Friendship by Emily Gould

gave you very specific instructions. We kept refreshing the site, waiting to see that you’d taken the initiative, but no. I’m just wondering what happened.” Jonathan was employing that maddening strategy of pretending to be confused, not angry.
    “I wasn’t … aware that I’d been given specific instructions. I certainly wasn’t given … a budget? Equipment?”
    Shoshanna turned her silver MacBook Air toward Amy. “This girl just sits in her bedroom and uses the built-in camera on her laptop, Amy! She got two million hits on this, and it’s just a video of her explaining why she chose these specific scents of Yankee Candle!”
    Amy watched the video, which was on mute, for a few seconds. She felt as if she, too, were on mute. There just wasn’t any possible response. Trying to make a viral video is the worst idea you’ve ever had, and you’ve had nothing but bad ideas—in fact, I work for one was just the merest beginning of what Amy wanted to say to Shoshanna. There was also This girl’s shirt is very low-cut and she appears to be around fifteen and A lot of people are watching this in order to make fun of it, and I suspect there is at least one death threat in the comments, but Amy wanted to keep her job, at least for another few weeks or months until she could find another one, so she didn’t say anything.
    They all sat there in silence—Jonathan, Shoshanna, and Amy watching the muted video in the center of the room; Avi, Jackie, and Lizzie sitting at the periphery, pretending to be engrossed in their screens. When the girl finished holding up candles and the video ended, Shoshanna crisply clacked her slim computer shut and stood. “I can’t wait to see what you come up with,” she said, and then she and Jonathan were slithering toward the door.
    Amy watched them leave, then stood and walked back to her desk, trying to glimpse her coworkers in her peripheral vision. After she sat, she tried to modulate her typing so it wouldn’t appear frenzied as she Gchatted with Lizzie and Jackie.
    Amy: you heard all that, right?
    Lizzie: duh
    Jackie: mmhmm
    Amy: Well maybe this will be fun! We can all take turns doing them and
    Lizzie: no fucking way
    Jackie: yeah, no one told us to do shit. You’re on your own here
    Lizzie: you’re the one with expertise in these matters
    Amy: No0000ooooo
    Lizzie: Oh, come on, it won’t be that bad. And like no one will see them
    Jackie: no one is even going to watch them
    Lizzie: Jinx
    Jackie: heh
    Amy: ughhhhhhhh
    Lizzie: cheer up, dude, you’ll do one and then they’ll forget all about it
    Amy: if you hear of any jobs lmk
    Jackie: If I hear of any jobs I am applying for them, bitch
    Amy: you two suck
    Amy is busy, you may be interrupting.

 
    15
    The first time Bev had ever taken a pregnancy test was in her junior year of high school, two weeks after losing her virginity to Trevor Gillespie. Her period wasn’t late and Trevor had used a condom, but she’d driven three towns over to buy the test anyway. She was certain that God would punish her for having sex, and for no longer believing in him. Bev had wondered a lot, while she was driving, how it was possible that she thought a God she no longer believed in was still capable of punishing her.
    She was sure that with time, she would get out of the habit of feeling guilty about every single thing she did. So recently, though, she and her sisters had been forced to recite memorized verses from Scripture every night at the dinner table. Bits of them still got stuck in her head on repeat, like the boy-band songs that were just beginning to dominate the newly Clear Channel–owned airwaves. But instead of Backstreet’s Back or “As Long as You Love Me,” Bev’s internal monologue chanted at her about virtuous women and pure hearts.
    She and Trevor had not lain in sin, exactly. They had remained standing, behind a toolshed, in sin. Probably that was even worse.
    Another bad thing: Trevor did not, generally speaking,