The Bright Side of Going Dark

by Kelly Harms

  But selfies don’t pay for canceled weddings.

  The garden roses are mostly bright, so I pick out the palest ones and put them in a water glass I find in the bathroom and set them on the floor. No, inside the wardrobe. Nope—I take them out of the water glass and balance one rose on top of the mirror. That’s it, and I adjust the curtains and take pictures, adjust the lights and take pictures, change angles, squat down, stand up on the bed, snap snap snap. I cannot have too many choices. After all, this will have to be the shot I post to announce the cancellation. It needs to be pretty and soft, the dress sheathed in the closet, the graceful acceptance writ large.

  But. Per my sponsorship contract, I need to do a full-length dress photo, wedding or no. I was thinking of one of those classic dress-on-the-bed pictures, but the duvet is white and the dress is antique lace, so it may not show up. Maybe better to put the dress on? But no, I cannot do that, not today. I’m holding it together so delicately as it is. And sure enough, when I have the dress out of the bag and have it draped across the pretty four-poster and see how charmingly the subtle sepia aging of the vintage dress stands out from the white lining, see the strapless lace from bust to toe in a slim sheath with just the tiniest kick in the front and an extra foot of train in the back, see the perfect little off-the-shoulder straps I requested at the last minute, I feel a few tears get loose.

  Enough, I tell myself. I cried enough last night. Tucker is just a guy. He’s just some guy who takes gorgeous photos and loved me for a while and doesn’t love me anymore. I am done crying over it. Tucker and I dated for nine months. There are plenty of other Tuckers in this world. At twenty-nine I can find another one and still do all the things I wanted to do. I’ll have to move faster, but come on. There are five hundred thousand people who want to look at pictures of me every damn day. The odds are fair.

  Anyway, I tell myself, I’m not crying over Tucker. I’m crying over the dress. It is so pretty, and it cannot be reused. For one thing, I’ve posted myself shopping for it, posted myself getting fitted, posted shots of lace being hand-tailored, even posted the strapless bra I will be wearing underneath it, sponsored by a high-end French lingerie line to the tune of a cool three grand, plus a full trousseau.

  I wonder if I will have to pay that back.

  A chill of panic runs through me. The dress itself is a sponsorship for an online vintage wedding shop. The tailoring was free in exchange for a mention of the alteration shop in at least three posts. The hashtag-sponsored cake is probably sitting in a cooler waiting to be frosted. Even the florist is doing my bouquet for free. Am I going to go belly up in this fiasco? Anger sponsors? Or worse . . . lose followers?

  I feel shaky. I try to breathe deeply and walk myself through some positive thoughts, but they won’t take root. My fans, what will they say? Will they rally around me in sympathy? If I am sympathetic or, more accurately, pathetic, will they still buy what I am selling? Or will they turn on me, as Tucker did, and find someone new to follow? Someone whose life is more perfect, more seamless, more like it’s supposed to be on Facebook and Instagram and Pictey and everywhere that is only somewhere on your phone?

  If they do, what will be left of me?

  I style the dress. I add the necklace of tiny gold filigree and the stylized veil, puff up the bed pillows, tinker with the lighting. The room’s gas fireplace, just inside the shot, is turned on, turned off, cropped out. The roses are added, moved three inches one way, two the other, until everything is absolutely, completely perfect. And when all these things are in their perfect place, I take the shot. On the screen of my DSLR, it comes together and looks almost magical.

  Or maybe the better word is unreal.

  But that doesn’t matter. I upload it, do a quickie edit, post on Pictey, tag all the sponsors, add my favorite wedding hashtags, and add a throwaway caption: Can’t hardly wait! And then, heart in throat, knowing that Tucker will see this and praying he will understand my plight and play along, I push “Post.” My phone makes a whoosh that gives me goose bumps. Whoosh goes my sanity. Whoosh goes reality. And in its place, something else. Something perfect. And perfectly false.

