“Oh aah well, are you sure this is wise?” Lily’s suspicion had evolved to full-face incredulity. “Making public accusations like this, especially ones that are false?”
She uttered the word false in such a way that made me wonder if she knew exactly how not false these accusations were. She was Margie Fischer’s assistant after all. It was possible Margie had hinted at the existence of her stockpiled documents. But with Lily, who could tell? You’d have better luck getting an emotional read on Siri.
Either way, I wasn’t ready to make those incriminating documents public. Which meant first and foremost keeping them a secret from Wendi and Ginger.
“I’m only trying to scare Robert into doing the right thing,” I said. “We’re not accusing him of anything new. It is true that some people say Robert’s a tax evader. People have been saying that for years. No one’s ever been able to prove anything, and no new evidence has come to light, but we’re not claiming it has. We’re only bringing the subject back up.”
“I guess it’s now or never.” Ginger undid the knot on her fuchsia neck scarf. “Legally, I’m pretty sure they can only hold Emily till tomorrow—then they either have to charge her with something or let her go.”
“See?” Wendi said. “And you thought law school was a total waste of time and money.”
Ginger gave Wendi the finger.
“What are we waiting for then?” I reached for my phone. “Let’s start making calls.”
—
BY TEN P.M., my bedroom looked like ground zero of an eighth-grader’s slumber party. Pizzas had been ordered, a candy run had been made, and we all had our eyes attached to some form of electronic screen.
Earlier, I’d bitten the bullet and called Tim, Kevin’s friend from BuzzFeed. Fortunately, he hadn’t yet heard that Kevin had dumped me and was therefore eager to be of assistance. Using me as an anonymous source, he lobbed the first softball-size piece of clickbait into the airwaves—Is Robert Barlow About to Be Ruined for Life?—abruptly followed in kind by the rest of the Internet-beast feeders.
Our “news” story got coverage on sites big and small, indie and corporate: Slate, the Hairpin, the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast Cheat Sheet, New York magazine’s Daily Intelligencer, even the YouTube channel of that girl who got famous for putting on makeup.
It wasn’t hard to envision all those e-mail chains: the under-or unpaid blogger at HuffPo calling in a favor owed to her by the politics editor; the intern at the Daily Beast who craved the bragging rights that would come with aiding and abetting us; even the trust-funded freelancer at the Daily Intelligencer who wanted to contribute to our efforts in order to appease her own class guilt.
All their articles pretty much said the same thing—nothing. But that was good, that’s what we wanted.
I sat at my desk in front of my computer, hitting refresh over and over again, announcing every time a new version of the story appeared someplace new.
Robert Barlow Guilty of Tax Evasion? Some Say Yes.
Crime, Corruption, and the Caymans: Is It Time for Robert Barlow to Come Clean?
Barlow a Fraud? Some People Say, Uh Duh.
“Yes!” I called out. “We just scored Upworthy.”
Ginger had been hovering over my shoulder, but she finally stepped away to make herself comfortable on my bed. Careful not to flash us as she tucked her knees beneath her cobalt-blue skirt suit, she flashed us anyway. “Well, if getting Robert’s attention is what you wanted, Tina, I think you might have done it.” She reached for a Whirly Pop from our candy stash. “You really think all this is going to scare him into backing off?”
Lily was on the bed beside Ginger, picking her way through a sack of Jujubes, choosing only the green ones. “Oh aah well, it would if we had any actual evidence that Robert’s done something wrong.”
I let that one go unanswered.
“How many page views is our site up to?” Ginger asked as she peeled the clear wrapper from her lolli. “I bet all this chatter is only improving our traffic.”
I clicked onto our site and hit refresh. “We’re almost at a million views.”
“Wow,” Lily said, with her mouth full of Jujubes. “That’s a lot of people.”
Wendi was lying across Emily’s air mattress with her boots propped up against the wall, gnawing on a stick of red licorice. She had her iPad on her lap. “No it’s not. That video of the cat that plays the piano has, like, twenty million views.”
Lily blinked at us obviously behind her thick glasses. “But that’s a cat that plays the piano.”
“You’re not considered a welebrity,” Ginger said, between licks of her Whirly Pop, “until you hit at least five million.”
“Tina’s not trying to become a welebrity.” Wendi threw a stick of licorice at Ginger’s face. “She’s trying to get Emily out of jail.”
Ginger reached for the nearest gummy ring and chucked it at Wendi, nailing her square in the horns.