Such a Bad Influence

by Olivia Muenter

Genres: General Fiction; Mystery; Amateur Sleuth; Thrillers; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

“A fascinating exploration of the dangers of social media . . . smart and timely.”—Carola Lovering, author of Tell Me Lies and Bye, Baby

For fans of Ashley Winstead, Jessica Knoll, and Jo Piazza, an electric debut thriller about what happens when one of the first child stars of the social media age grows up . . . and goes missing.

Hazel Davis is drifting: she’s stalled in her career, living in a city she hates, and less successful than her younger sister, @evelyn, a mega-popular lifestyle influencer. Evie came of age online, having gone viral at five years old for a heart-tugging daddy-daughter dance. Ten years older and spotlight-averse, Hazel managed to dodge the family YouTube channel—so although she can barely afford her apartment, at least she made her own way.

Evie is eighteen now, with a multimillion-dollar career and unlimited opportunities, but Hazel is still protective of her little sister and skeptical of the way everyone seems to want a piece of her: Evie’s followers, her YouTuber boyfriend and influencer frenemies, and their opportunistic mother. So when Evie disappears one day—during an unsettling live stream that cuts out midsentence—Hazel is horrified to have her worst instincts proven right.

As theories about Evie’s disappearance tear through the internet, inspiring hashtags, Reddit threads, podcast episodes, and scorn, Hazel throws herself into the darkest parts of her sister’s world to untangle the threads of truth. After all, Hazel knows Evie better than anyone else . . . doesn’t she?

