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It’s us. Unmistakably.

Outside his apartment building.

The streetlight catches the side of my face. Cal’s hand is at the hinge of my jaw, I’m up on my toes, and we’re kissing like nobody in the world owns a camera.

Beneath the picture, the thread says:

FOUND HER.

Beatrix Walker.

The replies have already found my Instagram. It’s private, thank god. By eight a.m., it has nine hundred follow requests.

My heart starts to pound against my ribs. I am trending.

Not, like, globally. I am trending within a fandom. A smaller thing, the way a fire in your own kitchen is a smaller thing than a forest fire. It’s still a fucking fire.

“Bea,” Sydney says finally. “Say something.”

I look up from the phone.

“They found me,” I say.

“I know.”

“No, Sydney. Four days ago, it was a song. Four days ago, nobody knew who it was about, and I let myself think that might last.” My voice is doing something I don’t like. “And now there are probably thousands of people who know who I am.” I breathe in. “I have to go.”

The phone, in my hand, starts to ring.

It’s him.

I decline the call. I decide to skip my lecture and head to the library instead. The fourth floor is where you go when you actually want to study. Floor-to-ceiling windows, the whole west face, nothing out there but the Rockies doing what they’ve been doing for eighty million years.

The mountains are not aware of my panic at being seen. I find that briefly comforting, and then I open the question bank.

I get four questions in before I notice my hands shaking.

I head back home after half an hour because I couldn’t even find peace in the library. I’m not sure if it’s paranoia or real, but I swear I saw a girl try to take photos of me behind her textbook.

* * *

I let Cal come over because he wouldn’t stop messaging me asking to talk.

“He’s on the porch,” Sydney says. “You’re on thin ice, my dude.” She turns to me on the stairs. “I told him he could stand on the porch. Do you want me to —”

“No,” I say. “I’ll come down.”

“Bea, I can tell him to fuck off.” She has her hand on her hip, and I love this woman.

“Please don’t tell me to fuck off.” I hear Cal’s muffled voice in the background.

“It’s ok. I can handle it.”

He looks torn up with bags under his eyes. Well, that makes two of us.

“They found out it’s me.”

He flinches. Good. I have no small talk in me.