black-rimmed glasses, perfect olive skin, and nude lip gloss, shiny and pearly, the kind Orla would have thought was out of style. Self-consciously, she touched her own lips, which were a thick red Floss had talked her into.
“Huh?” the girl said. She studied Orla. “Oh. Right. You’re on Flosston Public. The bookish one, right? Orla.”
It was her brand, but Orla still flinched at being called bookish. Not knowing what else to do, she trilled, feeling fake, “I love Lady-ish.”
The girl broke into a knowing grin. “I guess you do,” she said. “You worked there a long time.”
Orla bristled. “Right,” she said, reddening. “It’s a great place to start out.”
The girl shrugged. “I went to Yale,” she said, as if this explained multitudes. “I won’t be there that long. I’m writing a play. About—Well, I shouldn’t say too much. My agent wouldn’t want me to. I swear it’s like her full name is Polly ‘Top Secret’ Cummings.”
Orla nodded, teeth frozen. The girl had to be bluffing, she thought. There was no way she was repped by Polly Cummings. Polly was a lioness of literary agents, one whose name Orla had known since high school, when she checked a guide to the industry out of the local library. Her senior year, she had mailed Polly a short story she had written, the same one that now made up most of her manuscript. She remembered the day she got the response from Polly’s office. Gayle had come running out to where Orla floated in their aboveground pool, waving the envelope—Polly’s response came by mail, because it was only 2005—“Polly Cummings wrote back!” I see promise here. Keep going!!—P, said the Post-it on top of the packet Orla had mailed. Beneath the Post-it was another sheet, a half page of typed feedback. Now that she knew how these things worked, Orla understood that the letter had been written by an assistant—this was back when people Yale Girl’s age were expected to be assistants, not self-ordained playwrights. Yale Girl was full of shit, Orla ruled. But something must have crossed her face, doubt or envy or fear, because Yale Girl smiled suddenly, like she had won a race between them. Just before she turned to see who else was coming down the line, Yale Girl looked at Orla with pity in her eyes. “Anyway, good luck,” she said. “I mean it.”
Orla was already shuffling away when she realized: the bitch hadn’t even bothered asking her a question.
* * *
Floss had broken through, become known, back in September. What did it was Paulina’s fall at the Urban Outfitters, and Floss looking on, not catching her. It should have ruined Floss’s life. It might have sent her to court. But instead, she was saved by a sound effect.
There had been video, of course. At first, this was a bad thing. It looked somehow worse each time they watched it—Floss tugging her arm away, Paulina collapsing in a pile of wrong-way bones. They huddled together on Orla’s bed as the Paulina fans who saw their address on Twitter stood outside their building, hurling overripe squash at the brick. (The internet had decided that Floss’s face was gourd-like.)
Over the course of twenty-four hours, the video transcended web bedlam and landed on the news, local and national. Anchors shook their heads and talked about new lows. “You don’t understand,” Orla said, trying to impress on Floss how big and bad this was. “It’s not just online. Grown-ups know about it now.”
The little mobs kept coming. Orla and Floss were trapped inside. They quickly ran out of food. The police had stopped bike messengers from entering the building because of safety concerns, so there could be no takeout. Their neighbors all hated them for the fuss, so there was no one to beg for help or ramen. In a desperate moment, thinking the Ukrainian man might sympathize, they took a ride up to the roof. But all they found was a new padlock on the patio gate. Floss was furious. She took it personally. But Orla thought, as she stared at the lock, Good for you.
Gayle kept calling Orla and then refusing to speak to her, handing the phone to Jerry as soon as Orla picked up. But when Orla told her father that she and Floss were hungry, her mother went to work. Twelve hours later, the doorman held out a crazily markered-up box—FRAGILE!!!! PERISHABLE!!!—filled with cardboard sleeves of pasta and bubble-wrapped jars of Prego, Campbell’s soup, Chex Mix, Oreos,