Luna was acting weird.

  She was distant, not talking to me unless I asked something during dinner and the movie we watched together the previous night, not cuddling with me at all during the movie, and sleeping on the opposite side of the bed from me when we finally went to sleep.

  And sure, all of that fit her character, but that only was the case when it wasn’t me. Even when we were just best friends, she had no issues with hugging me or venting at me, but now that we were dating, that dried up?

  Was that just a coincidence and there was some other reason she was acting like this? Did she get sick of me already? Did she realise she actually hated my job and thinks I’m too disgusting to even touch?

  On one hand, my new retionship was rocky, but on the other, my anxious hands got a lot of cleaning done.

  Then, once I was out of things to clean, I threw together another video for my solo account, going through the motions with determination rather than enthusiasm. The end result wasn’t great, but I doubted the people watching would care all that much, given that I’d been getting a few messages begging for fox content ever since I’d posted the selfie with clothes on, and a few people had even made the connection between my account and my pce of work, meaning they were aware of the video I’d done with Emily, and of course, they wanted more.

  I was already well aware of that, so when I logged into my account to post my new video, it wasn’t surprising that I had unread messages. What was surprising was the number, which simply read ‘99+’, and the number of followers I had, which had increased by two orders of magnitude since I’d st checked the previous day.

  After a few moments of simply staring at the numbers and feeling an odd sense of disquiet forming in the back of my mind, I logged into my normal social media accounts so I could try to find out if someone had shouted me out or if…

  My thoughts trailed off when I saw among the trending topics, ‘#FoxPorn’, and a sense of vertigo washed over me. With a shaky hand I clicked on it, and suddenly on my computer screen were hundreds of… arguments?

  Arguments really were the primary method of communication on the internet, but what could people have to be arguing about me?

  Brushing past the feelings that came with the confirmation that, yes, all of these people were tangentially talking about me, I waded into the sea of discourse and, on the whole, was very disappointed.

  Lots of people thought I was a product of some AI special effects, others thought I was normal CGI, and others still were convinced there was some evidence of prostheses in my content – and all of these groups got into endless debates, talking past each other and going nowhere.

  Then, beyond the validity or believability of my existence, side discussions on furries spiraled into endless disputes on how ‘normal’ it was to be attracted to me, including a wonderful post from PETA decring that they condemned bestiality – which was a completely agreeable statement in isotion, but when pced within the rger context of what people were discussing, implied that I was some kind of mindless beast. And so of course, people looking to clown on PETA joined in the discussion and made some memes, and then sex worker advocates jumped in to point out the statement could be construed to imply that sex workers weren’t human, and…

  I was starting to understand how the topic had gone viral, and I hadn’t even addressed the memes using my embarrassed picture on the train.

  Skimming through the hours of posts that I’d missed while sleeping, cleaning, and working, I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people. Maybe some of them were bots, but the idea that even half of these were real living beings that were invested in me – or at least a small part of me blown up to exaggerated proportions – was beyond overwhelming.

  Thankfully, I wasn’t even the top trending topic, and so the discourse would die down before long. I certainly wasn’t going to give them anything new to talk about until I was reasonably sure people’s interest had waned.

  As far as money went, I’d gained quite a few customers just from the publicity, but the vast majority of people weren’t interested in buying anything from me, and I had no doubt that some of the people who were interested had found a way to pirate my content.

  So overall, it was a stressful experience, but I would soon be out of everyone’s attention span and I could move on with my work.

  —

  I hummed, tilting my head as I took in the aroma of spices and frying veggies in the pan. I’d been in a good mood ever since I’d forced myself away from my computer, and hopefully Luna would be home any minute and she’d be back to acting like normal.

  I’d called my mom earlier and we’d had a nice conversation where I told her about me dating Luna and she congratuted me and made a teasing comment about Luna and I taking an awfully long time to get engaged, given that we’d been ‘together’ for over a decade. I groaned and protested performatively, but inside my head I was thankful she was so supportive, and I was excited to move my retionship with Luna forward.

  Right as I was checking on the potatoes in the oven, my phone began buzzing, but I had my hands full and it was probably a spam call anyways, so I let it go to voicemail in the pocket of my sweats. A few seconds ter, however, while I was pulling tortils and shredded cheese out of the refrigerator, my phone began ringing again.

