The Herd(57)
“Twenty-four hours,” he finally said. “I’ll give you twenty-four hours if you delete that audio file right now, in front of me. And then you fuck off forever.”
* * *
—
At home I flung open my laptop and logged into my new, male, fake Facebook account (Fakebook!), and then felt a surge of adrenaline as the notification appeared: You’ve been invited to join the Antiherd. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I started with last Tuesday, the day we reported her missing. Some useless general hate speech, things that turned my stomach, reminded me of the panicked feeling I got while reporting from rallies in Michigan. I crossed to the kitchen and pulled out a seltzer, breathing hard, then forced myself to keep reading.
A few minutes later, I hit gold: A dude with a police scanner had posted about the 911 call from her address (which, creepily, said user knew by heart); the “possible ten-fifty-seven” had led to much gleeful speculation that her sad, whipped husband probably skipped town to get away from her. Gavin K commented that maybe the bitch had seen the light and killed herself, and someone else—Ron A—replied that that was unlikely when she’d just announced she was going to make herself even richer: He’d linked an article about the Titan acquisition, which had gone up just a minute before.
I clicked on Ron’s name and scrolled through his most recent posts and comments; he hadn’t uploaded a profile photo, so it was pretty clear this guy had a secret account for his hate speech. (More Fakebook!) My heart seized up when I saw a photo he’d posted to the Antiherd a few weeks back: a faded shot of a female teenager…no, a child, maybe twelve or thirteen but struggling to look older in the awkward getup of circa-Y2K—flared jeans, platform sandals, budding boobs under a corseted crop top. The face was unmistakably Eleanor’s: pretty even then, but rounder, her eyebrows thinner, her skinny arms a deep tan. Above and below the photo were strips of diagonal grayish lines, zigzagging into short columns, and I realized they were the gluey backing of an old-school photo album; someone, somewhere, had cracked open a dusty old album and snapped this picture of a photo inside.
It was presented without comment, but other users had quickly jumped in: “Born a whore,” “A cock-teasing bitch even then,” “lol people probably hid from her on the playground.” How had anyone gotten their hands on this? The original photo—someone had snapped it, developed it, stuck it lovingly on a cardstock page and smoothed clear plastic on top. The only place where you could find similar pictures of Hana and me was in our mother’s living room, in the musty albums in our bookshelf. Maybe Eleanor’s parents kept something similar in their house. Who would’ve had access to it, what visitors or neighbors or…?
Neighbors. The kids next door. I looked at the fake username again. Ron was typically short for Ronald, of course, but could it also be the tail end of Cameron?
Goosebumps rose on my arms as I scraped back through everything I’d learned about him: Ted’s older brother, Eleanor’s boyfriend both of her senior years, high school and then college. I searched for his Facebook profile—the non-fake version—and clicked through his photos. He gave the vague impression of a once-hot guy who’d lost his mojo and then felt bewildered by his dwindling prospects. His profile photo was of him in a Patriots T-shirt, his face painted, making a tribal yell in front of the open back of an SUV, all set up for a tailgate.
Outside, the snow was like a silvery mist filling the empty space around fire hydrants, trees, grimacing pedestrians. The thought was as hazy as the light: What if Cameron did hate Eleanor? He lived in another state, of course, but he knew people here…and he might have friends in this disgusting online community. What if he’d found someone to help him, or vice versa? The bubble letters from my first day at the Herd flashed before me: UGLY CUNTS.
I was still reading through jabbering vitriol, none of it useful and all of it jabbing at my gag reflex, when Erin texted: “Call me now.” Another text from my roommate, and then, as I was unlocking my phone to read her entire message, ones from Mikki and Ted. The calls and messages came like the snow had this afternoon—a few errant flakes, then steadier, and then suddenly a storm.
With shaking hands, I opened the New York Times homepage, and there it was at the top: Eleanor Walsh, Lifestyle Guru and Feminist Entrepreneur, Dies at 30.
Isn’t she thirty-two? I thought numbly. Another text from Erin: “You’re going to kill me.”
CHAPTER 16
Hana
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 8:25 A.M.
I stared out the window as my cab sped toward Daniel and Eleanor’s apartment. Just Daniel’s now—the thought was a bubble of sadness. Trash levitated and spun in the wind before smacking back into the sidewalk. The streets were already emptying as people headed home for the holidays.
What could Daniel possibly have gotten his hands on? It’s about what happened in 2010, he’d said, his voice almost a shriek; and you don’t want police. The driver braked hard in front of the townhouse, and I pushed the car door open against the wind. My third visit this week—much more frequent than when Eleanor was alive. Something deflated in my chest as I looked at her home’s dark bay window, its empty stoop. On Tuesday night, I’d charged inside with the then-absurd notion that something had happened to her, something bad. On Wednesday, I’d come back to browse, fumbling around for some guidance, a clue. Some reassurance that our secret was still safe. Now Eleanor was dead and Daniel knew about 2010. For a shimmering second, I thought I would vomit.