She dismissed this as paranoia of the most insane kind—-bipolar, crack--addict paranoia. No. It was a fluke that the commenter had come up with this particular trivia question. It didn’t mean he knew Nessa had been Rosie in another lifetime. There was no traceable connection between Rosie and Nessa. They were two different -people. She had to believe that. She had to.
She looked at the question again, and the name attached to it was of course Anonymous. Maybe she should make signing comments mandatory, but that would cut way down on interaction if -people had to identify themselves, and it was her numbers that kept her sponsors paying her.
It was just a coincidence. A very specific coincidence.
Nessa had to try and work, even though her concentration was shot full of holes. Too many things crowded into her brain. But with or without concentration, Nessa had to finish and put up a post before midnight, and nothing could get in the way of that. Her advertising agreement demanded she put out three posts a week, even if her estranged spouse was missing or dead, even if she was encapsulated in an iron lung, even if she was off--planet. Advertising marched on.
She sat down at her desk in front of the window that looked out on the hops vines and opened her laptop. Best thing to do was start typing. But she was interrupted by a quiet gasp from Isabeau.
“Hey, boss, I need to show you something.”
Nessa swiveled in her chair as Isabeau picked up her laptop, walked over to the couch, and sat down. She beckoned to Nessa, who got up and sat next to her.
“What is it?” Nessa said.
Isabeau set her laptop on the coffee table and tapped the trackpad.
“Okay, so I know you don’t do social media and all that, but I thought it might be useful to see what’s going on in the ’sphere, see if you’re being talked about out there. I know your advertisers are always looking for ways to increase your exposure, so anyway, I created a -couple of Google alerts—-with search terms like Nessa, radio, Altair, deep cuts. That sort of thing. So I got a -couple of alerts this morning—-”
Isabeau typed into the address bar and pulled up her Google alerts page.
“So as it turns out,” she said, “you have a Twitter account. Where ‘you’ tweet all kinds of really idiotic shit. No offense. And from the bad grammar and the weird topics, I don’t think Altair is responsible.” Isabeau typed on her keyboard. “I’m pulling up Twitter and searching for @RadioNessa.”
Nessa’s cell phone rang. Her contact at Altair. She let it go to voicemail and pocketed it before looking at Isabeau’s screen. A Twitter profile page appeared with the bio: Obamma was born in Kenya. He has no right to be the presdient. Someone should assinate him.
Nessa whipped her head toward Isabeau, her mouth so wide she could swallow a dinner plate. “We have to delete this.”
“We can’t,” Isabeau said. “It’s not your account. It’s not, is it?”
“Of course not! Look at the spelling!”
Was that really what she was so twisted up about? The spelling?
“I voted for Obama,” Nessa said, the defensiveness in her voice making her cringe. “Both times.”
“Oh,” Isabeau said. “I didn’t. Not crazy about his foreign policy. But I definitely don’t want him dead.”
“How do we get this taken down?”
“We can’t. Unless we can prove this person meant you harm, meant for -people to think this is actually you.”
“Of course I can prove it. Look at my voting record. Look at my spelling, for God’s sake.”
Again with the spelling.
“Anyway,” Isabeau said, “I don’t think that’s going to be enough to persuade a judge to issue a take--down order. But I’m going to report it to Twitter.”
Who was this girl? Where did all this knowledge come from?
“Keep reading. It gets worse.”
Nessa read through some more politically incorrect invective, and then she saw this:
The earthquake in Java was retribushon for legalizing gay mariage.
Nessa groaned. “Enough,” she said. “I can’t read any more.”
“Well, you obviously haven’t gotten to the worst one. You need to see it.”
Nessa kept scrolling until she got to a highlighted tweet, one that was twice the size of the others, and it was one of “hers.”
Thanks to vacines, my son can’t speak. He’d be better off dead. Don’t get your kids vacinated!
Nessa’s skin tingled. She’d never mentioned Daltrey wasn’t talking yet on the blog or on the radio. She was certain of it. She normally didn’t talk family on the radio and only rarely on the blog, and only as it pertained to whatever music she was discussing.
But . . . John had endlessly speculated on Daltrey’s lack of speech, although he’d never said Daltrey would be better off dead. Had he? Of course not. But John had bought into the whole vaccine conspiracy movement, no matter how many articles she’d shown him debunking this ridiculous myth.
“You don’t believe that, of course,” Isabeau said, as if to reassure herself Nessa wasn’t a crackpot.
“Of course not.” Nessa regarded her. Did she think Nessa was doing all this to generate publicity or something? What did Isabeau think, and how could she possibly ask Isabeau to be real with her when she had no intention of being real in return?
“I didn’t think so,” Isabeau said.
“Are you sure you didn’t think so?”