But there’s also a notification tag that simply reads: Thought you could get rid of me? I imagine it’s just some shitpost, but the thumbnail image looks familiar, and the account has a blue verification check, soI click to view the post. I almost drop my phone. It’s Athena’s account, posting for the first time since the morning before her death. In the photo she’s sitting at her writing desk, smiling sweetly, but everything is off—her eyes are a bit too wide, her toothy smile so stretched it looks painful, and her skin is ghost pale despite the sunlight streaming through her window. She looks like one of those CreepyPasta memes: an image that should look normal, but that makes your skin crawl with its deranged intensity. Lying open by her right hand is The Last Front in paperback. By her left, a slim hardcover of Mother Witch. I click to expand the caption. Thought you could get rid of me? Sorry, Junie. I’m still kicking. Glad you had a good writing day! I had a good writing day too—here’s me, flipping through some old works for inspiration. Heard you’re a fan ☺ My dinner crawls up my throat. I run for the bathroom. It’s nearly half an hour of panicked breathing and mental exercises before I’m near calm enough to approach my phone again. I run some searches on Twitter: “Athena Liu Instagram,” “Athena Instagram,” “Athena Insta,” “Ghost Athena,” and all the other possible queries I can think of. No one’s talking about this yet. The post didn’t have any hashtags or tag any other accounts. What’s more, the account, which once had nearly a million followers, now has zero. The person behind this has either blocked or soft-blocked all of Athena’s followers. The only person seeing this post is me. Whoever this is, they’re not trying to go viral —they just want to get my attention. How is this even possible? Don’t social media companies shut down accounts upon the owner’s death? This is so fucking stupid, but I Google “Athena Liu alive” to make sure she hasn’t, like, resurrected thanks to some medical miracle without my knowing. But that search returns nothing useful; the most “relevant” result is an article about how a recent English department event at Yale was dedicated to keeping Athena’s memory alive.
Athena is dead, gone, turned to ash. The only person who’s convinced she’s still around is me. I ought to block the account and forget about this. It’s likely just some troll, posting grotesque things to fuck with me. That’s what Brett and Daniella would say. That’s what Rory would say, if I tried to explain why I’m so upset. A troll is the obvious and rational explanation, and I repeat this over and over in my mind as I inhale and exhale into my fist, since the most annoying symptom of anxiety is refusing to believe the obvious and rational explanation. Don’t give it power, I urge myself. Just let it alone. But I can’t. It’s like a splinter digging into my palm; even if it’s tiny, I still can’t rest easy, knowing that it’s under my skin. I don’t sleep a wink that night. I lie with my phone screen inches from my face, staring with aching eyes at Athena’s forceful, mischievous smile. A memory rises unbidden to my mind’s eye, a memory that I’d hoped I’d drowned out or forgotten: Athena in her black boots and green shawl, sitting in the front row of the audience at Politics and Prose, beaming expectantly at me with bright, painted lips. Athena: inexplicably, impossibly alive. It’s late on a Friday night, soI can’t get Brett or my publicity team on the line for another two days. But what good could they do? It’s hardly a problem from a publicity perspective. Aside from me, who cares about this post? And it’s not likeI could explain why the account bothers me so much. Yes, see, the thing is that I did steal The Last Front, and I’m riddled with guilt, so you understand why these posts give me such bad anxietyI want to puke? At last, becauseI have to do something, I reach for my phone. I text Geoffrey Carlino. This isn’t funny. He doesn’t respond. After five minutes, I follow up. Seriously. Stop. Finally ellipses pop up at the bottom of my screen. He’s typing. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I send him a screenshot of Athena’s Instagram. Look familiar? He types, stops typing, then finally sends the message. That isn’t me. Bullshit, I type furiously. I know that all this anger is misdirected, but I hit SEND anyways. I want to take this out on someone, anyone. I’m not even entirely sure that it’s Geoff behind this—all I have are general vibes, and
the fact that of everyoneI know, Geoff is most likely to have access to Athena’s passwords—but it doesn’t matter. It’s not about Geoff. I need to take control, to do something that feels like I’m fighting back, even if all I’m doing is firing blanks. Coco’s, tomorrow. Or I’ll post the recording.
