The Knockoff (10 page)

WHEN OLDS TWEET

by Astrid Parkerson

Someone needs to hire a social media manager for Glossy.com’s Imogen Tate, 45 (what does she do there these days anyway?). It seems the former editor in chief has tried her hand at tweeting today, but no one explained any of the rules to her. It looks like something my mom would have done…four years ago. We’re going to assume she’s not drunk but you know how the olds like their martinis with lunch….

To start with, she was forty-two, not forty-five.

Ashley was suddenly joined by Alexis from the Public Relations department.

“Imogen, we are so sorry. I have no idea how Astrid Parkerson would even have known to look at your Twitter account, but I assure you we will get to the bottom of it.”

Imogen had two options. Act horrified, which she was, or laugh it off.

She rolled her eyes and let out her best, slightly too loud, Joan Crawford full-throated laugh.

“It could have been so much worse. At least I didn’t tweet something really embarrassing.” She clicked on her Twitter page. “And look how many followers the incident got me.” Imogen’s follower count was now topping 5,500, which she knew was 500 more than Eve. “I’m a little bit famous on the Internet now. Ashley, sit here with me while I compose a couple of tweets to all my new followers.”

Both Ashley and Alexis visibly relaxed. If Imogen didn’t think this was a crisis, there was no one reason anyone else should think it was.

@GlossyImogen: Thanks to @TechBlab for all my new followers. Welcome! I hope that I can delight you while I wobble about on here.

@GlossyImogen: I am trying to follow @BlabAstrid’s mum. I hear she is an excellent tweeter! I need a mentor.

In the course of the next hour, she was inundated with new followers and retweets. Someone created a hashtag: #GoImogen. She finally understood what all of the fuss over social media was about. This kind of validation was wonderful. She just needed to get a firm handle on how to tweet from her phone and she would be perfectly fine to start live-tweeting from her first fashion show tomorrow morning. She still dreaded the part where she had to seem wonderful and witty in every tweet. It was exhausting.

Hours later, she nearly collided with Eve walking out of the office.

“Easy there on the Twitter, Imogen.” Eve smirked. “We can’t have the investors thinking our editors are drinking on the job.”

“I think the tweeting is going quite well. I’m starting to really
enjoy it. Plus, I got nearly ten thousand followers today.” Imogen swelled with pride as she noticed Eve balk at the number.

“Try not to embarrass us tomorrow when you tweet from the shows,” Eve said. She glanced down at the FitBoom on her wrist. “I think I’ll take the stairs. Got to get my ten thousand steps.”

Ashley squeezed herself through the elevator doors just as they were closing. She looked anxious, like she needed to tell Imogen something. After the fourth time Ashley glanced sideways at her, made a small sound and then shut her mouth and looked sheepishly away, Imogen prompted her.

“Ashley. Is something the matter?”

“Ohhhhh, I don’t know if I should tell you this.”

“Just tell me. If it’s about my tweeting, I can handle any criticism you lob at me after what I’ve endured today.”

“It’s about your Twitter, but not about you. I really shouldn’t, but you should know. You’re my boss. I’m sorry, Imogen.”

The girl looked like she was about to burst into tears. Imogen put on her most motherly look.

“Ashley, please tell me whatever you need to tell me. I promise, whatever it is I won’t get mad.”

“I’m not worried about you being upset with meeeeeeee.” Ashley kept opening and closing her palms as she wiggled her jaw back and forth with a
click, click
sound. “Okay. Here it is. See, I am friends with Astrid from TechBlab. Not friends, exactly. Maybe you could call us frenemies. We were in the same sorority and stuff and I felt so awful when I read her post. She doesn’t even know you. I didn’t understand why she would be so mean. Anyway, I emailed her to be, like, ‘Hey, what the hell?’ and she was all, like, ‘Hey, I didn’t think anyone over there would care what I posted since Eve sent it to me.’ ”

Imogen didn’t grasp the connection at first, but by the time the doors opened to the lobby she realized what had happened. Eve had set out to sabotage her. Eve had planted a nasty item about her on TechBlab. Eve was a backstabbing cow. Imogen could feel the heat rising into her face, but it was important that to Ashley she appear unfazed.

“I am sure Eve thought it would be amazing publicity for us and it was. Look how many Twitter followers I got today. She really is a marketing genius.” Ashley looked relieved and pleased that she had come to Imogen with the news.

“So you aren’t mad? I thought you might not be mad. You’re always so calm and cool, not like Eve.” And then realizing she definitely said too much, Ashley dove in for a quick and awkward hug with Imogen and flew out the front doors.

