Follow Me Back Page 6

  HART: Just a few tweets back and forth. He followed me first. I followed him back. I was trying to be social. For therapy. I have agoraphobia. I was supposed to work on interacting with different people. But I didn’t realize who…who it was. I should have blocked him. I should have deactivated the account. I should have deactivated back when I left New Orleans. I’m so stupid [unintelligible].

  INVESTIGATOR: Tessa?

  HART: Eric. Eric Thorn—

  INVESTIGATOR: Are you OK, Tessa?

  HART: You don’t understand. I need my therapist. I need to go home.

  7

  BATTLE

  Eric gripped the phone in both hands as he exited the hotel bathroom. This Tessa person had better follow him fast. He only had a few minutes before Maury expected him downstairs, and then he’d have to endure his manager’s company for the hour-long ride to the poultry farm. Eric didn’t know if he could face it. Not without venting his overwhelming sense of frustration—fourteen million followers worth of pent-up rage.

  He silently willed the Twitter notification to appear, and he let out a grunt of satisfaction when he saw it.

  Tessa H (@TessaHeartsEric) followed you.

  Eric tapped the DM button so hard he nearly cracked the screen.

  Taylor: Hey, Tessa. Thanks for the follow.

  Tessa H: Hi

  Taylor: Hey can I ask you a question?

  Tessa H: Um OK

  Eric’s mouth twisted dangerously as he entered his next message. He knew exactly how to play it. He’d been around enough fangirls to know how they all talked.

  Taylor: Personality quiz! If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?

  Tessa H: I dunno. A gazelle maybe? Why?

  Taylor: Cuz you know what kind of animal Eric Thorn would see, if he ever noticed you existed?

  Tessa H: Ummm. I dunno. Not a gazelle? Maybe a chicken? :P

  Eric didn’t even read her answer. He plowed on, texting like a man possessed, entering new messages as swiftly as he could move his fingers—not even thinking about the words.

  Taylor: A leech.

  Tessa H: Excuse me?

  Taylor: That’s right. A nasty, bloodthirsty leech. With no purpose to your miserable, meaningless existence except to suck.

  Taylor: And when he saw you there, sucking, he would shudder with disgust.

  Taylor: And he would flick you off with his fingernail.

  Taylor: And then you know what he’d do, Tessa? Then he’d forget you ever existed and go about his day.

  • • •

  Tessa’s jaw dropped open at the words that flashed across her screen. She’d been sitting in her beanbag chair, but she stood now and paced back and forth across the narrow bedroom. Her stomach churned. This couldn’t be happening. Her first foray into social interaction with a stranger, and she’d picked some nasty troll. She should have known better. She’d totally misread the signs. Personality quiz…

  A leech?

  It wasn’t true, of course. As if this Taylor person could see inside Eric Thorn’s head any more than Tessa could. Ridiculous.

  Still, the DMs hit her like a gut punch. They knocked the wind right out of her, and Taylor managed to fire off a whole string of messages before Tessa finally gathered herself to reply.

  Tessa H: Wow. Thanks for the insight. And this is from…who exactly? Oh that’s right. An egg.

  Taylor: Yeah, I’m an egg. You know why I’m an egg? Cuz I actually have a life. In the real world. You might want to try it.

  Tessa H: You don’t know anything about me!

  Taylor: Why don’t you find a real person to obsess over instead of some pathetic celebrity?

  Tessa H: For your information I have a boyfriend.

  Taylor: Oh really? And what does your “boyfriend” think about your Twitter account?

  Tessa winced. She’d already been feeling guilty about Scott—as if she somehow betrayed her boyfriend every time she tweeted about Eric Thorn. But that was all just paranoid nonsense. Lots of people had fan accounts. Celebrity crushes. It wasn’t like Scott even cared what she did on Twitter.

  She’d only traveled a few feet across her room, but her legs felt like she’d just completed a marathon. She sank down heavily onto the edge of her bed.

