#JustTheTwoOfUs

I’m not allowed to tell this story.

The other story is okay. The one where I’m Prairie Hawkinsen, #BroccoliTantrum, precious daughter of #SingleMom Hannah Hawkinsen. Where I’m content. Content content. Where my mother has a perfectly round smiley face for a head and eats a bowl of floating red hearts for dinner every night.

When she’s pointing the phone at me, I call her Mommy because Algorithm likes it. But not in my own head. There, she’s @hnnhawk, her seventh-choice username. (@HannahHawkinsen refused to sell, even when @hnnhawk hit three million followers, even when one of the Hawks doxed her. She has 47 followers and a private account. I love @HannahHawkinsen. I wish she was my mother.)

I’m not allowed to write this story, but @hnnhawk’s eyes would well up in two perfect pools of blue tears if I wrote the other story. If I asked her to make up a dance to “Birds of a Feather” and begged her to post it with #MyLittleGirl and #JustTheTwoOfUs. Instead, she spends a lot of time texting her business manager saying, “I can’t fucking help it if she looks like she’s smelling rotten fish, okay? I am doing my best.”

It’s this story I’m not allowed to tell. The one where I used to be a girl called Ruth. Algorithm changed my name to Prairie. (It was between Prairie and Vision, but then @SkipperLoughtry named her baby Visionquest so Prairie won.) Ruth is a ghost now, I am a ghost now, moving Prairie’s body around, adjusting Prairie’s face in the mirror. Sometimes I can almost see the shadowy outlines of the world Ruth would be living if @hnnhawk was still working at Macy’s, if she still had her old face with the majestic nose like mine, the laugh lines radiating from her brown eyes. Sometimes I think I could step just the right number of steps backwards and I’d be in that world again, where it’s okay if Ruth’s smile isn’t big enough. If her eyes aren’t sparkling enough. If her voice isn’t bright enough. But here, when Prairie’s body doesn’t do it right, she carries the bruises for both of us. In places @hnnhawk’s posts don’t show.

When I was still Ruth we lived in a studio apartment. It was after my dad left, after my Nanna died. @hnnhawk spent her days working at the make-up counter at Macy’s. She was twenty-two. She would rush to pick me up from kindergarten, but she was always the last parent to arrive. She had an account with about two thousand followers, and she posted some #SingleMom stuff but mostly make-up tutorials. White eyeshadow, crimson lipstick, she was good at it but so was everyone else, and her #SmokyEye was indistinguishable from a thousand others. Every time someone unfollowed her, she would go into the bathroom and I could hear her crying. Sometimes people made fun of her nose. I loved her nose. I loved to sit on her lap and get as close as I could to her face before she went blurry. She would say, “It’s just the two of us, Ruthie!” and we’d dance to the old Carole King songs Nanna loved.

One Friday after she’d been extra late to pick me up, she went to the freezer but we were out of fish sticks. Her shoulders slumped, but she took a deep breath and said, “Okay! We are going to eat something that’s good for us tonight!” She made pasta and steamed broccoli and set the table with our mismatched plates. She set up her phone and hit the record button.

In the full video, I taste the broccoli. My face goes sour and I swallow and push the plate away. @hnnhawk says, “Baby, come on. It’s good for you.” I shake my head. She tells me to eat it, I won’t, she starts yelling, then screaming, and I’m crying, my face bright red. Then I pick up the plate and shout, “You’re bad! Broccoli is bad!” and throw the plate on the floor where it shatters.

She didn’t post the whole video. Just from where I picked up the plate. #SingleMom #JustTheTwoOfUs #Blessed?

It went viral. Jimmy Kimmel played it. @hnnhawk’s followers ballooned to three hundred thousand overnight. Ellen had us on for an interview and gave me broccoli ice cream, which was surprisingly good. After that, Algorithm said that no one wanted the make-up tutorials. They wanted #BroccoliTantrum and @hnnhawk. Algorithm named me Prairie at home, but Ruth wasn’t a ghost yet. There was still room for her in Prairie’s body. Algorithm decided I needed dresses, not overalls. Four hundred thousand followers, five, we moved into a two-bedroom apartment in a building without cockroaches. @hnnhawk got a business manager. We filmed a sponsored video for a doll that peed when you fed it water. @hnnhawk traded in her Hyundai for a Volkswagen Golf. She traded in her nose for a ski jump.

One day at school Miss Megan said, “Families come in all shapes and sizes. Some of us live with one mom and one dad. Some of us live with a grandma or a big brother. Some have two moms, or two dads. Some live in foster families, or in a blended family. We’re going to draw our—"

I raised my hand. “What about a Mommy and Algorithm?” I knew the word like other kids could name every Bluey character without pausing.

