Internet Famous Read online

  “I know that.”

  “All right, I’ll tell the MadLibbers we’re going to watch The Lost—”

  Madi stopped in surprise as her sister threw her arms around her, hugging her tightly. Sarah rarely, if ever, initiated an embrace. Madi’s hands wavered uncertainly in the air before she wrapped them around her sister’s shoulders.

  Sarah pulled away almost immediately. “This should be fun,” she said.

  And even though she wasn’t grinning when she said it, Madi knew her sister was as happy as she was.

  *   *   *

  Madi twirled a strand of hair over her finger as she peeked at her dashboard post. She smirked, then hit REBLOG.

  With Madi’s plans for funemployment about to relaunch, the post felt like a good omen. No more delaying my dreams.

  She reread her new MadLibs post one last time before she made the link live. She’d been offline for only a couple weeks, but it was a lifetime in Internet terms. Scrolling through the stats for the last few guest posts, she discovered there were thousands of new followers to the site. Her Internet fame might have been on hold for the last weeks of school, but she was set to return!

  The thought gave her a rush of elation. She was back!

  Blog Post 218, Tuesday 9:35 p.m.:

  Back off, Twilight, there’s a new (old-school) vampire in town!

  When I started the rewatch for The Lost Boys, I knew it wasn’t going to be the sparkly vampires that inspired my elementary school fangirling. *shudders* But could a new (old) vampire movie capture my attention the way the Twilight series once had? Before the MadLibbers liveblogging even took off, I was hooked. Angry teenagers? Check. Sexy death-metal vampires? Check. Kid on the outside, trying to figure it out before losing his already messed-up family? Check and CHECK.

  I was down for the count ten minutes in.

  When I usually write about a rewatch, I try to capture the highs and lows, but this movie swallowed me whole. I found I really cared about Sam. He’s an outsider, struggling to figure things out while his life falls to pieces around him. (Too much truth there!) His love for his older brother, Michael, *fans self* was at once realistic and painful to watch. Difficult sibling dynamics are rarely explored in teen films, and this was one of many happy surprises from this rewatch …

  Madi skimmed through the central paragraphs, her cheeks warming as she read the glowing descriptions of long-haired bad boy Michael. (She wondered if anyone else would know how much he reminded her of Laurent, or if she was the only one to see the connection.) She deleted one sentence, leaving her summary of his character more ambivalent, then jumped to the final summary.

  Movie Rating: 9/10 Mad!Cows, with a HUGE dose of Mad!Love for a realistic portrayal of the ups and downs of a single-parent family with two siblings learning to get along, despite the challenges. Why not 10/10, you ask? Simply put—the GROSS factor. This film dripped with blood, guts, and gore, and while I appreciate it was a scary movie in its day, trying to calm my sister down in the middle of the Chinese-food scene was a bit of a downer. LOL

  Would I rewatch it? Yes! This seems like a perfect date movie. *hint hint*

  And that brings me to the end of my first MadLib since my hiatus. A HUGE thank-you goes out to the amazing MadLibbers who volunteered as temporary rewatchers. You are amazing!

  And now it’s time for you to let me know what YOU thought of The Lost Boys. Am I off on this? Were you swooning over Michael, too? I’m all ears.

  *invites you into my blog*

  *eats garlic*

  MadLib

  PS: I’m back on the FUNEMPLOYMENT bandwagon once more, so clickety-click on the links!

  * * *

  Comments enabled.

  Tags: #MadLibs #TheLostBoys #ItsGoodToBeBack #Madi watches things and then blogs about them #Funemployment

  Madi hit POST, then headed to the bathroom to get ready for bed. Sarah had her morning items—toothpaste, comb, toothbrush, and towel—all laid out in a neat line on the counter, and Madi was careful not to move them. Glancing in the mirror, she realized just how gross her hair looked. Usually falling in a shiny black sheet, in the last weeks it had grown dull from lack of care.