  Dr. Regan had it wrong, Tessa thought, as her breath rushed in and out in shallow gasps. Not every interaction had therapeutic value. This one would probably set back her progress for months.

  Taylor: And…silence. Isn’t that interesting?

  Tessa H: I’m done with this conversation. Bye.

  Taylor: I’m guessing this “boyfriend” probably doesn’t exist.

  Tessa moved to the settings menu. Her finger skimmed past Mute this time. She eyed the other options. Block, perhaps? Or should she hit Report and call out this Taylor person for abusive language?

  Taylor: But if he does exist, I feel sorry for him because you’re kind of a shitty girlfriend.

  Tessa’s eyes flew back to the message thread, and the last remnants of oxygen left her lungs. Her mind could barely put together a coherent thought. Really? Like…really though? OK, no. No way. The Report button wasn’t good enough for this creep. With a burst of adrenaline, Tessa leaped to her feet and texted back.

  Tessa H: You have no idea who I am or what I’m dealing with!

  Taylor: Oh let me guess. Are the cool kids mean to you at school? Boohoo.

  Tessa H: For your information, I’m on Twitter a lot because I have a condition called

  She stopped herself in midsentence. It was none of this loser’s business. Tessa quickly deleted the words from her message bar and wrote something else instead.

  Tessa H: You know what? I don’t owe you an explanation. You’re the one with the problem. Maybe you should go take a good long look in the mirror.

  Taylor: Hmmm like Eric? He loooooves taking good long looks in the mirror LOL

  Tessa’s chest heaved as she sucked in the air, in full fight-or-flight mode now, texting too fast for Taylor to get a word in edgewise.

  Tessa H: So according to you, Eric sucks. And I suck. And basically everyone sucks except for you. Do I have that right?

  Tessa H: You know there’s a word for that. It’s called projection.

  Tessa H: You should look it up sometime.

  Tessa H: Or are you too “super busy” attacking random strangers?

  She paused after the last message, clutching her chest with outspread fingers as she struggled to catch her breath. The whole exchange had brought to mind a Tumblr quote that she saw once. Tessa liked to save them to her camera roll sometimes—little quotes and sayings she could go back to and recite to herself whenever her anxiety level started to rise. She knew the one she wanted, and she scrolled through the endless sea of Eric Thorn pics to bring it up:

  Tessa added the image to her message bar, with her finger poised to fire it back the moment Taylor responded. She stood stock-still, ready to spring, like a sniper waiting for her prey to wander between the crosshairs. The seconds ticked by as she held back.

  Silence.

  Was it over? Had she won? She had the distinct impression that Taylor had left the conversation. Off to find a new victim, perhaps.

  The Tumblr quote still remained, and Tessa hit Send before shutting down her phone: a punctuation mark on the end of her victory.

  8

  BE KIND. ALWAYS

  Tessa lay in her darkened bedroom, staring up at the ceiling. It was almost midnight, but she knew she wouldn’t get much sleep tonight. Her sleep schedule was completely out of whack—one of the lovely side effects of staying cooped up inside twenty-four hours a day. She hadn’t seen the sun in weeks.

  Circadian rhythms were the least of her problems though. She’d taken a dose of her anxiety meds, but she still felt the grip of barely suppressed panic weighing on her. She could see the ugly messages every time she closed her eyes, like they were imprinted on the inside of her eyelids.

  Taylor: You know what kind
of animal Eric Thorn would see, if he ever noticed you existed?

  Eric. Eric Thorn. Eric one…Eric two…Eric three…

  It was no use. Breathing exercises had their limits. Tessa rolled over in bed and reached for her phone. She knew she shouldn’t look at that DM thread again but, honestly, what difference did it make? She couldn’t stop thinking about it. She’d probably spend the next month dissecting every word.

  She should be proud of herself, right? She handled herself well. Someone had come after her, and she’d stood her ground. She’d fought off her attacker. She didn’t turn and flee. Not like she had in June…

  Tessa brushed a hand in front of her face to shoo away the memory. She didn’t want to face it. Not yet. Probably not ever. Better to obsess over this Twitter conversation, as awful as it was.