Miss Megan tilted her head. “Is that your Mommy’s partner? What a pretty name!”

“No.” I mimed a phone in my hand. “Algorithm lives in the phone and says all the rules. Like what I wear and how I talk and what my name is at home.”

Miss Megan’s eyes got wide. “Oh,” she said, “Um . . . wow. I would love to talk to your Mommy about that!” When @hnnhawk came to pick me up, we all went to the principal’s office, where the principal had stayed late especially to talk to us. When Miss Megan explained why we were there, @hnnhawk’s round face went bright red and her eyebrows turned down in the middle. She had to show Miss Megan and the principal her posts and her (then) 800,000 followers and the thank-you email from Ellen Degeneres, and she talked about how clever I was to know that big word. Algorithm doesn’t like it when I use big words, unless they’re Maybelline or Ferragamo.

Suddenly we were moving to Florida. To a big house by the beach that @hnnhawk promised was “hurricane proof.” Miss Megan threw a goodbye party for Ruth, giving her a hug at the end, the last moment of human contact before Ruth lost touch with reality, became a ghost hovering outside of Prairie’s body.

On the first morning in the new house, surrounded by cardboard boxes, @hnnhawk set up her tripod. She positioned us both with the ocean behind us. The sky still pink from the dawn. She knelt next to me and said, “Prairie, you never, ever have to go to school again.” She squealed with joy, so I squealed too. Hearts floated from the floor to the ceiling, so many I couldn’t see @hnnhawk’s face anymore.

In the story I’m allowed to tell, Prairie and Hannah Hawkinsen have been living in their beach house for eight wonderful years. Prairie is thirteen, she is #homeschooled and a #freespirit who watches #anime and loves #TikTokDancing and making content with her Mommy. Algorithm says the tween market has no interest in my opinions on books like Rez Ball or how good I am at climbing trees super high. Prairie’s room is painted bubblegum pink (Algorithm says that’s her favorite color) and next to the canopy bed there’s a stuffed swan in a tiara that’s five feet tall. I turn it to face the wall before I go to bed.

Prairie has long hair held back from her face with two butterfly barrettes. When her white-blond hair began to dull, Algorithm made a standing appointment with the hairdresser. Every six weeks it’s re-colored. Prairie wears dresses and skirts and Dolce Vita sneakers and clear lip gloss that makes everything taste like chlorine.

There are 14-karat gold words in looping cursive hanging from the wall—BEAUTIFUL and SMILE and DREAM—and last night I dreamed I stepped out my bedroom window and floated back to Michigan, back to the studio we lived in before. One corner of the studio was painted forest green. Ruth’s twin bed was there. It had a plaid cover on it and there were books everywhere. I lay on the bed and read and ate Cheetos and hummed to myself. When I woke up, I had a moment, just a moment, when I thought the pink room, the swan, the ocean was the dream.

Wednesdays, @hnnhawk takes me to what she calls #HomeschoolHangout in her posts but is really all kids like me, content-content kids. We’re not actually homeschooled, but nobody checks. We used to meet at Clover Park, where the parents got into discussions over ring light placement until Cyprian’s dad sprung for a portable film set-up. Now it’s always a warm sunny day. All the parents agreed—no identifying marks, to call it just “the park.” But @hnnhawk panned past the weird slide tower just once, for less than a second, and a week later when we arrived there was a couple sitting on the bench by the playground. No kids. They stood up and the woman was wearing a #BroccoliTantrum meme shirt. Every parent stopped and reached for their kid. @hnnhawk pulled me close and I shrank into her.

The man was in a baseball hat and long shorts. The woman’s eyes were swirling. She was already holding her phone up, already smiling and saying, “You guys! You guys! I knew it, they’re here!” She ran over to us and the rest of #HomeschoolHangout melted away, out of the frame. She said, “I swear, we are going to leave in just one second but can we get a super super quick hi to the other Hawks? It’s a livestream!”

@hnnhawk’s mouth pulled up into a toothy smile and her eyes turned to stars. “Oh my gosh!” she said, “My wonderful Hawks, hello hello hello!” but her hand on my shoulder felt like a claw.

Then we took photos for what felt like a hundred years. One of them is in the Hawk wiki under LOCATIONS / WEDNESDAY. The Hawk has her hand on one of my shoulders, and @hnnhawk has her arm around the Hawk’s waist. @hnnhawk is beaming at the camera, the Hawk is looking at her, and I’m biting my cheek so I don’t start crying. They finally left, and when we looked around everyone was gone. The WhatsApp group was buzzing with shock and apologies and are you okays but no one came back.

