Page 41 of The Followers
Molly didn’t like the girls to spend too much time on screens, but she did love to see them together. Ella’s arm around Chloe’s shoulders, Chloe’s golden curls mixing with Ella’s dark waves.
“And there’s a picture of me, and there’s another picture of me,” Chloe was saying.
“There’s a lot of pictures of you,” Ella said in a small voice.
“Because my mommy loves me so much.” Chloe bounced in her seat. “And see that one, too? That’s my mommy and me at the park.”
“I was there,” Ella said, sounding wistful. “I remember that.”
They were looking at her Instagram feed, Molly realized. Before this, she had never considered how it would seem to Ella: all the photos of Chloe, none of her.
Molly took a step forward, clearing her throat. “Hello, ladies. Sneaking the iPad again?” She raised an eyebrow and tried to look stern, but Chloe giggled. Molly settled on the couch next to Ella and nudged her shoulder. “Your dad asked me not to post any pictures of you. Otherwise, you’d be all over it, I promise.”
Ella nodded in her serious way. “Why doesn’t he want me to be on your Instagram? Does he think I’m not...” she hesitated, and Molly’s mind filled in the blank: pretty enough?
“He wants to protect you. You’re the most important person in the world to him.”
Ella looked up at her, a skeptical expression on her face.
“Oh, don’t look so shocked,” Molly said with a smile. “You’ll always be his number one girl, and I’m fine with that.”
Ella shrugged, looking down at Molly’s Instagram feed. All those smiling pictures of Clover looked back.
“What if we post a picture in my stories?” Molly suggested, and Ella’s eyes lit up. The picture would only be up for twenty-four hours. Scott would never even see it, but if it made Ella happy...
“Okay,” Ella said, nodding.
Molly took out her phone. “I read once that Oprah says ‘yeah’ when she gets her picture taken—gives a more natural smile. Ready girls? One, two, three...”
“Yeah!” they all said in unison, and Molly snapped the picture. Chloe’s eyes were sparkling as usual, but Ella... Ella’s face looked like someone had flicked on a stadium full of lights inside her. The biggest, brightest smile Molly had ever seen.
Which was what Molly reminded herself to focus on as she uploaded the picture, rather than the uneasy feeling in her stomach.
She started a movie for the girls so she could focus on work for a couple hours. First up, time to call Brookelle. A few weeks ago, she’d signed them up to beta-test a new app called Avachat. Molly didn’t quite understand it, but essentially the app created an avatar to appear on the phone screen in place of the user, speaking the words as you said them. It’s FaceTime meets Snapchat meets virtual reality, as Brookelle had put it.
Molly sank onto the chair in her office and looked at her phone, trying to focus on the conversation. Brookelle’s avatar—black hair in a bun, chunky purple glasses, and blood-red lips—was saying that Molly’s strategy of distancing herself from An Invincible Summer since moving to Durango was having a negative effect on her following.
“How negative?” Molly asked, putting a hand to her forehead. In the corner of her phone screen, her avatar—wavy blond hair, freckles—did the same.
“Four sponsors have pulled out this week.”
That was bad. “I just need a little time off, to adjust to my new life,” she said.
“A new life in which your five-year-old doesn’t wear a helmet when riding a bike?”
Molly blew out a breath, trying to cover her exasperation. She had posted one measly picture of Chloe sitting on the tag-along without a helmet—a posed picture!—and people had gone ballistic. During the actual bike ride with the family, Chloe had been wearing her helmet, but that’s not what the Almighty Mom-Shamers of the Internet had focused on.
“I’ll write an apology post. We’ll partner with a bike helmet company to give away a thousand helmets to needy children. It’ll be fine.”
“Love that idea. Making a mental note. All the shit about the helmet got you some new visitors, so let’s capitalize on that.” Brookelle’s avatar arched one bold eyebrow. “I’m more worried about the fact that you don’t share much about Scott or Ella—”
“I did just share a picture of Chloe and Ella in my story—”
“One story doesn’t matter,” Brookelle said, dismissing that with a flick of her hand. “You used to share everything about your life, and now you’re not. That’s hurting your brand.”
Molly hated thinking of it that way, as a brand. She preferred to think of her followers as a web of friendship, woven around the world. Her posts and videos are like silvery threads, tiny but strong, connecting them heart-to-heart.
But she wasn’t stupid enough to say that out loud. Brookelle would say she was being delusional, and Brookelle scared Molly a little bit.