Page 169
“Am I to take this as good news?”
“Oh. Oh, babes,” she said in a voice that normally would have preceded sitting me down to dish out some truly outstanding gossip. “I have been earning my paycheque–”
“I’m not paying you,” I pointed out.
“–metaphorically. I have enlisted the help of some Vibers – a ‘street team’ if you like – to defend you.”
“A what? And how?”
“The what and how isn’t important,” Becka said dismissively. “Just know that you have a street team, and they’re out there, right now, doing the lord’s work and defending your honour all over social media.”
“Okay,” I said bemused, dragging a hand down my face.
“I’ve also reached out to pretty much everyone you’ve ever worked with.”
“You’ve done what, now?” I sat up, much more alert now. “Who?”
“The Loop, Frequency, Daily News, THV…” she trailed off, listing nearly all the publications I’d worked with.
“Why?” I asked, baffled.
“Ky, you have friends,” Becka pointed out like this should have occurred to me. “You’re being attacked. They want to help. So many of them already agreed to write defence pieces on your behalf.”
“What?” I burst out.
“Ow, Ky, my ears,” Becka groaned, and I snapped my mouth shut.
“Sorry,” I murmured.
“Yeah, anyway. As I was saying. Not everyone can,” she went on. “I reached out to some of your connections at the show you did for Radio Two, but their hands are a little more tied. But the host did promise to shut down any malicious shit that he sees, and says you’d be welcome back on the show to talk about something related to all of this, once it’s all died down a bit, or you’re back in the UK. Whichever comes first.”
“Right,” I said, raising a hand to my forehead and leaning forward.
Becka didn’t seem to have picked up on my disbelief. “Oh! And Dad says he’ll write up a C and D on his law firm’s letterhead and we can email the online publications that are being total assholes–”
“A what?” I interrupted.
“C and D. Cease and desist,” she explained quickly. “It won’t actually do much, but it might scare some of the smaller ones to stop talking shit about you.”
“Becka, I–”
“Don’t worry about Dad, he says he’s happy to represent you,” Becka said casually, as though this was just another cog in her baffling machine, and not what it felt like to me. Everything.
“Becka, I–” my voice broke.
There was a moment of silence on the line, as if Becka had run head first into a verbal wall.
“Babes,” she said in a gentle voice, “what’s wrong? Did I do something? Oh fuck, did I overstep? Am I doing too much?”
“I–I…” I paused to take a shaky breath. “Becka–thank you for being my friend,” I sniffed, and then burst into tears.
“Oh babes, you never need to thank me for that.”
“You’re doing all this for me, and I don’t even–I can’t…” I dissolved into tears.
“Kaiya Thompson, you listen to me right now, and you better hear me. You are my best friend. I’ve been all in since I trusted you to cut my bangs in a field behind our university dorms.”
I laughed wetly, dragging a hand across my face.