  By the time Madi showered and blow-dried her hair, it was nearly eleven p.m. Returning to her bedroom, she found four texts from Laurent waiting on her phone. Her chest tightened as she read them.

  madi? you around? LOVED seeing you back at madlibs. admittedly a tiny bit jealous of your review of michael. seriously, though. so good to have you back.

  really great post. don’t let this commenting nonsense convince you otherwise.

  seems you’re offline. text me before you look.

  madi, text me. PLEASE.

  Hands shaking, she opened the MadLibs blog.

  *   *   *

  Madi felt like a truck had parked on her chest. Her breath wouldn’t fill her lungs; her ribs ached. She scrolled through the comments, ears ringing. Comments blazed with anger. Replies seethed with disdain. The words troll and fake geek girl popped up again and again.

  “My God…”

  She’d walked in on an ongoing battle, her post in flames. While she’d showered, a troll war of monumental proportions had broken out between a number of MadLibbers and the anonymous commenter.

  Comment 3.1, *anonymous*: If I wanted to read about a teenage crush, I’d hang out on the Twilight page. This post made me PUKE. @MadLib needs to get out and get a REAL life. The more I read, the more I’m convinced she’s a shut-in.

  @laurentabelard: You’re not welcome. Stop posting. GO!

  *anonymous*: Or what? You’ll yell at me in French? Thanks, Pepé Le Pew, but you’re gonna have to woo your GF on your own time. I’m just telling it like it is. This. Post. SUCKS.

  @StarveilBrian1981: You need to read the posting guidelines, Anon. This is inappropriate content, and I’ll be reporting this infraction.

  *anonymous*: Ooooh … Baby Brian’s going to REPORT ME. I’m dying of fear. LOLOLOL

  @ModernDayWitch: Look. You’ve said your piece, now move on. You did this on @laurentabelard’s and my post last week, and it wasn’t appreciated then, and it isn’t appreciated now. So go home. MadLibbers stick together. (*Madi, if you see this. Turn off anon postings—ASAP. Thanks.)

  *anonymous*: Oh yeah—all the SJWs are coming out to play tonight. Mama Witch is ready to fight. LOL Careful you don’t trip on your broom.

  Eyes burning, Madi read through pages of angry comments. Five more replies appeared as she watched, the anonymous poster taking lower and lower shots as the argument raged. Almost all of her friends had come to her defense, but with anonymous posting open, there’d been no way to stop him. Thought I turned that off, Madi thought in dismay. Now it was too late to fix the damage.

  She rubbed her temples as a stress headache began to pulse behind her eyes. She flicked open the settings page, only this time, she couldn’t access her settings. The page was locked.

  “What the hell?”

  She refreshed again, but her password wouldn’t work. Heart pounding, Madi tried a second time. PASSWORD INCORRECT appeared.

  “No, no, no!”

  Madi moved to her laptop and opened her e-mail with trembling fingers. There were a number of unopened e-mails, one linked site. She scanned through it, nausea churning her stomach:

  NEW Message, MadLibs Site Manager: 9:48 p.m. EST

  Priority: Normal

  Subject: Password Change

  This is an automated message to inform you that your password for the MadLibs site has been updated. If you did not make the changes, please click on the link below.

  “GodDAMNIT!” Madi snarled, double-clicking the link. “I just got hacked!”

  After ten minutes of double-checking security questions, she was back online where the battle raged.

  *anonymous*: If you weren’t so busy defending your shitty little girlfriend, you’d see what a hack you really are. NO ONE wants to hear from you, @laurentabelard. No
. One!

  Madi took a sobbing breath. “Get the hell OUT!” she cried, taking the page offline with a single keystroke. Her phone buzzed, but she ignored it as she scrolled through the comments, trying to sift through the garbage. Failing, she deleted them all.

  With that done, she opened the MadLibs e-mail server, knowing what she’d find.

  NEW Message, *anonymous*: 9:36 p.m. EST

  Subject: GO AWAY

  Didn’t think you’d be able to waltz back in here again, did you? I’m not giving up on this. You took off on your little NY fling to finish your stupid English course. YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED AWAY.

  “H-how would he know that?! I—I never posted about my class, or the trip!”

  Unable to breathe, she moved to the next e-mail.

