13. How To Aim
How To Aim
Cam
I woke up on the couch, still in last night's T-shirt. Takeout container on the floor, hair smashed flat on one side. My head pounded—not from alcohol, but from too many hours in the studio, chasing a hook that wouldn't land. The inside of my mouth tasted like stale coffee and regret.
The faint light in the room came from my phone, face-down on the coffee table, and my tablet, glowing white and angry from the mess of notifications piled up overnight.
I ignored the phone on purpose. I pulled the tablet into my lap and flicked it open, thumb scrolling on autopilot while I tried to remember what day it was.
Sunday, maybe? Didn't matter. The internet didn't care about weekends.
I snorted. There it was. Not even nine hours and the whole thing was a meme.
The cover was all Romi—green dress with a deep V, that razor jawline, her hand resting on her own shoulder like a warning.
Red mouth parted in a glossy, perfect O.
The lighting made her look carved from marble and dipped in platinum.
Her eyes stared straight through the camera, through the page, through whoever was stupid enough to think they could compete. I should've looked away. I didn't.
There was something in the angle of her chin, the way her bare shoulders were thrown back.
Not confidence, a challenge. Daring the whole world to try her.
My thumb hovered over the page corner, ready to flip, but I was stuck staring.
The sharp line of her collarbone. The deliberate way her fingers pressed into her own skin.
That mouth. It wasn't admiration. Couldn't be.
I just—couldn't stop looking at the way she took up space, the way she refused to soften even one edge.
Defiant down to the fucking lighting choices.
The caption: QUEEN OF THE GAME.
I let the words sink in. The tablet vibrated in my hands as a new alert came through—someone had tagged me in the headline. I tapped, reflex, and was catapulted into the Billboard feed.
The lead image was even worse. It was a close crop of Romi's face, hair laid, with her left hand cradling her chin and nails sharp as knives.
The article opened with the line: If rap was a religion, Romi Dulce would be both the high priestess and the devil herself.
She'd probably written the quote herself.
Underneath, in smaller font, a pull quote: I respect these new girls' grind, but a little hunger doesn't mean you're ready to cook in my kitchen.
I read that one three times. Raised my eyebrow.
Now that quote would make all the blogs.
But buried deeper in the article—the line everyone would skip over—was Romi declaring herself, me, and Stacks Monroe "the unholy female trinity of rap.
" That quote wouldn't trend. It wouldn't get dissected on Pixogram or turned into memes. But it was the one that mattered.
When asked about an artist the interviewer didn't identify, Romi said, "Some people need to focus on spitting on beat first." Brutal. Hilarious.
I caught myself staring too long and scrolled away fast, guilty, even though I was alone in the room, being weird.
That was when the phone started going off.
Ping. Ping. Ping. The sound was pure Pavlov, and my brain responded instantly with a chemical dump of dread and euphoria.
Cover dropped overnight, of course people were losing it.
Romi naming me in print was going to live on the timeline for another week, easy.
I picked it up, thumbed the lock screen, and saw that I had 230 unread notifications, five voicemails, and a row of missed calls that scrolled all the way down the notification bar.
My manager, my agent, my mom, Stacks, Skye, and a number that was either spam or my therapist.
I went to scroll the mentions first. Might as well get the taste of blood early.
Before I could open one, my phone rang. My actual phone, the one reserved for emergencies, my parents, or the zombie apocalypse.
I answered on the second ring, out of self-defense.
"Cam," said my publicist, voice already at panic pitch. "Are you alive?"
"Define alive," I said, flopping back on the couch.
Silence. Half a second too long.
"We need to get in front of this. ChattrBox Live, this afternoon. Remote tap-in. Don't say 'no.'"
"Cool, yeah, I figured somebody would want a reaction. I can do the cover thing in my sleep—"
"Cam. How's your voice?"
"My voice?" I touched my throat, which was dry but functional. "It's fine. Why does that matter for a remote?"
A beat. "Just—stay close. I have legal in a half. Be ready."
Legal?! She hung up before I could ask.
I rolled off the couch, feet catching on a patch of carpet that made my whole body tense.
