So Over Sharing

1. Hadley

We can hear the smoke alarm going off the second we turn the corner, and of all the McMansions (as Mom calls them) on the street, I just know it’s coming from ours. Mom said she’d pay me ten bucks to get my little brother and sister “out of her hair” while she gets ready for the Women in Content 2024 conference, which is later today in Manhattan, about a forty- five-minute drive from our new house on Long Island. We’re all leaving for the conference in an hour, and I wanted to spend that time lying on the carpet in my new room and reading the new Veera Hiranandani book, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen—not while Nash and Quinn were throwing balls of packing paper and jumping on sheets of Bubble Wrap—so I agreed to take them for a walk around the block. My older brother, Colton, was mixing up cookie dough when we left. Colton’s notorious for putting something in the oven, turning his attention to something else, and forgetting all about the baking, so I expected the cookies to be crisp at best, but I didn’t think he’d let them go long enough to set off the smoke detector. Sure enough, though, the beeping gets louder as we near the house.

Quinn, who’s six, reaches the edge of our lawn and becomes an immovable statue, his eyes closed and his hands over his ears, but my sister, Nash, who’s two and a half and fearless, grabs my hand and pulls me up the front steps and into the danger zone.

It’s smoky inside, even in the living room. Everything’s beeping—the smoke alarm in the kitchen, the one in the living room, the oven timer—and it’s all beeping in slightly different tones and rhythms, a cacophony of dissonance. Smoke billows out of the open oven door, and the smell of burnt dough fills my nostrils. Mom’s standing on a chair in the kitchen wearing nothing but a bath towel, waving a magazine at the smoke detector on the ceiling.

Nash grabs my arm with both hands and starts to scream. “Fire!” she yells.

“It’s just smoke, Nashie!” Mom shouts. “No fire. Hadley!” she calls to me. “Come here and grab my phone! Quick!”

I want to run outside to join Quinn, to cover my ears and pretend none of this is happening, but Mom will post about this no matter what, and if she says that I ran away and cried, it will only make me dread the first day of my new school even more. So I make my way into the kitchen, lugging Nash on my wrist like one of those weighted bracelets a fitness company sent Mom, hoping she’d mention them to her followers. Mom’s phone is on the counter.

“Get a video!” she shouts over the beeping.

“Mom, shouldn’t we—” I start, but she yells, “Quick, before the beeping stops! Make sure you get Nash screaming too. Great work, Nashie girl. Keep it up!”

Nash stops screaming for a second to catch her breath. She looks at Mom’s phone in my hands, waiting, and I know that the sooner I do this, the sooner it will all be over. I wriggle free from Nash’s grip to wave some smoke away from my face and open the camera on Mom’s phone, then press the record button and pan around to get some footage of her on the chair. I’m actually glad for the smoke because it makes it less likely to reveal anything under Mom’s towel. Nash starts her screaming again in earnest, upping the volume as the camera turns toward her. The back door opens, and in walks Colton, oblivious, wearing his big Beats headphones. I get it all on camera, and I know it will make great content, especially when Colton’s eyes go big and he shouts, “Shoot! My cookies!”

Mom hops off the chair she’s been standing on, edges Colton out of the way, and starts swinging the back door open and shut, open and shut. After about ten seconds, the smoke clears enough to quiet the detector above it, and the one in the living room stops about thirty seconds after that. The security system makes a ding-dong noise every time the swinging door passes its sensor, but after a few more open-and-shuts, Mom lets it hang open. Colton turns off the oven timer, Nash’s sobs subside to sniffles, and I stop the video and place the phone down on the counter.

Mom leans against the counter, closes her eyes, and takes a few deep breaths. “Were you trying to burn down our beautiful new house, C?” she says, suddenly serious. We’re back to reality. “Were you waiting for your siblings to leave so you could murder me by asphyxiation?”
“Ha, no,” Colton says. “It was an accident.”

“You promised you’d set the oven timer,” Mom reminds him.

“I set it,” Colton points out, “but I didn’t hear it because I was outside with my headphones on. The noise-canceling feature on these is really good.” He snaps his fingers, points to Mom, and says, “Will someone from Beats be there tonight? You could pitch them this video for sponcon!”

“Where are the cookies?” Nash asks from behind me.

“Nashie, shh,” I whisper, scooping her up in my arms.

