“My phone. Has anyone seen it?”
No one has. Everyone helps look until, from across the room, Mae asks, “Is this it?” and when I turn, she’s holding my phone in her hand, grinning like a little brat. Cass stands next to her, her face red, trying not to laugh, though eventually, they can’t hold it in anymore. They die laughing, falling into each other, and my stomach drops because they didn’t just happen to find my phone. They had it all along. They did something to it. Mae knows the password to my phone because of all the times I let her go on TikTok and YouTube when Emily says no, saying the videos are inappropriate and addictive, which they probably are, but Mae’s not as naive as everyone thinks.
My password is Mae’s birthdate, because mine seemed obvious. I regret that now.
“Give me that,” I say, snatching my phone back from them, my hands shaking. I look down to see a bunch of Instagram notifications pop up on the screen, though I haven’t posted anything to Instagram in months and shouldn’t be getting so many, if any.
“I hate you,” I say. “I actually hate both of you.”
They laugh again. I swipe up to unlock, and then I find the app and open it. All of a sudden, it’s hard to breathe.
They’ve posted a picture of Skylar and me. From my own phone. And not just any picture, but one of us from back in eighth grade that I should have deleted long ago, that I never should have even kept. In it, we’re smiling and happy, though my face is covered in acne, which it was before Emily took me to see her dermatologist, worried that if we didn’t get it under control it would scar. I also have braces, big silver brackets with teal rubber bands that the orthodontist let me pick out, which I thought was cool at the time, but is now humiliating. Everything about this is humiliating.
Their dumb caption:My bestie.
They don’t know that Skylar isn’t my bestie anymore. That Skylar actually hates me.
Mae and Cass don’t know what they’ve done. They think it’s funny, a stupid joke.
They don’t know that my life is over.
There are three likes and over thirty comments already, in the last two minutes alone, which are beyond cruel.
You wish.
Nice face.
Who actually liked this?
This is so cringe.
My face gets hot and red, and I fill with rage, humiliation, shame.
I look up over my phone to see Mae and Cass still giggling their dumb heads off—gasping for air, holding their sides while I want to die—about what they did, how they pranked me.
Aunt Courtney asks, “What’s so funny over there?” saying something to Emily about how nice it is to see the three of us having fun together.
No one tells her. Instead, I lean into Mae and Cass and slur under my breath, “You’re so stupid. You’re both such fucking idiots. If you ever touch my phone again, I’ll kill you.”
“No, you won’t,” Mae says, sticking her tongue out.
“Watch me.”
“Then we’ll kill you back.”
“You couldn’t. Because you’d be dead.”
They turn and go running upstairs, laughing so hard they run into a wall. A door slams. Emily turns around, asking, “Where did Mae and Cass go?”
I’m so stupid. I’m so fucking stupid. How could I ever leave my phone alone?
It’s not just the picture of me. It’s because Skylar’s in it too, like I’m needy and obsessed, like I haven’t gotten the memo that she doesn’t like me anymore, that she’s not my friend.
You’re so desperate for attention.
Skylar doesn’t even like you. No one does.
Emily says something. “Reese? Did you hear me?” she asks when I don’t respond.
