The Herd(96)

The plan was to ring in the New Year with a quiet night at Hana’s place; we were making spicy fish tacos for us and Mom. The recipe was one of our more successful endeavors from that sleepy period right after I’d moved back, which felt like years ago, now. Hana and I clattered around her kitchen, discussing food-prep logistics and sipping old-fashioneds I’d made.

Finally, I took a deep breath. “I have an announcement.”

“Oh?”

“I’m going to write Infopocalypse. I mean, if they’ll still let me.”

“Really.” Hana leaned against the kitchen island.

I nodded. “It’s what I committed to doing. And I’m going to make it part memoir and talk about how lonely and miserable I really was while I reported it, but how on social media I made it look like everything was great. The book’s going to be about fake-news culture as a whole—including in our personal lives. Curation, editing, thinking our actual realities, our selves, aren’t enough.”

“Wow.” Hana nodded slowly. “I love it. Why the change of heart?”

I shrugged. “I kept telling myself the reason I didn’t want to write it was that I didn’t have enough material, after all my interview subjects stonewalled me. But that’s not it—I was just ashamed. I cared so much what everyone thought and how, like, all these randos from high school who seemed vaguely impressed that I was writing a book were going to think I was a loser. So dumb.” Cosmo slinked by and I bowed to stroke his back. “I want to channel some Eleanor energy. She didn’t give a flying fuck what anyone thought of her. But…but in my own, non-destructive way.” I hated the way Eleanor had trampled on Mikki and other women—much as I disliked peering at this side of her, I knew it was as real as the Eleanor I knew and the “Teleanor” she showed the world. But it wasn’t how I’d do things. I’d remember her magnificence, the power of her confidence and bubbling laughter and ability to make you feel inspired, capable, invincible…and I’d find my own way to give zero fucks. Without destroying those around me.

Hana smiled and made vague congratulations. I pulled a cutting board out from under the sink and pressed it on the counter. “There’s another thing.”

Hana’s face was in the fridge, lit up by its yellow bulb. “Oh yeah?”

“Remember how, right after I got home from the hospital, I had you share the time and transaction number of your last Bitcoin payment?”

She slid the vegetable drawer open and lifted a fat purple cabbage. “Yep?”

“I…I know a little bit about how cryptocurrency works. There’s, like, a massive ledger showing every transaction—anonymously, of course.” I’d dipped my toe into cryptocurrency reporting back at Rocket; I knew how to sift through the blockchain and triangulate a particular transaction. “And I figured something out.”

Hana closed the fridge door slowly and turned to me. She gripped the cabbage with both hands and frowned. Surely she’d also noticed today was the deadline of that final demand. Surely she, too, was wondering what’d happen at midnight.

“Hana, there were only two payers,” I said. She blinked and I repeated myself: “Two wallets—two accounts—transferred funds to the blackmailer. Not three. Ten thousand dollars near the end of every quarter.”

In her eyes, understanding caught on like kindling set aflame. She placed the vegetable on the counter.

“It was Mikki,” she said, “all along. She told me. She told me how deep into debt she’d fallen, how she’d do anything to keep up. Oh my God.” Her fingers found her temple. “She showed up in Eleanor’s office and told us she’d gotten a letter, too, but of course it was her. She said it had to be Jinny’s mom. Because of the Tennessee postmark, and because her mom supposedly had looked at Mikki on LinkedIn or something. We never doubted her.” What came out was a laugh, barking and strained.

“Yeah, apparently it’s really easy to find a service to print and mail stuff for you. Without leaving a trace.” No one else had thought to Google it. No one else had thought to question Mikki.

Hana shook her head. “Wow. So it’s really over.”

“It’s over.” I sighed. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yes. But the offer expires with 2019.”

“Turns into a pumpkin at midnight—got it.” I pulled a knife from the block. “Do you think Eleanor was really going to leave? Run off to Mexico?”

She held the cabbage under the tap, then gave it a shake. “I think she just liked knowing she could. That she could drop everything and be out of here in a minute. And I think the blackmail had something to do with that. She realized this horrible accident from her past was going to keep following her.”

“God, the irony: Mikki didn’t actually want word to get out either. She just wanted money.”

“And they both started feeling suffocated by the masks they were wearing.” She pointed at me. “Exactly like you’re going to talk about in your book. I love this new direction so much. It’s the kind of messaging we actually need.”

I didn’t tell her about Gary and Karen’s offer or about Mikki’s proposition. They were frozen assets, useless to me for now. Instead I asked when Mom would come by for dinner (“any minute now”) and she asked, absentmindedly, what Mom had done for New Year’s last year.