Such a Fun Age(70)

“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.”