Who the hell was Eve Morton? Imogen still felt a tightening of rage in her chest. Spikes of adrenaline surged through her system. She wanted to call her, scream at her, rip those awful dangly earrings right out of her ears.

Move forward. Breathe.

Breathe. Move forward.

Imogen’s kitchen counter at home was strewn with fruit and veggies. Tilly, the family’s nanny and the little sister Imogen always wished she had, held up a hand as Imogen walked in to signal she should pause just outside the room and remain quiet. She was filming Annabel standing behind the counter as her daughter carefully explained the ingredients to make the perfect avocado, kale and mint smoothie. Annabel had her own sense of personal style. She wore a slightly shrunken version of her school’s uniform and restyled it with vintage menswear that made her look like a pint-sized Thom Browne model or a Dickensian orphan with an eye for fashion. Imogen loved it.

In just the past year, her daughter had become obsessed with organic smoothie making and insisted on making videos of her “garden smoothie” recipes like a young Alice Waters.

After much begging, cajoling and promising this was the start to an amazing culinary career (was she really only ten?), Alex and Imogen had agreed to let her put her videos up on YouTube. For a year, they tried to enforce screen time limits, something the other mommies at school talked about all the time—an hour a day on the various devices when Annabel wasn’t working on homework.

That didn’t fly. “This is my passion. It will be my career. What if
someone told you that you could only work on your magazine for an hour a day?” her daughter protested. Imogen caved.

To Imogen’s surprise the videos were something of a small hit among tweenage girls. Other little girls around the country made different kinds of cooking videos and, as Annabel described it, they all linked to one another. It was a hobby that Imogen couldn’t quite wrap her head around, but in the pantheon of things daughters did, making videos of healthy smoothies was harmless enough.

“And that’s all-vocado for today, everyone.” Her daughter waved cheerily into the camera.

“All-vocado?” Imogen raised an eyebrow and smiled.

So confident on camera, Annabel grew suddenly shy.

“I thought it was funny,” she said sheepishly.

Imogen felt guilty for mocking her daughter. “It was cute. I was kidding. I think it’s adorable.” Annabel rolled her eyes and stalked into the sitting room.

Imogen fell into one of the kitchen chairs.

“She’s sensitive today,” Tilly said.

Imogen had long ago gotten used to her nanny knowing more about her children’s moods than she did. She looked at Tilly quizzically.

“I’m sure it’s nothing, but there were some downright nasty comments on Ana’s YouTube page this morning.”

She had known it was a terrible idea to let her daughter put herself out there on the Internet. Probably some old pervert in a dank basement somewhere was watching and rewatching her daughter make smoothies and then writing something disgusting to get his jollies off.

Tilly shut her down before Imogen could work herself up. “I am sure it’s another little girl. It’s written in tween-speak. Here, look.” Tilly pulled the laptop across the counter to show Imogen. On the top of the screen was her daughter in an apron and a chef’s hat, a sunny smile on her face. Tilly scrolled down and clicked on one of the videos so Imogen could look at the comments. All of them
were
written in tween-speak, hybrids of bastardized words mixed with symbols and exclamation marks. The first few were pleasant enough:

U r kewl and kewt!
and make gud smoothies.

We would be friendz if we lived in the same city. You have nice hair.

Make something with mango. Mango munch. Mango munch. I
mangos.

Then there was this one:

You R Ug-LEE. No smoothie will ev-ur mak you look gud. U r gross.

It was signed:
Candy Cool
.

Imogen gasped. What the hell? Who spells “ugly” like that?

Tilly just shook her head. “Before you jump to conclusions, remember that little girls are the meanest creatures God put on this planet. They’ve been bullying one another since the dawn of time and will continue to do it until humanity’s dying day. This looks bad because it’s written right here for everyone to see, but it’s no worse in the long run than little girls passing notes about one another in class.”

“I always said I didn’t want her on the Internet.”

“Come on, Imogen. All the kids are online. This is what they do. They slag off. Ana loves making these smoothie videos. There are a hundred comments that are so sweet and nice. I probably shouldn’t show you the other one.”

“Show me the other one.”

“Bugger.”

This one was a picture. It was her daughter’s head on the body of a morbidly obese person, one of those people that
Dateline
did specials on when they became too large to fit through their front door. Someone animated the picture to make Annabel’s pretty heart-shaped little mouth chomp up and down.

Imogen felt useless. “I should talk to her.”