Page 1 of The Exit Strategy

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TRIAL BY TIKTOK

JUNIE

Saturday 3:15 a.m. TikTok Notification:Your video has 1M views.

Oh God.This isn’t good.

I set my empty glass on my nightstand and pull the covers up to my chin.

This will pass. Closing my eyes, I will myself to dream of happily ever afters and not the shit show my life has become.

Monday 8:30 a.m. TikTok Notification:Your video has 3K comments.

No. No, no, no.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand, flashing my brother’s name. He’s been in Japan for the last two years learning…whatever it is doctors learn over there, but it’s not our scheduled check-in day, so I send it to voicemail, which must piss him off because he immediately calls back three more times.

Nolan: Answer your damn phone, Juniper.

I bury my face in my pillow. Maybe if I just stay in bed long enough, this will all blow over.

Tuesday 9:00 a.m. Email Notification.

My fingers tremble over the message in my inbox.

From: Callahan Analytics

Subject: Urgent.

And for the second time in less than a week, my dreams are shattered.

Dear Ms. Mercer,

We regret to inform you that due to recent online activity, we are forced to rescind your offer of employment. Our social media morality clause…

My eyes glaze over. When I can’t see the words anymore, I toss my phone aside and scream into my pillow.

I should’ve seenthis coming. I’m angry with myself that I didn’t, but somehow, even after my life imploded, this particular brand of destruction still blindsides me.

And I’ve had fifteen hours, sitting in the back seat of my own damn car, to dissect all the ways I was wrong and all the things I should have said, would have said, if I hadn’t been so caught off guard by my own personal band of merry meddlers. Or as my brother calls them, his best friends.That’s how long it takes us to drive from a viral crashout in Boston to a town I swore I’d never set foot in.

The town that Cole Whittaker calls home.

Fifteen hours of gas station coffee with my sweatshirt hood pulled low and so many true-crime podcasts that now I’m one check-engine light away from a complete and utter breakdown.

I’ll stop scrolling on my phone in just a minute, I swear.

“Holy shit.” I sit up straighter. “What’s she doing?”

Forty-seven ways to ruin Grace Elliott scroll through my mind as I glare at my phone.

An anonymous call to the IRS because she’s never paid taxes from her nanny job.