  PAIGE

  The ability to actually anxious oneself unconscious is a rare one, I realize, but I’ve never had to work at it. The first time I did it was in high school, and after that I think something short-circuited in my brain and decided it was better to black out during a panic attack than to stay awake for it, and from what I’ve read from others about panic attacks, my brain may be right. I keep thinking next time I feel it coming on I will have the good sense to lie down on the floor, but so far no luck. So when I wake up, I’m disoriented and have a headache from hitting the floor. Karrin’s office floor, I remember, but I’m not in Karrin’s office now. I’m in my bedroom, in my apartment. I have no idea how I got here, but my head is really throbbing, so I should check my pupils before I do anything else.

  I struggle to my feet, stagger out of the bedroom, and put myself in front of the bathroom mirror so I can look into my own eyes. I don’t know exactly what pupils are supposed to look like when you have a concussion. Whirly? Should I look for tweety birds flying around my head? I lean in closer to the mirror.

  “No concussion,” says a voice, and I jump a foot.

  “Sorry to startle you.” It’s Karrin. “I must have been in the kitchen when you woke up. How are you feeling?”

  “Fine, thank you,” I tell her. “Did you bring me home?”

  “Not at first,” she says. “First you went to the Pictey clinic. I was pretty sure I knew a panic attack when I saw one, but I wanted that noggin checked out. The good news is it’s perfectly fine. The bad news is it was in fact a panic attack.”

  I sigh. These idiotic panic attacks. They are so, so, well, beneath me. They’re a poor use of time and resources. They solve nothing and make most situations worse. They seem to be resistant to daily medication, so I have become perhaps a bit too reliant on antianxiety pills to keep them at bay, and even then, I’ve found them to be a bit too slow to do any good in the moment of crisis.

  “What time is it?”

  “Seven p.m.,” she says.

  “Still Friday?”

  She nods. “You woke up briefly in the clinic. They gave you a very mild sedative, and I brought you home. Do you remember?”

  I nod. “Vaguely. Yes. It’s coming back to me now.”

  Karrin hands me a cup of tea. “I assume this is your first panic attack, Paige?”

  I nod, because mine is one of those rare jobs where stable mental health is a formalized prerequisite.

  She arches an eyebrow. “You don’t seem terribly surprised.”

  I look up from my tea. “Panic attacks are seen in as many as three percent of the adult female population. Women my age are more likely to have a panic attack than successfully convert to veganism.”

  She nods. “Interesting comparison. But you can see how such a diagnosis might change the conversation, vis-à-vis our department at Pictey,” she says gently. I narrow my eyes at her. “But we can talk about that later.”

  We can talk about that never, I think. I’ve had panic disorder since I was a young teen, and it’s never kept me from doing quality work at my company.

  “You took me by surprise,” I say. “The news of my sister’s attempt was upsetting. Speaking of which, I’d prefer to be alone right now. To reflect and . . . process.”

  Karrin nods. “Totally understood. I’ve written my number down, on that notepad”—she gestures toward the table—“and a prescription is there if you feel another attack coming on.”

  “Thank you,” I tell her.

  “And don’t rush back. We won’t expect you at the office for a while. Maybe two weeks?”

  I open up my mouth to protest. But I think twice. Now that my panic attacks are on the record, my options may be to take a long leave or never come back at all.

  My shoulders sag, but I say, “Yeah, that’s fine.” It doesn’t feel fine, but what el
se can I say? “If something comes up, I can always call . . .” My voice trails off as I try to imagine who I would call. “The staff psychologist,” I finish.

  “And maybe you can go visit your sister,” she suggests. “It could really help you process those feelings that overwhelmed you earlier.”

  “Sure,” I say, though I have no intention whatsoever of going to Colorado. My mom lives in a large suburb east of Denver. I have deemed the entire state off limits to be on the safe side. “Maybe,” I add, as I shovel Karrin out my door.

  When I am alone again, I get out my work laptop and my personal laptop and put them on the desk next to my desktop monitor. I pour the tea down the drain—even modest caffeine is contraindicated in many cases of anxiety—and pour myself a nice glass of milk instead. Then I wake up my big computer and get back on Pictey.

