CHAPTER ONE

       @TwitterGirl

       Tornado whips through Mississippi trailer park, causes three million dollars worth of improvements.

      Yeah, that’s the tweet which got me fired. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that it made me America’s most polarizing figure overnight. I, Cassidy Shea, former network reporter (handle: @TwitterGirl) whose stories included a snarky attitude that attracted more than one million followers, let her 200 IQ ass do the talking once too often. Who knew that one hundred and fourteen characters could sink my career like a stone, but, then again, when something goes viral on the Internet… well, the thing whipped around the country faster than the tornado that inspired it.

      Oh, and before you think I’m some insensitive New York snob who makes fun of those less fortunate, let me remind you of the follow-up story that hardly anyone saw. That tornado only touched down for a minute and it wiped out an abandoned trailer park that was about to be bulldozed by the government for a pork barrel project. It actually saved the feds millions in demolition costs and enabled them to start construction early on the desperately needed Museum of American Macramé. (Slogan: ‘Got Knots?’) Not one person was injured by the tornado, nothing else was damaged, nobody was left homeless. It simply whooshed a bunch of ramshackle mobile homes outta there and was done. But nooooo, you didn’t pay attention to that story, did you? You had the same knee-jerk reaction as the network president, who was deluged by angry tweets from flyovers (a network term for people the airlines zip over between New York and Los Angeles.) So even though I got canned three days ago, Twitter Girl still gets bushels of nasty comments collected in one convenient location by a very genteel hashtag:

       #FireTheRedheadBitch

       Merry Christmas, Cassidy. Enjoy the pink slip in your stocking?

      Most of these tweets contain lovely terms of endearment and suggest I perform various impossible anatomical acts that I won’t share. Suffice it to say I will never be able to set foot in the State of Mississippi again, which won’t exactly break my heart. Or, more importantly, a television station. Which will.

      So for the first time in my professional career, I have absolutely no idea what to do with the rest of my life.

      “Hey, Caz, come look at this!”

      The voice you hear belongs to my twenty-five year old kid brother Sam, with whom I share a home here on Staten Island, often called the forgotten borough of New York City. He’s been a saint through all this, compiling all the nice tweets and direct messages of support so that the redhead bitch might cheer up during the holidays. Every night after dinner he cuts and pastes them into one document, prints it out and makes me read them aloud. But with three days to go before Christmas, I’m unemployed and not in the mood. I shuffle down the hall and find him rolling toward me in his wheelchair, iPad in his lap. “Sam, you don’t need to keep doing this. I’m okay, really.”

      He smiles, making the dimples in his lean face pop. His green eyes brighten as runs his fingers through his mop of black hair to get it out of his face and points at the screen. “Caz, you really need to read this.”

      I roll my eyes. “I just want to forget about it, Sam. Look, I appreciate what you’re doing—”

      “I think it’s a job offer.”

      His words make my jaw drop. For the past few days I’ve been radioactive, so much so that my agent dropped me right after she told me my television career was toast and I had not only burned every bridge but napalmed them down to the molecular level. “Some television station wants to hire me? You’re kidding.”

      He shakes his head. “It’s not a station.” He hands me the tablet and I read a direct message sent to @TwitterGirl:

       Cassidy, your voice mailbox is full and need to talk. We have a position for you in the campaign. - Frank Delavan

      My eyes widen and I feel myself smile for the first time in days.

      Sam is wearing his eyebrows-up-I-told-you-so look, which I get a lot since he’s much smarter than I am. “So, Twitter Girl, still pissed at me for reading your mail?”

      I hand back his iPad, lean down and give him a hug, then muss up his hair like I did when he was little. “Hell, no. I owe you big time. You know who Frank Delavan is?”

      He nods. “Duh, my sister works in the news business. Of course I do. He’s Will Becker’s point man. And apparently he wants you to be a part of the team.”

      Me. Twitter Girl.

      Working for the Will Becker. And unless you’ve been living under that same neighborhood of rocks for a while, you know he’s America’s most eligible bachelor and odds-on favorite to be the next President of the United States.

      My euphoria is interrupted by the doorbell. I run across the living room to answer it, as I already know it’s my boyfriend Jamison back from a long trip to China. I’ve barely been able to get in touch with him since I got canned and now I can’t wait to share the good news. While Sam has been doing his best to comfort me, it’s brotherly love, and I really need a hug from my significant other. (Well, okay, more than just a hug.)

      When I open the door I see that he’s carrying something other than a Christmas gift. It’s a metaphorical box of relationship coal for my stocking as a peek inside tells me it’s my stuff from his apartment. My smile disappears.

      “Hi,” he says, looking at the box he’s holding instead of my face.

      “What’s this?” I ask, even though my romantic GPS has already told me.

       Your relationship has hit… a dead end.

       Recalculating…

      He walks inside, accompanied by a blast of frigid December air and I close the door. “I’m… uh…”

      I bite my lower lip and feel my emotions well up. He’s still not looking at me and I’ve been around the block enough times to know why. “You’re breaking up with me?”

      “I’m sorry, Cassidy.”

      “This why you didn’t get back to me?”

      No response.

      “Look at me, dammit.”

      He looks up and I see very little emotion in his eyes. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since… you know. The incident.”

      “And?”

      “I… don’t think I can be with someone who is disliked by so many people.”

      In a flash my emotions switch gears. Upset to pissed off. My blood pressure zips past elevated, leaves dangerous in the rear view mirror and goes directly to Irish-girl-wanna-hit-someone level. I see Sam wheel to the edge of the living room and peek around the wall as he’s obviously heard the conversation and is standing by in case I need him, which I will shortly. I slowly nod and fold my arms. “Wow. And here I thought you came over to support me. Alas, I incorrectly assumed you had a spine.”

      “The people at the firm today…” He shakes his head as his face