  She lowered her eyes to the Tumblr quote that marked the end of the thread. Something about it kept bugging her. Maybe it was those three words at the end:

  Be Kind. Always.

  Not: Be Kind. Sometimes.

  Not: Be kind. Unless the other person is mean to you first.

  That was what bothered her most, she realized. Not that she’d been attacked, but that she’d struck back. She’d been so busy defending herself that she hadn’t even stopped to think why the other girl might be coming after her. Everyone you meet is fighting a battle… What kind of battle was Taylor fighting to make her act that way? She might be dealing with mental health issues of her own. Maybe undiagnosed, untreated. Maybe she just needed to talk to someone.

  Tessa closed her eyes for a moment, and the panicky tension in her chest loosened its grip. She’d gotten to the bottom of it. She knew what she needed to do.

  The DM thread stood open on her phone. With a resolute nod, Tessa entered one more message.

  • • •

  Eric slouched down in the backseat of the limo and rubbed his bleary eyes. The car ride from the poultry farm back to the hotel would take a little over an hour. He should probably grab some extra shut-eye, but he had a feeling that sleep wouldn’t come easy. Not after the hellish day he’d had.

  He’d been on edge all day, waiting for his publicists to find out about his morning Twitter escapade. By some miracle, his selfie slipped by them unnoticed. They must have written it off as a fan’s twisted Photoshop edit—no different from the usual crude filth they tweeted about him all day long.

  Eric tried to summon some righteous indignation, but he knew it was pointless. He couldn’t blame the sick feeling in his stomach on anyone but himself.

  He gazed through the limo window at the darkened landscape passing by, but his mind remained fixed on the topic that had occupied his thoughts all day. Bits and pieces of that DM conversation kept coming back to him. He couldn’t shake the memory or the ever-deepening sense that he’d done wrong.

  Eric scrubbed a palm down the length of his face, trying to force his mind onto some less depressing train of thought. Maybe he should call someone, he thought. Maybe his parents? He hadn’t talked to them all week. Maybe it would help, just to hear familiar voices.

  Not that he could tell them how he really felt deep down. They always changed the subject whenever the conversation turned to darker thoughts. They only saw the concert lights—the dazzling glitz and glamour—and the money rolling into the bank. He knew what he would hear if he tried talking to them now: his father’s voice, full of laughter. “Champagne problems.” And then his mother would remind him how a solid eight hours of sleep always made everything better in the morning.

  Eric sighed. His parents didn’t get it. Maury didn’t get it. No one got it. Eric could talk until he was blue in the face, but no one ever listened to a single word he said.

  Angry tears pricked his eyes, and Eric rubbed them away harshly with the backs of his hands. He met eyes for a fleeting moment with the limo driver, who was watching him in the rearview mirror. Something about the man’s unblinking stare creeped Eric out. He pressed the button to close the privacy barrier as he reached into his pocket for his phone.

  Eric scanned the list of contacts, but he didn’t place a call. His finger moved to open Twitter instead, and he sucked in his breath with a hiss when he saw the username:

  @EricThornSucks

  He hadn’t bothered to switch back to his real account when he abruptly closed the app this morning. He’d missed that fangirl’s final words to him: one of those tidbits of holier-than-thou Tumblr wisdom.

  Eric groaned as he read it. Not because it was preachy—although it was. Preachy as hell. But because he couldn’t imagine any words better designed to make him hate himself. Fighting a battle… This girl could have some battle of her own going on for all he knew. She hadn’t spelled it out. It could be anything, really. She could have terminal cancer.

  And he’d attacked her.

  What was wrong with him? Here he was, consumed with fear that some random stranger might come after him—and he’d turned around and done the same thing to someone else. He’d slipped into attack mode so easily. It was just Twitter after all. Just words. Not real.

