CHAPTER TEN
If moving in was a job Poppy would be an expert. There's a certain productivity that comes
with living somewhere new, it makes you feel like you ought to be as well kept as the space
is. So the jackalope finally trims her antlers, styles her hair, irorns her shirts and washes her
bedsheets. She looks rather nice, all things considered.
It won't stay like this for long. She knows it. Maybe it'll be clean forever, with how little
she'll be able to live in it. It's close to WSUN, and not too far from the church basement
where the fan club meets, and not too far from Amora. Maybe that's exactly the
problem, she thinks, Your work is becoming your life. She pushes the
thought away, it's not productive. She has work to do.
Monday comes and she's recording the show all day, 10 hours in the booth for four 2-hour
episodes. The music segment is almost totally gone, people just want to hear her voice.
Shame, she bought a lot of CDs for this. Monday night the fan club meets up to listen to the
live broadcast. Amora cozies up close to Poppy, but doesn't say much. She falls asleep with
her head on her shoulder.
Tuesday is grocery shopping, it's when the store is the least busy so she won't be
recognized. She still tacks on an hour to talk to people just in case. That night the fan club
meets for a book reading, Poppy of course does all of the reading, and it kills her voice to
do all of the impressions of characters. The book isn't even that good, some mass market
romance between a horse and a deer.
Wednesday Poppy cleans, meal preps. She takes a 5 hour nap but still feels exhausted. She
goes to the fan club for another listening party, except people can pause it and ask her
questions. It would be more interesting if she cared about them, shouldn't she care?
Thursday is a press conference and appearing on a morning drive time show. She does her
best to sound energetic but the 5am calltime means she biked from the church right to the
studio. She goes home and tries to sleep all day, but theres interviews with the national
press. People are paying attention to her, she wishes they didn't.
Friday is the live show, she agreed to do one every week. She sleeps all day, Amora asks to
join her but she refuses. She's not cognizant enough for romantic advances. Midnight show
means she can't go to Leon's or go out for dinner like she used to on Fridays or even talk to
people on the forum. She sees Kelpy again, finally, and almost cries to it before and after
the live show. It drives her home, the bike barely fitting in the backseat of its tiny hatchback.
The weekend is meant to be free, but Amora insists on coming over for a sleepover one
night. Poppy of course obliges and while her fleece is soft and she's a good kisser it doesn't
feel like love. Maybe she's too tired. She definitely is.
That weeks seems to repeat itself over an over, with an almost mechanical level of precision,
for three months.
Over that time, Poppy became one of the most famous voices in the country, social media
accounts blowing up and the podcast reaching 8 digit listener numbers. It didn't make her a
wealthy woman, but the pay from ad revenue and merchandise made her far from poor. She
hires a maid to try and keep the dust from permeating every inch of her barely used
apartment, but it being totally clean feels even worse. The kitchen is the worst to look at, she
was so excited to cook for herself like she had in college but the entire place was pristine,
the fridge and freezer holding a bag of frozen peas for headaches and a box of takeout she
never got around to finishing.
Her paranoia only got worse with how little she slept, the fears of strangers following her
around and hurting her. She felt herself isolating from all of her friends, too busy to see any
of them. If working a routined job 5 days a week was bad for her mental health then beingon duty 24/7 was torture. The isolation was insane, even her hours alone were spent
worrying about her future and the public and the listeners who relied on her. She was a lot
of peoples emotional support, a rock in their lives, quitting would be detrimental to them.
These people had faces, attended the fan club, talked to her almost nightly. It would be
murder to just quit, leave them hanging. In the process of helping everyone else, she couldn't
be brought to help herself.
She went to the recording booth one Monday in the depth of winter, banged out four
episodes, and fell off her bike on the way home. Both her and the bike were broken.
Unlubed chains, rusting gears, handlebar rubbers degrading from the endless wear. She laid
there crying in the street while people walked around her. She gave up, fully. If she died
there, feet still connected to the pedals of her bike getting hypothermia in a freezing oil-
slicked puddle she wouldn't mind. At least her death would be good entertainment. Certainly
someone already got her photo, posted it to social media. The world knew about this, and
they would all hate her for it. Everyone hated her already. She was better off dead.
After who knows how long she picked herself up and walked her bike back to her
apartment. It felt almost embarrassing to sully the pristine living room with a bike covered in
mud, sleet and thin streaks of her own blood. She bandaged up a gash in her arm and wept
for hours. This was no way to live.
She booked the first train ticket to Maine, to where she knew nobody would find her, and
she ran from everything. She only told one person where she was going, then turned off her
phone and threw it in her bag.
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