by Kiley Reid
Josefa came in close. “Mira, who did this?”
Zara stepped in too. “Who the fuck did you send this to?”
“I don’t . . .” Emira’s lips crushed together. “I’m the only one who has this.”
“Did someone steal your phone?”
Emira shook her head at Josefa. She reached into her crossbody bag and held up her phone in its new gold case; the unmarked plastic made her want to cry. When she glanced at her screen, there were twelve new texts and four missed calls, and the previews of these texts went back and forth between Happy Birthday! and Emira is this you? There was a message from her mother that said, Emira call us ASAP. Another from her sister said, Why aren’t you answering your phone?! Emira placed her head against the wall and inhaled. “Ohmygod.”
“Girl, you need to focus,” Josefa said. “Look at me. Did your phone get hacked?”
“How would I even know that?”
Zara put her hands on her hips and stood with her heels shoulder-width apart. More to herself than anyone else, she said, “She would know if she got hacked.”
“Did you send the video to anyone?” Josefa kept pressing. “Is it on the cloud? Or on a drive or a shared folder?”
“I don’t . . .” A tear formed at the corner of Emira’s left eye. “I don’t even know what that means. No . . . no one has it but me.”
“Except for Kelley though, right?” Zara said louder. “Didn’t Kelley take this on his phone?”
This stopped Josefa’s questions, and all other conversation. Emira looked up to see Shaunie, Zara, and Josefa waiting for her to answer.
For possibly the first time, Emira felt truly judged by her friends. She didn’t doubt Kelley because, why should she? Instead, she felt her friends doubted her. And there were plenty of reasons to doubt her—she was terrible with money and she’d never had a real job and her life was stuck in a postcollege mess—but Kelley was different. Maybe Emira didn’t have a work phone or paid vacation days or an email ending in .edu, but she did have a trustworthy boyfriend who remembered her birthday and played basketball on Tuesdays and always bought her and her girlfriends drinks, which Shaunie still held in her hands. In a voice she didn’t recognize, Emira said, “Kelley doesn’t have it.”
“Are you sure?” Zara asked.
“He deleted it that night.”
“You’re positive?”
“I know he did. I watched him. I even looked in his photos to see if it was there.”
Josefa matched Zara and put a hand on her hip. “Did you watch him delete it from his Sent folder too?”
From the bathroom stall, Emira heard a group of girls scream with recognition and joy on the dance floor. One voice said, “When did you get back?” and someone else said, “Girl, you look good!”
“Emira,” Josefa shouted. “Did he delete it from his Sent folder? Did you make sure?”
“Of course I didn’t make sure, okay?” Emira felt her cheeks prepare themselves for tears. “I was a fucking mess that night, but that doesn’t mean he has it.”
“Guys, Kelley would never,” Shaunie agreed. “Maybe he just forgot and maybe he got hacked and then—”
“But doesn’t he work in tech?” Josefa crossed her arms. “You’re telling me that he took this video, showed you that it wasn’t in his photos, and that was that? It could have been in a million other places. Doesn’t Kelley work on iPhones for a living?”
Emira said, “Josefa . . .” and it might have been the first time she’d said her full name since they were students at Temple. When Emira looked back at Zara, she knew it was too late. They exchanged quick glances loaded with information (Don’t do this to me. If you don’t I will.) before Zara flipped the latch on the swinging door and let herself out of the stall. Emira yelled, “Z, stop!” as Josefa darted behind her.
The music was louder now and a few clumps of people were dancing out on the floor. Kelley was still at the bar but joined by two friends. Zara touched his arm and said, “Hey, I lost my phone. Can you call it real quick?”
Kelley reached into his pocket. “Sure, what’s your number?”
Emira stepped up next to her and whispered, “Zara, stop.”
One of Kelley’s friends said, “Hey, happy birthday,” and another said, “You lost your phone? Is it that one on the bar?” Neither Zara nor Emira answered. As soon as Kelley typed in his four-digit code, Zara snatched the device and turned her back to his face. With his fingers still curled around an imaginary cell, Kelley said, “Zara, what the fuck?”
