This Story Might Save Your Life(58)

“Benny…” Sarah glances down, and I realize I’m still squeezing her arm.

Loosening my grip, I study my texts with Joy again.

Joy: Might need you to piece together some tracks for XYZ.

Me: More info, please.

Joy:

Me: Mmkay… and…?

“You coming?” Mallory shouts up to me.

Attic, dismemberments, appliances. Floaters pass before my eyes. I look up and my vision narrows on the human chain lumbering down the hill. “Oh my god.”

“What?”

“I understand it now. I know what it is.”

“What what is?”

Leave it to Joy to make it so obvious and so difficult at the same time. “The password.”

I don’t wait. I turn my back on the search group and start running.





Joy Moore


EXCERPT FROM UNTITLED JOINT MEMOIR WITH BENNY ABBOTT

Two Months Ago

Thankfully, the photo of the hug didn’t gain traction. A few people liked it but none reposted it, and as quickly as it wreaked its havoc, it was buried in the graveyard of social media nonstarters. It was not, however, forgotten in my home. “It’s not what you think,” I told Xander over and over. “Please believe me.” But his anger was a burning ember. He drove around for hours in his MG to “cool off,” only to return home just as hot. I hated being around him, but I also felt guilty for making him that way, even though I knew I’d done nothing wrong. It’s odd how all these conflicting emotions can share the same space in your brain.

Throughout all of this, we maintained our recording schedule. Negotiations were finally beginning to wrap up, and heaven forbid Apex Plus believe something was wrong.

“I know who it is,” Benny said, charging downstairs two weeks after our hug.

“What are you talking about?” I asked irritably. Benny was twenty minutes late, and I was tired from fighting with Xander. I doubted I would last through the whole recording.

“Your stalker. I think I know who it is.”

For the first time since the photo posted, Xander looked him in the eye. “What do you mean?”

“I just talked to my neighbor—the squirrel guy? Ted? He’s a paparazzo. All this time I’ve been living next door to a fucking paparazzo and I had no idea. He’s the only person who could’ve gotten a shot of my backyard. It has to be him.”

“Oh my god.” I pressed a hand to my chest. “Did he admit it?”

“He tried to claim he’s never heard of our podcast, but like I’m gonna fucking believe that.”

This broke my brain. How did Ted know where I was at all hours? Did he have tracers? Hidden cameras? These were questions we’d asked before, but now I was picturing a sixty-year-old man with a squirrel on his shoulder, and it didn’t add up.

Xander, however, was all in. “We’ll sue him. We’ll sue him for every penny he’s got.” He looked alternately relieved and infuriated—the same expressions that were cycling across Benny’s face. For a moment, as they stood there staring at each other, grappling with this turn of events, I thought they might actually make up.

“I’ll call our lawyers right now,” Xander said, and left the room.

This was the last day of July.



* * *



ON THE FIRST of August we learned we had other problems.

“A recall?” I asked Xander, stepping out of the shower. I tightened my towel but remained on the pale green bath mat, hair dripping onto my shoulders. I’d had several gnarly sleep hallucinations the night before and woken in a funk, and the hot water did nothing to clear my head. “The energy shakes?”

“It’s bad.” His cheeks were mottled, gelled hair standing on end. The protein powder found in Shake Awake’s all-day-energy products had been linked to severe illness in hundreds of consumers. People were landing in the ER with extreme dehydration following weeklong bouts of nausea and vomiting. Half a dozen consumers had already needed their gallbladders removed. A handful had even gone into liver failure. “It’s a disaster. We’ll have to issue a statement. There was no way we could’ve known.”

I remembered then, face tingling from the sudden loss of blood: the email. My eyes darted around the bathroom before landing on my stricken reflection. I wasn’t going to be able to hide this.

“Joy.”

I didn’t respond.

“Tell me you didn’t know.”

“Not exactly…” I crossed my arms tightly and tried to explain that the email came through anonymously, without any supporting evidence. “We googled it, I swear, but nothing came up.”

“We?”

“Me and Benny.”

His jaw tensed. “When was this?”

“A few weeks ago.”

“And in all that time it never once occurred to you to mention it?”

“I forgot. You weren’t there, and then—” I cringed as the order of events came back to me in full color. That was the day of the hug.

Xander must have done the math. My equilibrium shifted and I pressed my back to the shower glass.

“It’s like you’re trying to sabotage our negotiations.”

Pulse racing, I shook my head, sending rivulets of water down my chest and back. “I would never.”