Free Body and Bone by LS Hawker Page A

the others, and it was one of “hers.”
    Thanks to vacines, my son can’t speak. He’d be better off dead. Don’t get your kids vacinated!
    Nessa’s skin tingled. She’d never mentioned Daltrey wasn’t talking yet on the blog or on the radio. She was certain of it. She normally didn’t talk family on the radio and only rarely on the blog, and only as it pertained to whatever music she was discussing.
    But . . . John had endlessly speculated on Daltrey’s lack of speech, although he’d never said Daltrey would be better off dead. Had he? Of course not. But John had bought into the whole vaccine conspiracy movement, no matter how many articles she’d shown him debunking this ridiculous myth.
    â€œYou don’t believe that, of course,” Isabeau said, as if to reassure herself Nessa wasn’t a crackpot.
    â€œOf course not.” Nessa regarded her. Did she think Nessa was doing all this to generate publicity or something? What did Isabeau think, and how could she possibly ask Isabeau to be real with her when she had no intention of being real in return?
    â€œI didn’t think so,” Isabeau said.
    â€œAre you sure you didn’t think so?”
    â€œYes.” But she wouldn’t meet Nessa’s eye.
    Nessa’s computer dinged from her desk. She brought it back with her to the couch, sat back down, and opened Hushmail. There were several messages from Altair and a ­couple from sponsors.
    She clicked on the one from Rick’s Music Shop and Guitar Ser­vices:
    Dear Ms. Donati,
    We are sad to say we are pulling our sponsorship from your blog Unknown Legends due to the offensive nature of your recent tweets. We wish you the best of luck.
    Nessa typed a reply to Rick’s:
    Dear Rick,
    The Twitter handle is a malicious spoof account. I can see how some ­people might become confused, but this happens all the time. If you’re in the public eye, you attract haters, and those haters do what they can to destroy your credibility. If you’ll notice, the spelling is horrendous, and mine is not. I of course know how to spell Obama and president . ;) As you know, I’ve never made any of these kinds of comments before, and now there are many, obviously an attempt by someone to discredit me.
    I hope you’ll reconsider. If not, I understand.
    Best, Nessa
    Nessa then got on her blog and whipped off a quick note to her subscribers and sponsors explaining what had happened and asking them to hang in there with her while she sorted the insanity out.
    â€œI have one more thing to show you,” Isabeau said. “So you read about the Air Capital plane crash over South Dakota over the weekend, right?”
    Of course she had. There’d been no survivors, but in a bizarre twist, much of the baggage was intact.
    â€œWell, as it turns out, you also have a Facebook fan page. And here’s the most recent thing ‘you’ posted.”
    #AirCapital597 Glad the valuble stuff survived!! Who’s going with me to the auction??
    â€œGood God,” Nessa said. This was the kind of thing that ruined ­people’s reputations forever. She remembered the story of the PR exec who posted a thoughtless tweet and had to change her name and move.
    â€œTrolls, right?” Isabeau said. “Nothing to do but sit in their parents’ basements and smoke weed and anonymously heckle ­people who are actually trying to create something. I’ll bet this guy’s some jealous asshole who’s trying to spook your sponsors. He probably has a shitty music blog with two subscribers—­his mom and a girl named Desiree who keeps asking him if, for just $24.95, he’d like to take a look at some of her nude photos.”
    Nessa laughed. “You really think that’s all it is?”
    Isabeau rolled her eyes. “Probably,” she said. “If you ignore him, he’ll probably get bored and try to find somebody