We got in the car. @hnnhawk kept saying she was sorry. I wanted to say that if she didn’t post anything, this could never happen again, but I could feel Prairie’s bruises when I shifted in my seat, and I was afraid. When we got home, she locked all the doors. She checked them twice more after it got dark. On Friday, she installed a security system, and now when Wanda comes to make us food she has to use a special card at the gate.

After that, #HomeschoolHangout met at the @borekifamily’s house, which has barbed wire fences and so much acreage the parents can still pretend we’re at a park. Well, except for after Hurricane Ian, when we didn’t meet for a month while the men came and repaired the playground.

Of all the kids I like Jane the best. She has two dads and wades in the pond even though Mrs. Boreki says no one’s allowed. But Algorithm says there’s not enough cross over between #QueerParents and #SingleMom so on Wednesdays I hang out with Sundance and her identical twin Moon, who never shut up about what they are not eating because Algorithm says they need to #EatClean. Thursday @hnnhawk posts a photo of Prairie and the twins. We’re on the all-wood playground (which is under a canopy of trees in case Hawks are looking using the terrain view of Google Maps) and Sundance is pushing Moon on the swings. They’re in matching miniskirts and they’re laughing. Prairie is on the other swing, her shoulders hunched, looking away.

WifeOfCallum: Aww #BroccoliTantrum looks so lonely!! I hope her day got better!!

Hawk4Evah: What are we gonna do with that nosie nose?

ka.mo582: the cutest love you both so much

And the other kind of comments that @hnnhawk pays two college students (one in Canada and one in Australia so all 24 hours are covered) to delete and block and report the second they go up. Except those comments still happened. Making them go away doesn’t mean the people who said those things don’t exist. They still exist, they still looked at me on the swings, they still said that awful gross stuff. How come Ruth’s face belonged to me, but Prairie’s face belongs to @hnnhawk? How come everyone is stopping the comments but no one is stopping the posts? I tried talking to Sundance and Moon about it. Moon said right away that their mom always asks before she turns on her phone. Sundance didn’t say anything.

I don’t really know what homeschooling looks like, but whatever it is I’m not doing it. In the morning @hnnhawk livestreams “making breakfast,” which is actually her doing the last few steps of whatever breakfast Wanda set up for her the night before. After we eat Greek yogurt and quinoa, @hnnhawk replies to any comments that came in while she was sleeping, her face changing as she taps away at her phone. She blows hearts from her pursed lips, her cheeks go red.

Then @hnnhawk gets on her treadmill, we eat whatever Wanda made us yesterday for lunch, she does her hair and make-up. Then it’s time to film sponsored content. It’s in the schedule for one hour. I’m lucky if it takes two because Prairie’s voice isn’t excited enough. She doesn’t look at the product enough. Her goddamn dress doesn’t fit, she misses her mark, she keeps turning to the side which means all anybody can see is her gigantic nose, it’s like Prairie doesn’t even fucking care about Flamingo Body Wash for Tweens. Sometimes it gets bad. Really bad. Sometimes Prairie has to go put on something with long sleeves.

Wanda arrives at 4 PM, @hnnhawk heads out to see and be seen and meet with potential sponsors, and . . . yeah. Not much learning in any given day. I’m not complaining! I mean, give me a choice between reading and anything else in the world and I’ll pick reading. But don’t kids go to college when they’re eighteen? How will I go to college if I don’t know the stuff other kids my age are learning? Anyway. I do get to have any book I want. We used to go to the bookstore. @hnnhawk would get a big coffee at the bookstore Starbucks and I’d get to choose five books. I loved that. Sitting on the floor surrounded by words and words and deciding which stories to take home with me. But then LOCATIONS / BOOKSTORES appeared on the Hawk wiki. So I order books online now.

On Wednesday, the twins are filming a sponsored video for roller skates on the curved driveway, so I grab my backpack and go inside the Boreki house to the bathroom. Sometimes @hnnhawk is distracted enough talking to the other parents that I can read a whole chapter in here. In the bathroom everything smells faintly of lavender and even the toilet paper is tinted purple. I sit down and pull down my underwear. There’s a streak of brownish blood. I’m thirteen, I know what it is. My heart starts beating like crazy.

If I tell @hnnhawk, she’ll aim her iPhone at me and squeal with delight. She’ll post it with #BloodPower and #LittleGirlsAWoman and #PubertyBegins. She’ll get a sponsorship deal with Stayfree and take me to CVS and set up her ring light in the aisle. I finish peeing and wipe myself, then look under the sink. There’s a whole basket of Dandelion Organic Cotton Pads, each one tied with a purple satin ribbon. I stare at the basket for a moment, then stuff every pad into my backpack. I untie one and, picturing the image from Celebrate your Body, stick it to my underwear. It feels weird when I walk outside. But at least I’ve bought Prairie a month of privacy.