“Where are the cookies?” Mom repeats, staring at Colton. I only just notice that she must have been putting on eye makeup when the alarms started beeping, because one eye is rimmed in black and the other isn’t, making her look like the dog from Target ads. “The cookies”—she slides her hand into an oven mitt—“are burnt to a crisp.” She removes the sheet pan and holds it out, fresh smoke rising. She’s about to tilt the tray and let the cookies slide into the trash can when the security system’s robotic voice says, “Visitor approaching.” The doorbell rings. I turn around, assuming it’s Quinn, who, last I saw, was still frozen on the front lawn, though it doesn’t really make sense that he’d ring the bell, except maybe to get our attention without having to talk. The front door is still wide-open, and on the steps are two firefighters, one man and one woman, both in full firefighting gear, and I wonder, as I often do, why my life can’t be normal and boring.

“Hello?” the man calls into our house. “We got a call about a smoke alarm going off at this property. Everyone okay in here?”

Mom does a quick check of her towel (which is still fully wrapped, thank heaven), puts on a smile, and rushes to the front. I look at the security camera screen to see if I can see the fire truck, then instantly wish I hadn’t, because instead I see that half the neighborhood is gathered on our lawn. I guess it shouldn’t matter, because the other half of the neighborhood will probably witness this humiliation soon enough, along with the rest of the world, when Mom posts about it online. But we only just moved from Brooklyn to a town called Merrick on Long Island, and I’ve been holding out a tiny, tiny hope that no one here has heard of PhoebeAndJay, in which case I’ll do my best to skim through middle school as a quiet, forgettable, invisible girl that people barely know exists.

“Everything’s fine!” Mom assures the firefighters. Her towel has been coming loose from all her movement, so she holds the top with one hand to try and keep it from falling. “Thank you for coming, but we’re fine. Apart from me being naked and looking like a cyclops.”

She actually says that, out loud, to firefighters, and my face gets so red that the firefighters will probably worry I got second-degree burns.

“My fourteen-year-old was baking,” Mom goes on, gesturing with her head toward Colton, who grins and waves from the kitchen.

“Ah,” the male firefighter says. He looks at me and smiles. “Any cake left for us?”

“Cookies,” Nash informs him, running over as fast as her chubby little legs will take her. “They burnt.”

“Boo,” the man replies with an exaggerated frown. Then he turns to Mom. “Would you like us to walk through and make sure everything’s okay?”

“Not necessary,” Mom insists. She smooths the air with her hands, which almost makes her towel drop, but thankfully it doesn’t. “We’re good. Just an ordinary Saturday in the Harris house. In fact, do you mind if I take a selfie? I blog about the circus that is my family, and I might as well get some laughs out of this.”

“Wait,” the female firefighter says, recognition dawning. “Are you . . . Phoebe Harris? From PhoebeAndJay?”

Mom turns to me and Colton with a look that says How about that? “Phoebe Harris,” she announces, “in the flesh.” She motions to her bath towel and adds, “All the flesh.”

My flesh turns an even brighter red, and I use my fingers to comb my long hair in front of my face like curtains that I can hide behind.

“Holy smokes!” the female firefighter says, and I wonder if all firefighters say that or if maybe, for them, it’s more extreme than any curse words. “I thought you looked familiar! I love your blog!” she continues, flapping her hands with excitement and looking around our house with a sudden awe. “You’re C . . .” she says, pointing to Colton, “and that’s little . . .”

“N,” Mom tells her.

“Of course! And you’re H? Holy smokes, how old are you now?”

“Twelve,” Mom answers for me. “At least I think so. With four of them, it’s hard to keep track.”
I am twelve, and I keep quiet because I know my mom knows all our ages; she only says she doesn’t because she knows it’ll get a laugh, and sure enough, it gets one now.

“Twelve!” the woman says, placing a hand on the chunky part of her vest over her heart. “A young woman. I’ve been following you since ‘don’t make my poop slide’! You used to be so adorable.”

“Aww,” Mom says. “What do you say, H?”

I force a small smile and say, “Um, that’s, well . . .” because I’m never sure how to respond when someone says I used to be cute, since it implies that I’m not anymore. (Not that I want a random adult to tell me I’m cute now, either, since that would be awkward too, but still.) But Nash is conditioned to automatically say “Thank you” after “What do you say?” so she says it now, which gets another laugh and another aww.