  My sister and I have different last names. Mine is Miller. Hers is Odanz. As far as I know, she lives somewhere in Boulder. She is in college there, as a communications major, of all things. I fear that major leads to a career in PR, or worse, writing.

  It takes me almost twenty minutes to find anything new related to my sister, so thoroughly has the Pictey team been erasing things. The flagged comment I dropped is long gone, obviously, and my sister’s account is hidden, but from tags to it I find a few of her friends’ accounts, and they are totally normal, vapid college-girl accounts. I note with disdain the typical foolishness—pictures that will make it hard for them to get jobs in the public sector while also revealing their exact location at all times.

  But one of them is even more clueless and tasteless than her friends. RIP JESSICA reads this girl’s latest post. There’s a picture of my sister and two other girls hugging and laughing.

  I feel anger surge up in me, or some feeling I vaguely recall as being anger. I realize I was hoping, for my sister’s sake, that her attempt was going to be a well-kept secret and she wouldn’t have to answer questions about it or be stared at or otherwise ever revisit this horrible moment in her life. It seems like a simple dignity to pretend an attempt never happened. But that’s not the world we live in anymore. There’s no more “Grandma’s memorial” or “ankle sprains” to hide behind. Now there are emojis that look like funeral sprays and the general understanding that anyone under the age of thirty who goes dark on social is probably dead.

  A thought bubbles up in my mind. Is she dead? The only person who told me otherwise is Karrin. My breath catches. I reach for the new prescription—Valium, I see, which will do me just fine—take a pill, and begin my square breathing immediately. This soon after an attack, proactivity is the name of the game. And what I have to do now, I cannot do without extra help. I take off my glasses, rub the bridge of my nose, and then tell my phone to call Mom.

  “Yello!” True to form, my mom does not sound like someone sitting vigil by her daughter’s hospital bed. She sounds like someone on the way to mixed doubles.

  “Hi, Mom,” I say to her.

  “Paige! My goodness. To what do I owe this pleasant surprise?”

  I look blankly forward and will the Valium to work faster. “I’m calling about Jessica.”

  “What about her?” she singsongs.

  “Mom, don’t make me go fishing through hospital records to get a look at her chart. I just want to know how she is.”

  My mom’s voice drops an octave. “She’s fine,” she says. “Not that you care.”

  “The very fact of this phone call is evidence that I care,” I say, staying as placid as possible. “In fact, I am deeply concerned.”

  “She says you haven’t talked to her since Christmas.”

  “She hasn’t talked to me since Christmas either,” I say.

  “She’s busy! She has so much going on, with college and dating and friends. You’re the older sister. You’re supposed to manage these things.”

  “I have an actual job,” I point out.

  “That’s all you have,” my mom says quickly. “Anyway, she’s just under a lot of stress, and she needs to rest for a week or two.”

  “I heard she tried to kill herself,” I say.

  “Oh, no no no.” Mom tsks. “Where did you hear that rumor? It was just a fall in the shower, when she was shaving. Poor thing couldn’t find her safety razor.”

  I translate this from Mother to Reality. “She slit her wrists?” I ask.

  I can hear my mom’s frown through the phone. “I just told you what happened. You and your imagination.”

  “I’m already past the firewall at Billman Adventist,” I warn her. “It just gets more illegal from here. And embarrassing,” I add.

  My mom inhales audibly through the phone. “It’s all such a mystery. She’s a very happy girl. She always has been. She’s never needed a single pill in her life. I can’t sort out exactly what happened, but somehow she ended up in the ER around nine last night with cuts all over her arms.” I hear emotion cracking through my mom’s voice, but I refuse to acknowledge it. She’s a far better actor than I am a lie detector. “They gave her blood and admitted her. She’s doing fine now. Just needs to stay awhile to get back on her feet.”

  “She’s going to be ok?” I ask.

  “She’ll be fine. Just don’t overreact. We don’t have to make this into something more than it is.”