  NEW Message, *anonymous*: 9:41 p.m. EST

  Subject: PUT UP OR SHUT UP

  Too bad you’re too much of a stuck-up bitch to stand up for yourself. Or maybe that’s how ALL you snobby girls are. Ignoring everyone else and expecting us guys to do your fighting for you.

  NEW Message, *anonymous*: 9:49 p.m. EST

  Subject: What—you SCARED NOW?

  Aw … poor @MadLib’s too scared to reply? Waaaaa! Stop being a baby. The silent treatment won’t work! I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE.

  NEW Message, *anonymous*: 9:51 p.m. EST

  Subject: I WON’T BE IGNORED

  Don’t like my e-mails? FINE. I’ll give you something NEW to play with. Screw YOU! You’re going to wish you’d taken me seriously when you had a chance, minette.

  At that point, the e-mails stopped.

  That’s when he hacked in, Madi realized. She stared at the screen, blinking furiously. It was over for now, but how could she stop it from happening again? Her phone buzzed and this time she glanced down to see the two texts from Laurent.

  are you around yet? there’s something up with your website. i just got blocked. did you do that?

  never mind. seems that everyone is blocked now. (did you do this or did the troll?) i really need to talk to you. answer, please, minette!

  Madi started to type in a reply, then stopped. A cold sweat rose on her back. With shaking hands, she reopened the last e-mail.

  “He called me minette,” she gasped.

  Her gaze flicked between the final e-mail and Laurent’s text. The single word was burned into her retinas. That was Laurent’s endearment. His nickname for her! Seeing it echoed by the troll disturbed her more than even the doxing had. Her brow crinkled into deep grooves as a new thought intruded: Why was Laurent so interested in me seeing what the troll posted? Why did he warn me when no one else did? Who else knows I went to New York to finish an English assignment? The unsettling idea tightened its hold, and after a moment she deleted her unsent text.

  As she became more unnerved, other instances of concern appeared: In the last few weeks, Laurent always seemed to be the first person to reply to the troll, but after that, Laurent would generally disappear from the comments. He was quick to get angry, but the first to console Madi and apologize for provoking the situation. It wasn’t difficult to post from two different usernames—heck, even a phone and a laptop would work!—and if one of them used Tor to throw off the IP address, then it wouldn’t even seem to come from the same place.

  Other details popped to mind. Laurent was one of the newest MadLibbers; the trolling had only started after his arrival. Laurent was online at odd hours, then offline with no explanation. Laurent had shown up on Madi’s doorstep, and weeks later, the troll had described her house. An easy task if he’d already been there! There suddenly seemed to be a hundred questions Madi couldn’t answer. Her heart rattled against the walls of her chest as she looked back through the troll’s messages to her.

  “He knew I was in New York because he was there, too!” she cried.

  Her phone buzzed in her sweaty palm, and she jumped.

  madi? you still there? i want to talk.

  It was impossible! But was it…?

  “Oh my God,” she whimpered. “This can’t be happening.”

  She set her phone down as if it was a snake. She wasn’t sure where the idea had come from, but now that it arrived, she couldn’t shake it. As much as she didn’t want to believe it, there were too many things that made sense.

  Could the troll be Laurent?

  18

  “Les jeux sont faits. Translation: ‘The game is up.’”

  (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, 1986)

  “Are you sick?”

  Madi opened her eyes against the shimmer of sunlight to discover her sister standing just inside the door to her room.

  “Hey, Sarah,” she groaned. “Not sick, just tired.” She rolled to the side, pulling back the covers to reveal yesterday’s clothes. “Give me a minute to get ready, and I’ll walk to school with you.”

  Her sister’s frown deepened. “You really are sick.”

  “What? No, I’m not.”

  Her sister pointed to the clock radio/phone charger next to Madi’s bed. She stared at it for several seconds, but the numbers were an equation that refused to add up. It was far too bright to be four in the morning, but that meant …

  “Sarah, what time is it?”

  “It’s four-oh-nine,” she answered. “You slept all day.”

