Such a bad influence, p.1
Such a Bad Influence, page 1
Praise for Such a Bad Influence
“Mix one part juicy social media scandal, one part bitter family drama, and one part scintillating missing woman case—shaken up with urgent ruminations on what we lose by turning our identities into products for sale—and you have the heady cocktail that is Such a Bad Influence. Olivia Muenter’s timely, riveting debut plunges readers into the dark underbelly of the influencer world, examining the unhealthy side of our parasocial relationships with the ‘internet-famous.’ This story is as addictive as scrolling Instagram, and marks the launch of a talented new writer. Highly recommend.”
—Ashley Winstead, author of Midnight Is the Darkest Hour
“An addictive psychological thriller that will totally immerse you in the terrifying, overexposed world of child social media stars. Muenter’s debut will have you rethinking everything about your Instagram scroll as you inhale this book in a single sitting.”
—Jo Piazza, author of The Sicilian Inheritance and host of the Under the Influence podcast
“Such a Bad Influence is as addictive as Instagram. Woven into its twisty, propulsive story of a missing influencer are complicated questions about the cost of mining one’s life for content. I was riveted the whole way through.”
—Ana Reyes, author of The House in the Pines
“A fascinating exploration of the dangers of social media told through a propulsive mystery surrounding the sudden disappearance of a beloved mega influencer. In her smart and timely debut, Muenter probes the following questions: What do influencers owe their followers? What ownership do parents have over their children? And, perhaps most hauntingly, how do we reconcile the psychological perils of living in such an intensely online world?”
—Carola Lovering, author of Tell Me Lies and Bye, Baby
This is a work of fiction. All names, places, and characters are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, places, or events is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2024 by Olivia Muenter
All rights reserved. Except as authorized under U.S. copyright law, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Muenter, Olivia, author.
Title: Such a bad influence / Olivia Muenter.
Description: Philadelphia : Quirk Books, 2024. | Summary: “Infamous social media influencer Evie Davis has spent her whole life online, since her mother shared a viral video of her at age five. When she suddenly disappears in the middle of a live stream, her older sister, Hazel, becomes determined to find Evie and the truth behind her disappearance”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023050511 (print) | LCCN 2023050512 (ebook) | ISBN 9781683694014 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781683694021 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Thrillers (Fiction) | Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3613.U3758 S83 2024 (print) | LCC PS3613.U3758 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20231106
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023050511
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023050512
ISBN 9781683694014
Ebook ISBN 9781683694021
Typeset in Georgia and Roboto
Designed by Elissa Flanigan
Production management by John J. McGurk
Interior photo by Vincent Burkhead on Unsplash
Quirk Books
215 Church Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
quirkbooks.com
a_prh_7.0_147266664_c0_r0
CONTENTS
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Two Years Later
Acknowledgments
About the Author
FOR MY PARENTS
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.
CHAPTER 1
I am the one degree. I am the familiar link. I am the tiny line that separates everyone I know from someone else, the connection that makes a fun fact slightly more interesting than all the others shared during a forced get-to-know-you group activity, the thing that makes someone finally tune in, perk up, say, “No. What? Really?” I am the second someone. Not the first mentioned when an acquaintance says, “Well, actually, I do kind of know someone famous—well, someone who knows someone famous.” I am what comes after the part that matters.
I’m more than just that, of course. I know that. I can still name the qualities I know to be true about myself in the way that a former therapist suggested: I am a good friend. A truly top-notch giver of gifts. A person who asks “How are you?” and means it, who can physically feel when there’s an undercurrent of shame or sadness moving through someone I love. I am a hard worker. A problem solver. More likely to get shit done than to complain about it. I am a seeker of beauty. I can see loveliness and humor in almost anything or anyone that isn’t me. I do it automatically, unconsciously. I am always pointing and laughing. Isn’t it funny? Isn’t it gorgeous? But then there’s everything else, the things I know to be just as true, that would make my former therapist slowly nod and close her eyes, as if she’s heard all of this before (she has) and say, “Remember how we talked about being nicer to ourselves, Hazel?” I always imagined her eyes were rolling under her lids. I’d try to track their movement, but I’d never know for sure.
It didn’t really matter, though, because niceness doesn’t have anything to do with the truth. And the truth is that I am suspicious of most everyone I meet, distrusting and awkward. And I am stubborn. Not headstrong, or willful, or brave. I am the kind of stubborn that means I’ve held on to every slight, every hurt, every worst quality that I should have grown out of and let fall away from me years ago. I’m all of that, too.
But I am my sister’s sister first. And mostly, I’ve learned to be okay with that. Mostly, I know the alternative is not much better.
There were years when it bothered me, of course. Huge swaths of my early twenties when the last thing I wanted to hear from a new friend was that they feel like they know my younger sister, that they’ve been following her since they first downloaded Instagram in college, or that she was the reason they started doing that one eyeliner trick that makes you look more awake, like you’ve gotten a full night of sleep. I always wanted to say, “Don’t you mean more like her?” but I never did. Because it didn’t really matter. Once they knew, once they confirmed that Evie Davis was my sister, I was something else to them already.
My sister would be the first to tell you that she isn’t for everyone, though. It’s what she’s been saying for years in response to nasty messages, or particularly cruel comments. “No one’s for everyone,” she’ll say, and shrug, seeming wise beyond her years, as if that explains a stranger leaving a vomiting emoji in response to her posting a selfie, or a direct message that just contains the copied-and-pasted Merriam-Webster definition of the word slut. I know she’s right, of course. That it would be impossible for everyone to approve of her. I’ve remembered it a thousand times when I’ve zoomed out and tried to see her internet presence, her brand, in the same way that any stranger would on any given day. An ad for an antiaging moisturizer that features a close-up of her poreless eighteen-year-old skin. A photo where the tiniest ripple of fat inches over the top of her low-rise leggings. A caption about how you’re beautiful just as you are. I’ve seen the daily story slides of Amazon finds, or cute dresses under $50, or “must-have” designer dupes. A lot of times, I’m tempted to hit BUY instantly, too. Sometimes I do. Other times, I do the rough math. I consider the single item she’s shared and all the tens of thousands of people who will then buy it because of her, the subsection of those people who will share that item again, bolstered by the reassurance that they’re endorsing something that Evie Davis loves, too. I’ve pictured hundreds of Evie Davis–specific landfills populating the earth. But then I circle back around. No one forced any of them to buy those things, right? No one forced any of them to follow her either. To stick around. No one’s for everyone, after all.
