Follower

The white SUV turned in step with my car the whole way home. A left at the gas station, a sharp right at the dry cleaner. Through the wind-around flanked by trees, where the houses came into view one by one, tucked back behind their sprawling front yards, sitting far enough from the road to deter solicitors or criminals. A sense of security for the homeowners. We don’t need a gate. Who would venture down such a long driveway? My husband, the practical one, who always squashes my paranoia before I can give it hooks, who cuts me off before I get hysterical. A trait of his I am equally grateful for and irritated by.

With sweaty palms, I turned into my driveway, only because I knew Phin was home. The SUV continued on. I pulled into the garage and pressed the clicker, waiting for the garage door to close before getting out of the car. The early morning light dipped lower and lower, the door groaning shut like the slow closing of an eyelid, until I was blanketed in darkness. I am safe. Olly is safe.

I wanted to tell Phin about the SUV when I walked into the house. But as I kicked off my shoes, he smiled and kissed me, as he does, curbing my fear with the taste of his coffee breath and the layers of platitudes he had entrenched in me. Don’t overthink it. We live in a safe area. You have a higher chance of getting struck by lightning than getting stalked. That one he’d always said to make me laugh, but what I could never bring myself to say aloud was that, of those two options, I’d prefer the electric shock.

Minutes after arriving home, just as I was bringing a fresh mug of coffee into my office and Phin had disappeared to his, a succession of three deep booms shook my core. It wasn’t thunder. I wished so deeply it were thunder. But no. Someone was knocking at the front door.

---

One Year Earlier

“Have you ever heard of BookTok?” My publisher asked me this over Zoom during our meeting to discuss ways for my books to reach a wider audience.

“Is it a bookshop you’re thinking of adding to my next tour?”

She laughed, but I wasn’t joking. “No, Bec, it’s a subset of TikTok, a way for books to get attention, even backlisted stuff. It’s mega for sales.”

“Sounds…” I couldn’t think of an appropriate adjective for this thing that did not appeal to me at all.

“It’s exciting stuff. I want you to be more active on social.”

“I know you do. But you know how awkward I am. Can’t you just let me hide behind my pages? I can’t stand seeing videos of myself. Even this Zoom call is making me uncomfortable.”

“You don’t have to watch your own videos, silly. People will love seeing more of you. You have camera-worthy hair. And you won’t even have to come up with the ideas! We have interns for that who are much, much younger than us.”

“My son’s privacy will be protected?”

“Olly does not have to be a part of this at all.”

“And Phin?”

“We both know he would love it. But no. Just you. And your book babies.”

My publisher was more persuasive than I was resistant. So, it began. She sent me a tripod, a tiny clip-on microphone, and a ring light. I left them in their boxes for a week in an attempt at rebellion, but I finally gave in. The interns came through. They wrote me scripts and a calendar plan for the next six months.

My following grew. My page, @beccahearthwrites, even got verified. Eventually, to my publisher’s delight, one of my books was featured in a video of a quasi-famous BookToker (as they’re called, apparently). I commented on the video. My comment got 1,053 likes.

Being active online, as it turned out, was not as scary as I had predicted it would be. But the physical world around me was shifting in a way I wasn’t prepared for. People were connecting my name to my face. My husband became my assistant with the sole task of taking my picture with fans, which he found hilarious and fun. My carefully curated garage door of privacy was lifting, and the light was blinding and white hot.

---

A week before the white SUV incident, I was coming down from an adrenaline-fueled two-week tour. I wanted nothing more than to hide in my house and find routine again with my writing, my husband, and Olly: cutting up strawberries for his Paw Patrol lunchbox and driving him to school. It was a glorious week of quiet, of no makeup, of sweatpants and a reacquainting with my laptop screen.

Until the three knocks. Phin’s office was closer to the front door than mine. And being the social butterfly that he is, it doesn’t even faze him to hear a knock. It excites him, actually. I tripped over my laptop charger while trying to leap from my office to warn him, sloshing hot coffee onto my bare foot. I gasped and tried to yell out, “Don’t answer!” But it was too late. The door’s hinges squeaked followed by the southern drawl of a woman who said, “Hi! I’m here to see Becca. Are you her husband?”

It was like being stretched in two directions, that moment. Half of me wanted to turn the corner, charge the door and slam it in the stranger’s face, and the other half wanted to hide. So, I did neither, frozen in place, my foot sticky and throbbing from the burn.

Send her away. I tried to speak to him telepathically. We’d been married for ten years, surely that was enough for him to know what to do.

“Yep. Phin,” he said. I could tell he was smiling just by the tone of his voice. “And you are?”

“An ol’ friend. From childhood.”

I squeezed my eyes shut to heighten the telepathy powers. Don’t do this, Phin.

“That’s nice. Do you like coffee?”

Oh my god. He’s going to invite her in. Who is she? A mad fan? The door’s hinges squeaked, and it clicked shut. The stranger was in my house.

In a panic, I slipped into my office’s tiny closet with the now half-full mug of coffee in hand and shut myself into the dark. Their voices became unintelligible as they went into the kitchen.

