That thought disturbed me.
Why had Melissa been so determined to keep recording?
I changed into dry clothes and sat on the edge of my bed.
Then I remembered something from three weeks earlier.
Ethan had hidden my purse.
At least, that was what Melissa told me.
I had searched the kitchen, living room, and hallway for nearly twenty minutes.
My medication and house keys were inside, and when I began to panic, Melissa laughed.
“Mom, calm down.
It’s just a purse.”
Ethan eventually produced it from behind a couch cushion.
But he hadn’t looked amused.
He had looked relieved.
At the time, I assumed he was embarrassed because I’d become upset.
Now I wondered whether he had been waiting for the ordeal to end.
Then there was the spider.
I had opened my medicine cabinet one afternoon and discovered a large rubber spider sitting on top of my prescription bottles.
I screamed.
Melissa appeared almost immediately, phone raised.
She had been recording then, too.
And afterward, she kept asking me to repeat what I’d said.
“Mom, say that again.
That was hilarious!”
I refused.
She seemed annoyed.
A soft knock interrupted my thoughts.
“Grandma?”
Ethan.
“Come in.”
He entered slowly and closed the door behind him.
His eyes were red.
“I’m really sorry.”
I looked at him for a long moment.
“Did your mother tell you I knew about the bucket?”
He nodded.
“She said it was a birthday surprise you’d agreed to.”
“Did that sound believable to you?”
“No.”
His honesty surprised me.
“Then why did you do it?”
He rubbed his palms against his jeans.
“She said you were getting upset about everything lately.
She said if I did something really funny, you’d laugh afterward, and everybody would see you were okay.”
“Okay?”
He swallowed.
“She said you needed to stop taking everything so seriously.”
A heavy feeling settled in my chest.
“Ethan, look at me.”
He did.
“Did you want to do those things to me?”
He shook his head.
“Not all of them.”
“Which ones were your idea?”
He hesitated.
“The spider.
I thought you’d laugh.
But when you screamed, Mom kept telling me we should do more.”
“And my purse?”
“She told me to hide it.
She said you were always losing things anyway.”
I closed my eyes.
My own daughter had been encouraging her son to frighten and humiliate me.
But I still didn’t understand why.
“Why was she filming?”
Ethan glanced toward the door.
Then he lowered his voice.
“Grandma, I think she’s putting the videos online.”
I stared at him.
“What videos?”
He took out his phone.
“I found something last night.”
He held the screen toward me.
And there I was.
Screaming in my own bathroom.
A caption stretched across the bottom.
When Grandma can’t handle a little prank.
Underneath were thousands of views.
And the account belonged to my daughter.
I stared at Ethan’s phone.
There was my bathroom.
My medicine cabinet.
My frightened face.
And there was my daughter’s laughter in the background.
I watched myself stumble backward from the rubber spider, one hand pressed against my chest.
The video ended just before I began crying.
I remembered that afternoon clearly.
I had been getting ready for a doctor’s appointment.
My heart raced so badly afterward that I had to sit on the edge of the bathtub for ten minutes.
Melissa had told me I was overreacting.
Now strangers were laughing at me.
I scrolled down.
The comments made my stomach turn.
Grandma needs to relax.
Do the bucket challenge next!
Her reactions are priceless!
One person suggested that Melissa should prank me every day.
I handed the phone back.
“How long has she been doing this?”
Ethan sat beside me.
“I don’t know.
A few months, maybe.”
“Did you know?”
“Not at first.”
“And when you found out?”
He looked miserable.
“She said it was harmless.
She said people liked watching us together.”
“Us?”
He nodded.
“She said we could make family videos.
She told me lots of people do it.”
I remembered Melissa talking about social media several months earlier.
She had complained that her videos never got much attention.
She worked long hours, felt unappreciated, and often talked about people who earned money online by filming ordinary moments.
I hadn’t paid much attention.
Now I wished I had.
“Show me the account,” I said.
Ethan hesitated, then opened the profile.
It had a cheerful name about family fun.
The profile photograph showed Melissa, David, and Ethan smiling together.
I wasn’t in the picture.
But I was in nearly every recent video.
There was the purse incident.
The caption read:
Grandma loses her purse AGAIN!
I watched myself search the room while Melissa asked whether I remembered where I’d left it.
