The Popstar & Me

Chapter 29 - Gossip Queen, Only Eighteen

Chapter 29

I arrive at class the next day, to our only non-hospital lecture day that work-week, and everything changed. In the hallways, the native students are pointing and snapping pictures of me. I pray that in my international students class that there will be some degree of normalcy. I try to shield my face by pulling the top of my hoodie over my head. It doesn't do much good. In class, Andrew approaches me first. Calvin gives me a polite smile and waves from his seat at the back of the classroom.

At least that hasn't changed. I may be a famous gossip-rag queen, but Calvin is still treating me like I am carrying the bubonic plague ever since I got intimate with him.

"Do you have any idea this was happening to you?" Andrew squeals as he spreads out his backpack and personal effects out in the chair beside me. He is scrolling through his phone furiously now. I have a feeling Andrew's discovered that the Fang Yao fandom has quite the presence online, and his fans are all out for blood. How dare I, a simple, clueless girl from the United States, steal their beloved heartthrob? I imagine that the female race for the mightiest, most sought-after of man-prizes, the competition is fierce and nasty indeed.

If Liyuan was a jerk to me at the bar, I bet the internet is a million times worse under the cloak of anonymity.

"What? Did I get canceled?" I ask with a haphazard chuckle. "For wearing a jean jacket? Or for wearing ripped jeans?"

"No, silly," Andrew sighs and slaps his forehead at my cluelessness. "You need to have an internet presence first before you can get canceled. You're just lucky the blood-thirsty fangirls haven't found your Facebook in the states yet. I'm sure soon they'll have a VPN, and you are going to be plastered all over every message board on this side of the world. Did you have any idea that the leader of Fang Yao's fan club has put out a hit on you?"

"What? Who?"

"It's this girl who goes by the alias XiaoLiLi. She changed her alias to Yuan after Fang started dating Liyuan. She goes by that nickname online because she sees a lot of herself in Liyuan."

"So, she's a complete psycho stalker."

"Yeah, except she has more followers than there are people on this planet."

"That's not possible," I reply with a laugh. "Unless some of those followers are Martians or from the planet Krypton."

"Well, at least some of those followers are real. And they're furious that Fang Yao dumped Liyuan only to go out with you." Andrew has always had my back in the past, but now he is shaking his head and reading off the messages on his phone like he can't believe his eyes that a man-deity like Fang Yao could possibly see anything in a life form that is lower than pond-scum like his fellow classmate in this acupuncture class.

"So they're going to stalk me and snap photos of me in the hallways? Then they're going to mock my bad-hair-day on their message boards?"

"Be careful around these girls," Andrew tells me in absolute seriousness. "They're not your friends, and if their ringleader tells them to go after you, they might be doing more than shooting pictures of you. Just this morning, XiaoLiLi said that to help Fang get back with Liyuan, that she would send a free pair of Fang Yao's used socks out to any girl with the flu who spits into your morning tea."

"Wait, seriously? Where did she get his used socks? eBay? How can she even prove he wore them?"

"Watch what you eat or drink. And don't stand near any large piles of rocks or bricks. Also, avoid standing too close to the subway tracks on your way home or near the path of any incoming buses."