“We fired her over it,” Yale Girl blurted. Ingrid put a hand down in front of Yale Girl on the desk.
The anchor shook her head, the clipped ends of her hair swinging in perfect coordination. “So,” she said, as the camera cut to her alone, “what kind of person does a thing like that? Mmm.” She took a breath. “We have an old friend of Orla Cadden’s joining us now.”
“Oh, God,” Orla said. “Danny.”
But it wasn’t. The camera pulled out, revealing a third woman at the table. She pulled self-consciously at an ill-fitting blazer as the anchor nodded at her and said, “Thank you for being with us today.”
“Sure thing,” Catherine said. Her face was blazing red.
* * *
It became the thing she feared most in the world, her name. And it was everywhere.
One time Orla sat in a cab, stuck in traffic on her way to the prissy crisis counselor Craig had prescribed, and watched her name ripple over the Times Square crawler of a national news network. That time it was just her last name, at the end of an ominous headline, one sandwiched between stories on the presidential race she was paying no attention to: SALGADO FAMILY MAY PRESS CHARGES AGAINST NATUZZI, CADDEN. Orla’s face had gone limp with shame, thinking of her parents. Their name looked just the same on-screen as it did on the driftwood sign above their stove: THE CADDEN FAMILY, EST. WITH LOVE 1985, MIFFLIN, PA. She hadn’t talked to Gayle and Jerry since Anna Salgado died, and she would only be able to if they showed up and pressed the buzzer at her door, which they hadn’t so far. Orla had set her phone to airplane mode. She wasn’t checking her email. She deleted her social-media accounts. She stopped watching television—first because she couldn’t fathom that she was on the news, and then because she couldn’t fathom that she wasn’t anymore. How dare the world move on and leave her to live out this ending alone?
The people who recognized her on the street now looked at her sharply and called her a cunt. She had been called that so many times on the internet, she thought the word had lost its sucker punch. But hearing it out loud, unexpected, when she was in sweats and just picking up toilet paper, was a whole new kind of injury. Once, as Orla was hurrying home, past the nail salon under her apartment building, a woman standing on the sidewalk in her toe separators hissed the word and spit at her. Then she went right back to being on the phone, as if the gesture was routine. As if it took nothing out of her.
After that, Melissa bought her a Yankees cap and said not to leave the building without it. She banged the hat against Orla’s desk, then set a tennis ball beneath it, squeezing the brim into an arch over the ball and wrapping a rubber band around to make it stay. “So that it doesn’t look so new,” she said. Orla nodded in silence, looking at her, thinking that Melissa looked fat. Orla knew she hadn’t worked out since Anna’s death, nearly a month ago, and that, apparently, was enough time to melt the marble curves that took her years to carve.
As for the rest of them: Mason still reported to the apartment each day. He was afraid to tell his husband that the network had suspended Flosston Public indefinitely, that they were ignoring Craig’s pleading follow-ups. Craig still came to 6D most days, too, for no discernible reason. He puttered around like a broken toy, chattering or sinking into hour-long silences. He missed the mug when he tried to pour coffee. He opened cabinet doors and left them that way. He had to be reminded, every day, that Aston wasn’t there.
Aston had gone back to the Bowery Hotel, and he wouldn’t leave his room. He would not return calls or texts from anyone, but he tweeted constantly.
Anna S was a beauty. Coulda seen her in one of my videos (after 18th bday, obvs)
My true heart goes out to her family and friends
It’s so loud in my head why should I be quiet
I thought I was eating the world but the world ate me, the money, the money made a monster out of me
But the money will be gone son
SOON
Hey ASTONished Nation—Don’t forget to download my app! It’s free all month! Let’s get this to number