  The grogginess disappeared under a rush of anxiety. She’d tossed and turned half the night as she dissected each moment she’d shared with Laurent. Sometime after midnight, she’d reread every one of his texts, but even that had left her uncertain. She didn’t want to believe he was the troll, but the evidence was stacked against him. Madi had come to the uncomfortable realization that she just didn’t know what to believe anymore. She was trapped.

  Sarah waited in the doorway, her head tipped to the side.

  “Wait,” Madi said. “So if I overslept, who got you up?”

  “Dad did.”

  “And who picked you up from school?”

  “Dad. He went to the wrong classroom, though. I was certain you were coming, but when I started shouting for you, he came running down the hall.” She rolled her eyes. “Totally embarrassing.”

  Madi let out a shaky laugh. “But you made it home okay?”

  “Course I did. Dad said you were probably run-down from working on that assignment. So are you sick?”

  Laurent popped to mind, and the possibility that he was the troll. It was impossible! (Unless it wasn’t.)

  Madi winced. “Maybe I am.”

  “Hope you feel better, then,” Sarah said and walked away.

  After dressing in clean clothes, Madi headed downstairs. It wasn’t her turn to do dinner, but she pulled together a quick pot of spaghetti sauce, figuring she owed it to her father after foisting Sarah on him—planned or not. While she was measuring out the pasta, her phone buzzed.

  haven’t seen you around at all today. is everything all right?

  With a wave of guilt, she put the phone back into her pocket. It buzzed twice more while she was setting the table. Her feelings for Laurent aside, she needed to get his side of the story, but she really had no idea how to bring up the issue of the trolling. She didn’t think it was him, but she wasn’t entirely certain it wasn’t, either.

  Sarah came through the kitchen door at five thirty exactly, her father close on her heels.

  “Smells delicious!” he said. “What’s the occasion?”

  “Nothing really. Just trying to say thank you for picking up my slack today. I don’t know how I slept through my alarm.” She filled her plate with pasta and headed to the table. Her phone buzzed, and Charles lifted his eyebrows, but Madi shoved it deeper in her pocket, ignoring it.

  “I’d hardly say those grades are slacking,” her father said, squeezing her shoulder as he passed on his way to his own spot. “Just a little worn-out from the effort, is my guess. Try getting more sleep.”

  “Madi slept all day,” Sarah announced.

  “Then she probably needed it.”

  The phone buzzed again. T
his time Madi pulled it out, ignoring Laurent’s series of texts to open her settings. She flicked on the standard “User Offline” message. It was stupid, she knew. She was never offline. But that’s what the troll had brought her to: hiding from the place she used to hide from real life. It hurt her that Laurent might be the cause.

  “Everything okay?” her father asked.

  “Things are fine,” she said, dropping the phone back into her pocket.

  “You sure? You seem—”

  “Seriously, Dad. I’m fine.”

  “All right, then.”

  Dinner passed uneventfully. Her father chattered about his day. Sarah got into a deep conversation about the supervoid in the constellation Eridanus, and how it might actually be evidence of a parallel universe interfering with our own. Madi only halfway followed her sister’s excited description—science was Sarah’s passion, not hers—while their father made sounds of encouragement. Perhaps, Madi thought, it’s time to watch another sci-fi movie. She squelched the thought almost immediately. She had no intention of going online until things calmed down. (The fact she was delaying was a niggling thought in the back of her mind.) She’d post for MadLibs again, but this time she’d be ready to block the troll the second he showed up.

  As for dealing with Laurent—

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the trill of a cell phone. For a second Madi thought it was hers. What would she say to Laurent if it was him?! But her father stood from the table, patting his lapel pocket as he fished his phone from its depths and put it to his ear.

  “Charles Nakama speaking,” he said. Across the table from him, Sarah stopped eating to watch. “Mm-hmm? Yes, that’d be my daughter, Madison.”

  Madi looked up in confusion. What the hell?

  “It says what?!” Ashen-faced, her father stared at Madi before striding from the room. “No, I don’t know anything about that! Do you know where it came from?” His footsteps disappeared down the hall to his office. “Just let me call my attorney and—”

  The door slammed shut, cutting off his words. At the same time, an image flashed on Madi’s screen, followed quickly by another. Her chest ached seeing them.