Crazy Stalker

Chapter 13 - Feeding the Trolls

Chapter 13

WHEN YOU'RE as internet-famous as I am, there's something you learn about haters. Haters don't hate you because you are bad at what you do. They hate you because you're good at it. Haters are just people who once loved you but got pissed off somehow. Maybe you replied to a DM an hour later than they would have liked. Maybe you are more popular than they are. Maybe they believe you don't deserve what you've achieved.

Either way, once they hate you, they will try to hurt you.

Don't let them.

That stuff happens on the internet all the time. I'm hyperventilating now because it's not supposed to happen in real life. I've never had someone scream at me the way Jake did during lunch period. The truth takes time to sink in. 

Jake Villin is no longer my friend. He is a hater now. I kept turning the outburst in the cafeteria in my head as I wait for Nick after school.

I still don't know how exactly I screwed things up.

Wasn't Jake a bad boy jerk who cut his classes and banged every bad girl in school?

I thought what happened in Coney Island meant nothing.

No, it meant something...to him.

Jake hates me now.

Because he loves me.

He thought our encounter on the beach was much more than it was.

As Corrine Stone, this was baffling to me. No one hates Corrine Stone, she's too insignificant to hate. To truly hate someone, you had to have loved them at one point. 

WilderLuna15 knows how to deal with haters. 

She discards them, blocks them, mutes them. I know for a fact that there are private discords dedicated to hating on my stories. There are blogs devoted solely to talking about how it's not realistic for anyone, even a werewolf, to have a penis the size of a baseball bat. Heck, you don't get millions of reads for being shy about your desires. I know sometimes I write about things that aren't real.

 But, I feel like when I write those things, maybe underneath it all the reader will —just for a split second see the real me.

See me, love me, hate me.

It is a cycle that I'm used to seeing.

There's even a whole club dedicated to hating me. They call themselves the Cooler Cougars. Their leader PrincessSilver likes to post pictures of my avatar with my eyes scratched out into Xs. I'm used to it. It's true, I know that PrincessSilver would love to jab scissors into my eyes in real life if we ever met. Yet, I'm not scared of her. She still thinks I'm a dude pretending to be a girl who lives in his mom's basement. Even despite accusing me of being a loser neckbeard who snorts Cheeto dust, she is obsessed with hating me and everything I do. Her club is about three hundred members strong now. I tell myself it's nothing compared to the millions of people who read my books and love me.

There are days that go by when I don't think about PrincessSilver at all. 

But I'm thinking about it now as I try to dismiss Jake Villin's threats.

Jake is different. 

Corrine Stone not used to this. No one hates Corrine Stone. She's a wallflower that people can't ever seem to remember. Whenever I bump into anyone I know outside of my old school, I start by saying, "you probably don't know me, but I know you."

I can't wrap my mind around the fact that Jake hates me. Not just WilderLuna15 with her crazy internet fame. He hates poor little Corrine Stone, the chubby, unremarkable, girl in his English class.