Mary’s phone flashed for a notification. The light colored the partially-constructed home she was squatting in, and in that moment she felt she could see into the red of the foundation. She thumbed downwards, to look but not say “I looked.” Purple Snapchat to start her nightly dalliance with this week’s friend, Jordyn. She tabbed back over to the fanfiction she was reading, a voice told her not to open it yet.
Sometimes, and tonight was one of those nights, she found herself savoring these moments before chatting more than chatting. She would close her eyes and imagine being near Jordyn, and looking at her, savoring the simple joy of gazing at beautiful people. Jordyn was beautiful, and Mary fought hard to ignore how exciting that was, much as her body fought back.
The story she was reading was a cover to allow her eyes to glaze over, mind drifting. Her older friend, Evaline, had emailed it, captioned: i would die to watch these sweaty boys >->. Evaline was obsessed with British shows because people who wrote fanfiction watched British shows. This story was like many she had read out of obligation before: long-pining male friends, amid acute trauma [locked in a labyrinth in this case] acknowledge their smoldering emotions, and then embrace upon their escape. As she pulled her eyes from the story’s conclusion, the recognition of her solitude crept in. To put that feeling off, she glanced out where a wall ought to be, and watched the shuffling of car tires on their way back from work.
She started to feel her skin itch and bubble, she needed to open the Snapchat, to feel Jordyn’s eyes, her attention, more acutely. Anticipating the independent clutching of her fingers, she stood and walked home. She steadied against an exposed beam, in a state of head-rush and recalibration to the icy twilight world. Then she headed out.
The nascent subdivision pimpling the hill behind her family’s house was flush with kids during the day. They played house and war in see-through studies and kitchens. Her dad had bought a house here to be closer to the neighbors and for Mary to have a room separate from her sister. Mary would slip into the new room when the sun slipped out. A couple times, she had to hide flush against the closet floor of the master bedroom, when highschool-seniors came to drink warm beer in the dug-out basement. She always tried to slip out again before dinner. Her mother did not allow her to listen to music when she walked at night. In silence, she walked along the curb with her eyes closed. Her phone flashed through her pocket, highlighting the pink silhouette of her eyelids. She began to feel the anticipation in her teeth, and walked on in the dark.
Since changing schools, Mary was riding a carousel of new friends. Every friend she made talked to her in a different way. Evaline only used email, Ashley would only text. Bryce, who she blocked whenever he found her again, had started on Discord.
Jordyn only talked through Snapchat. At first, she thought it was because the messages evaporated as soon as they were opened, but Jordyn took a screenshot each time Mary responded. Mary caught the habit, and now has a folder on her phone of Jordyn: her wardrobe, her guinea pig and two cats, her little sister’s stuffed animal collection, the grain of her bedroom door, the fuzzy static linen sheets on her bed, and the wide ridge of her nose. It all formed a composite, and Mary would drift to sleep, phone in hand, eyes swiping between lips, then hair, then fuzzed iris.
In the prayerful dream-state that deep breathing and closed eyes can sometimes afford, Mary’s thoughts approached a singularity. Send your face tonight, I’ve been waiting on you.
Mary allowed herself to peer at the ground to confirm the trueness of her balance. Her foot wasn’t quite where she had imagined, and she stumbled towards the street, narrowly missing a Corolla. Eyes-wide, she briskly strode the last few meters and up the steps home. The street was empty save for the shrubs.
Cars in the driveway mean mom and dad are home. Chattering across the corners of the home meant TV dinner alone. At the kitchen counter sat her mother’s minestrone, still covered with a low fog of steam. While she stole a few sips from her personal bowl, she glanced at the new message. A text from an unsaved number:
DON’T OPEN MY SNAPCHAT.
A scared heat passed through Mary.
Play it cool. Okay haha, talk here? Mary could feel her insides blend together–the gnawing desire to talk all night and the jitter that something is wrong. Instead of waiting for a response, she climbed up to her room. Her sister read by the window and Mary shot a look that said: leave me alone.
Mary shrunk into her bed. Under the covers, she began to finish the story Evaline had sent her. It ended, as they typically did, with sex. Mary skimmed just enough to have something to say to Evaline. She wondered how many of these authors had had sex. It felt like everyone online was 13 too.
Every so often, she opened Snapchat, gazing at the rounded purple square. Jordyn’s face floated underneath the surface. Resisting the urge, she always tabbed back to her story for the night.
As exhaustion set-in, a waking dream phased into the bedroom. she imagined Jordyn as a spector, colored by LED-glow, levitating by her bedside. Her form was a mist below her neck, her face unstable, with multiple sets of eyes. Mary vibrated as they examined her body. It felt as if a beam from the sun rolled a thin nail across her spine.
Mary blinked away and returned to her phone. The illumination of the screen burnt sun spots across her pupils that made their way into her dreams. She knew, physically to an extent, that when a reply never came, this week’s friendship was over, and it was time to find another. Some time between midnight and 3 AM, Mary fell asleep, her phone against her chest.
When she woke up, she didn’t remember dreaming at all.
In the morning, she was instinct. Her blood was hot and slow, and she had been dreaming about this moment. She unlocked the phone and opened her Snapchat notification.
Mary could hear Jordyn’s voice from behind the operation of the camera. It was her perspective. The camera was recording the screen of another phone, Mary didn’t know the girl whose phone it was. This girl went into her messages, and played a video that had been sent to her. Two girls embracing, against the cinderblock backdrop of school walls. The video ends when the pair turn to the videographer, frozen in their recognition. Laughter fills Jordyn’s message, and in her fumbling, the camera faces frontwards. Her smile fits the frame, open and toothy, and the message ends.
Mary allowed her thumb to slip, and the video closed. She couldn’t unreel the film strip from her eyes, as much as she wished she could.
That night in the bathroom, she replayed the video to ascribe every detail to her marrow. Mary hovered briefly in the electromagnetic field that fills screens with dreams. Then she deleted Snapchat and stopped talking to Jordyn.