I woke up the next morning to the sound of Val's alarm going off. Her phone played Katy Perry's "Roar" on repeat every morning, and she claimed it helped get her in the mood to dominate every single day. Normally she turned it off relatively quickly, meaning I could roll over and go back to sleep if I didn't have work that morning, but today the song seemed to drag on and on.
"Val?" I croaked, sitting upright and rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. "You gonna get that?"
She moaned, rolling over on her lofted bed that was across the room from mine, and made a move to grab her phone. Instead of pushing it toward her, however, she knocked it off her bed and sent it tumbling down onto the sofa below where it continued to blare Katy Perry at us.
"Flaaaaaargh," Val mumbled into her pillow, rolling over and pulling her black comforter over her head.
I grimaced, massaging the headache pounding at my temple from lack of sleep, and cast off my blankets so I could climb down from the bed. Carefully avoiding the shoes scattered on the floor from last night, I grabbed her phone and hit snooze on the annoying alarm. I was tempted to turn it off entirely, but I knew Val had to work in a few hours and - as much as she'd appreciate the extra sleep now - she wouldn't appreciate it later when Peter was chewing her out for missing work.
Her iPhone screen went black once the alarm was cleared, but - as I moved to drop the phone back on the sofa - the screen lit up with an Instagram notification. I would've ignored it, but the second after the first one popped up, another one followed. Then another. And another.
I pushed the home button, and I was stunned to see hundreds of Instagram notifications staring up at me on Val's phone. There were both likes and comments, several of which said something to the effect of "lucky bitches!" along with a shit ton of heart eye emojis.
A split second later, I noticed my Instagram username included in most of the comments, and I nearly dropped the phone in shock.
"Val," I muttered, climbing halfway up my lofted bed to snag my phone from underneath the pillow. "What did you do?!"
I unlocked it quickly, ignoring the countless Instagram notifications filling the lock screen, and tapped to open the app.
Holy shit. I remembered her taking photos last night, but I didn't think Val had uploaded any of them to Instagram. Even if she did, I certainly didn't expect to see over two thousand likes on the photo in five freaking hours. There were hundreds of comments, hundreds, and I couldn't even begin to comprehend what that would mean for me.
Val tagged each of us in the photo, and when I clicked through our Instagram profiles I discovered that all of us had managed to gain at least two hundred followers overnight. Groaning at the realization, I clicked back to my own profile only to discover that I was wrong. I had not gained two hundred followers overnight.
I gained two thousand.
I went through Instagram and soon discovered that Andrew had followed me sometime between last night and this morning as well. Val's photos only added to this, especially considering the sheer number she uploaded, and - aside from a slew of horrible selfies and the collage with Andrew and his friends - there was a candid shot of Andrew leaning in to plant a kiss on my cheek. His friends had joined us bearing gifts of fresh margaritas and chips and guac, and we'd spent the whole night laughing and talking. There were so many of us squeezed into a tiny table that Andrew had moved next to me, and - while we didn't talk to each other for the rest of the night - there was no denying the tension between us.
And it wasn't the bad kind of tension.
Val kept taking candid photos of everyone at the table, and at some point she told me to smile for the camera. Little did I know, Andrew had winked at her - giving her a devilish grin - and leaned in to peck me on the cheek. I flushed bright red, glaring at him while failing to restrain my smile, and Val had apparently captured the moment and shared it for the internet to see.
And see it they did. More than three thousand people had liked the photo, and the comments were far less friendly than the ones on the collage. Half of the people just wanted to know who I was, if I was Andrew's new girlfriend or a co-star of his upcoming film, while the rest took it upon themselves to critique every aspect of my appearance. I was called an attention whore, a slut, a bitch...and those were the nicer ones. Every three comments was another girl saying how jealous she was of me, while a few added comments like, "She's not even that pretty."
I stared at the screen of my phone in horror, scrolling through comments that I knew I shouldn't read or take personally, but somehow I couldn't look away. It was like my eyes were glued to the screen as I raked myself over the coals that people who didn't even know me decided to light under my feet.
It was absolutely horrific. How could so many people - without rhyme or reason - take it upon themselves to comment on my appearance in a photo with Andrew? Some were mad, legitimately angry, that he was pictured with me! It didn't make any sense.
