“You should stop torturing those poor fish,” I said, watching the black ball bob in the water. Bon Jovi tried to nibble at it, and then ducked away in disgust.
“Ophelia, if we look like garbage, people will treat us like garbage,” Mom said, the same mantra she’d been repeating since we were kids. “You know the world doesn’t like ugly people.”
“You can’t say things like that anymore.”
“Why? Because it’s true?” Mom tossed a second muffin in, even though the fish had left the first nearly untouched.
“I thought koi shouldn’t eat carbs.”
“They’re gluten-free,” Mom told me.
My phone in my back pocket pinged then. It was a Spark message from Spider-Man Mateo, aka HotSpidey, my currently off-again casual hookup who hadn’t messaged me in a couple of weeks.
I figured on-set shooting had gotten busy, or he’d found a different person to hook up with. Or, he, like the rest of the world, heard about my embarrassing demise and decided it was best to quietly exit stage right.
Querida, my Spidey-sense is tingling. And that’s not the only thing…
I blinked at the message, and wondered if he was trying to say he missed me, or warn me that he had an STD.
Everything okay?I messaged back.
Sí! Just want to see you. You free tonight?
I sighed. I guess I forgot to tell my Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man With Benefits I’d left town. I kind of wish I hadn’t. A little roll around in his squeaky twin bed in his closet-sized bedroom might just be the thing I needed to forget my failures as a human.
Sorry! Left Chicago. Went home. Won’t be back for a while.
As in, maybe not ever.
I waited for a second, but Mateo didn’t respond. We weren’t that serious, because I didn’t do serious. The fastest way to get me out of your bedroom was to start talking about your feelings. Blech.
Since I had the app open, a few more notices came up. Apparently, there were singles in Lake Sanguis looking to smash.
“Who’s texting you?” Mom asked me, interested, as she lobbed a third muffin into the pond.
“None of your business,” I said.
“Is that Spark?” Mom looked uneasy.
“It’s actually Knife, the new get-matched-with-your-soulmate-serial-killer app.” Diamond Dave slapped his tail against the surface of the water. At least he appreciated my joke.
“Ha. Funny,” Mom said. “But why is it dinging so much?”
“I just got an update about all the available bachelors in my area on the app.”
“Like who?” I saw Mom’s aversion to the app be overridden by blatant curiosity in real time.
We both saw Allen Gordon, the frozen custard king, at the same time and squealed in terror.
“He’s older than your father,” Mom pointed out.
“I’m going to swipe left!” I promised.
“No—wait, let me see his photos.” Mom grabbed my phone and began flicking through the photos of the reviled owner of the Gordon’s Frozen Custard empire. The first one looked relatively normal: just him and his bald head, red bulbous nose, and acne-scarred face in his red fleece vest with the Gordon’s Frozen Custard logo on it.
But then the pictures quickly devolved into weird.
Like, one of him in front of a fireplace, lying on a bearskin rug on his stomach—buck naked.