  But that was a real person on the other end, wasn’t it? A real person who obviously wasn’t as mindless as he’d painted her to be. She seemed like she might have half a brain, actually. “Projection,” she’d said. “You should look it up sometime.”

  Maybe he should, he thought. Maybe that was his penance. Go look up projection like she said, and maybe then he’d feel less horrible about himself.

  He entered the word into his phone and pulled up a Wikipedia page.

  Projection

  A psychological phenomenon first described by Sigmund Freud, in which the individual denies his or her own negative qualities while ascribing them to others.

  Eric could already feel his eyes glazing over after the first sentence. He’d never had much patience for homework. He hadn’t even bothered finishing high school. Once he had his record deal, there hadn’t seemed much point.

  He skimmed farther down the page.

  Examples include:

  Blaming the victim…

  Justifying infidelity…

  Bullying…

  Something caught in his chest when his eyes fell on that last word: bullying. He forced himself to click on the detailed explanation.

  Bullying: The classic bully engages in activities that target the weakness of others as a projection of his or her own sense of personal insecurity or vulnerability.

  Eric winced. There it was on Wikipedia—exactly what he’d done. He’d been feeling vulnerable for weeks, ever since the details started to emerge about the Cromwell case. And the label’s reaction, or lack thereof, had only added to his growing sense of powerlessness. He had absolutely no control over his life. That was what had made him so angry that morning. And he’d taken it out on that girl. The classic bully. He couldn’t deny how well the label fit. Apparently, he was a textbook case.

  Eric squeezed his eyes shut for a long moment. He knew what he had to do.

  No more angry hate-tweeting, for one thing. He needed to deactivate this fake account and find a healthier way of dealing with his demons. Like maybe talking to someone. Someone who would actually listen and try to understand. Not Maury. Not his parents. Not his personal trainer or his hairdresser or his limo driver, who were all on the record-label payroll. Not his old friends from back home either, whose interactions with him now were always tinged with jealousy. There had to be someone somewhere on this planet without a hidden agenda. Someone who would listen.

  But first he owed @TessaHeartsEric an apology. Plain and simple.

  Eric began to type a DM into the message bar when something else flashed onto his screen. A new message had been added at the end of the thread.

  He blinked, confused. Had he hit Send by accident?

  No, it wasn’t from him.

  She must have DM’ed him something else just now. He ran his eyes across the words:

  Tessa H: I don’t know what kind of battle you’re dealing w
ith, but if you ever want to talk for real, just let me know.

  Eric felt a fresh wave of shame buffet him. She wasn’t what he’d expected, was she? To reach out like that after the way he attacked her? To a total stranger on Twitter?

  He finished his message and hit Send.

  Taylor: I’m sorry for what I said. I’ve been having a rough time, and I took it out on you. I feel horrible. You didn’t deserve it. I’m so sorry.

  Her reply popped back a moment later.

  Tessa H: It’s OK. I get it.

  Tessa H: Do you want to talk about it?

  Eric looked away from the phone. He fiddled idly with the limo’s seat temperature buttons as he considered his next move. He’d made his apology. Now he should end the conversation. Close the account. Destroy the evidence. The consequences could be devastating if the wrong person ever found it.

  But it was just so tempting…

  It was perfect, really—the answer to a prayer he didn’t even know he’d made. She didn’t know anything about him. An egg: that’s all he was to her. And she was offering to talk, one human being to another, with no other motive than pure kindness.

  Just one little conversation, he thought. One innocent little heart-to-heart. He could deactivate in the morning.

  Tessa H: Are you there?

  “What harm could it do?” he whispered to himself as he entered his reply.

  Taylor: Yeah, I’m here. Let’s talk.

  THE INTERROGATION

  (FRAGMENT 3)

  December 31, 2016, 8:42 p.m.

  Case #: 124.678.21–001

  OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPTION OF POLICE INTERVIEW

  —START PAGE 4—

  INVESTIGATOR: Mr. Thorn, do you deny setting up a social media account under a false name on August 12, 2016?