Chapter 43: Captured
You are sitting in your favorite window seat, co-editing a script on Teams. The house is filled with soft music playing. You are thoroughly relaxed and pre-production is going well on your side.
Suddenly you are getting messages...and follows...and dings...and messages from people you haven't talked to in some time. "Oh, no..." You breathe. Suddenly, you see Stella's picture pop up. She's ringing you. You click on.
"I'm so sorry!"
"Stella?" You say slowly "Hey, what's wrong? I had the weirdest thing—"
"Here."
You see a link and click on it.
"Have you seen The Mirror? eOnline?"
"What?"
"Check the website!"
You click on and see a clip of you and Stella having lunch. And you can tell what is going to happen next. You remember. Henry pulls you to his side, and looks down at you. Your body language says it all: couple. If they put together the picture from Christmas, deductive reasoning and a little face recognition. You sigh heavily. "Oh."
"Are you okay?"
"I have to be," you say softly. You start to think. You realize that if your real name is compromised, your writing pseudonym may not be. "Hold on!" You scramble to your laptop and check. All the accounts under that are amazingly safe. You double check to make sure there are no connections between the accounts except for follows. You unfollow and follow yourself to try to make sure you are not the first follower on your pseudonym page. It works on some of them, but not others. You make every profile private and evens shut some down. You exhale heavily.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm just making sure no one can guess my writing pseudonym." You are tapping and dragging and X'ing like a mad woman.
But even as you heave a sigh of relief that no one has found the writer in you, you see yourself under fire as yourself.
"You've got to be kidding me!"
"She looks okay."
"Hey, it's his choice. What if she's a nice person?"
"Okay, I definitely liked the last one better."
"Her? Her?!"
"She must have laid that shit on him good."
"They don't look right together."
"Enter Golddigger Number Whatever."
"If she cuffed him, you know she got somethin' going on."
"I hate her. I like her...but I hate her."
"Where did she come from?"
"Who is she?"
"I checked. This chick isn't even in his world, his level, I think."
"Cinderella?! NOOOOOOOOO! Supposed to be ME!"
"The countdown is on as of the first picture, you know that."
"Anybody find anything else?"
Your heart begins to race as you read the comments You shut down the site and sit back. Your writing profile remains in tact, and you still hope to grow it, yet, you've done other work under your real name that could be shut off to the world. Your children's books and other writings are now harder to find and look at unless you create yet another profile of some kind.
"You okay?"
Stella's soft but slightly anxious voice gently stops your racing mind. "Yeah."
"So your writing profile is okay?"
"Yeah, think so."
"But you have other stuff—"
"I will have to figure that out later." You say softly. "Right now I'm on defense. Loved ones are on my profiles, even locations. I can't let that be out there. I—I—" Suddenly the other line rings. DAL. "It's Henry, let me call you back."
"Okay," she says.
"Thanks for the heads up Stella," you say. "Sometimes I feel like I'm in my own world here."
"No problem."
"I'll call you back, okay?"
"Okay," she whispers. "Love you, okay?"
"Okay, Love you too." You click over, and to your dismay he has put on video. "Hey."
"Hey." Henry has a way of making one word say sentences. "Saw the east wind coming?"
"Yeah, think I got ahead of it."
Silence. Oh, you hate this. He is trying to read you, and you are not good at poker faces with him at all. You wish you knew what your look was saying but you don't.
"I'm not sure what to do with all the writings under my own name."
"Good question," Henry says. More silence. Maybe you're better at poker faces than you thought.
"When you come home, can we talk about it?" you ask. "I'm out of my element here. I mean, I had open profiles so people could see the work I did with kids but made adult stuff under a different name and—"
"I know, sweetheart."
You exhale. "I'm a little—"
"Scared?"
"Yeah," you admit. "more of doing something or having done something that could hurt us."
He is quiet, his look softening. You can almost hear him swallowing hard. "You're a decent person, sweetheart, I wouldn't worry."
"But they like to twist stuff-"
"It's what 'they' do," he says softly with a small smile and then exhales. "Let's talk about this when I get back, alright?"
You take a deep breath. "Alright."
"Hey."
"Hmm?"
"I love you."
"I love you, too."
You click off. You finish your work on Teams and decide to call Stella back after lunch. You both decide silently not to talk about the earlier morning's events. While she is a comfort talking about the new flat and how she wishes you were there to help with it, and what she is learning at the restaurant she is working at, part of you is swirling in self-doubt and dread. Is your countdown really on?
Regular everyday people do not think anyone is looking for them. That's why a profile is open. You just put there what you want and only people who know you really know anything because they are the only ones who care. It's like an extension of the old phone pages but with pictures. Your old classmates found you this way, and you were delighted. Your fellow kid advocates had no problem either and it benefited you and your job. But being a world wide known name-trending and knowing it-being specifically sought after in a world wide web of people-it's a different feeling! It's like being a queen ant in a sea of ants on a sidewalk. You stand out, everyone sees you and the looking glass is focused on you because you're an easy target. A target...
"You there?"
"Yeah," you say. "Sorry, phased out a second." You hear her sigh and make yourself brighten with an ideal "How about you put your phone on video and we look at the space? Got a tape measure?" You are relieved to hear her chuckle with a bit of relief herself.
"I was hoping you would say that," she says. "and then maybe go to the store?"
"Let's get measurements today, talk about layouts and then tomorrow we'll hit a store or some sites."
"Yes!" Stella is happy now and that brings you some, too. "Thanks, let me get my tape!"