Page 44 of While You Were Trending

“Let’s get you back inside, my poor baby,” my mother croons, trying to break through Mabel and Cricket and Heath. “I’ll make you your favorite macaroni and cheese with hot dogs, and everything will look better.”

Macaroni and cheese with hot dogs is Ten’s favorite comfort food.

Not mine.

My favorite is oatmeal chocolate chip cookies with walnuts.

“I’m fine,” I force out. “Just startled.”

“Ginny. You’re emotional. You need your mommy.”

“I need to think.”

“Mommy can help with that too.”

Goddammit.

It’s what she always said on camera in my teenage years.

I still occasionally pass by someone in a T-shirt with my pimpled, four-eyed, brace-face squinting weird with my mouth half-open andMommy can help you thinkprinted over it.

“We need to do damage control,” Cricket says. “I have a few ideas. Freida, why don’t you come with me, and we can brainstorm together while Ginny collects herself?”

“Sweetheart, no offense, but when your only camera experience is flashing your coochie to the world, no one’s going to take your ideas seriously.”

“Mother,” I hiss.

“What?” she says to me. “I’m not wrong.”

“Freida?” Heath says.

She turns her show smile on him. “Yes?”

“Get fucking bent and get the fuck off of this property.”

She gasps.

Heath glowers. “No oneinsults my girlfriend and gets away with it.”

“But there’s a crisis, and—” she starts.

“And we’re all grown adults who can handle it,” Mabel interrupts.

“Are you going to let him talk to me that way?” my mother says to me.

I look at Cricket. Then at Heath. Then at Mabel, and then back to my mother. “I don’t know, Mother. Maybe I should ask if I’m going to allowyouto talk to my friends like that?”

As expected, her hand flies to her chest. “You don’t want my help, but you want me to apologize for something that’s not my fault? Shedidflash her coochie to the world. Am I not allowed to say that now? Am I not allowed to tell the truth when the truth is painful?”

I press my fingers to my temples. “Can you not?”

“And here we go.” My mother throws her hands in the air. “It’s always my fault, isn’t it?”

“Squuuuuuaaaaaawwwwwwkkkkkk!”

A large brown chicken charges into the barn, wings flapping, feathers flying, beak wide open while it yells.

And runs straight for my mother.