I stretched, arms above my head, and felt my spine crack back into place.
My stomach rolled, and I told myself it was the takeout, the no-breakfast, the studio hangover.
Not the way Jayda had hung up. Not the half-second pause before she asked about my voice.
Weird question for a remote tap-in. You don't need your voice for ChattrBox, you need a face and a punchline.
And we'd put the leak to bed weeks ago—or as close to bed as a thing like that ever got.
The reach had died, the memes had aged out, the timeline had moved on.
Legal had nothing left to do but bill us.
So why was she pulling them in now? I rolled the question around in my head like a stone in a shoe, then put it down.
She was probably just panicked. Publicists ran hot. That was the gig.
I pulled on sweatpants, ran fingers through my hair, forced myself to breathe.
When the next wave of notifications came, I ignored them. Cover dropped, of course the phone was screaming. Some people were just finding out about the leak. Let it scream.
I opened the tablet again. This time, I scrolled through Romi's Billboard feature slower, letting the images burn into my brain.
The layouts were sharp. All Romi across the spread.
Her face staring back from different angles, different poses, but always that same expression.
Six pages of her, claiming the feature like she owned the entire magazine.
There was a paragraph I'd skimmed past the first time. When asked about her biggest threat, just laughed and said, "Cam. She knows how to aim. Give her a few years, and she's untouchable."
I read it twice. Three times.
For the first time, I felt it. Not validation. Not even pride. Just…a weird, fucked-up sense of being felt. Not as the upstart, not as the sideshow, but as the only person in the city who could go punch for punch with Romi Dulce and not end up roadkill.
I let the feeling stick for exactly three seconds.
Then my stomach did the thing again. That low, animal turn. The one that meant my body had clocked something my head hadn't caught up to yet.
How's your voice.
I checked my mentions, just to see if the cover thing was still real. Just to ride the high one more time before the day made me earn it.
It was real. But it wasn't the cover they were tagging me about.
A dozen new posts. Same handle on every one.
@MikkiLeaks.
My stomach bottomed out. They'd already had their moment with me weeks ago. They'd bled it dry. There was nothing left to—
I tapped the top post before I let myself think.
My voice came out of the speaker. Mid-verse, no mix.
This type of raw take you only let walk out the booth if you trust everyone in the room.
Except this wasn't the part that leaked the first time.
The last was a quick post-and-delete. This was longer.
A whole stretch past where the old clip cut off, bars I knew hadn't been in the version that went around before, because I'd have heard them played back at me for a month.
They'd been sitting on the rest of it. Holding it. Waiting for me to climb back into the light—waiting for Romi to put my name in print—so they could time it for maximum blood.
Queen with no subjects/just subjects to change
I knew the bar because I'd written it.
Oh. Shit.
The quote-tweets were feasting. Memes, ringtones, somebody had laid it over a Romi instrumental like they were doing me a favor.
I hated how much it mattered. Hated that some sick part of my brain was still clocking the engagement and going, oh.
I set the tablet aside. Paced. Circled back, sat down, picked up the phone, and typed:
If y'all gonna leak my shit, at least wait till I fix the hooks, damn.
I hit post before I could think too hard about it. The likes started ticking up, and my mentions kept scrolling, a flood of GIFs and emojis and "SAY IT LOUDER" memes. I didn't read any of them too deeply. Not yet. Turned off notifications.
The next call came right before noon, just as the sun scorched my living room into a sauna.
I was in the kitchen, staring at a mug of black coffee that tasted like wet cardboard.
The phone buzzed once, then twice, and when I answered, I knew it was going to be bad.
It was my manager, plus legal—on speaker, of course, because why keep misery private.
"Cam? We've got legal looped in," said my manager. Her voice was crisp, performing for someone above her pay grade. I heard the click of a laptop, the background shuffle of someone pacing a WeWork hallway.
"Morning," I said, voice flat as the coffee. Forgot they were on the East Coast. A lawyer I'd never met came on. "Hi, Cam, we're working with your team to draft a cease and desist to MikkiLeaks. This is moving fast, but we're on top of it. Do you have a minute?"