Page 42 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

Suzie was nodding. “That’s true, you are both very, very scary.”

“Wait, are you saying I’m a heel?” Margo asked.

“Yes,” Jinx said, considering. “I do think you’re a natural heel. I know you wanted to be a face. Don’t think about it as being mean, think about it as being... disruptive.”

Margo picked at an ingrown hair on her calf. “I don’t see, like, right now I’m not a heel or a face, I’m not a person even, I’m a set of tits. Like, how are you supposed to make a character when it’s just pictures of your body?” Arabella had Fortnite, she had something to play, to do. Margo didn’t have anything like that.

“That is exactly the question,” Jinx murmured. He was visibly more relaxed since he’d taken his medication, almost euphoric. “How to go from being another pair of anonymous tits to the only pair of tits that matter? It has to feel real, but how to capture it? That way you throw yourself around in the world like you’re invulnerable, when of course you can’t be and you are going to get terribly hurt, and yet there is something beautiful about the abandon, the recklessness, and—and kind of the bravery of it.”

Never in one million years would Margo have guessed her father understood these things about her.

“What you need,” Jinx said, “is buddies.”

“Buddies?” Suzie said.

“To play off. You need to build that heat. Heat’s what puts the butts in the seats.”

Margo knew what he meant immediately. He had mentioned buddies before, but she had only been thinking of it in terms of cross promotion, not in terms of actually producing content. “I need to interact with people. I need other characters to help differentiate myself, so that I’m not just a pair of tits. A face needs a heel, and a heel needs a face.”

“Exactly,” Jinx said. “Bingo, kid.”

Margo had gotten this far in her thinking before, but she’d always stumbled trying to imagine how another person could enter her content without, you know, having sex with her or something. The answer had been right in front of her all along.

“We need to cut promos,” she said.

Not the match. She needed the hype in the weeks before the match. How had she missed it? The promos were almost the most important part—they were the reason the audience cared about the fight enough to watch it.

“What do you mean promos?” Suzie asked.

“TikToks,” Margo said. “We’ll make TikToks.”

“Who is we?” Jinx asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Margo said. “Buddies.”

“Buddies,” Jinx said, cracking a smile, nodding.

I went to WangMangler’s account that night and found the photo that had been bothering me. It was WangMangler in a bikini at the beach. Behind her you could see a pier, and on the pier was a kind of hut, a little hexagonal building with a red roof. I zoomed in as far as it could go. I wasn’t 100 percent, but I was pretty sure that building was a Ruby’s Diner and that the pier was at Huntington Beach. I noticed on her website that she also had a podcast with another girl who did OnlyFans named SucculentRose, so I went and subscribed to her account and poked around.

SucculentRose looked like an adorable sexy puppy. She had long platinum-blond hair that hung down her back in an unbroken sheet. She was plump with dramatic fake eyelashes and breasts so big and perfectly spherical it was like a twelve-year-old boy had drawn them on her. Her account wasn’t as interesting as WangMangler’s and she didn’t seem to do dick ratings. She only had fifteen thousand Instagram followers, about half as many as WangMangler. She was very obviously a baby face.

I clicked over to WangMangler’s account and sent her a message saying I’d realized we might both be in Southern California, and if that was true, could I ever be a guest on her podcast? I received a message from SucculentRose saying yes, they were in Huntington Beach, and did I live close enough to drive there? The timing was perfect because their guest for that week had canceled. Could I come to their apartment to record tomorrow? She and WangMangler were roommates, as it happened. I checked with Jinx. Yes, I could go tomorrow. Suzie would call in sick and help with Bodhi since Jinx still couldn’t handle lifting him. SucculentRose gave me the address. It was all set. I had no idea what I would say on a podcast and figured I would have to just deal with that in the moment.

Margo still hadn’t heard back from JB, and she tried not to let it bother her. Around midnight, right as she was about to fall asleep, her obsessive phone checking was rewarded.

Ghost,

JB is my name, and no, it does not stand for Jelly Bean, sadly. It stands for Jae Beom.

A name for a name?

JB

Margo’s heart was beating fast. She didn’t know if it was from fear or excitement. Part of her wanted to tell him her name. How could it hurt? There had to be thousands of Margos in the world. But later, if he killed her, people would say, “I can’t believe she gave him her name!”

You’re never going to believe this, she wrote, but my given name is Jelly Bean.

That’s a beautiful name, he wrote.

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