The Obscure Downsides of Fame

67 // crash

When I woke up the next morning, my phone was blowing up and I wasn't sure why.

My first thought was that something had happened that I was somehow involved in. Before I had the time to let it settle in, Gen called me.

"Why is my phone blowing up?" I asked, getting out of my bed and suddenly thinking about how I even got there.

I left Nolan in the woods, picked him up, drove him and Gray to my dad's restaurant I think? I think I drove. And we ate. Or well, Gray ate, actually. Then I drove Nolan home and he was still mad at me, so I borrowed his car to get home. I didn't even talk to my family as far as I remembered, but I did watch tv with them?

Honestly, it was all a blur.

"Your phone is blowing up because why did you never tell me about your private Instagram thing or whatever?"

"What?"

"The one share you posted music on? I thought you had to rebrand it when you signed the record deal."

"I did. I made a big private one that got leaked remember? So I blocked everyone in there except for a few people. Did I block you on there?"

"Apparently you did, because I can't find it."

"Wait, I'm so confused. How did you find out about it then?"

"Okay, don't panic, but someone leaked it. Again, I guess."

"Wait, what?" I put Gen on the speaker as I logged into my Instagram.

I was tagged in a bunch of posts that showed screen recordings of the page. I mean, I wasn't sure how to feel, because on the one hand, people seemed to like the music. On the other hand, which ones were leaked? Because there was definitely some personal stuff out there.

"Fuck, oh no. Wait. What do I do? Do I delete the entire page? Did they show everything?"

"What would 'everything' include?" she asked me.

"Everything! It could fuck everything up!"

I didn't want to admit it but this scared the fuck out of me. Though it was probably obvious that I was freaking out at this point.

"Don't delete it yet. Just..." Gen got stuck as she thought it through. "Just come to my place."

•••

Thirty minutes later, Gen and I were seated in her studio in silence, staring at my phone.

"I swear I don't remember posting some of these," I told her. Apparently I wasn't so good at keeping secrets because I had at some point a few months ago posted something that wasn't very discreet about my relationship.

As in, I literally posted a song called Nolan, referring to my boyfriend Nolan whom I'd tagged—which he obviously didn't see because the account was private and he wasn't following it.

Lucky for me, it was one of the videos the person had spared.

"I swear to god if it's Trisha I might just kill her."

"You blocked her."

I checked my followers and apparently I had blocked her. Maybe because I knew it was something she would do. I wasn't sure. It would've been years ago.

"Then who was it?"

"There's only... one, two, three, four, five, six options."

One was Mason, which was unlikely. Two was someone who worked for the label, which was also unlikely. Three, was my uncle, which was also unlikely because I was the one who made the account for him because he didn't know how to use social media, and then there were options four, five, and six, which were basically just my high school friends I hadn't talked to in two years and had probably just forgotten to unfollow.