Is my face still my face?”
“Who the hell is Anonybitch?” Margot demands.
“No one knows,” I say, and the roaring in my ears is so loud I can hardly hear my own voice.
“People just re-gram her. Or him. Am I talking really loud right now?” I’m in shock. Now I can’t feel
my hands or feet. I’m gonna faint. Is this happening? Is this my life?
“We have to get this taken down right now. Is there a help line for inappropriate content? We have
to report this!” Margot’s grabbing the computer from me. She clicks the REPORT INAPPROPRIATE tab.
Scanning the comments on the page, she seethes, “People are absolute jerks! We might have to call a
lawyer. This won’t get taken down right away.”
“No!” I scream. “I don’t want Daddy to see!”
“Lara Jean, this is serious. You don’t want colleges to google you and have this video come up!
Or, like, future employers—”
“Gogo! You’re making me feel so much worse right now!” I grab my phone. Peter. He’ll know
what to do. It’s five o’clock, which means he’s still at lacrosse practice. I can’t even call him right
now. I text instead:
Call me ASAP.Then I hear Daddy’s voice calling up the staircase. “These potatoes won’t mash themselves!
Who’s helping me?”
Oh my God. Now I have to sit at dinner and look my dad in the face, knowing that this video exists.
This can’t be my life.
Margot and Kitty look at each other, then back at me. “Nobody says a word to Daddy!” I hiss at
them. “That means you, Kitty!”
She gives me a hurt look. “I know when to keep my mouth shut.”
“Sorry, sorry,” I mumble. My heart is pounding so hard it’s giving me a headache. I can’t even
think straight.
At dinner, my stomach is churning and I can barely get down a bite of potatoes. Luckily, I have
Margot and Kitty to run interference and keep a steady chatter going so I don’t have to talk. I just push
the food around on my plate and sneak Jamie Fox-Pickle bites under the table. As soon as everyone
else is done eating, I sprint upstairs and look at my phone. Still nothing from Peter. Just more texts
from Chris and one from Haven:
OMG is this you??!I don’t know who the girl in the video is. I don’t recognize me in it. It’s not how I see myself at all.
It’s like some other person who has nothing to do with me. I’m not someone who climbs into hot tubs
with boys and sits in their laps and kisses them passionately with a wet nightgown clinging to them.
But I was that night. The video just doesn’t tell the whole truth.
I keep telling myself it’s not like we’re really having sex in the video. It’s not like I’m naked. It
just feels like I’m naked in the video. And all I can think is, everybody at school has seen that video, a
video of me in one of the most intimate and truly romantic moments of my life. And not only that, but
someone recorded it. Someone was there. That memory was supposed to only be mine and Peter’s,