Page 120 of The Exit Strategy

Junie: Explain.

Fen: I told you.

Fen: I fucking told you she was playing her hand too hard. It’s the timeline contradiction.

Fen: She did three interviews, three different versions of when you “attacked” her. I fed the discrepancies to a creator I’ve worked with before, and she cut a side by side. It’s at 2M views and climbing.

No. No. No.

Yes, I want Grace to fall.

No, I do not want to be included in a fresh wave of ToxicTok.

Fen: The Scout Report quietly pulled the original piece this morning. Their legal department reached out to mine to “clarify the factual basis of the prior reporting.”

Fen: The Unfiltered Hour just issued a statement.

Fen: The baby registry is still up btw. A king among thieves.

Junie: Holy. Shit.

Fen: I told you.

Fen: Never doubt me, my infamous little Spite-Berry.

Fen: I’m currently crushing a glass of champagne with Hudson. Well, I’m crushing one, he’s scowling at his phone.

Fen: If you were here, you’d get a hug that would dislocate your shoulder.

I set my phone down because my fingers are a live wire of electricity searching for an outlet.

I read the messages again.

The anger that always propels my spite takes a little longer to surface this time. Interesting what happens when you have no cause to reach for it for extended periods of time.

Vengeance dances across my chest with fiery tips though. It’s a joy with teeth. It’s the joy I’ve been storing in a jar under my bed for two months as the Internet called me names while Grace profited. It’s the joy I’mowed, and every cell of my body is preparing to claim it.

I open Instagram and scroll. It feeds my rancorous heart in seconds.

Then I move onto TikTok and the hunger grows, manic in its ascent and vital to my exoneration.

My fingers move on muscle memory to my drafts folder where there’s a seventy-one-word reply to Grace I’vebeen accidentally maintaining, lovingly, like a sourdough starter.

I stare at it, and the glow shining in my heart moves outward toward my limbs as I add a seventh sentence.

P.S. The “natural” cry face you’re using in your TikToks is the one you practiced in my bathroom junior year before yourFalling for Loveaudition tape. The lighting’s better now. The chin wobble’s the same.

It’s mean.

It’s extremely gratifying.

It is, objectively, the best sentence of the entire draft.

My thumb hovers over send.

And then, unbidden, Cole’s voice enters my mind.

“Tell me.”