  I frowned, and my frown deepened when I pulled my phone out and saw that my sister was calling.

  She wouldn't call more than once unless it was an emergency…

  “Hello?” I said, panic shooting through me.

  “Um, hey sis, I don’t know how to say this, but have you been looking on social media?”

  I blew out a long breath, expelling my panic.

  Oh it’s just that, I guess it makes sense that she’d have seen it… Although that is embarrassing…

  “Oh, yeah, sorry about that. I didn’t expect to go viral like that. Hopefully it doesn’t bother you that your older sister is…” Shame crept into my tone, driven even further by the fact that Maddy thought that this was an emergency. I just had to hope that our mom wasn't active enough on the internet to notice my fifteen seconds of ‘fame’.

  “No, Sarah,” she sighed, voice full of exasperation and stress, “I don’t care if you’re doing porn, that’s not–”

  There was a brief moment of silence, where I imagined my sister was massaging her brow or something. My concern began to return as well, because if she wasn’t calling about my job then…

  “Sarah, when’s the st time you were online?”

  “A few hours ago? Sometime in the early afternoon…?”

  “People recognised the subway car in the background of one of your selfies, and that, combined with anecdotes from people around the city who’ve seen you, means that everyone knows what part of the city you live in and now people are trying to figure out your identity and where exactly your apartment is so they can harass you or something.”

  “What…?” I thought back to the picture I’d taken when I’d first gone out with my ears on accident, and to the dozens – maybe even a few hundred – strangers that’d seen me walking around and taking public transportation. "That's just one or two weirdos thought, right?"

  "No, and it only takes one person to post your address or harass you on the street..."

  "Oh..." I might've been in a bit of denial about how anomalous I was, assuming that after a month or two, people would get used to seeing me around. Maybe that wasn't true, and it would only get worse.

  My ears twitched anxiously.

  “Sorry to just drop it on you like that, but I just…” Maddy trailed off in a worried tone.

  “No, thanks for telling me…" I sighed. "I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do though, it’s probably too te to delete the picture… Maybe I can email my boss and ask for help? Otherwise, I guess I should stick to a different body in public…?” I grimaced at the thought of having the body I was comfortable with taken away from me because of a bunch of nosy strangers on the internet. Was it worth it to sacrifice my own comfort to draw less scrutiny from strangers?

  “Stay safe sis… I’ll let you know if I figure anything else out. Just remember not to post anything new for now. I love you.”

  “I love you too,” I responded, sighing as she hung up.

  Well there goes my good mood…

  Luna

  “Yeah, I don’t know if this is the best way to do this…” the jackass in front of me ruminated, stroking his shitty goatee and shaking his head. He zily tilted his head to the side and gnced at the kid sitting to his left, his assistant who was all too eager to nod along to whatever his boss said.

  I clenched every muscle under the table between us, my nails digging into my palms even as my face stayed neutral – at least that was the idea. “What do you propose instead, Mr. Erickson?” I bit out after waiting for anyone else in the room to express a more reasonable opinion.

  “Well I’m thinking that it can’t be secure to do this all on a website – we should have a program we can download that we use to access the data, and this data is so sensitive that we need a proprietary solution. You can handle that, right?” He waved his hand, brushing over the details involved in completely retooling the project I’d been working on for months and ignoring how it hadn’t even been my idea to use a website.

  “Yes… sir.”

  I spent the rest of the meeting either sitting with my eyes and ears closed or staring intently at the wall in front of me. When the heads in suits finally finished talking and dismissed us, I collected the printed notes from the presentation I hadn’t gotten to complete in front of me, and slid them into my bag next to my ptop before pcing the single strap on my shoulder and calmly striding out of the room.

  Down the hall, one left and two rights ter, and I was in the women’s restroom, setting my bag down on the pristine marble countertop. I surveyed the stalls, despite knowing that I was the only one that used the more out-of-the-way of the two restrooms on the floor, and, after seeing no one, I turned to my bag and unpacked a carefully folded white hand towel.

  I took a deep breath in, pressed my face into the towel, and screamed.

