Once Al had righted the screen door, he gave it a few test slides and called out, “I’m going to bed, hon.”
“Can you check on Iz while you’re up there?”
“You got it,” he said, then disappeared inside.
“How was she tonight?” Natasha asked me, taking a huge gulp of wine.
“Wonderful, as usual. We put together that whole Lego set, then watched a movie before she went to bed.”
“Isn’t her new mermaid room cute?” Natasha said. “Izzy picked out the comforter set herself.”
“It’s adorable.” My mind flashed back to the trinket box, the musty smell of the peeling felt. “I saw you put a little reminder of Mom in there.”
Her face screwed up into a question. “What’re you talking about?”
“The trinket box on Izzy’s nightstand.” When she still looked confused, I added, “The one covered in seashells.”
“That? I got that at HomeGoods two weeks ago.”
“But it looks so much like the one Mom used to keep on her dresser.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but it’s a pretty generic box, Bree. They’re probably mass-produced in some factory somewhere.”
Natasha sipped her wine dismissively and I felt crushed by the weight of my hopeful naiveté. Naturally, she was right; it was a common, unremarkable, and inexpensive item. Of course she’d bought it at HomeGoods. Of course she hadn’t stowed Mom’s belongings away, untouched, for over a decade. She wasn’t like me, with the secret memorial under my bed.
“Oh!” Natasha cried, her drink sloshing over the side of her glass in excitement. “I meant to tell you. I took your advice and started an Instagram account.”
“Cool! How’s it going so far?”
“Great! I wasn’t sure what I was doing at first, so I signed up for this Instagram boot camp with Demi DiPalma and powered through all the lessons in one day.”
“I didn’t realize she taught an Instagram boot camp.”
“She teaches everything. She’s a genius.”
“What kind of stuff did you learn?”
“Strategies for building an audience, tips for creating quality content, tricks for improving engagement. That sort of thing.”
“Sounds really useful.” Maybe I should’ve taken that course myself. I grabbed my phone from where it rested on the deck beside the hot tub. “What’s your Instagram handle? I’ll follow you.”
“@declutterwithdeangelis. All one word.”
I pulled up her profile and gasped. “You have over twenty-five thousand followers.”
“Mmm-hmm.” She nodded over her wineglass, as if this wasn’t completely astonishing. Meanwhile, @breebythesea had 223 followers, and I’d felt like every single one was a triumph. Until now.
“How did you get all these followers so quickly?” And what was I doing wrong?
“I bought them. Well, most of them.”
I’d heard of this practice—paying some third-party company to give your account a big batch of followers, mostly bots who were programmed to interact with your account on an automated schedule. “Demi DiPalma told you to buy followers?”
“No,” she said, “I figured that one out on my own. Right after I started the account, I got a DM from someone called BuyFollowersNow or MoreFollowers4U, something like that. Anyway, I paid them $250 and an hour later, I had twenty-five thousand followers.”
“But doesn’t that defeat the purpose of using Instagram to boost your business? You’re trying to reach actual people who could turn into paying customers.”
“Yeah, but it’s impossible to gain any traction without a little help. People want to follow people who are legit, and the only way to prove you’re legit is to have a lot of followers. It’s a total catch-22. By pretending I already have a big following, I’ll be able to attract real people who are genuinely interested in my work.”
“Right.” Instantly, I thought of the picture I’d just posted, the wine bottle with the bogus #collab hashtag. “Fake it till you make it.”
“Exactly!” After another huge gulp of wine, she asked, “So, what’s going on with your action plan? You started telling me about it last weekend but then we were interrupted. You said you made a vision board?”
“A virtual vision board—on Instagram, actually—and it launched me into this whole new venture of being a nano-influencer.” I could see she was about to ask what that was, so I headed her off at the pass. “It’s like a regular influencer, but on a smaller scale.”
“How many followers do you have?”
Too embarrassed to speak the actual number out loud, I said, “Not nearly as many as you. I can’t afford to buy followers. Right now, I’m mostly focused on trying to pay my rent. I’ve been working with HandyMinion all week, though, and it’s been good. If I keep it up, I think I’ll stand to make way more than I did when I was with GrubGetter.”
She set her wineglass down on the side of the hot tub and sighed that same exasperated sigh she gave whenever she was about to lecture me on the importance of “aiming high” and “never giving up” and “choosing happy.”
“Let’s back up a second. How did you define your aspiration? What did you write in the first action item?”
“I didn’t actually define one.” Another exasperated sigh. “I couldn’t think of anything I really wanted to do or be. All I could see when I did that creative visualization exercise was a perfectly curated Instagram feed.”
She cocked her head, thoughtful. “Well, maybe the fact that you’ve manifested this nano-influencing thing into your life is a sign from the universe that you should continue down this path. But you shouldn’t settle for ‘nano’ anything. You should aim for greatness. What’s your Instagram niche?”
“Niche?”
“It’s the category you’re looking to dominate. A lot of the big ones are so oversaturated right now, it’ll be hard for you to stand out in something like travel or beauty or fashion. You should pick a niche that’s less common, but still profitable. I bet you could make a killing on something like cooking in small spaces. How to make the most of your tiny appliances in a kitchenette. Gourmet meals in a microwave, or whatever.”
“But I don’t know how to cook.”
“Well, you can learn as you go. Fake it till you make it, right?”