palms up. “They have deadlines. But listen! I have two blog features lined up for you, and they are very excited about you. The New Designer Showcase is a big deal for the fashion blogs.”
Victor sighed and looked at his hands. “Yeah, maybe.” He pushed himself off the couch and walked into the kitchenette.
Carly looked at June. “What is happening?” she whispered.
“He gets depressed sometimes,” June said softly, her gaze darting toward the kitchenette. They could hear Victor putting something into the microwave. “He’s having some confidence issues.”
“But why?” Carly asked with alarm. “Why now? Why at all? He won Project Runway!”
“Social media,” June muttered. “People are so cruel.”
Carly felt sick. She posted content on his social media channels, and of course she kept an eye on his mentions and user comments. She hadn’t seen anything to give her concern—most of the comments were positive. But then again, she’d been wrapped up in dog issues over the weekend. “Which account?”
“Instagram.” June frowned darkly.
“Mom, we’re out of ketchup!” Victor called.
Carly grabbed her phone and pulled up Instagram.
“Look in the cabinet,” June called back.
Carly began to scroll through the posts.
“I can’t find it!” Victor shouted.
“Look in the cabinet!” June walked into the kitchenette to help him find it.
Carly didn’t see anything to alarm her at first. She had posted a lot of pictures of his completed work, pictures of Victor hard at work, mentions of him in the press. Victor had posted some of his sketches, too, all of which she’d seen and thought were great content. But there was a post from last Thursday, a sketch of an evening gown that featured his signature shoulders and hips. Someone had panned the design and called it a second grade art project featuring Minecraft characters.
That was the sort of comment Carly would have paid no heed to at all and would advise Victor, or anyone else, to ignore. That was the problem with social media—there were people in the world who seemingly existed just to tear other people down, but you couldn’t give them any oxygen. You couldn’t let them steal your mojo. And the best way to keep your mojo intact was to stay off social media and allow your publicist to post for you and monitor comments.
Unfortunately, Victor hadn’t done any of that. He’d fired back at the comment, calling the female a wannabe who was obviously jealous of his success and probably, judging from her comment, lacking talent. Others had begun to pile on. They’d called him names, said he was overrated, that they hated him on Project Runway.
Victor had responded to each and every comment.
That’s when the worst trolls began to suggest that he was such a talentless hack that maybe he ought to kill himself.
“Oh my God,” Carly breathed when June returned. She deleted the post.
“And there is this one,” June said, and held out her phone to Carly. It was a fashion blog site called Felicity’s Fashions. The header was an illustration of a smartly dressed woman dashing across a street with a poodle on a lead, oversized sunglasses, and wearing a polka-dot dress.
“What about her?” Carly asked.
“Oh, she ranked all the designers who are showing in the New Designer Showcase.” June glanced back at the kitchenette and whispered, “She ranked Victor last. She said his designs looked like someone took a surplus army tent and cut holes for the arms and legs.”
“Don’t let him see that,” Carly said, pushing June’s phone back to her. “Delete it.”
“He’s the one who showed me. And then said he didn’t take advice from someone with so much side boob.”
Carly gasped. She grabbed June’s phone and scrolled through the comments. They were just as awful on the blog as they were on Instagram, but here an argument had erupted on the blogger’s post. Some defended Victor. Some suggested that others who defended a young upstart designer who hadn’t sold any clothes to the masses ought to sit down and shut up. Others took umbrage with the word upstart and its culturally negative connotations, and especially those with tattoos and rainbow hair and suggested that it was homophobic.
“No, no, no,” Carly groaned.
“You need to turn this around, Carly,” June said. “That’s why we hired you.”
“I will do my best,” Carly promised. “But I can’t do that if Victor is going to come in behind me and make these comments. He needs to stay off social media.”
“I am doing my best, too,” June said. “But he gets like this. He gets all in