I wasn’t sure why Thompson Ingleby wanted to help me. I’d never been very nice to him. On the other hand, I’d never been overtly mean to him, either, and maybe, in Thompson’s world, that was enough.

“Thanks.” I grabbed my prints and left.

Chapter 33

33

For an outcast like me, social media was a fresh kind of hell—somewhere between livestreaming your Brazilian wax and being disemboweled and having your entrails set on fire in front of you. By avoiding Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, I could almost enjoy my complete lack of a social life. During my previous sojourn onto social media, I had realized its sole purpose was to make me feel bad about all the fun and frivolity I was missing out on, all the typical teen experiences I would never have. Though I hated fun and frivolity, and didn’t even want those clichéd experiences, seeing my peers drinking and partying and declaring their undying love for one another with hashtags—#BFF #timeofmylife #memories—made me want to hurl.

But this Instagram page would be faceless. It would be about my photography only. I might actually enjoy having a bunch of strangers fawn over my work. Freya said it was the best feeling in the world . . . until it became the worst. It was all fake, she had said, and the people who adored you one minute would turn on you the next. There were bullies out there, empowered by the anonymity of the internet. Depression, anxiety, and negative body image were just some of the side effects of a diet of social media. But that wouldn’t happen to me. Because this wasn’t about me. It was about sharing my art with the world.

The name I chose was “Hawkeye 61.” (Actually, I had to use The_Hawkeye_61 because someone already had the other label.) The moniker was derived from the town of Hawking combined with my eye for photography, and the fact that I was six foot one. I had always related to hawks. They were loners, watching, circling, waiting to strike. Over the next few days, I uploaded some of my favorite photos—of Eckhart, of nature, of the pig and the goat. I DM’d Thompson Ingleby and he worked his magic. Within the first few days, I had over four hundred followers.

I had conditioned myself to view social media platforms as evil, but I was beginning to see the beauty in them. Instagram didn’t care if you hadn’t grown since the ninth grade like Thompson, or if you had grown to a near-freakish height like me. It only cared about the facade, the pretense you chose to share with the world. And that worked well for me. My talent was being appreciated without the distraction of my unfortunate physicality. My confidence bloomed.