After My Boyfriend Framed Me With an AI Recording

I woke up at 6:40 AM because the nightstand was buzzing.

Not ringing. Buzzing. Nonstop, like a trapped insect. I flipped my phone over. The screen was warm in my palm.

4,812 notifications.

My first thought was stupid. *Someone died.* My second thought was worse. I opened Twitter.

My own voice came out of the speaker.

*Okay, so. Honestly? They're pathetic.*

I sat up so fast my head spun. I played it again. The fridge hum. The clink of a glass. That short laugh through the nose. My laugh.

I had never said those words. But I couldn't prove it. Not even to myself, for one horrible second.

The clip had 2.3 million views. It was 6:41 AM.

I opened my DMs. I shouldn't have.

*You fake bitch.*

*I cooked your noodles for my dying mom. I hope you choke.*

*Kill yourself before someone does it for you.*

I scrolled. They kept coming. Faster than I could read them. New ones pushed the old ones down. It was like trying to bail out a boat with a teaspoon.

Then I saw a tweet with fourteen thousand likes.

*Her parents live at 1147 Linda Vista Ave, Pasadena. Go say hi.*

Under it, a photo of our house. The blue door. Mom's lemon tree. Dad's old Volvo in the driveway.

Someone had replied: *Hector Weaver, retired teacher. Wonder how his students feel about his garbage daughter.*

They knew his name.

My hands went cold. I typed a reply. *This is fake. I never said this.* I deleted it. Nobody would believe one sentence. I typed it again anyway. Posted it. Within a minute, it had nine hundred replies.

*Lol. That's what they all say.*

*AI? Sure, Jan.*

The same people. Some of them were the exact same usernames from my farewell post. *Your garlic noodles got me through chemo.* Now that account was calling me trash.

I got in the shower to stop shaking. I don't know how long I stood there. When I came out, my mom was screaming.

---

I pieced it together later. From my mom. From the paramedics. From the iPad on the floor.

Dad never used social media. He thought Twitter was a bird thing. But he heard the phone calls. He saw the cars slowing down outside. He saw Mom crying into the kitchen sink.

So he took her iPad into his study. He sat in his leather chair, with his reading glasses and his cold coffee. He wanted to understand what was happening to his girl.

He read for forty minutes.

The iPad was still open when I found him. On the rug, beside his hand. Somebody's comment glowed on the screen. *Her father should have drowned her at birth.*

He was gray. His lips were blue at the edges. His chest moved in small, wrong jerks.

“Dad. Dad, look at me.”

His eyes found mine. He tried to say something. Only air came out.

The ambulance took eleven minutes. I counted every one.

---

Pasadena General smelled like bleach and burnt coffee.

They said it was a cardiac event. Stress-induced. They said the next twenty-four hours mattered. They said a lot of things in calm voices that didn't match the beeping.

Mom went to sign papers. I sat by the bed alone.

Dad had tubes in his nose. Wires on his chest. A clip on his finger glowing red. The monitor drew his heartbeat in green, jagged lines. Each one looked like it might be the last.

I took his hand.

It was dry and light. When did it get so light? This was the hand that turned the pages of *Charlotte's Web* every night when I was six. The hand that wrote *You were never small* on a note under a teacup.

His eyes opened halfway.

“Don't,” he whispered.

“Don't what?”

“Don't read them. I saw your face. In the study.” He breathed. It cost him. “Those people don't know you.”

“They know my voice.”

“No.” His fingers pressed mine. Barely. “They know a recording. That's not the same thing. You taught me that. Editing.”

I almost laughed. It came out wet.

“Rest, Dad. Please.”

“I should have told you. About him.” His eyes drifted shut. “I saw it the first dinner. All performance. No substance. I said nothing.”

“I wouldn't have listened.”

“That's not the point, sweetheart.” A long breath. “The point is I didn't try.”

Then he slept.

I didn't let go. With my other hand, I picked up my phone.

I know. I know I shouldn't have.

6.8 million views now. #CancelEmber was trending in the U.S. A food blogger I'd admired for years had posted, *Disgusting. Unfollowing. Do better.* Leif's channel had gone quiet. No statement. No defense of me. Just silence. He was letting it burn.

I could see him. On Macie's couch. Refreshing. Thumb pressed to that scar.

The monitor beeped. Steady. Then it skipped. My heart skipped with it. Then the line evened out again.

Outside, the sky over the San Gabriels went from pink to gray. Someone rolled a cart down the hall. Somewhere, a stranger was typing my father's name.

I waited for the crying to come. It didn't.

Something else came instead. It was quiet. It felt like ice forming on a lake. Slowly. Then all at once.

Four years. I had saved everything. Every clip. Every take. Every outtake where the camera kept rolling after Leif thought it stopped. Labeled. Dated. Backed up twice, on drives in a shoebox in my closet.

He'd used my voice to bury me.

I still had his.

I looked at Dad's hand in mine. I looked at the trending tag on my screen.

Then I turned the phone face-down on my knee. Not to hide this time.

To think.