Rory and I aren’t terribly close, but we have the easy intimacy of two sisters who can’t fathom what the other finds attractive about their lifestyle, and have long given up trying to convert them. Rory thinks I’m itinerant, badly prepared for the future, wasting an Ivy League degree, and getting a little too old to keep chasing the publishing pipe dream instead of a stable career with benefits and a retirement plan. And I think Rory, who studied accounting at UT Austin and now does precisely that, has such a boring, cookie-cutter, picket-fence life that I’d rather claw out my eyeballs than live it.
Rory is married to her college sweetheart, Tom, an IT technician who has always struck me as having the appearance and personality of wet dough. Neither of them knows a thing about publishing. They aren’t, as Rory puts it, “bookish people.” They like browsing the airport store for the latest John Grisham paperbacks, and Rory takes out the occasional Jodi Picoult title from their local library over the holidays, but otherwise they haven’t a clue about the vicissitudes of my world, nor are they dying to learn. I don’t think Rory even has a Twitter account.
Tonight, that’s a blessing.
Rory and Tom live far enough out in the suburbs that they can afford a spacious backyard with a deck, where they host family grills the last Saturday of every month. The weather tonight is perfect: humid and hot, but breezy enough that it’s not a bother. Rory is making corn bread, and it smells so good, I think this might be the first meal I stomach this week that doesn’t come roiling back up from anxiety.
They’re bickering on the patio when I arrive. The argument, I gather, is whether it was fair of HR to reprimand Rory’s desk mate for telling a colleague that her hair looked gorgeous that day.
“I just don’t think you should touch people without their permission,” says Tom. “Like, that’s an etiquette thing, not a race thing.”
“Oh, come on, it wasn’t like she was, like, assaulting her,” says Rory. “It was a compliment. And it’s so crazy to call Chelsea a racist—I mean, she’s a Democrat. She voted for Obama—oh, hey, honey.” Rory squeezes me from the side as I walk up. Usually I cringe from Rory’s big-sisterly affectations—it’s always struck me as a bit fake, overcompensating for her distance when we were younger—but tonight I lean into her touch. “Have a beer. I’m going to go check on the oven.”
“How’s tricks?” Tom gestures to the picnic table, and I sit down across from him. He’s been growing his beard out. It’s nearly two inches long now, and it emphasizes his solid, unbothered lumberjack’s aesthetic. Every time I see Tom, I wonder what it would be like to go through life with the easy contentment of a rock.
“Just the usual,” I say, accepting a Corona Light. “Could be better.”
“Rory told me you published another book, right? Congrats!”
I wince. I hope they haven’t Googled me recently. “Well, thanks.”
“What’s it about?”
“Oh, uh, World War One. Just, like, narratives of laborers on the front.” I always feel awkward explaining the Chinese Labour Corps to people who don’t already know about my book, because the inevitable follow-up is always a nose scrunch and a flat, awkward I didn’t know the Chinese were in World War One or Huh, why the Chinese? “It’s told like a mosaic, kind of like that movie Dunkirk. A broader story told through the amalgamation of a lot of little stories.”
“Very cool.” Tom nods. “Great subject for a novel. It seems like all the books and movies are obsessed with World War Two. You know? Like Captain America, and all those Holocaust movies. We don’t get enough stuff about World War One.”
“Wonder Woman is about World War One,” Rory calls from inside the kitchen. “The movie.”
“Well, sure. But that’s just Wonder Woman; that’s not serious literature.” Tom turns to me for backup. “Right?”
Jesus Christ, I think. This is why I don’t talk to family about publishing. “How’s Allie?”
Allie is my eight-year-old niece. I see plastic animals strewn all over the yard, but no bite-size, peanut-breathed hurricane of destruction, so I assume I’m free from auntie duties for the evening. I’m not opposed to children in theory, but I think I would have liked Allie better if she were a shy, bookish type I could have taken on shopping sprees at indie bookstores instead of an iPhone-addicted, TikTok-obsessed basic bitch in training.
“Oh, she’s great. She’s at a sleepover with her friends tonight. They’re reading Charlotte’s Web in class, which means she’s refusing to eat meat this month. Veggie burgers only.”
“I’m sure that’ll last.”
“Ha. Tell me about it.”
We both sip our beers, having exhausted our range of routine conversation topics. Often I feel like talking to Rory and Tom is like making conversation with a pollster’s hypothetical Average American, or with a blank Facebook profile. What are your thoughts on movies? On music? I’ve tried asking Tom about work, but it seems there is nothing interesting to say about the duties of an IT technician.
Or is there? A thought occurs to me. “Hey, Tom? Could you trace the IP address of, like, any random Twitter account?”
His brows furrow. “What do you need an IP address for?”
“Um, there’s this account that’s been harassing me.” I pause, wondering how much to explain, or whether I could even explain things in a way that makes sense to people not keyed deeply into publishing. “Like, spreading lies about me and stuff.”
“Couldn’t you report the account to Twitter?”
“I did that.” Brett’s been encouraging people to report and block accounts that are flinging vitriol my way, but Twitter is notoriously bad about enforcing its antiharassment policies, and as far as I can tell it hasn’t made a difference. “I don’t think they’re going to do anything about it, though.”
“I see. Well, I don’t think you’re going to be able to find them using a Twitter handle.”
“Don’t websites store the IP addresses of visitors?”
“Yes, but Twitter’s data is protected. All major social media sites protect their data; they have to by law.”
“You couldn’t, like, break into it? Aren’t you a hacker?”
He chuckles. “Not that kind of hacker. And a data breach like that would make headlines. That’s a huge privacy violation. Not trying to go to prison here, Junie.”
“But if I owned and ran my own website, I could see the IP addresses of anyone who visited?”
Tom considers this, then shrugs. “Well, I guess, yeah. There are plug-ins for that sort of thing. You could even do it on WordPress. But the problem is that an IP address doesn’t tell you all that much. You can find out what city they live in, maybe. Or even what neighborhood. But it’s not like in TV shows, where it magically pinpoints their exact GPS location. And it makes a difference whether they’re accessing a website from their cell phone, or from their home internet router . . .”
“But you could tell me a broad geographical range,” I say. “That is, if I got you the address?”
Tom hesitates. “You’re not doing anything illegal, are you?”
“Of course not. Jesus. I’m not going to like, throw a Molotov cocktail through their window.”
I’m trying to be funny, but the specificity of this scenario puts him off. He fiddles with the rim of his beer bottle. “Then could you tell me a bit more about what you need? Because if they really are harassing you, then maybe it’s not safe—”
“I just want to know who it is,” I say. “Or just generally, where they are, and if they’re nearby—you know, so I can make sure they’re not a physical threat. Like, whether I should be worried about them stalking me, or—”
“Stalking? What’s going on?” Rory pops up, balancing a platter of corn bread in one hand and a bowl of watermelon chunks in the other. She sets the food down, slides onto the bench next to me, and gives me another side hug. “Everything okay, Junie?”
“No, yeah, it’s just this stupid thing. Just asking for Tom’s help finding this person who’s been bullying me on Twitter.”
Rory frowns. “Bullying?”