At least Olly’s not here. Do I know her? Is it another mom? I tried to place her, to ground myself in something I could hold on to, information I could weaponize. To find a way out.

How many seconds did I have before Phin would call out to me? He’d find a mug, pour coffee, chat up the stranger to charge his social battery, then I’d be toast.

That accent. It was starting to take shape in the recesses of my mind. The heavy r: “Are you her husband?” and the flat, drawn out i: “…childhood.”

Childhood. A two-chapter book. Before and after. A carefree, cheerful me then a tense, folded in version of myself.

And that voice. It was there, not in the first or second chapter, but on the page between.

---

Twenty-Six Years Earlier

She was new to our school in eighth grade. Which was noticeable, unlike a new kid starting high school with everyone else. We became fast friends. But that was like me, then. I was social, welcoming, wanted to be liked and for others to feel the same. I had a lot of friends. She, I would come to learn, did not.

It started with harmless gestures, her pulling me aside at lunch to sit with her in a quiet corner or asking someone to switch seats so she could sit next to me in our classes. I felt idolized, my fragile adolescent confidence buoyed by her adoration.

Then it was the notes. Rambling letters with swirly s-es exploding into every corner of my life: in my locker, backpack, classroom desk. Enough to fill a book. She always addressed them to “Becs” with a curly s at the end. I hated the nickname and told her so. She doubled down.

They weren’t love letters, per se. In fact, she droned on about the boys she had crushes on, some of whom I think were totally made up. But she was burying me in them. She must have used dozens of notebooks, ripping the pages out one by one, and spending countless hours late into the night to write these notes. Maybe they were love letters. She did often compliment my hair. But I didn’t have the tools at that time to understand how to process it or draw a boundary line.

Then, in the spring, just weeks before summer break and the chance to step back and, admittedly, take a break from this strange friendship, she showed up at my house. My mom let her in, to my horror, and directed her straight to my room. Hours later, I was practically begging her to leave, until it got so late, my mom gently asked her to go.

She showed up nearly every day after that. Not just at my house. But at my lacrosse practices, at the movies where I would already be with other friends, and even once at the grocery store where I tried to casually hide behind my mom.

The dam finally broke on the cereal aisle when she found me and said these four words: “Are you following me?”

She said that to me. I was aghast. Then, I was enraged. I blew up. Half the grocery store, hell half the town, witnessed my outburst. I told her off, made her feel as small as a fourteen-year-old could make another fourteen-year-old feel. She cried. She ran. My mom grounded me for the entire summer.

My simmering, summer-long anger was superseded by fear when I caught her staring at me from a distance outside my bedroom window on a hot August night. I closed the curtain and convinced myself it was in my head. Until I found a note tucked into the windowsill outside the next morning.

“She’s gone but not forgotten,” it said, with swirly s-es. Below this was a drawing of a girl stabbed to death with dark pencil marks depicting a pool of blood around the body. Was it me? Her? I didn’t understand. I ripped it to shreds like I’d done that summer with all her other notes and went back inside, locking the door.

Freshman year began, and she was nowhere to be found. Classmates who barely knew her speculated that she moved away, and I finally believed it myself when fall turned to winter and she hadn’t materialized. I would never be as open or friendly again. Paranoia became a standard guest at the dinner table. But I would eventually grow up, burying that year in a heavy pile of new memories, and lose track of what caused this shift in me. Of who caused it.

---

Are you following me? Are you her husband?

Are you…her? I thought in my office closet. I knew the answer. I just didn’t know what to do about it.

“Becca!” Phin called from the hallway. “You have a friend here to see you.”

His footsteps stopped in the office doorway. “Bec?”

He left and called out for me one more time before shuffling back to the kitchen. I strained to hear their muffled voices but couldn’t make out the words. Then, to my relief, the front door opened and closed.

I waited five more minutes before I emerged, setting aside my coffee mug and carefully avoiding the laptop charger, then tiptoed to my husband’s office.

“Where you been?” he said, unbothered.

“Was…someone here?”

“Yeah, some lady, an old friend of yours? Real sweet, had a southern charm about her. I told her I couldn’t find you, that you must be indisposed.” He rubbed his belly. “She left you a note. It’s in the kitchen.”

I shuddered. “Did you happen to see what car she was driving?”

“Nah.” He yawned. “She wasn’t parked in the driveway, must have been on the street somewhere. Anyway, she’s gone.”

But not forgotten. I floated to the kitchen, tugged by a force from my past on a string that should have broken years ago but never really had. It had only lain dormant, invisible.

“Becs” the folded note read, with a swirly s.

I unfolded it with trembling fingers.

“You’re famous now,” she wrote. “Bet that comes with a lot of pressure. And a lot of weird followers. I’m sure you’re handling it with grace. But if it ever gets to be too much, I’ll be around. You could use a friend. Would hate to see a crazed fan stab you in the back. I know all too well how that feels.”

A phone number, and below it: “Call me real soon. I have the perfect idea for your next book.”