The worst part?

Almost all of these tweets are from last year. Hardly anyone’s been talking about me since, except to make jabs. A theory that I’m in rehab is floating around. Some people think I’m dead.

Even my unpopularity isn’t popular anymore.

I can’t let this be my legacy. I had no idea how pathetic my public image has gotten. I’m going to have to deplete my vault of Photoshopped pictures. Each one takes hours to perfect, which is fine because I don’t have anything else to do. I have no real skills, so I can’t find lasting employment anywhere. The few places that would take me, I can’t work at without being recognized. I can see the trending topic now: Is Bettie Hughes working at Speedway?

I unleash the whole collection: myself Photoshopped in front of private jets. Hotel rooms with Versace shopping bags on the bed, lobster dinners in restaurants that require a reservation made months in advance. I’m not an amateur; I know I have to alter enough details in these pictures that no one can trace back to the originals. There’s a forty-year-old Swiss woman with two followers who has the best life I’ve ever seen, and she’s usually my go-to. I change the shape of clouds in her backgrounds, tint the coloring of her clothes. Apply filters liberally. Now her life is mine.

My brain waves blur as I open a new bottle of wine, footsteps unsteady. I pass thirty reflections of myself in Eileen’s hallway endcap of mirrors and record a TikTok soliloquy about how I could’ve been a movie star if I wanted. If I had the time, which I don’t. I’m a busy business lady, lots of green-eye tea to peddle. Would anybody else like to sponsor me? Except I’m highly exclusive, you probably can’t afford me. But you should definitely put in an offer. And you know what? Nobody invited me to any Halloween parties, which is bullshit, but I don’t care, I don’t want anything to do with all those two-faced . . . with all those people and their however many faces. I don’t even care! What happened to all the friends I used to have and why did they leave when I stopped paying for group vacations?

In my fizzy state, my attention turns inexplicably toward that hack Kelly Frederick, spamming her socials with pictures of my Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards surfboard, which I won for being a Red Carpet Fashion Icon in 2010 (it was the Before Times, when the populace still liked my fashion). “Suck on that,” I mutter. “They don’t give you surfboards at the . . . the goddamn New Year’s Times, do they.”

Then I drift back to Twitter, perhaps unwisely. Magnolia stores are unethical. Don’t shop there!!

This garners a comment from my sister Athena (who has double the followers I have): I love those stores! In under two minutes, a dozen people reply to say that by promoting Magnolia, Athena just convinced them to shop there. The official @magnolia Twitter account “likes” all of these tweets, even mine, which feels passive-aggressive.