Page 13 of The Exit Strategy
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I swipe through the damage with the manic energy of someone picking a scab. Yes, it’s bad for me. Yes, it’ll leave a gnarly scar. No, I can’t stop.
Someone auto-tuned my “I’m not sorry” speech into a dance remix that’s now also going viral. The famous influencer SassyTalk is now doing a series on it that’s bringing in viewers at an alarming rate. My newest video, where I told the world that she slept with my boyfriend, in my house, where she lived rent-free, is being suppressed by the one Grace spliced together, omitting her bad behavior but keeping my colorful language.
It only takes three swipes for me to come across the original video of myself. The woman staring out of the screen doesn’t even look like me. This girl really is…ferine. She’s mascara-smeared and magnificent, saying things I’ve swallowed for twenty-four years.
She’s also the reason no one will hire me.
The lump in my throat gets bigger.
Callahan Analytics was the center of every spreadsheet I’ve ever made for my life. My five-year plans, the career trajectory I mapped out in the school library long after I should have been in bed. All of it was torched by sixty seconds of spite.
It wasn’t just a job. It wastheplan. The one I started to formulate in the fourth grade at career day. The one my mom pinky-promised to show up to. And as I sat, listening to Christy Callahan’s mom talk about life balance and how numbers never lie, I understood once and for all that lies were all my mother was capable of.
That’s the day I chose the Callahan path. Years later, I made their company my mission. And now it’s gone too.
Hudson’s words when he rescued me from the Bagelry ring in my head.“One of these days, you’ll figure out that all that spite you wield to protect yourself is really just what ruins your joy.”
I shove that memory down and keep scrolling.
It takes even less time to land on Grace’s I.Am.Sorry account because of the sheer quantity of posts she’s made. Toxic acid swirls through my gut.
She has new videos pinned to the top. The first one I click on is of me tossing her stuff out my window with her crying into the camera. The caption she chose?This is what she did to me after I told her the truth.
It has 3.1 million views. A million more than the bar video.
Her second video is of her with perfect lighting and perfect tears. “I lost my best friend, and I don’t know how to heal. I just don’t understand what I did to deserve this.”
What you did?I want to throw my phone into the ocean.You slept with Paul. You’re pregnant by someone else’s boyfriend. You told me at my graduation party with all my acquaintances present, not while we were getting ready to go out in the privacy of my bedroom. You knew exactly what you were doing!
It’s clear in the comments section that the viewers don’t have any context. All people see is a crying woman sitting inthe wreckage of her belongings, pregnant, on a sidewalk, and the monster who threw them there.
She’s unhinged.
Classic narcissist behavior.
Grace, you have nothing to be sorry for.
Her account name is genius, and I hate that I recognize it. I.Am.Sorry. It sounds like an apology. It’s designed to make the audience say you have nothing to apologize for. She was always smarter than people gave her credit for.
I scroll again. A video of Grace holding up a torn book, another of her showing screenshots of death threats she says she’s received. Each video is more polished than the last. Each one with more followers, more sympathy, more love.
My hands are shaking. How can she be benefiting off of my pain that she caused, while I lost everything?
A text notification pops up from Fen. He’s never slept normal hours.
Juniper and Her Berries:
Fen: Jesus, Spite-Berry. This thing is spiraling.
Hudson: Dare I ask?
What the hell is he still doing up?
Nolan: Answer your fucking phone, Junie.
Fen: Seriously. The fucking audacity. She must have bots scanning her I.Am.Sorry account. The second someone defends Junie, it’s gone. Wiped as though it never existed.