Twenty-One HEY, JUNE.” Geoff slides into the seat across from me, and I’m so startled I nearly knock over my tea. I didn’t think he’d show. I straighten up. “Uh, hi.” An embarrassed confession: I sent him a barrage of texts last night, hurling wild accusations about his motives and cruel jabs about getting dumped by Athena. He didn’t respond. I assumed he would delete them all and then block me. But here he is, with heavy shadows under swollen eyes. He looks like he hasn’t slept all night. “I don’t suppose you still think I did it.” “No.” I sigh. Part of me was hoping that he’d come off as somewhat guilty, but it’s clear from glancing at him that he has nothing to do with this. “I’m sorry, I just . . .” I give my phone a shake. “It rattled me. And I thought, of all people who might have had access to her account . . .” He extends a hand. “Can I see?” “You didn’t look?” “She blocked me. Years ago.” “Ah.” I unlock my phone, navigate to Athena’s Instagram, and pass it over. Geoff scrolls up and down for a while, lingering on each photo, eyes scanning back and forth over the captions. I can’t imagine what’s going through his mind. This is his ex-girlfriend. This is someone he loved. He lowers the phone. “No, this isn’t her.” “What do you mean?” “It’s photoshopped from an old picture.” He returns the phone. “Can’t you see it? The lighting and shadows are all off. Also, she’s blurred around the edges.”
“Which old picture?” I ask. “I’ve been over all the photos I can find online. There’s nothing in that exact pose.” “Maybe it’s not public anymore? I don’t know. I just know I’ve seen her looking like that before.” “Then who’s behind it?” I press. “Who would know her password?” “Who cares?” Geoff shrugs. “You’ve got plenty of haters, right? It could be anyone. Maybe Athena’s passwords were easy to guess, or maybe someone’s a very talented hacker, I don’t know. It’s just a joke.” I can’t believe that, though. Something else is going on here. A random troll doesn’t explain Athena showing up to my reading, or the fact that her specter haunts every professional moveI make. Someone is pulling the strings. “Does Athena have a sister?” I ask. “Any cousins?” Mrs. Liu had told me Athena was an only child. But cousins can resemble each other, can’t they? Or maybe Mrs. Liu was lying. All kinds of crazy plot twists fly through my head. A sister thought dead. A hidden twin, raised in Communist China, escaped to the free world and determined to step into her dead twin’s life. Maybe that’d be a good idea for a novel. MaybeI should write that down, file it away for once I’ve finished my pseudo-memoir. “I know what you’re getting at.” Geoff shakes his head. “It’s not that, I promise.” “Are you sure?” “Athena’s folks lost touch with most of their relatives when they emigrated. I’m sure you’ve heard her talk about it. Seriously, there is some deeply fucked-up stuff in that family history. People were murdered, executed in firing squads, lost out at sea. And maybe it’s all made-up, in which case that would be supremely fucked up, but I don’t think it is. I’ve talked to Mrs. Liu about it a bit. That pain is real.” “You don’t think . . .” I trail off. “What? That it’s her?” Geoff pauses. He’s also had this suspicion, I can tell. It’s crazy, but I wouldn’t put it past Athena to fake her own death, to put the manuscript right where she knew I would find it. The funeral could have been staged. Her mom could be in on it. Maybe she’s watching from the wings right now, laughing into her trench coat. But Geoff shakes his head. “No. No, she was an odd one, but she wasn’t, like, a crazy person. She’s—she was a writer. Not a performance
