’s severed hand on your nightstand. Why would anyone want that? Why does she still have it? Because. Because her followers love it. Because she is terrified that if she threw it away and she posts a photo from her bedroom and her followers see it is missing, they’d know. They’d know what a fake she is. And that is why Aimes’s apartment is filled to the gills with things she hates. Including herself.

Dim light spills across the room. Aimes locates her phone, unplugs it, and settles back in bed with it. She opens Instagram. Fifty-seven DMs and over three hundred notifications from the last time she checked, which was less than an hour ago. Aimes’s eyebrows knit together. That is way more messages than she typically gets in an hour. The notifications used to trigger endorphins, the likes nourishing her as tiny little pieces of vitamin C would. But now, the sight of the notifications and unread messages only makes Aimes feel overwhelmed. She taps on the DMs.

OMG Aimes, just heard abt Xan, are you ok??

AIMES I LOVE YOU NO MATTER WHAT!

OMG I’m literally in tears writing this.

Aimes’s stomach sours. Oh no. It’s happening. She opens DM after DM, only half reading them, the sense of dread seeping even deeper as she scrolls. Then one of them makes her stop. It has a link, and the message reads: Is this true????

The link leads Aimes off Instagram and onto TikTok. When it opens, Aimes’s heart stops for a second. It’s a video of Vera. A video that Aimes had shot just earlier this evening but somehow already has over one hundred thousand views.

In the video, Vera makes tea calmly. The camera zooms in on her weathered hands mixing the ingredients, then pans out to take in the small, loving smile on her face. Aimes isn’t surprised by how good the footage looks. She remembers getting sucked in herself while watching Vera, marveling at how comforting it is to watch her do something as simple as brewing tea. No, the footage isn’t what bothers her. It’s the audio. Vera has added a voice-over of herself narrating as she makes the tea.

“What happen to Xander Lin?” Vera’s voice says, full of suspicion and maternal concern. “Xander Lin was a social media star, many of you probably follow him. But police find him dead, and what is more suspicious, he is called John Doe by police. Because it turn out Xander Lin is not his real name. So, what is? And why does it seem like nobody know who is the real Xander Lin? Join me, Vera Wong from Vera Wang’s World-Famous Teahouse, as I investigate Xander’s death. Is it murder? I don’t know, but we will have good tea and good food as we look into murder. I mean death. But also possibly murder.”

For a second, Aimes almost throws up. She feels bile rush up her esophagus and lightly thump her chest, then swallows it. Oh god. This is bad. She needs to put a stop to this. But although Aimes has only met Vera twice, she knows that putting a stop to anything Vera is doing is probably going to be an exercise in futility. Maybe if she came clean to Vera, the older woman might feel sympathy toward her and…

And what? Stop looking for answers? Unlikely. She’s investigating an actual death , not just some Internet scandal. And what if Vera’s right about Xan’s death being suspicious? Would Aimes really get in the way of a potential murder investigation just to hide her dirty little secret?

Aimes groans out loud. How did she get herself into this mess? She flings herself out of bed and paces around her room. Here and there, her feet catch on more unusable knickknacks and she wants to cry with frustration. There are exactly two corners in her entire apartment that aren’t choked with clutter—her bed and one side of her couch, which is right next to the window. Those two spaces look pristine most of the time, because they are where she shoots most of her content for social media. If someone were to look through her Instagram profile, they would think Aimes had everything under control, that she lives in a beautifully curated space instead of the mess that dominates her life.

She needs to get on top of things. A choked laugh burbles out of her at the thought of it. She thinks this to herself at least seventeen times a day: I’m going to get on top of things. It feels as though life were a treadmill, and Aimes has to keep rushing just to keep up with everything that it keeps throwing at her. She stops moving and stands in the middle of her bedroom, ignoring the piles of clothes, random plates, books, and other crap around her. Get on top of things. Right. How should she begin to do that?

First things first: She needs to resolve the whole Xan thing. But how? She can’t just keep hiding and posting content as though nothing has happened. That’s not going to work. She needs to acknowledge his death. What would she say about it? Aimes goes to the living room and sits at her coffee desk / dining table / writing desk. She finds a notebook—one of many that she’s been sent—a pretty one with a swirl of flowers on the cover and the words She Will Move Mountains in a beautiful cursive font. Aimes can barely move the lint out of her apartment, but whatever. She opens it and starts writing.

Get on top of shit.

Xander—Make post about his death. How much detail to go into? Maybe the last time I saw him?

Aimes winces. The memory of the last time she saw Xan stabs into her like a jagged piece of glass. She wishes she could excise it from her mind, slice it out like a rotting appendix. She’ll have to make something up for her followers.

Maybe start up a fund for his family?

How much do I post about his family? Find out more about them?

With a sigh, Aimes crosses out numbers 2 and 3. If she starts up a fund for his family, people are bound to get curious about them. No, she needs to keep this contained, put all things Xan in a neat box so that she can shut it when the time comes and put it away where no one would ever think about him.

The small, hateful voice at the back of her mind says, You could spin it into a huge story. Aimes wants to hit herself at the very thought of it. She could not, would not, stoop so low as to profit from Xan’s death. She’s lost enough of herself online; she would not lose her soul as well. No, she wouldn’t post about his death to gain sympathy and followers. She would only post enough to make it seem believable, then she would move on. Forget about this whole mess. She’s not a ghoul.

Aimes catches sight of her framed diploma hanging on the wall and turns away sharply. She cannot stand the sight of the thing. A bachelor of arts in English Lit from Berkeley, like that was ever going to do anything in the real world. All it did was make her unemployable. They should tell you things like that in high school. That, actually, you can’t be anything you want to be, and that studying something like English Lit would only prepare you for disappointment in life.

