“Have you seen this one?” someone nearby whispered.
“No, the other one,” came from a few rows up. “Scroll down.”
“They tagged the inn.”
“They tagged the school.”
Though I was pretty isolated out on the farm, Ellie had filled me in on the ride into town. Celinetoo, who hadn’t heard much at school. These days it seemed the middle schoolers were our most tech savvy citizens, and they had hunted down hundreds of videos about Maplewood.
Murderville, USA.
The moniker was absurd.
“They’re canceling reservations,” a woman standing in the back of the room murmured. “Three weddings.”
“The Airbnbs too.”
“Yelp’s a disaster. One-star reviews from people who’ve never been here.”
“Some claimed Tony’s pizzeria has multiple health code violations.”
“Someone said they were mugged at the festival.”
“All the true crime folks are drumming up theories about the murder.”
“They’re calling us unsafe.”
That word landed hard.Unsafe.
As if the town itself had done something wrong. As if the streets I’d learned to ride a bike on were suddenly hostile or the maple forest my grandfather had walked every morning had become violent.
Celine stiffened beside me, and my protective instincts kicked in. I was angry. And sad. Our town was being unfairly flattened into a headline.
Etienne Pelletier, the owner of the wine shop, stood up in the back, and Gabe passed the microphone to him.
“Can we talk about the damage this is doing?” He asked in his thick French accent. “This year has been hard enough. My business has been hurting for months, but this? I don’t know if I can survive it.”
“None of us can,” someone shouted.
A ripple of agreement moved through the room.
Marv O’Brien took the mic next. He owned the barber shop, coached my little league team, and he and his wife had raised several foster children over the years. “They’re digging up everything,” he said, holding up his phone. “Stuff from the eighties. Fires, old police reports, random occurrences. It’s all being framed like some kind of pattern.”
“Because the internet runs on outrage,” Callie shouted from the front row. “The worst thing we can do is overreact.”
“Yes,” Nora added. “No one cares if it’s accurate or not. Only if it’s clickable.”
The chatter swelled again, voices overlapping, hands raising.
At the front of the room, Gabe stood, clipboard in hand, his tie perfectly knotted but his face red.
“Let’s take this one day at a time,” he said slowly. “I know many of you are upset. I am too. But shouting isn’t going to?—”
“It’s already out there. You can’t take it back,” someone hollered.
“How did this get started?” another volleyed.
The earth shifted beneath us, the fear in the room palpable. The citizens of Maplewood had built their lives around this town. Its safety, its economic opportunity, and the strong community.