Josefa stepped between them, holding a hand up to Kelley. “Hey, it’s cool. Just chill out for a second.”
Kelley said, “What?” and looked to Emira. She held her breath, feeling everything inside her bubble and churn. She’d left the bar sipping champagne and turning twenty-six. She’d returned looking more like the enraged woman in the video that was currently hemorrhaging across the Internet. Standing there, drunk and confused, Emira thought, He wouldn’t, but then she thought, Jesus, please no. She tried to mentally figure out what was on his phone before Zara could, but her mind was a choppy mix of segments that somehow flowed together: Kelley telling her she should write an op-ed. Kelley telling her she could work for the richest family in Philadelphia. Kelley saying, Don’t you wanna get him fired? Alex shouldn’t be able to get away with this shit. And for some reason, Briar was in the mix too, holding her hand in the movie theater that day, and saying, “You’re just a little turkey, hello.”
Kelley looked from Josefa to Shaunie to Emira. He licked his lips and said, “What the fuck is going on?”
“Just give her a second,” Josefa said. Half of her body leaned to see his screen as Zara searched. Her other arm stretched out in front of Emira’s body as if they were driving and Emira was the passenger, seconds after an abrupt stop.
Shaunie squeezed Emira’s arm behind her. She looked at the floor and said, “Mira, just ask him.”
“Ask me what?” Kelley demanded. “Can I have my phone, please? What is going on?”
“Did you . . .” Emira looked to the ceiling. “Did you share that video?”
She saw him have the same recognition she’d had; remind himself that there was only one video that mattered. To make matters worse, Kelley answered, “No,” but then, “What video?” One of Kelley’s friends laughed and stood with his drink. “Kelley’s got all kinds of drama today.” He stepped past Emira and the other man followed.
“The video from the night we met.” Emira said this with more volume and charge. “Did you share the video from the night we met?”
“Of course I didn’t. I deleted it that night.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
Josefa clicked into her own phone and held the screen toward Kelley. “So why is it going viral right now?”
“Whoa whoa whoa, what is that?” Kelley squinted into the light. “Jesus Christ, how . . . When did this happen?”
“So you don’t have the video at all?” Shaunie was still speaking very calmly. “Not on your phone or your computer or anywhere else?”
“No way, I’ve never even watched it back. Emira, fuck.” Kelley gently lowered Josefa’s arm so he could step closer. “I wouldn’t . . . I wouldn’t do this.”
Emira breathed. “You deleted it?”
“Yes.”
Zara bent her head around Josefa’s. “You don’t have it anywhere?”
“Absolutely not.”
“K, then what’s this?” Zara flipped his phone around to face the group. There, on Kelley’s phone, was Emira blocking her face. For the third time that night, Emira heard how her voice sounded when she was tired and scared, saying, “Can you step off?” Hearing it for the third time, it was like listening to yourself leave a drunk voicemail, or continuing to sing a song after someone turns the radio off. Zara clicked out of the video,
and there was Kelley’s Sent folder. When Emira looked back up at Kelley, she thought, This was just getting good.
“Fuck you,” she whispered.
“No no no. Emira, wait.”
The next moments came together in an organized mess consisting of the logistics of leaving Tropicana 187 and the politics of breaking up. Zara told Shaunie to grab Emira’s stuff and then Josefa declared that she was getting an Uber. Kelley kept begging Emira to stop, to listen to him, to look at his face, but Zara grabbed onto Emira’s hand and steered her through the crowd in a way that felt young and reminded her of college. Somehow Shaunie appeared by the stairs to the street with Emira’s coat and presents, like a boyfriend who had treated his partner to a shopping spree. Outside, it had started to snow.
My boyfriend leaked a video of me? Emira took a tighter grip of Zara’s hand in the fresh layer of white. Kelley was still behind her and saying, “Emira, wait,” to which Zara responded, “You need to back up ’cause I am not the one right now.” Josefa stepped into the street first. A car drove up and asked her, “Hey, are you Molly?” to which she responded, “Do I look like a Molly? Get the fuck outta here.”
