Free Assured Destruction by Michael F. Stewart

right. Worse. It’s gross.
    “The Internet. That’s interesting,” I say. “You must know a lot about each other then.”
    The air has been sucked out of the room. It’s a bell jar.
    Neither can tell if I’m being facetious, and I feel like a third wheel. But I can’t help but think that this is a car accident waiting to happen. What should I do? Be a bitch and ruin the night? My mom doesn’t get out, it’s true. So maybe I should just let it go.
    “Actually, this is our third date,” my mom says.
    I release a long breath. The two lovebirds share a look. How gross!
    “Please.” Peter holds up the dumpling platter and smiles. I can’t tell if his teeth are dentures or not. I take a dumpling, and they’re really good even if it’s not pizza. My phone is buzzing (it’s always buzzing) and I use it as an excuse to flee back to work.
    I take the exit stairs instead of the elevator, punching through the door at the bottom so it slams hard against the wall. In the dark, the emergency light glows red and the roller line glints. I go to the window and peer out at a nice-looking, powder blue Mercedes. I try to think like my mom. We need money so she finds an old guy who won’t be around too long? A year ago I would have done anything to support the family. Maybe I’m driving her to this by demanding fewer work hours? My stomach twists. Powder blue. I mean, who gets a Mercedes in that color?
    I can’t decide if I don’t like my mom dating online, or dating at all. The only obvious thing to do is find out who the heck he is. I wander down to Shadownet, comforted by my network of friends.
    I click away the image of my healthy mom and bring up an old picture of my dad. In it, he’s holding out his hand, face earnest, as if beckoning me to follow.
    “She’s moving on, dad,” I say in a warning.
    I slump into my chair and suddenly realize I don’t have Peter’s last name, Googling Peter won’t help. I don’t feel like creating anything beautiful either, so instead complete my ritual of updating everyone’s walls, feeds, and blogs.
    Is ten too young for a boyfriend? Frannie tweets the world.
    Ten is too young for Twitter. And tweeting for boyfriends is never a good idea, Paradise57 says.
    Oh come on @paradise57says, I want to see what happens to @Franniemouth, Heckleena replies.
    NO! JanusFlyTrap tweets. I won’t let anyone else get hurt!
    And it’s so weird because there are tears in my eyes as I send off an imaginary tweet to protect imaginary friends.
    I wipe my eyes and inspect Frannie’s spam folder. She has another ream of it, and I scan through carefully to see if I’d missed any other threats. At the last second, I catch a weird email. It’s a comment notification like I receive when someone comments on my blog posts—an email saying someone left a comment. But Frannie doesn’t have a blog. Who is commenting on a nonexistent blog?
    Other notifications I missed are scattered amongst the hundreds of spam emails. I let out a small whine and click on the link. There it is: the mystery site. Except, it’s not a mystery; I recognize it.

Chapter 11

    T he website glitters with leprechauns and pixies that dance on rainbows, hearts, and stars. It’s like a box of Lucky Charms barfed on my screen. It’s the same site Chippy had up on his monitor this afternoon. I’m positive.
    Everything is in shades of pink and purple, including the barely decipherable text. I highlight the whole thing and doing so makes the font legible. A series of short topics have been posted, and everything is anonymous, including comments—at least, that’s how it appears at first. The blog posts are in hot pink and the most popular as measured by comment count are:
    Who does she think she is?
    What do you get when you cross a donut, a dog, and a fart?
    And:
    Why doesn’t she just die?
    I suspect that I don’t want to read any of the responses but I click the donut-dog-fart post anyway. Beneath are seventeen answers. I check