The notifications continued to roll in, and I read every single one of the comments on Val's photos. Many of the people who followed me decided to go through old photos of me as well, and they were asking questions about Andrew, about who I was, about where I got my clothes. Some of them were judging my appearance and my body in my old photos, calling me fat and ugly, saying that Andrew "deserves better."
By the time Val's alarm went off again thirty minutes later, there were fat tears rolling down my cheeks as I sat alone on the sofa. I fumbled with it, tapping the screen to turn it off, and I quickly wiped my face with my palm to make sure my now-awake roommate wouldn't notice anything wrong.
"Ughhh," Val groaned, sitting upright slowly while she gripped her forehead. "Headache."
I sniffed, running my hand over my face to make sure all the evidence of my crying was gone, and stood.
"I'll grab you some ibuprofen," I told her, trying to inject a false cheeriness into my voice. "Coconut water?"
She made a noise that sounded like a yes as I headed into the bathroom to grab the medicine for her. I checked my appearance in the mirror, smoothing a hand through my sleep-tangled hair, and found myself focusing on the imperfections everyone on Instagram decided to point out for me. Suddenly, my chin was too pointy. My lips were too big. My eyebrows were too full. My body was too large. I'd always been slender thanks to genetics and my passion for running, but right now I felt massive. It was like they'd taken a sledgehammer to the already fragile self-esteem I possessed and demolished it for their own entertainment.
Taking a shaky inhale, I flicked off the bathroom lights and grabbed a coconut water from the fridge, passing the water and the medicine up to Val. She opened her eyes and took them from me, murmuring a thank you, and swallowed two pills before washing them down with coconut water.
"You okay?" She asked, her voice still raw.
I nodded, picking up my phone from where I left it on the couch, and stared at the screen as a few new notifications continued to pop up. Fresh tears sprung to my eyes when I saw yet another insult, another stranger bashing me for my association with Andrew, and I forced them away.
"Yeah. I, um...hangover. It's killing me," I lied.
My head was pounding, but it had nothing to do with the alcohol I'd consumed last night and everything to do with the tiny device in my hand. All because a celebrity had followed me on Instagram. All because my best friend had posted a photo of the two of us on her account. All of this shit because of a boy who just wanted a chance to be normal.
"Thank god Logan covered for me today," Val said, digging her spoon into the carton of Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia that I picked up for her from the corner market. "I'm pretty sure I would've died from working a full shift today."
I nodded, picking at my cookie dough ice cream with a spoon. I had the day off, which normally meant I'd spend the day going on a run, checking out my favorite record stores, and trying to find live music in the city, but today I couldn't bring myself to change out of my yoga pants and stained Van Halen t-shirt. The only reason I volunteered to get ice cream for us was because Val saw me sniffle and wipe away an almost-tear as I scrolled through the fresh comments on my Instagram, and I needed an escape to calm back down.
By the time I got back, she was curled up in front of our flat screen TV watching the latest Marvel film. I'd turned off my Instagram notifications and my phone, willing myself to ignore the virtual onslaught until it died down a bit, so I settled down next to her and passed her a carton of ice cream and a spoon.
This was our tradition. Whenever one of us wasn't feeling well - whether the cause was alcohol, stress, boys, or a combination of the three - we would consume copious amounts of ice cream, argue over who the cutest superhero was (or supervillain, obviously, because hello Loki), and pretend the rest of the world didn't exist.
Normally, it worked. We'd zone out for a few hours, go off the grid, and by the time we were finished watching the second film we'd always be ready to take on the world.
This time, however, I felt like it was only going to do the opposite. Instead of relief, I felt my thoughts weighing on me like a sack of bricks. My phone burned a hole through my leg from where it rested on my lap, and I couldn't help but wonder how - if ever - I could possibly go off the grid.
Social media made it possible for strangers, all over the world, to inject themselves into my world and shatter my confidence. They didn't hold back, saying things to me online that no person would ever say face-to-face, and...it was hard not to believe them. I'd already been subjected to that kind of torment back home in Texas, and it was part of the reason I left. I didn't think it would happen again here, and I certainly didn't expect it would happen online.
I could delete my account, sure. I'd had the thought only a dozen times over the course of the day. But would that solve anything? Would that really help?
They'd still say those things about me, they'd still feel like they were allowed to judge a person they know nothing about, and what would be different? I wouldn't be able to see it happening.
Ignorance really was bliss, I guess.