If I hadn’t got stuck in that elevator, I wouldn’t have then taken to Facebook Live later that night and cursed @TheKyleWhite101 and @Paige_Dreams_ and all those people who’d unfollowed me, which then led me to lose another 100,000 over the next day. Not to mention losing all my brand endorsements and, finally, my beautiful sponsored car. I’d hung onto the bonnet while it was being driven away, which had been good for a TikTok video painting me as a crying, screaming wild woman.
No! If it hadn’t been for that faulty elevator, I wouldn’t now find myself here. Alone and lonely. Lonely time 2.0. I was officially a nobody again, lying on a bed in a hotel, because @TheKyleWhite101 had kicked me out of our flat, and glued to my phone as #FrankieFreaksOut trended and everyone who had once looked up to me threw insults my way from the safety of their social media anonymity.
And when I wasn’t watching my social-media-self crash and burn, I was stalking @TheKyleWhite101 and @Paige_Dreams_ every five minutes as they grew followers by the second and they became the #couplegoals #blessed #gratitude #winning #dreamteam that I was only seventy-two hours earlier . . .
Screw that elevator!
And screw hashtags too.
#screwthem
CHAPTER 1
I hadn’t cried like this in ten years, two hundred and seventeen days and—I looked down at my Apple watch—eight hours. Specific, I know. But the thing that happened ten years, two hundred and seventeen days and eight hours ago, has been seared into me, leaving third-degree burn scars behind that have never faded.
Hey, Frankie, they’d all said with such big smiles.
I wasn’t used to smiles. But I’d wanted them. So badly.
Wanna hang out after school? they’d asked, still smiling.
I’d never been asked to hang. But I’d always wanted to. So, so badly.
Meet us down by the cricket nets. They’d given me high-fives.
I’d never been given high-fives. But I’d wanted them. So, so, so badly . . .
I suppose a girl like me should have known better. I should have known that there would be no more smiles and hanging and high-fives. I should have known that instead there would be taunts and jeers and spit in my “fat, ugly face” before being shoved into the small shed by the sports fields that no one ever went to.
It took my mom a whole night to notice that I was missing—when she’d come home from her shift at the hospital and my bed was still made. It took the police another eight hours to find me after that. Sitting there alone in the dark shed, shivering from the winter cold, hysterical, bloody fingers and broken nails from trying to rip the door open. I should have known.
I looked down at my fingers and picked at the nail that I’d ripped off in the elevator three days ago and sobbed some more. I always wear false nails, I have to. Because since that day in the shed, I’ve bitten them. But I would hate anyone to see that. I needed a distraction, so I jumped up and did ten quick lunges across my hotel room, and then logged the activity into my exercise app—only twelve calories burned. For some reason, this made me cry even more. Surely, surely there was a universal limit to the amount of water that can come pouring out of a person’s eyeballs. I was going to become dehydrated, for heaven’s sake! This wasn’t normal. And there was no app to calculate this either, so I was really freaking out.
But the tears had been gushing on and off at steady intervals for the last three days, as if on a timer. In fact, they were perfectly timed with the movement of my hand reaching for my phone, only to discover what fresh post from hell was waiting for me there. What new number of thumbs downs, mass exodus of friends, lack of likes, like lemmings plunging off a cliff. Or maybe it was all the comments that were cutting me to the quick that were really responsible for the tears . . .
I used to look up to @FitspoFrankie, but now I just feel sorry for her.
@FitspoFrankie is a bitch. Hate her!
Who thinks that @TheKyleWhite101 and @Paige_Dreams_ make a much better #couplegoals #hotspocouple
I hope @FitspoFrankie gets fat again!
Have you ever swallowed a pill while hiccupping? It catches in your throat with a bolt of sharp pain. Chokes you, makes you splutter, and then when it finally goes down, leaves your throat feeling raw and assaulted. That’s what it felt like every single time I went back to my phone. But I couldn’t help it. I kept going back for more punishment. I needed to stop doing this, especially now that the video of me clinging to my car wailing was going viral . . .
@FitspoFrankie hanging onto her car crying is the most pathetic thing I’ve seen all year. #FrankieFreaksOut
Don’t worry @FitspoFrankie, walking will be good for you. LOL #FrankieFreaksOut
@FitspoFrankie is a total loser. #FrankieFreaksOut
I needed a distraction, and lunges weren’t helping. I needed someone to talk to. So I went to WhatsApp and messaged Suzanne, a friend I’d met online. But when I saw the two blue ticks next to my message and didn’t get a response, the need to phone her kicked in. But you can’t just phone someone without first asking them if it’s okay to phone them. I typed her another message.
Can I phone you?
I stared at my new message and my hopes skyrocketed when I saw her typing back. I waited patiently for the moving dots to result in letters, but when they didn’t and the typing stopped and she went offline, my heart sank. She went offline in the middle of a conversation—she might as well have broken up with me like
@TheKyleWhite101 had done. The tears prickled in my eyes and, this time, I did make a call without asking.
“Hey, Jess,” I said, when my very busy-sounding sister answered.
“Frances.” She was the only person in the world who called me that. “What’s up? I’m in the middle of the school run.” She was always in the middle of something. Suburban mom in a Suburban, driving my niece Melissa to her myriad of extramurals, both cultural and sporty, so she would be well-rounded, as Jess was so fond of saying. And Melissa was only two. Jess had gotten married pretty young—high-school sweetheart, of course—and they’d actually conceived Melissa on their honeymoon . . . how perfect!
“I . . . I . . .” I stuttered stupidly and then the tears came.
“Frances, what’s happened?” she asked, sounding more irritated than concerned.
“No one likes me anymore,” I found myself wailing. “They’ve all unfriended me.”
I heard a sigh. A long, loud, protracted one. “I really don’t have time for this now. Isn’t there someone else you can call? One of your Facebook, Twittery friends or whatever you call them?” she asked, not bothering to hide the sarcasm in her voice. Jess had never really understood my “strange online life,” as she called it. She was all about real experiences, with real people, and couldn’t understand why I didn’t agree with her on this. Well, as far as I was concerned, IRL was not all it was cracked up to be.
“I went to the meeting with the lawyer the other day,” I suddenly said, sharing something real with her.
She paused. “That must have been difficult. What happened?” I sensed true sympathy in her voice this time.
“Well, I almost plunged to my death in an elevator afterwards, that’s what happened.”
I heard another sigh. I could tell she had now gone from feeling sympathy, to something else. She didn’t believe me. She was always accusing me of blowing things out of proportion. I’d once had the courage to share with her how I’d felt as a child growing up. How I’d felt utterly worthless, always standing in her perfect shadow. She’d said I was being dramatic and exaggerating.