Hopeful
1061 Words
I didn’t wait until I got home to call Natalie back. The second I stepped out of the building onto the Fifth Avenue, I hit redial, pressing the phone against my ear hard enough to hurt, but who cares?
The street was packed with people rushing home from work, a river of suits and briefcases and exhaustion flowing around me.
Pick up, pick up, pick up.
“Ivy.” Natalie answered on the first ring. “Where are you?”
“Just left work. What did Marcus find? What’s wrong?”
“Are you somewhere you can talk? Like actually talk?”
My stomach dropped. “Nat, you’re scaring me.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But this isn’t a phone conversation. Can you come over?”
“Now?”
“Yeah. Please. I’ll order food. We can eat while we talk.”
I looked at the subway entrance, then in the direction of Queens where my empty apartment waited. I didn’t want to go home, and sit alone with whatever bomb Natalie was about to drop.
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” I said.
The subway ride to Natalie’s neighborhood felt endless. My mind racing and spinning through possibilities. What could Marcus have found that required an in-person conversation? Had he proven the photos were real somehow? Had he found something that made me look even worse?
No. That wasn’t possible. I hadn’t done anything wrong.
But then why did Natalie sound so serious? So careful?
I practically ran from the subway station to her building, nodding distractedly at the doorman who greeted me by name. He remembered me from all the times I’d visited before everything fell apart.
Natalie buzzed me up immediately. She was waiting in her doorway when I got off the elevator, still in her work clothes but with her hair down, looking worried.
“Come in,” she said. “I ordered Thai. Should be here in twenty minutes.”
“I don’t care about food. Just tell me what Marcus said.”
She closed the door and gestured to her couch. “Sit down first.”
“Natalie…”
“Please. Just sit.”
I sat, my whole body tense. She sat next to me, turning to face me with an expression I couldn’t read.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “So Marcus examined the photos. All of them. The ones that were in the slideshow at your party.”
“And?”
“And they’re not photoshopped.”
The words hit me like a punch to the gut. “What?”
“They’re not photoshopped, Ivy. Marcus ran every test he has. Looked for all the usual signs of digital manipulation. Inconsistent lighting, edge artifacts, pixel discrepancies, metadata irregularities. All the things that show up when images are altered.”
“But they have to be fake. I never…”
“I know. And I believe you.” She grabbed my hand, squeezing hard. “But according to Marcus’s analysis, these photos weren’t created in Photoshop or any other editing software.”
My mind was spinning. “Then how? How is that possible? That wasn’t me in those pictures. I’ve never even seen that man before.”
“That’s the thing.” Natalie took a deep breath. “Marcus thinks they might be deepfakes.”
“Deep what?”
“Deepfakes. It’s AI technology. Artificial intelligence that can create incredibly realistic fake videos and photos. It maps someone’s face onto another person’s body. The technology has gotten so sophisticated that it’s almost impossible to detect with the naked eye.”
I stared at her, trying to process what she was saying. “Someone used AI to make it look like I was having s*x with a stranger?”
“That’s what Marcus thinks. The photos are too perfect, he said. Too seamless. The kind of seamless that only comes from machine learning algorithms, not human manipulation.”
“Can he prove it?”
Natalie’s face fell. “That’s the problem. Deepfakes are really hard to prove. The technology is designed to be undetectable. Marcus can point to certain inconsistencies that suggest AI generation, tiny things like unusual skin texture patterns or slightly off shadows, but it’s not definitive proof. Not the kind that would hold up in court or convince people who’ve already made up their minds.”
“So we still have nothing.” My voice came out flat, dead. “We still can’t prove I’m innocent.”
“We have something. We have a forensic expert saying the photos show signs of AI manipulation. That’s more than we had before.”
“But it’s not enough.” I pulled my hand away from hers, standing up to pace. “My parents won’t care about ‘signs of AI manipulation.’ Ethan won’t care. They all saw what they saw, and some technical explanation isn’t going to change their minds.”
“It might. If we present it the right way…”
“They didn’t even give me a chance to defend myself!” My voice was rising, all the anger and hurt I’d been holding back for weeks finally breaking free. “They saw those photos and immediately decided I was guilty. My own mother told me I’d disgraced the family. My father fired me from his company. Ethan threw my stuff on the lawn like I was garbage. And you think some forensic report is going to make them apologize?”
“Ivy…”
“No one believed me, Nat. Not one person except you, and even you had doubts at first. Everyone who was supposed to love me unconditionally just abandoned me the second things got hard.”
I was crying now, hot angry tears streaming down my face. All the pain I’d been trying to hold together, trying to be strong through, it was all pouring out.
Natalie stood up and wrapped her arms around me. I collapsed into her, sobbing into her shoulder like a child.
“I know,” she whispered. “I know it’s not fair. I know they should have believed you.”
“Who would do this to me?” I choked out between sobs. “Who hates me enough to create fake photos? To destroy my entire life?”
“I don’t know. But we’re going to find out.”
- Writer