Because for as long as Aimes can remember, she’s always preferred spending time with books rather than spending it in what her parents would call “real life.” As a kid, and then later as a teen, she never went anywhere without a book in her hand. During family meals, while her cousins chattered and giggled with one another, Aimes sat quietly with her book, looking up once in a while to spear a roasted potato or give a polite smile to someone. Her parents were somewhat bemused by this, but they were mostly proud of it.

“My little bookworm,” her dad would say, and her mom would roll her eyes with obvious affection. They were, in general, proud that unlike other kids, Aimes had her nose buried in a book rather than the phone screen. They failed to see that she was becoming someone ill-suited for the real world. That with her compositions, Aimes was spinning stories for herself to inhabit. And now she was still spending most of her time spinning fictitious stories, except she had, as it turned out, moved on from books to phones. What a disappointment she’d turned out to be. They’d expected her to be a writer; hell, Aimes herself thought she would become a writer too, but she’s queried enough agents to know that she doesn’t have what it takes to stand out, not in publishing, anyway. But coming up with catchy Instagram captions is a form of writing, isn’t it? And so what if it turns out that Aimes’s imagination is better suited to coming up with social media content instead of books? That’s nothing to be ashamed of. She’s good at it. Good at spinning stories for people to consume.

Except now maybe the stories have gone too far. Now that Xan is dead, Aimes has no idea what to do with their story. She can’t tell the truth, that much she knows. She has to stick to fiction. She’s always been so good at fiction. While her Berkeley friends went on to do impressive internships after college, Aimes had spun more and more stories to try to keep up with seeming like she was keeping up with them. And the whole time, she retreated deeper into her isolation. Because if any of them actually spent enough time with her, they’d know. They’d find out what a pathetic life she was really leading.

I can’t go out Friday, I’m slammed with work. Yeah, my job at the San Francisco Chronicle is ridiculous, but I hope I can see you guys soon!

Oh, I got offered a better position at this literary agency, so I left the Chronicle. I know, what an amazing opportunity, right? So anyway, I can’t come to your housewarming. I’m so sorry, but I’m sending over a nice bottle of wine, okay?

I can’t join you guys for girls’ night, I have a really bad cold. I wouldn’t want to pass it to anyone. I’m making a gift basket for you girls though. I hope you have so much fun!

Aimes shakes her head. Snap out of it. She needs to focus. She needs to come up with a really good story now; otherwise, she risks losing everything she’s worked so hard for. No one can know the truth about her and Xan. She doesn’t want to profit off his death either. The best thing she can do is to shut this whole thing down.

After applying minimal makeup, Aimes sets up her phone on its ring light stand in front of her couch. She sits down, takes a deep breath, and hits Record.

“Hi, everyone. It’s me, Aimes. I just—”

No. It’s all wrong. She sounds so stilted. Everyone would know she’s a fake. She shakes her head once more, rakes her fingers through her hair, and takes another deep breath.

“Hi, everyone. By now, many of you have heard the devastating news about Xan. I—”

No. Too melodramatic. She doesn’t want to invite more attention. She needs to keep it as short as possible. But at the same time, she has to convey sadness—and she is sad, but she can’t be over the top with it. God, how the hell did she land herself in this mess?

“Hi, everyone. By now, many of you have heard about Xan. I just wanted to say that I see all of your messages and I’m grateful for all of your support, but I will be taking a hiatus from social media while I grieve Xan. Thanks.”

There. Succinct. Suitably sad, if there is such a thing. Definitely doesn’t invite more questions. Aimes watches it over, scrutinizing every minute expression her face makes. Does she look sincere? Sad enough? Too sad?

The thing about living your life on camera is it makes you question every single observable thing about you, to the point where Aimes no longer knows what she is truly feeling at any given time. Like now, for example. She is torn up over Xan. But she feels the grief as though it is hidden underneath a thick pane of glass, as though she were watching someone else, someone who looks exactly like her, go through it, and she can only sense the faint stirrings of the grief through this other person who looks like her. Did that thought even make any sense? Or like when she plans Instagrammable activities, like the time she made soba from scratch by following a YouTube tutorial. She thinks she had fun, but when she looks back on it, she can’t remember the actual sensation of fun. She remembers laughing and smiling, but she also remembers thinking, I am laughing, this is good, the camera likes it when I laugh. She remembers slurping up the noodles when they were done, but she doesn’t remember what they tasted like. She only remembers going, “Mmm, delicious!” so they must have been delicious. Her entire life feels like this, a murky mess of memories she can only remember through the eye of her phone camera. Is that sad, or is that just the new normal for everybody?

Aimes realizes she’s been staring at her phone for ages. The world feels like it’s hushed, waiting for her to hit Post. There’s that anticipation she’s come to love and hate, the moments before posting new content, wondering if this is the one that will go viral. Enough of her posts have gone viral for Aimes to crave that endorphin rush. It’s too bad that the rush lasts shorter and shorter each time. And right now, with this particular post, Aimes wants it to sink into obscurity, though for a large part of her, it’s become second nature to hunger for the next viral post. God, she is such a mess. She squeezes her eyes shut and presses the Post button. When she next opens them, the post is live, and the likes and comments are already trickling in.

OMG Aimes you poor thing!!!

Babe call me, I’m here for you. xoxo

Holy shit, I just saw this, this is crazy! He was so young!

Aimes can’t possibly feel more disgusted about herself. She tosses the phone onto the carpeted floor and trudges to her bedroom. She’ll take a nap, sleep the day away, and when she wakes, this will all have blown over. Right?