“Remember when you all had lice?!” the firefighter shouts with glee.

“How could I forget?” Mom says, sitting on the arm of the couch and crossing her legs so that her towel only covers one thigh. “H had thousands of them in her hair. We had to have a special lice service come to the house and comb it all out. It took hours. Real talk: This was a guy who combs out lice all day, every day, and he said H’s was the worst case he’d ever seen.”

Everyone looks at me, and the warmth in my face spreads to the rest of my body, and I just stand there, wishing our walls were painted red instead of white, so that I might be able to use them as camouflage. The lice thing happened eight years ago, when I was four, so the firefighter remembers it more clearly than I do. When someone had lice in Quinn’s class last year, the school alerted parents without sharing the kid’s name, to avoid embarrassment. When I had lice, my mom shared it with so many people, a stranger is able to bring it up eight years later.

“Have you heard of PhoebeAndJay?” our firefighting fan asks her partner.

“PB and J?” her partner says. “Are you asking if I’ve heard of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?”

“That’s the joke,” Mom explains. “Because I’m Phoebe and my husband’s Jay.”

That’s not technically true, because Dad’s name is James, and no one calls him Jay, not even Mom. But that’s just one of many things that aren’t technically true when it comes to Mom’s content, and I have to admit it makes for a clever name.

The female firefighter says, “PhoebeAndJay is, like, the best mommy blog out there.”

Mom points her finger at her and says, “I like you.”

“My wife’s probably heard of it,” the male firefighter replies, “but I don’t know why she looks at that stuff. No offense,” he says to Mom. “It’s just too much pressure, comparing yourself with those picture-perfect parents.”

“Not PhoebeAndJay,” his partner assures him. “Phoebe keeps it real. I’ve got a three-year-old—”

“I’m sorry,” Mom quips.

“Ha! Yeah. He’s sweet, though. I love him to death, you know? And we have our crazy days. But reading PhoebeAndJay makes me feel better about it.”

“Because my days are crazier.”

“Ha, yeah! Usually. But parenting’s hard, you know?”

“Oh, I know,” Mom says, motioning to her bath towel and the chaos around her. “Parenting sucks. One star. Do not recommend.”

This gets a chuckle out of both firefighters, of course.

“Hey!” Nash says, going up to Mom, crossing her arms, and pouting dramatically. She knows to break out this cute protest every time Mom says something about us having ruined her life. It’s as automatic for her as saying “thank you,” and it’s required just as often, since Mom’s whole brand is telling people that we’ve ruined her life.

“Just kidding,” Mom says. She leans over and kisses Nash on the forehead. “You know I love you little monsters.”

I mean, I know she says she does, at least. This is basically all a script, which is kind of funny when you think about it, since Mom’s known for “keeping it real.”

“So,” Mom says, turning back to the firefighters. “Selfie?”

“Yeah!” the woman says, and the man shrugs.

“C, grab my phone. C?”

Colton doesn’t answer, because he’s not even in the house anymore. He probably went out back again, and I don’t know why I didn’t think to follow him.

“See what I’m dealing with here?” Mom says to the firefighters. “H, can you please get my phone?”

I knew this was coming, because it’s not like Mom was going to forget about taking selfies in her towel with firefighters, but my stomach still turns over at the fact that it’s happening.

“Can we take one with my phone too?” I hear the woman ask as I walk to the kitchen and get Mom’s phone from the counter where I left it.

“Of course!” Mom says. “Tag me when you post it, okay? I’ll share it with my followers.”

“Holy smokes! That would be awesome.”

“Do you want to touch the firefighter's hat?” Mom asks Nash. Without even waiting for an answer, she picks Nash up, sticks her in the woman’s arms, and takes some photos. “Where’s Q?” Mom says, only just realizing she’s been one child short this whole time, and Nash points outside.

Mom, Nash, and the firefighters move to the front lawn, where there are still lots of neighbors gathered, and others looking on from their lawns or windows. Mom doesn’t go farther than the front steps, but that doesn’t stop people from seeing that she’s in a towel. Two boys about my age ride by on bikes, pointing and laughing, and a girl who will probably go to my new school has her own phone up, no doubt taking photos or videos to send to her friends, while her own mom tries to pull her away. I watch it all from the living room window, my palms sweating and my face burning and my mind hoping that no one can see me.

