Page 28 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

Margo did not want to see.

“Cosplay!” Jinx said, instantly fascinated. “You dress up as... characters?”

“Yep!” Suzie beamed.

“Tell me more,” Jinx said, slitting the membranes of the sausages and pinching their pink flesh out into the hot pan.

It had not occurred to Margo before that cosplay and wrestling had anything in common, and yet Jinx wanted to know every detail. “So these orcs—” he said, leaning his face on his fist at the table, “forgive me, I don’t know a lot about orcs—are they from a specific franchise?”

But he did make garlic bread, thank God, and it was glorious.

After Margo survived a seemingly interminable number of wrestling matches, each one triggering such lengthy oral histories Jinx felt the need to pause the video, worried she would miss even a second of the action while he told yet another weird story that seemed to involve a wrestler shitting themselves, when she finally slipped off to her room to put Bodhi down for the night, she turned on her bedside lamp and lay on the center of her rug and stared at the ceiling.

Buddies, she thought. Buddies.

The OnlyFans girls, Margo thought, had to be either promoting themselves on other platforms or doing some form of cross-promotion. They had to be helping one another out; they had to be buddies. Filled with sudden conviction, she opened her laptop, navigated to WangMangler’s account, sent a $100 tip with a message that said: I’m new to OnlyFans and desperately need fans. Would you be willing to do a cross-promotion or give me tips on how to market myself?

Ten minutes later she received a response: Your account is cute. You should make a TikTok. I’ll push you on my page for $500.

Margo was shocked at the price. Would it be worth it? She checked and WangMangler had over 100,000 followers on Instagram. Even if only a fraction of them subscribed to WangMangler’s OnlyFans, it was a staggering amount of money at $15.99 a person. Which on the one hand made the request for $500 seem petty; WangMangler certainly didn’t need her $500. But on the other hand, WangMangler seemed to know what she was doing and believed $500 was a reasonable price. If Margo landed even thirty-eight or thirty-nine fans out of the deal, she’d at least break even. And she technically had the money.

Margo went ahead and made a HungryGhost TikTok account. Kat the Smaller had told her about TikTok, but Margo hadn’t gotten around to joining. It was a newer platform, the point of which Margo did not get. Kat the Smaller said it was like Insta for videos, but that made no sense because you could post videos on Insta, so why use an entirely different app? After she made an account and began exploring, however, she discovered that TikTok was an entire world.

She watched an elephant dunk a basketball. She watched cleaning hacks and dance moves and teen boys pretending to be their teachers. She watched people throw cheese slices on other people who weren’t expecting it. She watched cats getting baths and hedgehogs drinking from bottles. She watched kids do impressions of moms who wash your hair too roughly, moms who chastised you for having too many water glasses in your room, moms who were constantly opening and flapping trash bags. The most remarkable thing was how the TikToks were all loosely in response to one another. Someone would make a video using a certain song, and then lots of people would use that same song and make their own videos, each one a distinct interpretation of the original. And she didn’t have to search for these things, she didn’t have to already know what she wanted, like on YouTube. They just came to her, all lined up, ready to be flipped through. It was like the missing link. If OnlyFans had the monetization but no discoverability, TikTok had pure discoverability without any way that she could see of monetizing it. It was somehow now four in the morning.

She wrote back to WangMangler.

K I set up a tiktok where shd I send the $500? If I send thru here I know you’ll lose 20%

??????

WangMangler wrote back the next morning with her CashApp. Margo sent the $500. Then WangMangler messaged: I’ll pin ur post for 3 days but u have to run a promo making your account $4.99 so my fans get exclusive discount on your content.

Margo gasped. She had been betrayed! If her subscription was only $4.99, there was no way she would make back her money. WangMangler had all the leverage. The $500 was already sent; if Margo refused to lower her subscription price, WangMangler could shrug and decline to run the promotion. Margo logged in to OnlyFans and lowered the price. Then she ran to the bathroom and puked absolutely everywhere.

Chapter Eight

There is a grotesque lucidity to having a fever. I remember lying on the bathroom floor, pressing my hot cheek to the cold white tile and feeling like I could see every speck and crumb and hair in microscopic detail. I had Bodhi with me on the pink bathmat, which was not terribly clean. He was whimpering, though not fully crying yet. I had nothing left in my stomach, but that didn’t stop my body from trying to heave it up anyway. I felt if I could keep the hot red balloon of my forehead pressed to the tile then it might pass. If only I could hold still a moment longer, I’d be able to stand. Bodhi turned his head to look at me, and we stared into each other’s eyes. His were brown like mine and Jinx’s, but marvelously dark and liquid. He opened his mouth and let out an absolute geyser of puke.

I yanked down a bath towel, crawled over, and wiped him off. He didn’t get too much on his jammies, but the bathmat was done for. I rolled it into a burrito and pushed it into the corner. As I was holding him, he heaved again and puked down my shirt. It smelled like sour milk, and I gagged. “Oh, baby,” I said, “I know, I know,” as I bounced him and tried to peel off my vomit-y T-shirt at the same time. There was nothing for it but to strip us both naked and get in the shower.

That day was a blur. Almost as soon as I lay down, Bodhi puked again, soaking the sheets. I built us a nest of towels and brought a mixing bowl in from the kitchen so I wouldn’t have to leave him every time I needed to puke. The main thing I was thinking was that it would be dangerous for him to get dehydrated, so I nursed him again. We both had a fever. I cued up endless episodes of Sesame Street on my laptop and propped it on a chair beside the bed. We watched with monk-like focus, our eyes hollow bowls of liquid suffering in which Cookie Monster’s tiny reflection danced. Every time I googled what I should do in this situation, I lost myself reading the descriptions of all the possible things it could be. There were no clear action items. Going to the store and buying fever reducer was so beyond my capabilities I actually started laughing. I texted Shyanne: Help! Bodhi and I have the stomach flu and I don’t know what to do.

She texted back: You’ll get through it! ??????

Whenever I went to the bathroom or to the kitchen for water, I lingered, hoping to be discovered by Suzie or Jinx. I never saw either one of them. Suzie might be at work or class, and I didn’t know if Jinx was out or shut up in his room.

When it started to get dark again and we were both still puking, I began to panic. How long could a baby throw up the contents of his stomach without needing IV fluids? When would this ever end?

I called Dr. Azarian’s office around nine p.m., and there was a twenty-four-hour help line where you could leave a message in an emergency. I left a mildly incoherent voicemail, then there was a knock on my door.

“You okay?” Jinx poked his head in the dim room.

“We’re sick,” I said. “And he keeps throwing up and—” My voice broke. I did not want to cry, so instead I kind of yelled. “I’m scared.”

“Oh, poor baby, did you call his pediatrician?”

“Yeah, I left a message.”

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