artist.” He meets my gaze. “And didn’t you—?” Didn’t I see her die? Yes, I did. I saw the panic in her eyes, saw her thrashing and convulsing, trying to free her throat, saw her at last go still and blue in front of me. She couldn’t have faked that. The best actress in the world couldn’t have faked that. “Then who’s doing this to me?” I demand. “What do they want?” “Does it matter?” Geoff shrugs. “Just ignore them. You’ve brushed it off every time before, haven’t you? Where’s your thick skin? Why start getting bothered now?” “Because . . .” I swallow. “It hurts. I just—it hurts.” “Ah.” He leans forward. “So are you going to tell me the truth now?” I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I can’t do it. I’ve held the line for this long; I can’t break it, even if, in some wretched way, it might set me free. “I get it,” says Geoff. “You say it once, you can never take it back.” He knows. I can tell from his face that he knows. I don’t bother trying to convince him otherwise, or to explain the complexities involved—that I did put in the work, that The Last Front is just as much my accomplishment as it is Athena’s, that it could not possibly exist in its current form without me. It doesn’t matter. Geoff’s made up his mind, and that’s fine—there’s nothing more he can do to me than what the internet already has. I blink angrily down at the table, trying to collect my thoughts. I can’t convince him that I’m innocent, but I need to make him understand. “I just don’t get why everyone’s so obsessed with Athena’s legacy,” I say at last. “They all talk about her like she was this saint.” Geoff cocks his head, then settles into his chair, hands clasped in his lap like he’s prepared to stay awhile. “So we’re doing this.” “I’ve seen her writing process,” I blurt out. I don’t know why I’m saying this, especially to Geoff, of all people. I just can’t keep it on my chest any longer, can’t keep swallowing my resentment. “She was a thief. She took people’s pain and made it her own to describe however she liked. She stole as much as I did—she stole from me. Back in college, she—” I choke. My nose stings, and I clamp my mouth shut. I’ve never told this story to anyone else before. If I keep talking, I’ll burst into sobs. “She stole from me, too,” Geoff says. “Constantly.” I’m stunned. “You’re saying that your stories—”
“No, I mean—look, it’s complicated.” His eyes dart around, like he’s afraid that someone will overhear. He takes a deep breath. “It was more like —okay, look, here’s an example. So we’d get into fights, right? Stupid stuff, like her dog allergy, or having joint finances—anyways, it felt so important at the time. And I’d yell something desperate, something vulnerable, only to find those same words published in a short story the very next month. Sometimes, when we fought, she would give me this very cool, narroweyed look. I knew that look, because it was the same look she got when she was drafting a scene. And I never knew if she was really there during our relationship, or if the whole thing for her was some kind of ongoing story, if she did what she did just to document my reaction. I felt likeI was losing my mind.” He presses his fingers against the bridge of his nose. “Sometimes she would say things that made me upset, or ask about things I’d been through—and as time went on all I could think was that she was mining me, using me as fodder.” It’s hard for me to really feel sorry for Geoff. This is, after all, the same man who once threatened to leak nudes of Athena on Reddit if she didn’t back him up against a Locus reviewer. But I can see the truth in his eyes, the pain. Athena always thought that what she did was a gift. A distillation of trauma into something eternal. Give me your bruises and hurts, she told us, and I will return to you a diamond. Only she never cared that once the art was made, once the personal became spectacle, the pain was still there. Suddenly my eyes flash up to the window. My breath halts and my hands clench before my brain catches up to what I’m seeing: Athena, dark curls loose over her shoulders, draped in that same emerald-green shawl she’d worn to my book launch. Her eyes glimmer with amusement. Her berry-red mouth forms a jagged hole in her face. She’s laughing, jeering, at the sight of me with Geoff. She lifts a hand to wave. I blink, and then she’s gone. “You all right?” Geoff half turns toward what he thinks I’m looking at. “What were—?” “Nothing,” I say, rattled. “I just—sorry.” I take a deep breath. The window’s empty. There’s nothing I can point to, nothing that proves I’m not going mad. I have the fleeting urge to get up and sprint to the door, to chase this apparition around the block—but what if no one’s there? What if I’m simply losing my mind?