After about five minutes that feel like five hours, everyone who’s supposed to be inside my house is, anyone who’s not supposed to be isn’t, and the doors are all closed. A peek out the window confirms that the crowd is finally beginning to disperse.

“Well,” Mom says with a clap. “We’ve announced our arrival to the neighborhood, and I’ll be able to kick off that momfluencer panel tonight with a bang.”

“Holy smokes!” Colton shouts, imitating the fire fighter.

Mom laughs and watches the video I took of her standing on the chair while Nash screamed her head off. She starts swiping to look through the photos, but then she must notice the time, because she hops off the couch and curses. “We need to leave in forty minutes,” she says, “and I need to be dressed. We all need to be dressed. You’re coming onstage at the end, remember, and people will want selfies.”

“I don’t want to go,” Quinn says quietly.

“Don’t start with me, Q,” Mom warns as she walks up the steps. “Not today. We’re already behind schedule thanks to your brother’s shenanigans.”

“I want to stay home with Dad,” Quinn says.

“Dad’s meeting us there. Eat something and get ready!”

And then she disappears into her room, where she’ll put on clothes (I hope) and finish her makeup (I hope). I’ll get my siblings ready while Colton does whatever he does and Mom sits with her phone, posting the photos with the firefighters and teasing more details to come. Then a driver will pick us up and take us into the city for the Women in Content conference, in time for a panel called “Family Business: Making the Most of Motherhood,” where Mom will relay the whole ordeal to a sold-out theater of her most devoted followers and tons of aspiring influencers, and they’ll all laugh at us.

As Mom would say, just another Saturday in the Harris house. One star. Do not recommend.

2. Willow 

Is that what you’re wearing, darling?”

That’s Mum’s way of saying she hates my outfit. I knew she would. I say, “Yeah. Let’s go.”
Mum frowns and tilts her head. The flower she was pinning into her hair slips over her ear. “It’s not quite formal enough, I’m afraid. Where’s the cute romper I bought you?”

It’s in a ball under my bed because there’s no way I’m wearing a romper. Especially when it matches Mum’s linen jumpsuit.

“I don’t know,” I say with a shrug. That makes my crop top lift higher. My entire belly is visible. And okay: I feel exposed. But it’s just a little skin. Mum’s already been posting about me to the thousands of people who will be at this Women in Content thing anyway. They all think I live in a haze of soft lighting and swoopy cursive. That I’m a sweet baby moonbeam. I’m not.

“I’m sorry, Willow, but you’ll have to change,” Mum says. “It’s a content creator convention, not a pool party.”

“Pool party?” Silas asks excitedly from the doorway. Mum’s dressed him in a linen button—down, khaki shorts, and tall socks. He’s even wearing a polka-dotted tie. With his side—parted hair and his proper English accent like Mum’s, he’s “Moonbeams and Marigolds” come to life.

“No, love.” Mum sweeps Silas into her arms for a kiss. “No swimming today. So no outfits that look like swimsuits, I’m afraid,” she adds to me.

“There’ll be literally thousands of outfits that look like swimsuits,” I tell her. “Fitness influencers.”
Mum says, “You’re not a fitness influencer.”

Amen. Their outfits show even more skin. Aren’t their stomachs cold? I doubt six-pack abs provide much warmth.

Dad arrives in the family room. He’s dressed in freshly ironed linen, like Silas. Mum said she'll be making a big announcement at the end of her panel thing. Maybe it's a deal with a linen company.

“Whoa!” Dad stops short. “Where’s the rest of your shirt?”

“Very funny,” I reply.

“I know you’re trying to show your individuality . . .” Mum begins.

Dad raises his eyebrows. “Is ‘individuality’ a new way of saying ‘stomach’?”

“Dad!” I cross my arms.

“‘Papa’ today,” Mum reminds me with a kiss on my forehead. “Try your best.”

I roll my eyes. Mum decided Dad should be called “Papa” when Silas was a baby. In her posts and in real life. The truth: It sounds dumb. He’ll always be Dad to me.

“Where did this half-shirt come from, anyway?” Dad asks. He’s looking in the full-length mirror. Rolling one of his linen sleeves to his elbow.

“Beatrix gave it to me.”

“Because her parents wouldn’t let her wear it,” Dad says.