A few days later I come downstairs for breakfast and @hnnhawk is there at the kitchen island, but the ring light isn’t. Her phone is sitting face down on the counter by the coffee maker. @hnnhawk is staring at the giant TV that’s never on, where the weather announcer is talking about a tropical storm that might turn into Hurricane Marjorie next week. Her face is a light shade of green.

“Um,” I say, and she looks up. Her eyes are bleary. “Is . . . are you okay?” I can’t remember the last time we had a conversation without a phone pointed at us. I feel shy.

She says, “I think I had bad sushi last night. How am I gonna—” and then she runs to the bathroom. I can hear her throwing up.

I don’t know what to do. @hnnhawk never gets sick. I know I should go see her, but I don’t want to. Instead, I pick up the landline and call Wanda. It just rings forever and in the bathroom @hnnhawk is throwing up again. She calls, “Paper towels!” and there’s more retching.

I stare at her phone. If it weren’t for Face ID I’d pick it up, I’d press record, I’d walk to the bathroom and live stream. (Except probably the Hawks would love it. The college students would have to work twice as hard.) From the bathroom I hear a thunk and grab the paper towels and run. When I get there @hnnhawk is flushing the toilet with the lid closed, but she’s still on the floor.

“Sorry,” she whispers, “I think it’s food poisoning.”

I hand her the paper towel roll. “It’s okay.” I don’t know what else to do so I just stand there.

She wipes her face and reaches out a hand. I help her up. She leans against the wall. “I’ll put my face on.” she says, “And we can post a . . . post something.” Her face is going green again.

“Or not,” I blurt. I brace myself, but a big drop of sweat appears next to one of her eyes and she smiles a little.

“I don’t know if Algorithm—”

“We could get crackers and 7-Up from Postmates,” I say, my voice fast like I’m trying to sell a used car. If she takes a day off there’s no sponsored videos, no “candid” talks about my favorite #PopSong.

After a long silence and a horrible burp, she says, “Do you still like animated movies?”

I nod, because I’m afraid I’ll cry if I say anything. Why doesn’t she know? Don’t people know stuff like that about their kids?

“We could watch that one with the monsters,” she says, “I mean, if you wanted.”

So we do. We order crackers for her and a just-this-once pizza for me and eat on the bed in her room. At the end of the movie, we both cry. The phone stays on the counter all day. Later Wanda says that when she arrived we were both asleep, curled up like puppies.

But the next day, Algorithm is furious. For the first time in six months @hnnhawk’s engagement numbers are dipping. During breakfast @hnnhawk says, “Friends, I am so sorry you were worried. My tum tum was a little bit upset yesterday. All I can say is, don’t trust those street hot dogs!” I guess she doesn’t want to piss off the $40 a plate sushi place she got poisoned by. “Anyway, me and Prairie watched Monsters Inc. and I had crackers and we both feel so guilty because she had,” she whispers, “pepperoni pizza.”

I’m not allowed to leave the table during our livestreamed breakfast. I’m not allowed to say that I loved the pizza. That for once she wasn’t calling it shame eating. That I don’t feel guilty, and why should I? The raspberries feel too ripe in my mouth. I drink some orange juice. I don’t know why I thought yesterday belonged to just us. Maybe if it really really was #JustTheTwoOfUs she wouldn’t be sure it happened at all.

I make my mouth into a smile shape. Comments float in the air.

flahr943: Noooo not hot dogs

BroccoliTantrumFan: I WAS SO WORRIED

debra.tumbler6: here comes the zits #BroccoliTantrum

And the scary ones, the blips that vanish fast but not fast enough, the split-second words making my stomach hurt.

After I weigh myself, Algorithm says Prairie has to wear Spanx under her dress. While I’m changing, I close my eyes and go to Ruth’s school, where they’re learning about the Vietnam War. The classroom is quiet save for the teacher’s round voice and the ticking of the clock on the wall. Downstairs we film two sponsored videos in a row to make up for yesterday. Prairie is afraid of Algorithm, so it hardly takes any time at all and then @hnnhawk runs off to reply to the new comments, her hands already in a heart shape.

Tuesday night I forget to turn the swan to the wall. When I wake up to pee, I open my eyes and it’s right next to my bed, looming over me and getting closer, its head turned to the side so it can see me, its red eye gleaming brighter and brighter until it turns into the record button on an iPhone. When I wake up for real, it’s to a crash of thunder. I’m sweating so much my shirt is damp. I run over to the swan and shove it in the closet, then stand for a moment catching my breath.