Geoff gives me a sympathetic look. A silence passes, and then he says, leaning forward, “Look, June. You probably don’t want to hear advice from me, but someone’s got to say it. Go work on something else. Don’t—I mean, just get out of her shadow. Leave this all behind.” It’s decent advice. I imagine that’s what he’s been trying to do for the last two years. He’s not on Twitter anymore, soI haven’t heard much about what he’s up to, but from what I gather from others he’s making some decent money for himself writing for TV. He doesn’t go to literary conventions anymore. His name isn’t a punch line anymore, just a tired reference. He’s freed himself from Athena’s web. But Athena is the reason for any modicum of success I’ve ever had. My career as an author does not exist without her. Without Athena, who am I? “I’m trying,” I say in a very small voice. “I just—I don’t think she’ll let me go. Or these trolls, whoever they are—” “Ignore them, June.” Geoff looks so tired. “Just block them out.” “Do you—do you think I should respond? Try to get in touch?” “What?” He sits up straight. “No, of course not, why would you—” “Just to see what they want. To see if they want to talk, I mean—” “There’s nothing to say.” Geoff seems inordinately angry; far angrier than this response justifies. It scares me a bit. I wonder what’s going on in his mind, what ghosts of Athena’s he’s been struggling with himself. “All right, Junie? This road leads to nothing good. Just leave it alone, I swear to God. Don’t encourage the crazies.” “All right.” I exhale slowly. “You’re right.” For lack of anything better to do, I finish my tea in silence. Geoff never orders a drink. He pays my bill without asking, then walks me out to the street. He gives me this long look as we stand waiting for my Uber, and I almost think he’s going to ask me to come home with him. I imagine, for a fleeting moment, the act of sleeping with Geoffrey Carlino, the messy industry of clothing removal and frantic stimulation of parts. Shared trauma brings people together, doesn’t it? Are we not both victims of the same narcissistic bitch? He’s attractive, of course, but I feel no real twinge of desire. If I fucked Geoff, I’d only be doing it for the shock value, for the narrative wrench it would throw in this whole mess. And, though I can’t quite articulate why, I know the only winner to come out of this would be Athena.
“I guess I’ll see you, then,” I say. “Around. Maybe.” “Maybe.” Geoff glances down at me. “And June?” “Yeah?” “It’s going to be fine,” he says. “These things always feel like the end of the world when they’re happening. But they’re not. Social media is such a tiny, insular space. Once you close your screen, no one gives a fuck. And you shouldn’t, either, all right?” “I—all right, Geoff. Thanks.” He gives me a nod and walks off in the direction of the bus stop. Maybe I’ve been too harsh. Maybe Geoffrey Carlino isn’t such an asshole. Maybe he was just young, and insecure, and caught up in a relationship he wasn’t ready for. Maybe Athena really did hurt him quite badly, and maybe we all judged him too quickly because he was a wealthy, cishet white guy and Athena was Athena. What’s more, Geoff is one of the few people on earth who also understands the unique pain of trying to love Athena Liu. The futility of it all. Like Echo looking at Narcissus. Like Icarus, hurtling straight at the sun, just to feel its warmth on his skin.
Twenty-Two ATHENA’S INSTAGRAM STARTS POSTING AT LEAST ONCE A DAY. They’re always impossible photos of Athena, alive and well, positioned near objects that are deliberately dated—newspapers, recent New Yorker issues, books released after her death. Sometimes she’s winking or waving, taunting me with her insouciance. Sometimes her face is contorted in grotesque expressions; eyes wide, tongue wagging. Sometimes she’s clutching her throat, eyes crossed in mockery of her death. She always tags me at the end of her captions. How ya doing, @JuniperSong? Miss me, @JuniperSong? I try to take Geoff’s advice. I mute the account, and then, sinceI still can’t stop myself from scrolling through the photos on writing breaks, I buy a timed safe in which to lock my phone during the day. I try to take refuge in my work. But I can’t lose myself in the words likeI have before. All my happy memories with Athena are tinged now with niggling guilt, so all I can bear to dwell on are the bad ones—of awkward exchanges, of social snubbing, of constant stabs of jealousy in my gut. Of Athena, laughing obliviously as she asked about my floundering career. Of Athena, dying on the floor of her kitchen whileI stood by, doing nothing. I dream of Athena every night. I see her in her last moments: her wide panicked eyes, her fingernails tearing at her skin, her feet drumming against the floor. Powerless, helpless, literally voiceless. She works her mouth, desperate to make me understand. But no words come out, only a series of awful, strained gurgles, until her eyes roll up to the back of her head, until her convulsions dwindle to a faint twitch.