Does he really more than like me? Emira made it to the asphalt. Did he more than like me when he sent it? Am I a fucking idiot? Who has seen it? Ohmygod. The thought of Mrs. Chamberlain seeing the video sent a bolt of disgust through Emira’s spine and it landed in between the blades of her shoulders. “I’m making money right now, and I bet I’m making more than you.” “He’s an old white guy so I’m sure everyone will feel better.” “The fuck are you doing? Don’t touch me!” This would be the Emira that existed when Mrs. Chamberlain left her house and children. As Kelley stepped into the street and begged, “Emira, just talk to me, please don’t do this,” Emira looked at him and wondered, Will I say good-bye to Briar on terms that aren’t mine?
“Sefa, Imma need an ETA,” Zara called.
“Derrek and his Honda are two minutes away.”
“Emira, look at me! I didn’t fucking do this!” Kelley said.
“Ohmygod Kelley, stop!” Emira was shivering in the snow as she finally spoke. Shaunie tried to put her jacket on her shoulders, but Emira waved it off. “Literally no one else wanted this but you.”
“Me wanting that and actually sharing a video are two completely different things.”
“Cool, but you still wanted me to share it, right?” When Kelley said nothing, Emira kept going. “Exactly. You want me to be a completely different person. Like . . . you hate that I live in Kensington and you’ve never even been to my apartment.”
“Whoa whoa whoa, you never invite me!”
“You make jokes about me not having health insurance when I’m obviously fucking trying.”
“That’s not true. You make jokes about it!”
“You hate that I babysit for a living, which is fine, it’s whatever. But it’d also be easier if you’d just fucking admit it.”
Kelley dropped his arms to his sides. “Emira, the only person who hates that you still babysit is you.”
Emira took two steps back.
There was a time when she would have accepted this statement from Zara, maybe Kelley if they’d been dating a little bit longer and if she’d been drinking a little bit less. But Zara would have never used the word still, highlighting the fact that yes, Emira was a bit late to adulthood, that she should have moved on to something else, and that she currently held a job that thirteen-year-olds were trusted to do. Underneath a patina of tequila and champagne, seeing herself pull her skirt down on tape, and watching it happen via Kelley’s Sent folder, Emira could see nothing else but Kelley’s doorman, the free basketball tickets he got from work, and the time he said the N-word in front of her, which suddenly didn’t seem so banal. Emira looked Kelley up and down. She stuck out her lips and said, “Cool.”
“Wait, I don’t—this is . . .” Kelley blew through his lips. “Emira, I swear to God I didn’t do this . . . but I do think Alex did.”
Emira laughed and said, “Ohmygod,” as Zara pulled her toward Derrek’s approaching Honda. Shaunie hopped in the front seat of the SUV and Josefa went around to the other side.
“I’m not kidding, Emira. She did this. I don’t know how, but she came to my work and she—”
“Ohmygod! You have to stop! You two are obsessed with each other and it’s so fucking stupid. Actually, you know what? You obviously wanna be with someone who has lots of money and a great job and a book deal, so you might as well just date her again.” Once she was inside the car, Zara reached over her lap and pulled the back door shut.
In the backseat, Emira held both sides of her face. Zara put her seat belt on, Shaunie placed a coat on her legs, and Josefa said, “Gimme your phone.” By the time they reached Shaunie’s apartment, Emira had two missed calls from Kelley, though the new contact name in her phone read Don’t Answer.
Twenty-three
On Saturday afternoon, Alix struggled to find a walking speed that fell somewhere between feeling safe and looking offensively scared. For all she knew, Emira had moved out of this apartment, and the address she’d put on her résumé belonged to someone else. But Alix hadn’t called because she didn’t want Emira to reject her visit. She asked the cab driver to drop her off two blocks away.
Alix liked taking the scooter instead of the stroller because leaving the former somewhere by accident didn’t mean losing thirteen hundred dollars (and she could potentially use it as a weapon). With Catherine strapped to her front, Alix held the handlebars as Briar stood on the lime green children’s scooter with an unnecessary but adorable helmet strapped to her head. Alix guided Briar with one hand and held her phone in the other as she used Google Maps to navigate past apartment buildings built on top of one another with white bars in front of windows, some of which had cats perched behind them. Emira’s apartment building—two satellite dishes were attached to the side of it—was across the street from a basketball court currently covered in a thin layer of snow. Alix lifted Briar and her scooter onto the front step with her left hand and hip. She pressed the button labeled apartment 5B.
