CHAPTER 1
NEW YORK CITY, U.S.A
LYSSA
My crown is called content: a crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.
KING HENRY VI PART III
Lit nerd knowledge drop: Shakespeare invented or introduced approximately 17,000 words to the English language, including the word hurry. As I hurled my frame between the snapping subway doors, only just catching a pole to avoid face-planting, hurry felt insufficient.
This was hauling mine ass.
It took a few moments to catch my breath. An unmistakable pungency filled my nostrils, explaining why this car was so empty. Four seats down, someone had taken a dump on the floor. Again.
I considered changing cars, but my bags were heavy, my stop wasn’t far, and if I breathed through my mouth it wasn’t that bad. Absently, I wondered what Shakespeare would call subway crap. A commute most foul? A malodorous peregrination? If I gave this hypothetical exercise the context of four centuries of linguistic evolution, maybe dastardly deuce drop.
The irony of it almost made me want to laugh. My entire day had been a shitfest, so there was a sick poetry in it becoming literal now.
At one o’clock I’d started filming the most important Get Ready with Me of my entire influencing career. After that, I headed to Bossi, where I used to intern, and began a livestream.
At 2:25 p.m., my life imploded.
Now my phone was on Airplane Mode to avoid all the notifications, and I was running late for a Zoom call with my best friend Caroline and her extended family.
Hence the hauling.
I ran from my stop to my building, sucking in big lungfuls of (mostly) shit-free air. Kicking my apartment door shut behind me, I threw my wicker clutch in the corner and toed off my platform Balenciaga sneakers, borrowed from the fashion cupboard at Bossi. I would have returned them—that was actually part of today’s plan—but now that I was banned from the premises, I guessed they were mine?
My apartment was chaos, as usual. I had to rummage through discarded outfits looking for my headphones—shit, battery dead—and my laptop—20 percent—it would have to do. With one arm, I swept everything off my bottom bunk and onto the floor. Clothing, yarn, a soda can, an empty Sweetgreen’s take-out container I was saving to put buttons in, and the balloon dog I’d made out of air-dry clay and was covering in rhinestones: it all went flying. I cleared everything out of frame other than my cat, Root Beer, who was asleep on my pillow, and the loose rhinestones that were trapped in the folds of my sheets and refused to budge no matter how much I brushed at them. Oh well. If they stuck to me, I’d pretend it was on purpose. (This was how I started a viral trend last year for face stickers.)
Tucking my legs under me on my bed, I joined the call and waved cheerfully at the five squares that filled my laptop screen. But I quickly hid my arm behind my back when I noticed the mascara smear on the sleeve of my pink Birth of Venus sweatshirt, which must have been from wiping my tears as I ran down 57th Street, sobbing.
This morning, which felt like a million lifetimes ago, I’d styled this Venus sweatshirt with a deerstalker hat and bloomers with white bows pinned to the hems. At the time, the bows felt essential, coquette, en vogue!
Now they seemed silly. Embarrassing. Pathetic.
With a tiny shake, I forced myself to focus on the call.
Caroline Holliday and her partner, Chase Sanford, were in their apartment in Chelsea, while Chase’s mom was calling from Toronto, and Caroline’s dad and her brother, Mike, were in New Zealand. I’d joined a few of these Holli-ford family calls now. When Caroline used to live with me, I ended up a part of them anyway because the apartment was so small. Since she’d moved out, she continued to include me (probably out of pity, as she knew my own family rarely called).
It was either very late or very early for Mike and Kevin in New Zealand—the time differences were too confusing for me to keep track of, and I couldn’t tell from the background because Mike’s big build filled most of their frame. He was kind of handsome, if you liked that kind of thing. Not handsome in a New York way, but in a lumberjack way.
But he was a lumberjack who didn’t hold me in very high regard. It was clear he thought I was a self-obsessed kook.
And so what? I was.
“Sorry I’m late!” I apologized.
Root Beer jolted awake at my voice and glared from where he was curled on my pillow. Hopefully he was mad because he’d been woken up, not because I smelled like the worst of the subway.
“I had an issue with a livestream.”
Predictably, Caroline’s brother snorted. “Some people use the internet for remote surgery, but don’t keep us in suspense, Lyssa. How many corners did you cut your toast into this morning?”
“Influencer culture is a billion-dollar empire, Michaelangelo. You should support female digital entrepreneurs.”
“Oh, I do.” Mike grinned. “I just have to put my credit card into a paywall first.”
