“She didn’t give you permission to touch her,” Paxton said. He released Eric and shoved him back a step. “Don’t try that again.”
Half of my heart soared. Paxton had shown up for me. The other half was terrified. I didn’t want him anywhere near Eric and Jessica. What if they were lying and didn’t plan to let their viral fame go anytime soon?
“You can’t be here.” I reached for Paxton’s hand, prepared to drag him away, but he just shook his head. He wouldn’t budge.
“I’m not leaving you alone with them.” He bent closer to me so only I could hear him above the generators. “You’re a risk worth taking.”
“I really didn’t want to do this,” Eric said quietly. “But if you’re not going to help us, then we’re out of options.”
Eric opened his screen and turned it to me. Two pictures of me and Paxton popped up. One of me hugging him, from when I’d seen him earlier, and the other where I looked up at him with my heart in my eyes. I had no doubt in my mind what Eric planned to do with those pictures.
Horror slammed into my gut, and vomit threatened to climb in my throat. I gritted my teeth, willing it back down, mentally soothing the sickness. If Eric saw what those pictures did to me, I’d never get the upper hand. Paxton breathed in deep through his nose.
“If you don’t tweet what I asked, then I’m going to make you the villain. I’m going to tell the entire world you screwed me over.” Eric tried to look remorseful. Tried, and failed miserably. He thought he had me again. I wanted to smack that smug undercoating off his face so bad, my entire arm was already vibrating from the impending contact. “If you thought the shaming was bad when everyone tweeted about you fucking me in the bathroom, wait until I tell them I only said you didn’t do it to protect you. Poor me. I was so in love. Until I found out you had a boyfriend the entire time. They will burn you alive.”
And they’d believe him. No matter what I said or did, they would believe him. The word of a sun-kissed boy with a pretty smile would always be worth more than that of a teenage girl.
Just like Eric and Jessica had brought every bit of hate down on themselves, I’d done this too. If I hadn’t played along, if I hadn’t wanted those YouTube subscribers so bad, Eric wouldn’t have anything to hold over me. I didn’t care what anyone said about me on Twitter. Not anymore. But if he posted those pictures, Paxton would be all over the Internet again. He’d go viral again. Amateur sleuths would uncover his real name and his entire past would be rehashed and chewed on by wolves again. Because of me. Because of the decisions I’d made when I’d been scared and hurt and worn down.
Eric put his phone away. “What’s it going to be, Macy?”
I still had one card left to play. And I prayed it would be enough. “Go ahead and do it.”
Paxton whipped his head toward me, and I silently begged him not to say anything. I couldn’t let Eric think those pictures had any weight. If he knew what I’d be willing to give to make sure Paxton never appeared on the Internet again, I’d never escape. Eric would never let those pictures go. He’d never let Fly Ball Girl go.
“But if you do that, then this is going up on YouTube.” I stopped recording, turned my own phone toward him and Jessica, and hit play. “It sucks when people invade your privacy and film you without your consent, doesn’t it?”
Paxton relaxed beside me as Eric and Jessica both paled at the sound of their voices, their threats to use those pictures against me, which could be heard loud and clear above the generator. Bless modern technology. And as we glared at each other over my phone, we entered into a new game. One with bigger stakes. It was only a matter of who would fold first.
Eric had his blog and I had YouTube. Desperation to grow our numbers had brought us both to this point. Eric was right about one thing: I wasn’t innocent either. I’d hurt and lied to people I genuinely cared about who genuinely cared about me, because I didn’t believe in myself enough to think I could be anything other than Internet famous. While I couldn’t go back and change my mistakes, I could still make better choices going forward.
Those tough decisions were now my only option if I wanted a clean break. I held up my phone so Eric could get a front-row view, opened up Twitter, and shut the whole thing down. Bye-bye thirty-five thousand followers. I never knew you, and you certainly never knew me. Next, I flipped over to YouTube. This one was way harder, but I needed all the leverage I could get. With a few clicks, they were gone. Every single one of my reviews.
“There. It’s done. I have nothing to lose if you post those pictures,” I said. “Sure, strangers will drag me, but it’ll be like a tree falling in the forest, and I won’t be around to hear it. But you will be.”
“If you don’t care, then you won’t mind if I upload these pictures so people will leave me alone.” Eric sneered, but his lip wobbled too much for it to be anything other than comical.
“I care about strangers showing up at my house again. I care about my grandma having to change our number again.” I also cared about keeping Paxton out of this mess. “But you care a whole lot more about online hate than I do. I wonder if the Royals will still let you into the locker room? Don’t they revoke press credentials for manipulative, abusive assholes?”
“You wouldn’t dare.” Eric turned so red, if he’d been a cartoon, steam would’ve poured out of his ears. “I will fucking ruin you.”
“True.” I gave him my sweetest smile, the one where I showed all my teeth. I could practically taste his blood on them. “But not nearly as bad as I’ll ruin you.”
“What do you want?” Jessica asked.
“I want your phones,” I said. “Both of them.”
They looked at each other. The pleading in Jessica’s pouty lip met with Eric’s stubborn ego. I had her. Now I just needed to get him. “What are you going to do?” Eric asked me.
“I’m going to delete your pictures, then I’m going to hop on Twitter and delete every thread and mention of Baseball Babe.”
“We can do that ourselves,” Jessica said.
“No.” I knew how deleting worked. How they’d be saved in the trash for thirty days. I wouldn’t be taking any chances with this. “I want to do it. I need to make sure they are really wiped clean.” I handed my phone to Paxton, who held it with a white-knuckle grip.
“How do we know you won’t wipe away our photos, the only leverage we have, and then load that video anyway?” Eric asked.
I tapped a finger to my lips. “I suppose you’ll just have to trust me.”
And I hoped it haunted them. I hoped they’d wake up in the middle of the night, frantically scrolling through YouTube to see if I’d uploaded that video after all. I hoped they felt a fraction of the terror I’d gone through. But most of all, I hoped Jessica would learn how to keep her camera to herself from now on.
Jessica handed me her phone first, grinding her jaw the entire time. “Just do it.”
She nudged Eric, shooting daggers at him, until he finally relented and gave me his phone too. I deleted the pictures of me and Paxton first, in case they changed their minds and tried to snatch their phones back, then I went in and deleted the photos permanently from the trash, making sure they hadn’t downloaded from the Cloud yet. I even checked their emails and texts too. I deleted every tweet, every Instagram video, every YouTube video until every interaction, every mention of that day at the Royals game, disappeared. With every click, that black hole in my heart healed over. I couldn’t do anything about the hashtags or screenshots, but it was enough for me.