After I pee, I change my shirt then stand at my window watching the rain and the waves. I’m thinking about when @hnnhawk was starting out. When the Hawks didn’t exist yet. When @hnnhawk was excited to get three likes on Blurred Lips Tips 4 U!!!. Outside, one seagull plays in the wind.

In the morning, the storm is worse. I can hear my bedroom windows rattling, the wind howling outside. Downstairs, rain is pelting the wall of windows that faces the ocean, blurring the high waves, making it feel like the house is driving through a carwash. @hnnhawk turns on her phone, making sure the windows are in the frame. She says, “Good morning, my lovely Hawks! Today’s #HomeschoolHangout is canceled because some people are scared of a little rain!” She gestures to the windows and eats a perfect strawberry. “Not the Hawkinsen girls. We’re not afraid of Marjorie. Right, baby?”

“Um,” I say, stalling, no idea what she’s talking about.

“Our house is hurricane proof,” says @hnnhawk. “Marjorie, come do your worst.” She explains to the phone that we’re not going anywhere. I feel sick. I put my napkin over my mouth and spit out my yogurt and try to make it look like I’m just wiping my mouth. Words cascade from the ceiling.

Hawk4Evah: YES babe! You are the bravest!

BroccoliTantrumFan: U do U

FalcoMommy: I’m not sure . . . They’re saying it’s going to be bad, and you’re really close to the water? They’re saying it’s a category 5 . . .

Bannanna5: i can’t afford to evacuate but it looks like YOU can

WasFloridaMan: Be sure you write that kid’s name on her forehead with a permanent marker

WifeOfCallum: MOMMA YOU INSPIRE ME

As soon as she hits the stop button I get up from the table. “What’s happening?” I say.

She doesn’t look up. She’s typing in hashtags.

“Did the Wednesday group evacuate? Are we supposed to evacuate?”

“One sec.” She’s still typing.

“Mom,” I say, without meaning to, and she looks up then. “I don’t understand. There’s a hurricane? Why aren’t we leaving?” Outside the waves mount ever higher.

“It’s not a hurricane really,” she says, but I remember now where I heard the name Marjorie, it was from the weather announcer.

“Algorithm says if we just wait it out our numbers will go through the roof.” She holds up her phone and whispers, “Nine, maybe.”

My whole body is trembling. “No, we have to go. Like how we did for Hurricane Ian.” I dig my fingernails into my palms to stop myself from crying. “It’s—you can post from the shelter—that’s still good for—”

@hnnhawk gestures to the living room window. Outside a beach umbrella cartwheels past, then launches up into the air, twirling out of sight. “A, I am not getting mobbed by followers at the shelter again, and B, if we drove in that we’d die.” She grins.

My mouth forms words but I can’t make myself say them and she’s moving her tripod anyway, aiming the phone at the couch with the storm behind it. She hits record and lounges on the couch. I tell myself the waves can’t be closer than they were before. “Hawks! We are riding out this little old storm together, and I want you to see everything!”

I’m not allowed to tell this story. The one where I run upstairs and call Wanda on the landline in the hallway while @hnnhawk is filming. When Wanda answers I say, “It’s me!” but the wind’s wail is inside the phone, too, an endless static so I can barely hear Wanda as she says, “Hello? Hello?” and then the phone beeps three times and goes dead.

I’m not allowed to tell this story. The one where I sit on the stairs and watch @hnnhawk as she says, “Okay! Closest one to guess the next thing flying past the windows gets a Hawk t-shirt signed by me!” flar943 wins by guessing bicycle, which is closest to the scooter that goes airborne for a moment, then is eaten by the ocean.

I’m not allowed to tell this story. The one where, later, I find Ruth’s ghost trembling under the covers in Prairie’s room and ask her what to do. Ruth says to ask the followers for help. But on my way downstairs the bruises on bruises aching with every step, I can’t. I can’t. @hnnhawk’s face is flushed. She’s sitting on the edge of the couch, her elbows on her knees. “It’s like a roller coaster but the part where you go down the hill never ends!” The water is an inch deep on the deck outside. The waves. I don’t want to talk about the waves.

I’m not allowed to tell this story. The one where we huddle in the dark bathtub. I am crying, sobbing, saying, “Mommy, Mommy,” but she’s holding her dead phone in front of her face. Shouting over the sound of the train made of water plowing through the living room windows. “We did it, my sweet and lovely Hawks! We made it to ten million followers! Isn’t that crazy? Isn’t that insane? Ten million!” while water cascades under the bathroom door.