I flip through my new pictures again and keep coming back to the very first one I took, where I’m walking away from the camera. Maybe I’m being a coward, using one that doesn’t reveal even my fake face, but it captures the emptiness that weighs on me right now. I fiddle with the image in Photoshop, making sure I have a clean, blank background around my whole body. I’m like a cutout doll. Then I search the internet for a place I’d rather be.
A concert or crowd scene would only make me feel lonelier, so I go somewhere my solitude can be appreciated, even envied. I find a photo of an empty beach at sunset, waves gently lapping at the shore, reflecting the tropical sky’s orange light. I drop my purple-and-orange-wigged cutout self into the scene—a small figure walking in the distance.
Disappearing.
And I post it. It’s amazing how quickly the visual affects me. It’s like I’m there. I’m somewhere else. I’m someone else. I take off my Vicurious costume, wipe my red lips clean with a tissue, and crawl into bed. Cuddled under my blankets, I take one last look at my alter ego’s Instagram, my single lonely post, out there in the void. No likes. No comments. It’s a comfortable place to be, but a part of me wishes someone would notice.
I click on the “. . .” button and slide my thumb to “edit.” Then I add a single word:
#alone
6
SOMETHING WAKES ME, BUT I’M too groggy and disoriented to figure out what it is. I glance at the clock—it’s two a.m. Just as I’m starting to nod off again, I see a dim flash of light through my closed eyelids, like the headlights of a passing car or a flash of distant lightning. I don’t hear an engine or rumble of thunder, so I crack an eye open and look around my room. The light flashes again and . . . it’s coming from my phone.
Jenna?
I lunge for it, forgetting. Squinting as my eyes adjust to the brightness of the screen, I quickly realize it’s not from Jenna. And it’s not a text.
It’s a message from Instagram.
Actually, there are several messages from Instagram.
Wait, why is Instagram sending me messages? Then I remember last night and how I opened a new account.
I scramble to sit up in bed, swiping the screen. Vicurious is getting likes. And followers! There are twelve of them, with names like lonelyyygirlll and unlovelyunloved. I remember the hashtag I added right before bed. I click on it, #alone, and oh . . . my . . .
There are 13,150,650 posts with the #alone tag.
I scroll down the photos and see mine—Vicurious on the beach—amid a sea of other images of people in various states of solitude. The pictures are intermingled with what appear to be inspirational quotes. I click on one of them to see what’s so quote-worthy about being #alone.
Don’t depend too much
on anyone in this world.
Even your shadow leaves you
when you’re in darkness.
Oh, God. That’s depressing. I click away from it and tap on another and another.
It’s sad when you feel alone
in a room full of people.
I am a prisoner in my own mind.
No one needs, wants,
or loves me.
I’ve found my people, apparently. And they’re kind of scaring me. I mean, I can totally relate, but the thoughts they’re sharing are ones I try very hard to ignore. Reading them all in one place is like standing on the edge of an abyss, and I can only teeter here for so long before I fall in.
So I back away. I click out to my own page again, to my single post. It has seventeen likes. Seventeen people have enjoyed my photo enough to click on the little red heart. I’m not sure what that means. Do they like that I’m lonely?
I turn my phone completely off so the flash of notifications won’t wake me again, and I try to go back to sleep. It’s not easy, though, knowing people are watching me, or Vicurious, rather.
But, seventeen people? I probably haven’t spoken to that many people in a year. I’m not sure there are even seventeen people who know my name. And though these seventeen people don’t know my real name, they know a part of me that nobody else does. They like something about me I hardly knew existed.
Comforted by that strange connection, I fall asleep so soundly it takes my mother pounding on my bedroom door to wake me later that morning. And I’m not even annoyed. I’m excited to check in on Vicurious. I wait until after breakfast, though, telling my parents I’ve got tons of homework. Which I do. But that’s not how I plan to spend my day.
For the first time in my life, I feel like I can be part of something. I won’t be lurking and watching with nobody knowing I’m there. Vicurious gets to put herself out in the world, which I never could.
The question, as I’m back in my room and searching the internet, is this: If I could spend a day with anyone, who would it be? Where would I go?
I start dragging photos into an empty folder. Hogwarts. The Titanic. The Tonight Show. The guard hut at Buckingham Palace. Skydiving over the Grand Canyon. The Great Wall of China. The cosmos. An assortment of red carpets.
In the absolutely-not-crushing-on-him-but-think-he’s-super-smart-and-cool department, I decide my first adventure will be with Neil deGrasse Tyson. He’s standing at the helm of his spaceship with the cosmos exploding behind him. I select one of the photos of myself I took yesterday, where I’m sort of jumping and making this “Wow!” face, and I Photoshop it into the cosmos picture with Neil. I am copilot of his spaceship.
It takes me a while to get it just right, and looking quasi-realistic. Not that I expect anyone to believe it’s real, but I want it to seem like it could be. If only for me.
When I open Instagram to post the doctored image, I’ve got a dozen more followers—twenty-four total, and thirteen more likes. I hold my breath, clicking through the notifications to see if I recognize anyone. They’re all random names, some who identify specifically with depression or sadness and incorporate it into their handle, like sadgirldreaming and sucks2bsodepressed.
There is no jennaelizabethtanner or marissadimarco or anyone else I know. So I’m able to breathe again. I select the image, and I write a message:
To infinity and beyond!
I’m about to post it when I start worrying about copyright infringement and if it’s okay to use someone else’s photo like this without getting permission. I mean, people do it all the time, but that doesn’t make it right. But I’m thinking the Cosmos producers will be cool with it because it’s promotion of the show, and a form of fan art. They’re probably happy to see people share stuff like this with friends. If anyone complains, though, I’ll take it right down.
Still, I let my thumb hover over the “share” tab. This is it. I’m doing it. Sharing an image where you can actually see me. In costume, but still. I close my eyes and press my thumb to the blue bar, holding my breath until it pops up as a real, live post.
Then I wait.
And wait some more.