Excerpt from Followers by Megan Angelo, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

It had grown dark. A floodlight tacked up over the sliding doors went on. It was too bright for the small space, meant to shine over someone's endless suburban backyard. It might have made Orla homesick, if she wasn't busy wondering whether the Ukrainian man could now see up her skirt as she leaned over the rim of the building, into the night. She felt thirsty and picked up the whiskey, found it didn't help.

"You put her in a roundup of Fashion Week It Girls," Floss went on. "A reader asked you who she was, so you did a post with, like, facts about her. Remember?"

"9 INSANE Facts About Sage Sterling." Never ten facts—readers hated the number ten. It was too perfect, too choreographed. Suspect.

"And you found that old photo of her with the kid from that boy band, the one who's hot now," Floss went on.

"Yeah," Orla said. "I thought they dated in high school."

"Wasn't true," Floss said, "but it didn't matter. You wrote it, and then you corrected yourself, but someone had already put it in their Wikipedia pages. I bet you it's still there now. And the publicists were into it, so they went with it. They made them date." Floss hugged herself and shivered. It was August, warm enough to be out on a roof near the water, but not warm enough to do it in just shapewear. "And then you really wrote," she said.

Orla remembered. "Sage and Finn—Uh, We Mean SINN—Step Out Together for the First Time." "Every Sinn-gle Thing Sage Wore On Tour With Finn's New Band." "Sinn Has a Sexy Hawaiian Veterans Day—Pics, Right This Way!"

"And then, Jesus Christ," Floss said. "She got that haircut, the grandma haircut with the platinum and the curlers."

"Erm, Marilyn Monroe WHO? Come See Sage Sterling's New 'Do." Ingrid had added the "erm" after Orla left the office for the day.

"That's when she got Some Like It Hot," Floss said bitterly. She pointed at Orla. "After you said she looked like Marilyn Monroe. She looked like a goddamn Golden Girl!"

Floss sounded so upset that Orla almost apologized. Instead, she reminded Floss that the movie was made by the studio Sage's dad ran, that she probably would have gotten the part even if he was the only one who knew who she was. "Besides," she added, feeling suddenly defensive of Sage, patron saint of her disposable income, "are you trying to tell me you're jealous? She got addicted to heroin and died."

Floss waved it away. "She got sloppy. I'm not like that."

Orla stared at her. She thought about going downstairs and into her room, about putting the flimsy fake wall between her and this strange, scheming girl. She thought about telling her super, Manny, about the weirdo in the penthouse, watching young women on his deck when he should have been home with his kid in Delaware.

"This is the part," Floss said patiently, "where you ask what's in it for you."

Orla shook her head. "What could possibly be in it for me?" she asked. "Also, no offense, but you're a little old to start trying to be famous. I mean, you're, what...?"

"I'm twenty-eight," Floss said. "Just like you, right?"

Orla straightened herself with what she hoped seemed like authority, with the air of someone who had put Sage Sterling on the map. "And you're just now getting into dog apparel parties," she said.

Floss smoothed her hair away from her face, flicked it over her shoulder. "At least I'm not working at them."

The line was cruel, but Floss made it sound like a joke they'd had for years. And that was what got Orla—Orla, who had told herself on the day she moved to New York that the hollow way she felt would subside once the cable got hooked up, and who had gone on feeling empty every day for six years.

She said, "What's in it for me?"

"If we do this right," Floss answered, "whatever you need. I'm sure you don't want to blog forever. I'm sure you have, what? A book? So you need an agent. If you help me, if I get as big as I think I can, they'll want to talk to you just because you're standing next to me."

Excerpted from Followers by Megan Angelo. Copyright © 2020 by Megan Angelo. Excerpted by permission of Graydon House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.