  “It’s big, Mom. Don’t you realize it’s big?”

  “I’ll say to you now what I said to you then. Moments like these can be anything you want them to be. Make it into some big drama, and it can define you for the rest of your life. Or you can say oops! and put it into a little box and just get on with it. No one has to know. Jessica is going to be fine. We never have to think about it again.”

  “Mom—” I start, but she makes a little “ooh!” into the phone.

  “My dentist is calling, hon. Let’s talk another time.”

  “But I—”

  “Kisses!”

  My mom disconnects.

  I let my head sink until it’s resting on my hand and listen to the phone going off. My poor sister. Our mother may stick to the “fall in the shower” line for the rest of her life, but I know what happened. The flag came in yesterday around four p.m. Most likely it was flagged by the influencer, or one of the influencer’s fans. It’s also possible Jessica might have been the flagger. Maybe she really was making a cry for help. Whether it was her or not, she would have been refreshing the feed from then on, waiting to see if the influencer, or the unseen mechanisms behind Pictey—namely, me—would reach out and try to give her some kind of hand up. She would have waited hours. Specifically, she waited five hours, waited for me to do my job.

  And when I didn’t, she tried to kill herself, exactly as I did when I was in her shoes, almost twenty years ago.

  MIA

  #WeddingDay is here at last! Even though I’ve only known Tucker for 9 months now, and we are about to start the rest of our lives together, our story still feels like a true romance. And like every good story, it has a beginning, middle, and end. Beginning: we meet, and you, my friends, were there! Middle: we both fall hard, and you were there! End: my last morning as a single woman . . . and yep, you guys are here for me now too. How do you say goodbye to one stage of your life? What helps you move on to the next? Any advice for me as I get ready to say #iDo? Don’t worry, plenty more wedding posts coming, but I’ve got so much to do, it might be a while . . . xoxo Mia

  On Saturday, the morning of my wedding, I wake up in a puddle. Grief, ice cream, potato chip crumbs, and wine seem to be gathering where I lie, which, fortunately, is the luxe soaker bathtub of my en suite. Last night, at some point between pinot grigio bottles one and two, I decided that, as an internet fraud and future nobody, I was not deserving of a fancy bed. Drunk-person logic is weird. Maybe I just anticipated spilling my wine, which I did, like, thrice. I took my pillow and several towels and the duvet into the tub to continue my pity party. I know there was a pint of melting organic vanilla bean full-carb premium ice cream with crumbled potato chips on
top, and then the rest is kind of a weepy blur.

  Now, looking around the honeymoon suite of the inn, I realize I can’t stay here a moment longer. It’s too bright, too promising, too much of a lie. I pack up a night’s worth of stuff and drive to my mother’s house, about twenty minutes toward Dillon. If I’m going to fake my own wedding to five hundred thousand people, then Mom is literally the only human in the world I can count on to support me, because she has a complete disdain for social media, phones, and tech in general and thinks of it all as a house of cards anyway. Plus, she keeps a healthy supply of good wine lying around.

  When I arrive and stand on my mom’s long wooden porch, trying to decide between knocking and walking right in, the door flies open of its own accord. “About time!” says my mother. “I expected you yesterday.”

  I step inside, trying not to show my instant Mom-induced fatigue. “How did you know?” I say obligingly.

  Mom gives me a quick hug hello, notes aloud that she thinks I’m losing muscle tone, and then gestures to a little table mounted near the front door. It has legs that swing out from the wall and support a fold-down top. On it, next to a familiar family photo turning yellow with age, is a small altar with my framed senior photo, arms crossed, back against a tree, hair resplendent, outfit unfortunate. And then various candles and beads and a deck of Goddess cards.

  “Mom,” I say. “You can’t be doing my cards all the time. It’s intrusive. And also a waste of your time.”

  “You’re here, aren’t you?” she replies, which is not, I notice, an acknowledgment of my request. “I bet you’re hungry too. I can warm up a can of soup.”