I should check on Amy, I thought. Maybe she needed help with something for the wedding, and that would take my mind off everything. And I hadn’t been as kind as I should have been the previous night. Or at her shower. Or in the previous year, for that matter. I honestly didn’t know if Caryn and I would still be on speaking terms after her wedding, and Megan was fading fast as well. I may not have always liked Amy, but she would always be there, so the least I could do was treat her like a human being.
Of course, calling her also meant I would have to tell her Alex wasn’t coming to the wedding, but if I was lucky, she wouldn’t remember that she had invited him in the first place.
With a distinct feeling of dread, hoping there would be something from Alex saying I was still his best friend, but knowing that there wouldn’t, I picked up my phone and held the power button.
It buzzed relentlessly in my hand, notifications filling the screen.
Voicemails and missed calls from Megan, Caryn, Amy, Sharon, Megan again, Becca, Megan again, Jake, Sharon again, Becca again, my mother, a cousin I hadn’t talked to in ages, and a couple of numbers I didn’t recognize.
The emails were still loading: 250, no, 300, no, 487, no, 726 new emails.
What on earth? I looked at the calendar icon. It wasn’t Sunday. I had slept for close to thirty-two hours. Which thankfully didn’t matter because of the holiday. But still. What was going on?
The text messages came clanging in as well.
I clicked Megan’s thread first.
Are you kidding me?
Jesus Lily
You started a fucking blog?
What were you thinking?
I don’t even know what to say to you right now
Are you really not even going to answer me?
The blog. Oh God. The blog.
I dashed across the room to my laptop and flipped it open, my heart racing. My name wasn’t anywhere on it, so Megan must have stumbled on it randomly and figured out it was me. Of course she would be able to tell that I wrote it; she knew me so well.
I refreshed my blog dashboard page. When I saw the number of hits, I closed my eyes, assuming I would see the real number when I opened them. In the thirty-two hours since I had hit “Publish,” the blog had amassed over a million new views.
“What the hell?” I exhaled.
“Lily?” Becca called, the door opening. I didn’t move from my computer screen.
She came to my doorway. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling you.”
I looked up at her, my eyes wide. “I—turned off my phone. After the party.”
“Jesus,” she said, sinking down onto my bed. “When did you get back online?”
“Just—now.”
“So you don’t know?”
“What happened?”
Becca typed something on her phone and handed it to me. “Buzzfeed,” she said. “You went viral.”
“I—what?” I took the phone from her. A Buzzfeed headline read, World’s Worst Bridesmaid Hilariously Blogs about Her Five Bridezillas. It was typical Buzzfeed-style writing, an author detailing her favorite parts of my snarkiness with screenshots highlighting specific passages.
I skimmed through it. The last paragraph had what I needed to know.
And while I can’t one hundred percent confirm who the bridesmaid from hell is, a recurring IP address where posts and comments from the blog’s owner originated is registered to the Foundation for Scientific Technology. I did a little social media sleuth work （or stalking, call it what you will—it wasn’t hard; there are only three women under fifty who work there） and it looks like FST’s Public Relations Director, Lily Weiss, is, in fact, listed on five different wedding websites as a bridesmaid, including her brother’s, her sister’s, and three friends, one of whom is a coworker. If that’s not a smoking gun, I don’t know what is.
*Note: Messages to Ms. Weiss have gone unanswered so far. We’ll update this post when we hear back from her.
Fuck.
I looked up at Becca. “Is it too late to deny it?”
She grimaced. “If you’d seen it early enough, maybe you could have. But I think everyone and their mother has seen this post by now. It’s all over my Facebook and Twitter timelines.”
The room started spinning and I thought I might throw up, but I closed my eyes and waited for the spell to pass.
“I don’t think I’m in any weddings anymore, am I?”
“I don’t know.”
I put my head in my hands. “I don’t even know where to start dealing with this. Should I take the blog down?”