Release date: June 4, 2024

Publisher: Quirk Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

Evelyn Davis has argued with every person she’s never met.
     In her mind, she has gone to battle with each stranger who has posted a negative comment on an Instagram post, every person who has somehow found her personal email address. The ones who have found her physical address, too. She has stood in front of them and laid it all out. She’s made every point, every argument. She’s memorized each counterpoint. Every caveat. She has looked into their eyes and convinced them that she gets it. She’s willed into them the same belief that she’s had to convince herself of for years: that she’s as human as they are, soft and vulnerable in the very same spots.
     Today, Evie drives and plays the game again, imagining all the usernames she sees on her phone as real people, giving them that benefit, even though they never gave it back to her. She turns up the volume and pictures the person who sent a handwritten letter to her house last week. The woman who had asked why she wasn’t a better role model for people her age. Why she’s not more grateful for her four million followers, for her success, her face, her body. “Don’t you understand the power you have?” the stranger had written in neat, curving letters. “Don’t you get it?”
     The stranger’s name was Susan, and it turned out that she, like Evie herself, was all over the internet. Single and in her late fifties, Susan lived outside of Columbus, Ohio, with a black lab named Muppet. Her passions, based on her digital footprint, included giving local restaurants highly detailed, lukewarm-to-scathing reviews and spoiling her two redheaded grandchildren whom she frequently referred to as “my life” or “my joy” or “my everything.” Muppet, it seemed, didn’t quite make the cut. Susan frequented Twitter less often, which made it easy enough for Evie to see her thoughts from any given time in the last ten years. It only took a few seconds of browsing, for example, for her to find a post from 2018 in which Susan wrote that she felt “truly devastated” when Matt Lauer lost his job on The Today Show. Her Instagram bio featured ten emojis and a Bible verse. And, of course, she had a lesson to teach Evie.
     Evie imagines how they’d sit down together for coffee. “It’s all a huge privilege, Susan,” she’d say, ticking the box she knows Susan is so clearly waiting for her to skate right by. “An unbelievable, immense privilege. It really is.”
     Susan would cross her arms and lift her chin. A challenge.
     “And?” she’d probably ask, pursing her lips. The unspoken second question suspended between them: “What do you plan to do with that, exactly?”
     Evie smiles in real life, imagining the careful expression she’d strike in response to the question, knowing that whatever answer she gave next wouldn’t really matter. Maybe she’d explain that she actively avoids promoting all the things that people her age are taught to avoid—drugs, alcohol, diet pills, bullying. She would reference the half dozen videos where she’s made a point to mention that these things just aren’t for her, that they’ve never been her thing. That they aren’t cool. Maybe she would be honest and level with Susan. Tell the truth, that her vices have always been things that are  entirely unique to her. That the things she can’t quit are much more humiliating.
     Even before people like Susan went out of their way to tell Evie what they thought of her, Evie has been addicted to seeking out the worst things people would say about her, to carefully cataloging the ways she is hated.
     In the beginning, her mom half-heartedly tried to hide the snark sites from her, to block the Reddit forums that discussed influencers, to make sure Evie didn’t learn about the darker, more hateful online message boards and chat rooms, too. To filter the worst comments. By the time Evie was eleven, though, she could find her way around most website child protection programs. A few years after that, Evie had nearly half a million followers, and the whole thing was too big to control, anyway. Her mom couldn’t have hidden her from most of it if she’d tried. Besides, she had seen her mom browsing these same sites herself. She had gone through her mom’s phone and found the screenshots of particularly hateful threads about her clothes, her body, her personality. Evie had wondered then if her mom was keeping them all to refer to later, to remind herself to not let Evie wear a certain outfit that the internet hated, or to nudge Evie to stop smiling in a way that seemed fake, forced. A million tiny road signs that illuminated the path to bulletproof adoration.
     But Evie felt a pull to look at the sites, too. When most of her friends were desperate for first kisses and clear skin, she was fighting the same insatiable hunger to read more about herself. To know what everyone was really thinking about her, underneath it all. Most people might assume she’d mark the milestones of her life by career highlights (going viral at five, hitting 500,000 followers on Instagram by the time she was fifteen, becoming the most-followed teenager on TikTok shortly after), but instead she remembers ages by notable usernames.
     At twelve, there was ShortCake23, who wrote that Evie was changing her voice in videos to sound more like an adult. That it was creepy the way she was trying to appeal to an older audience. Disturbing.
     At thirteen, there was RioGranddd, who said she looked like “if JonBenét Ramsey was a hipster,” adding an important disclaimer that they only said that because they were just “like, really concerned with her well-being.”
     At fifteen, it was NotMyTwin1993, who mocked her for wearing too much makeup. “God, if she needs this much cosmetic assistance now, just imagine what it’ll be like in 20 years . . .”
     You’d assume, maybe, that she’d fall back into this habit on her worst days, in her weakest moments, but it was in the happiest moments that she felt the urge to search more than anything else. She felt lucky, even, that she could cross-check her joy against the opinion of the rest of the world. That she had a built-in gauge for weighing her success, her pride. For knowing if she really deserved any of it.
     There were thousands of comments that she had filed away in her mind, each one attached to a brief, unspoiled moment of joy. An achievement. A birthday. A crush. Each time she’d remind herself that she shouldn’t look, but she’d do it anyway. It was like picking a scab, satisfying and shameful, always worse after than before. And in the end, she knew that the truth was the same thing that Susan would tell her, probably. That she had no one to blame but herself. That if she looked for room to complain there would always be none. She knew this, too.
     “We didn’t ask for this, but it doesn’t mean we can’t be grateful for it,” her mom would often say when Evie mentioned a negative response to something she’d done online. An outfit. A life choice. A brand partnership. “This is just what happens when you share your life with the world.”
     It had been more than a decade since the Davises first became internet famous, all thanks to a viral video of Evie and her dad doing a coordinated dance. It was sweet, the kind of thing that makes people say, “Girl dads are just the best, aren’t they?” Paired with the right music, the right exposure, the video might have been enough on its own, to go viral in a small way. But it was what happened after that made it explode. That led to daytime talk show appearances and enough social media followers to fund a new car, a new house, a new life.
     “I’m grateful for all of it. I could never have imagined this in my wildest dreams,” Evie would explain to Susan, to every follower she’s imagined talking to, referencing the success she had found (or built, or had handed to her, depending on who you asked) on the internet.
     She sighs as she pulls into the parking lot, shifts into park, and adjusts the sun visor. The Los Angeles sun feels like it’s boring a hole into the side of her face, burning straight through to her teeth. She places her elbows on the steering wheel, pushing her hair out of her eyes. Evie is used to people not agreeing with her life decisions. She is used to the Susans of the world and their friends and their daughters going out of their way to tell her that reading paperback books is killing the planet or how her boyfriend doesn’t really love her or how she would probably never get into college, not that she would even try. And yes, she is used to a million messages supporting her every move, too, but the one thing she has learned from both groups is that neither has helped her at all. Neither sees her or knows her. Believing the good stuff has sucked the soul out of her as much as believing the bad stuff has.
     Evie checks her makeup in the mirror and grabs her phone, fluffing her hair and taking a deep breath before opening TikTok. She scrolls through some of the most recent comments, wondering what all those usernames would say if she decided to actually respond to them. To push back. To argue. To go through the points and counterpoints over coffee. She wonders if anything she said, even face-to-face, would change anything. As if answering the question, her brain automatically populates with the things she’s read about herself recently.
   How long do you think it’ll be until Evie Davis gets a real job?
   How much do you want to bet a ghostwriter writes Evie Davis’s captions?
   She doesn’t even have shame about the ads anymore.
     Evie exhales deeply, then hits the live button, waiting for other users to populate the TikTok Live.
   Evie Davis never posts about anything good anymore.
     One hundred people are viewing the TikTok Live.
    Evie Davis tries too hard.
     One thousand people are viewing the TikTok Live.
    I honestly wish Evie Davis would just disappear.
     Evie watches the live symbol in the top right corner blink red, and she nods and smiles, giving a half-hearted wave to no one and everyone as she watches heart emojis appear and float past her face to the top of the screen, popping and dissolving into nothing as fast as they appear.
     “Just thought I’d hop on here . . .” she begins, but her mind is elsewhere. That thought is floating up again, bubbling to the surface of her brain and sticking there. And then there’s something else rising in her chest, a feeling. Something bright and new. Sharp. She’s still trying to place it when she sees the man approach her car from the corner of her eye.
    I honestly wish Evie Davis would just disappear.
   I honestly wish Evie Davis would just disappear.
   I honestly wish Evie Davis would just disappear.