And then Astrid Marshall, one of Sabrina’s bitchier friends, sent me a link to a YouTube video called “HOTTEST GUYS AT NEWMAN HIGH RATED!” I felt sick as I watched Sabrina, her gorgeous hair hacked to her chin and streaked through with brassy blonde, sitting in some unfamiliar room in a circle of strange girls. The ringleader—a bleached blonde who was wearing so much makeup that her face was a different shade than her neck—screeched a greeting into the camera and then led the others in discussing which of the boys at Sabrina’s new school were the “hottest.” My stomach churned as Sabrina giggled and nodded in agreement, but the bile started to really climb my throat when someone asked her, “But you have a long-distance boyfriend, don’t you, Sabrina?” She shook her head quickly, her alien hair swishing around her small face. “No, no. There’s this guy who’s, like, obsessed with me, but we’re not going out. I just keep him around for the gifts.” The entire circle cackled with cruel laughter, and I slammed shut the computer before that treacherous whore could take another bite out of my heart.

That night, I stole a lighter from one of my older brothers and watched those glimmering strands blacken and break.

When I confronted Sabrina about the video, she cried that she was sorry. But that was just another lie. She was only sorry that she was caught, that her duplicity had been exposed. After all, a quick search had shown me that there were more videos, and in them Sabrina didn’t look sorry at all. That stone-cold bitch had moved on, leaving me completely and utterly destroyed. For years, I thought my heart had been broken beyond repair. I thought I would never love again.

But then there was Audrey.

Ironically, Sabrina is the one who brought me to Audrey. If it weren’t for Sabrina and her lies, I never would have ended up on the Overexposed forums. That was where I took shelter, commiserating with other men who had discovered disheartening truths online about the women they thought they loved. The other commenters helped me gain perspective, helped me see that this was less a reflection of me and more a reflection of Sabrina and the grasping, unhappy women like her.

But the forums didn’t just contain grievances and complaints about ex-girlfriends. They were also home to lively discussion about online women. You know the type: the bloggers, the vloggers, the Tumblrinas, the Instagram models. The women who peddle their bodies online like fruit at the supermarket. The consensus on those threads was that admiring these virtual women was better, easier than finding one in real life because all women lie, and at least these liars were up-front about it. It was no secret that their perfect bodies were Photoshopped, that their sultry eyelashes were glued on. Online women could never humiliate you. They couldn’t carve a gaping wound in your soul because they didn’t have souls themselves.