She turned the phone face-down on the nightstand. Tomorrow, she decided, she would take a photo of her own chipped mug. And she would not delete it.
She imagined Kat, somewhere in a similarly dark room, scrolling through her own analytics. Seeing a single username— lena_scribbles —hovering over her stories at 2:00 AM, night after night. Not liking, not commenting. Just… looking. kat_licious
She clicked on a recent post. A selfie. Kat was looking directly into the camera, no smile, just a level, knowing gaze. Her hair was a mess. Mascara was faintly smudged. And her eyes held a question Lena couldn’t articulate. The caption read: “Who’s watching?” She turned the phone face-down on the nightstand
The second highlight was “ loud .” This one was a party. Strobe lights, glitter on collarbones, a scream-laugh into the microphone of a karaoke machine, a toast with a bottle of cheap champagne, the foam spilling over. Kat’s face appeared here, but always in motion, a blur of joy and reckless abandon. She was beautiful in the way a wildfire is beautiful—something you admire from a distance but suspect would leave you scorched. She imagined Kat, somewhere in a similarly dark