“Hello?”
This was definitely Emira’s voice, and not on a good day. Alix pushed forward and placed her mouth closer to the intercom.
“Emira? It’s Alix. Hi. It’s Mrs. Chamberlain.”
“Ummm . . . Hi?”
An older black man passed by on the sidewalk with his hands in his jacket pockets. He glanced up from underneath a blue baseball hat and looked at Alix as if she were lost. Briar pointed directly at him and said, “That man is driving the train.”
“Honey, shh. Emira, I know this is strange,” Alix said. “We just wanted to drop off something for you and . . . just say hi.”
Briar kept her eyes on the man and shouted, “Choo choo!”
Under a dense static, Emira said, “Wait . . . is Briar there with you?”
The man was almost at the next street, but Briar cupped her arms around her mouth to yell, “Stand clear of the closing doors, peas!”
“Briar is here and she’s making lots of friends,” Alix said. “But do you have a mailbox? I can just leave this inside the door.”
“No no, I’ll come down. Just a second.”
The fuzzy connection clicked off and Alix stood up straight.
Briar gave up on the train conductor and looked up at her mother. “Mama? Mama, what . . . what is this right here?” She touched the front door three times with her palm.
Alix licked her thumb and swiped dried yogurt off Briar’s lips. “This,” she said, “is a little adventure, okay?” She took out antibacterial gel and rubbed Briar’s hands, then her own.
Through the window in the door, Alix saw champagne-pink terry-cloth sweatpants come down the stairs first, and then the rest of Emira appeared. Her hair had been pulled up into a black silk wrap that came up together in a b
un on top of her head. Emira had a T-shirt on underneath a denim jacket, which seemed like an odd choice of clothes for a weekend at home, but then again, this wasn’t just any weekend. There was no makeup on her face. Emira’s eyelids were swollen and soft.
“Hey.”
“I’m so sorry to surprise you. Hi.”
Briar looked up and pointed. “Mira has no hair.”
“Well, hi.” Emira smiled. “I still have hair. I just wrapped it up.”
“I know this is crazy.” Alix raised one hand in the air as if she were swearing on a Bible. “And if you’re busy, we don’t have to—”
“No no, come on in. I am four flights up, though.”
“Not a problem. Can I leave this down here?”
“Ummm . . .” Emira bit the side of her thumbnail and stared at the scooter. “I mean, I wouldn’t. But that’s up to you.”
The stairwell smelled like dust and mold, but when they made it to the fifth floor, Alix could start to smell Emira. Nail polish, lemon, the artificial trace of coconut, and wet grass. When Emira pushed her front door open and revealed her apartment, Alix thought, Okay, phew, I can do this, and then, Oh man, this is depressing.
Emira’s apartment looked like one of those graduate college dormitories where all the rooms are exactly the same, except the corner ones are slightly bigger, or maybe they have one extra window. The hallway and kitchen floor were cased in puckered linoleum that was meant to resemble wood. On top of the refrigerator was a bright red microwave, and Bed Bath & Beyond coupons were stuck to the refrigerator door. There were two bedroom doors off the carpeted living room, and Alix could tell that one was very much Emira’s.
There were pictures of brown girls on a corkboard, and hanging on one of the pushpins were the black cat ears from Halloween. There was a tall plastic shelving unit with unfolded black clothing inside, a paisley quilt on the unmade bed with a sad black dress crumpled on top, and a pink bowl on the floor next to the bed that held a shallow pool of sugary milk. The living room had a television, a black IKEA coffee table, a black butterfly chair, and a purple futon couch with an ill-fitting cover sheet. (Alix had once written a blog post that was a letter addressed to futons. In this letter she referred to futons being the biggest furniture hoax of her generation, and called them “glorified bean bags on a rickety but colorful frame.” This unsent letter was meant to be funny, but seeing Emira’s living room setup made Alix feel like a bully.)