The Assistants(68)
“I guess it’s now or never.” Ginger undid the knot on her fuchsia neck scarf. “Legally, I’m pretty sure they can only hold Emily till tomorrow—then they either have to charge her with something or let her go.”
“See?” Wendi said. “And you thought law school was a total waste of time and money.”
Ginger gave Wendi the finger.
“What are we waiting for then?” I reached for my phone. “Let’s start making calls.”
—
BY TEN P.M., my bedroom looked like ground zero of an eighth-grader’s slumber party. Pizzas had been ordered, a candy run had been made, and we all had our eyes attached to some form of electronic screen.
Earlier, I’d bitten the bullet and called Tim, Kevin’s friend from BuzzFeed. Fortunately, he hadn’t yet heard that Kevin had dumped me and was therefore eager to be of assistance. Using me as an anonymous source, he lobbed the first softball-size piece of clickbait into the airwaves—Is Robert Barlow About to Be Ruined for Life?—abruptly followed in kind by the rest of the Internet-beast feeders.
Our “news” story got coverage on sites big and small, indie and corporate: Slate, the Hairpin, the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast Cheat Sheet, New York magazine’s Daily Intelligencer, even the YouTube channel of that girl who got famous for putting on makeup.
It wasn’t hard to envision all those e-mail chains: the under-or unpaid blogger at HuffPo calling in a favor owed to her by the politics editor; the intern at the Daily Beast who craved the bragging rights that would come with aiding and abetting us; even the trust-funded freelancer at the Daily Intelligencer who wanted to contribute to our efforts in order to appease her own class guilt.
All their articles pretty much said the same thing—nothing. But that was good, that’s what we wanted.
I sat at my desk in front of my computer, hitting refresh over and over again, announcing every time a new version of the story appeared someplace new.
Robert Barlow Guilty of Tax Evasion? Some Say Yes.
Crime, Corruption, and the Caymans: Is It Time for Robert Barlow to Come Clean?
Barlow a Fraud? Some People Say, Uh Duh.
“Yes!” I called out. “We just scored Upworthy.”
Ginger had been hovering over my shoulder, but she finally stepped away to make herself comfortable on my bed. Careful not to flash us as she tucked her knees beneath her cobalt-blue skirt suit, she flashed us anyway. “Well, if getting Robert’s attention is what you wanted, Tina, I think you might have done it.” She reached for a Whirly Pop from our candy stash. “You really think all this is going to scare him into backing off?”
Lily was on the bed beside Ginger, picking her way through a sack of Jujubes, choosing only the green ones. “Oh aah well, it would if we had any actual evidence that Robert’s done something wrong.”
I let that one go unanswered.
“How many page views is our site up to?” Ginger asked as she peeled the clear wrapper from her lolli. “I bet all this chatter is only improving our traffic.”
I clicked onto our site and hit refresh. “We’re almost at a million views.”
“Wow,” Lily said, with her mouth full of Jujubes. “That’s a lot of people.”
Wendi was lying across Emily’s air mattress with her boots propped up against the wall, gnawing on a stick of red licorice. She had her iPad on her lap. “No it’s not. That video of the cat that plays the piano has, like, twenty million views.”
Lily blinked at us obviously behind her thick glasses. “But that’s a cat that plays the piano.”
“You’re not considered a welebrity,” Ginger said, between licks of her Whirly Pop, “until you hit at least five million.”
“Tina’s not trying to become a welebrity.” Wendi threw a stick of licorice at Ginger’s face. “She’s trying to get Emily out of jail.”
Ginger reached for the nearest gummy ring and chucked it at Wendi, nailing her square in the horns.
Lily ducked for cover, probably fearing for the giraffes on her cardigan, as Wendi retaliated with a handful of Swedish Fish.
“Stop throwing the candy!” I yelled. “It’s more teasing than the rats in the walls can handle.”
Wendi agreed to a truce and returned to her lying-down position, further scuffing my walls with her boots. “If I knew you’d be this good at bluffing, Tina, I would have entered you into the World Series of Poker.”
I laughed like I thought I should.
Let everyone think it was a bluff. I didn’t trust Wendi to not go ahead and leak the documents if she found out about them—and then what? There would be no undoing that once it happened. I’d probably get subpoenaed, sworn to an oath to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, and what the hell was the truth anyway? None of that mattered. I only needed one person to believe I had those documents, and that was Robert.
30
I WOKE FIRST, dry-mouthed and momentarily confused as to why there were other people’s limbs draped across my chest. Then I remembered how the night had turned into a sleepover, all candy and pizza and late-night stomachache. There had even been an impromptu hairbrush sing-along to Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” when our page views reached one million—which in retrospect made little if any literal sense, but it felt right at the moment. I know, girls singing into hairbrushes, right? But would you believe I’d never done that before? I mean, not when I wasn’t by myself, alone, doing my own backup vocals. It was different in a group—louder, for sure. My upstairs neighbor had to bang on the floor with a broom handle to quiet us down. But now all was silent.