  —

  I sighed, packing my things away at 4:55 after a wonderfully productive day of filling out job applications and staring at apartment listings. It was only a matter of time until I had an outburst that got me fired, and while I wasn’t sure what would happen to make Sarah hate me, I could feel it coming nonetheless.

  After all of the good fortune that had come my way since Candice dumped me – getting Snuffles back, seeing my best friend bloom into a beautiful woman, having that woman be interested in me – it was inevitable that I would experience some kind of bad luck to bance it out.

  Walking out of the building, I pulled out my phone and turned off my ‘do not disturb’ mode, something I regurly used to deter Madeline from texting me with nonsense while I was at work. Honestly, I probably could’ve used the pick-me-up her messages would’ve provided today, but I was nothing if not a creature of habit.

  True to my expectations, I saw a few notifications of texts from my girlfriend’s sister, but strangely, it was accompanied by five missed calls, three from Maddy and two from Sarah.

  The gleeful anticipation I’d been feeling about Maddy’s silly texts dried up, and apprehension crept in to repce it as I read the only text Sarah had sent me, timestamped after her calls.

  Sarah: Don’t worry, we can talk about it when you get home

  I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. Even more confusing was the other set of messages:

  Madeline: Maybe check in on Sarah

  Madeline: this is important by the way

  Madeline: kinda freaking out here sorry Sarah wouldnt want me to tell mom so i dont know who else to go to

  Madeline: lunaaaaa i know you read your texts at work stop pretending you dont

  I threw my bag into the backseat of my car and called her as I sat down in the driver’s seat, tapping my fingers on the wheel when she didn’t immediately pick up.

  “Come on…”

  The phone clicked and Madeline’s voice came through, the words pressed together, said all in one breath. “Luna, are you home yet? Did you talk to Sarah? Have you seen social media today?!”

  Shit, shit, shit, what’s happening with Sarah, is she okay?

  I grabbed my steering wheel tight, eyes flickering to the ignition to consider if it was worth having this conversation when I could be on my way to Sarah’s apartment already.

  “Luna? Do you know what I’m talking about? Are you there?”

  “No, I don’t fucking know what you’re talking about – I have actual work to do at work; I’m not just checking social media!” Embarrassment flooded my cheeks before I’d even finished my rant; I hadn’t done any work today and it wasn’t Maddy’s fault I was so pissed off.

  On the other hand, there was a burning guilt in my stomach from not getting anything done today, not just because apparently something had happened with Sarah, but also because I was shirking the constant pressure I felt to excel at work, to prove the haters – and myself – wrong. Because if I couldn’t justify my existence to the people around me with superior work, they might thinking about how much of a pain it is to have someone that’s so socially awkward around, to have a queer person that makes more work for HR, that makes everyone attend a sensitivity training just by my very existence.

  Maybe if I went above and beyond anything anyone could possibly expect of me, then I wouldn’t be able to wonder anymore about if deying my transition would’ve helped my career, or if eschewing it entirely would’ve somehow made everything else easier. Would my retionship with Sarah be easier if I was a man? Would my coworkers respect me more? Would my parents still speak to me?

  Was it really worth it in the end if I had to give up so much?

  “...and I just told her to keep quiet, you know. It’ll die down eventually, but I was kinda hoping you–”

  I didn’t realise Maddy had been speaking for a while until the first of my tears poured out of my eyes and I dropped my phone, missing the rest of whatever was so important.

  I heaved a sob, trying to cover it up with the back of my hand, and used my other hand to scramble for my phone on the dirt dusted mat below. When I spotted the purple case through my blurry vision, I shot forwards in my seat, eager to grasp onto something, and smmed my forehead into the bottom of the steering wheel in the process.

  ‘Stupid unwieldy body,’ I hissed inside my head, my lungs already occupied with gasping in as much air as they could.

  Once I finally had my phone in hand, my lips curled back in an ugly-cry and my forehead throbbing, I tapped the disconnect button rather than try to expin what was going on to a confused Madeline. Instead, I turned, hunching over the centre console, and let my tears fall into the passenger seat cushion.

  Only after my tears had run out did I start on my journey to Sarah’s apartment, having wasted nearly a half hour and not even hearing what Maddy had wanted to tell me.