The profile picture is a magpie, and the account has only tweeted once, but it already has more than a thousand followers.

“It’s not really him,” Hanna says, and while I know she’s right, it still makes me shiver.

The first tweet says:

I’m watching you, Jessica.

I feel the tears come again and try to blink them away, but they slip out anyway.

When Hanna notices, she squeezes my hand. “There are some creepy people out there.”

I take a few deep breaths, desperate to stay calm. It’s only going to get worse. I knew that before I started. And if I can’t handle this, I might as well quit now. There were always going to be disgusting people, creeps forcing their way into my story, because that’s what they do. But it still feels overwhelming.

“I’m sure he’ll be blocked,” Hanna says, but even if he is, another will spring up in his place.

I think about deleting my Twitter account, but I’ll have to check the contract, because it probably says I can’t.

To change the subject, I tell them about Ross’s friend request.

“Is he cute?” Emily asks. When I say he’s gay, she says, “I refer you to my original question.”

She smiles, and I can’t help laughing, and then Hanna says, “Does he know anything?”

“I don’t think so. I think he’s just being nice.”

Although I hope it’s more than that. I hope eventually, if I can speak to everyone, I will find a pattern the police couldn’t see.

Chapter 29

If I’m going to beat the others, I need to keep up.

Tuesday—Ryan—passed me by, so I watch his highlights.

What the producers do is cut together our best scenes and turn our day into an hour: a neat and tidy roundup for people who didn’t watch us live. The highlights are then added to our channel: sixty-minute videos you can click on whenever you want. Those, combined with the live stats, determine which of us gets three months rather than one.

Once you’ve done it yourself—talked to the world through a camera lens with no idea how many people are watching—it’s interesting to see how others do it.

Ryan lives with his mother and older sister, and neither of them like what he’s doing.

I watch them argue with him, his mother turning directly to the camera and saying, “This isn’t right!”

While Dad’s grief has seeped into his pores, Ryan’s family’s sadness has expanded, bursting out without warning. I wonder how he got them to sign the contract. Did he guilt-trip them like I did?

When Ryan’s mother isn’t shouting, she sits in the corners of shots, watching as he apologizes for his brother’s actions.