“Not true. Bea’s parents respect her personal style.”

“Whatever happened to . . . what’s her name . . .” Dad snaps his fingers. “Mackenzie?”

I think: Good question, Dad. I’d like to know what happened to Mackenzie too. One theory: Alien abduction. They picked her up during the pandemic. Sucked out her brain. Returned her to Earth in the form of Juliette’s echo machine.

“She and Willow aren’t really friends anymore,” Mum tells Dad. She’s running around now. Packing her camera bag. Grabbing snacks for Silas. Stressing about time.

“This Beatrice doesn’t sound like a good influence,” Dad says, “if she’s wearing shirts like this.”
“What?” I say. Dad clearly knows nothing about Bea. Not even her name. This is veering off course.

“I’m sure Beatrix is nice,” Mum says. “Her clothes aren’t appropriate for today, though, sweetheart. All the children will be coming onstage at the end of the motherhood panel.”

As if I could forget. “Fine,” I say. “I’ll change. But I’m not wearing linen.”

“Quickly, Willow,” Dad says, tapping my bare back as I pass him. “Your mother’s fans are waiting.”

As if I could forget that either.

“Is my tie on properly, Papa?” Silas asks.

“Let me check, buddy,” Dad says.

“Let’s move into the living room,” Mum says, “so I can get a photo.”

The living room is not for living. It’s strictly for photos of living. It looks like an actual living room. And a dining room. A corner of it even looks like a playroom. But Sy and I aren’t allowed in there on our own. The big lights are too expensive. And it can’t get messy, even the playroom part. God forbid Mum’s followers see that we’re human.

It’s ironic, really, because Mum’s the messy one. My room is always organized. Silas’s room is only messy because he has too much stuff. And who gives him all that stuff? Mum and her sponsors.

In my room now, I take off Bea’s crop top and my cutoff jean shorts. It was clear that outfit wasn’t going to fly. Better to give in before Dad cuts off my friendship with Beatrix and Mom insists on the romper. What should I wear? I ask in sign language, just to practice, as I stare into my closet. What’s “appropriate” for this stupid Women in Content thing but still shows everyone there that I’m twelve, not two?

I decide on the black-and-yellow skater dress I wore to the stupid sixth-grade dance. I wanted to skip it. Mum said it was a “rite of passage.” So we looked online together and picked out this dress. It’s made of stretchy material that makes it tight on top but swingy on the bottom. There’s a cutout in the lower back. But Dad let me wear it to the dance, so he can’t suddenly decide it’s too revealing now.

“I changed,” I announce, entering the fake living room.

The photography lights are on, and Mum’s got her big camera around her neck. She’s taking photos of Silas on the couch. She turns the camera to me, but there’s no click-click-click. When she lowers the camera from her face, I see that she’s disappointed.

Now I’m disappointed too. My shoulders drop. “It’s nice. It’s a dress.”

“It is. . . . ”

“I like this dress. We bought it together. You said it looked good.”

“It does, darling, it’s just . . . ” Mum frowns.

“We’re meant to wear light colors today, Willow,” Silas explains. “For the photos.”

Dad smooths Sy’s hair. “Exactly, pal. Your mom’s readers will want photos of us together. She’s a big deal, you know.”

“Oh, stop.” Mum hits Dad’s arm playfully.

“You are! You’re one of the top four momfluencers on the whole internet.”

“Not nearly,” Mum says. “But today is a big day for me. For all of us. I know you don’t like it, Willow, but today’s about Moonbeams and Marigolds.”

Today? For the past two years, every day has been about Moonbeams and Marigolds. But today is extra about Moonbeams and Marigolds. Mum will be sitting on a panel with three hugely popular mommy bloggers in the Women in Content headline event. Dad’s been talking about it on repeat since she was asked to do it. There were two thousand tickets for sale. It sold out in under five minutes. That’s how much randos are obsessed with my family.

I’m so over it.

“I knew we should have agreed on your outfit earlier,” Mum says with yet another sigh. She looks at her phone. “There’s no time for you to change again.”

I don’t want to change again. I don’t want thousands of strangers to ooh and aah over me like I’m a sweet little marigold. So it shouldn’t sting when Silas says, “You don’t match us, Willow.”
He’s four. He’s talking about clothing. But it feels like he’s talking about more.