“Hello, everyone.” Both of Eli’s dimples were visible as he grinned at the crowd. “So glad you could make it out to our little shindig, which is turning out to be a much bigger shindig than anybody planned. Standing room only left in the back. Hey, Danny, hand me your phone?”

Daniella, aware of every eye in the store staring at her, handed over her phone to Eli.

He opened it—did the boy know everyone’s passcodes?—started a video, and began filming the crowd. “Everybody, wave.”

Most of the people did, which annoyed Daniella to her core.

“Great, now that that’s over with…” Eli tossed the phone back to Daniella.

Daniella, surprised, managed to catch it. She looked down. He’d posted the crowd onto her anachronisticblonde account. Daniella knew what he was doing. He was giving her social proof. He was building her up, just a little bit.

She hated that it worked.

“Hi, everyone, I’m Eli. And whether you realize it or not, I’m the reason you’re all gathered here today. You see, late last night, I was going through the accounts here at Wild Nights Bookstore and Emporium and I made a discovery. This bookstore was going to close in two weeks unless we did something about it.”

Someone in the audience gasped. The rest of the audience laughed at that response.

“I know,” he said, putting his hand over his heart. “Tragic. And as somebody who is very bad at sitting still, I tried to do something about it. What I tried to do is flip Jordans.”

This bit got a laugh out of the audience.

“I know,” he said, winking. “Good for me, right? Anyway. I screwed up and bought some fake Jordans.”

Eli pointed to the mountain of sneakers behind them.

“There they are, folks; get a long, hard look at one of my most expensive mistakes, and trust me when I say, that’s saying something. We’ve all spent the day trying to figure out what to do with them. Try to unload them onto another unsuspecting schmuck on the internet? I know, you’re thinking, That’s immoral. But the thought crossed my mind. I was ready to quickly get out of trouble. But in the end we decided to do something different. We decided to take my mistake and use it as a platform to give this poet behind me her own platform. In case you don’t already follow her, she’s got an account: anachronisticblonde. May I please present, and will you please give a warm welcome to, Daniella Korres.”

The crowd applauded appropriately, and Eli waved Daniella onto the stage.

Oh God.

Daniella got out her phone. She stepped up to the mic. Then she closed her eyes, blocking out everything for a minute.

You love your own poetry, right?