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The crowd around us thins. Holden grabs his jacket from a guarded area and starts moving Mara to the exit.

“Well, it wasgreatseeing you, but we have to get home,” he says without looking at me.

“What about your interview?” Mara asks him. “You’re a winner and the world needs to know!”

“I’ll do it next time. I told them I had to return you to the zoo.”

“Wait.” My body moves in their direction without my permission.

To my surprise, Holden actually stops. Mara peeks aroundhim, her eyebrows raised. They could belessinteresting to watch, that’s for sure. But it’sHolden, and just liking video games and wanting to win a VR headset isn’t enough to make anyone care about this documentary.

“What?” Holden asks, impatience tainting his words. Like he has any right to be mad at me for anything.

“I was making a documentary about someone trying to win this thing and—” Well, he doesn’t need to know the profession-of-unrequited-love bit. “I need it for my Temple app, but, as you know, my subject bailed.” Holden’s here, he’s local, I know him, he’s going to the next round. This is my only option. It makes sense and is way more convenient than it would have been with Yvette—I lose the angle of an “older” Black woman competing in what is seen as a contest mostly for young white men, while balancing love and video games, but I can work around this. I can fabricate a story if I need to; it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve managed it. I once edited random clips of Corrine and Kayla together to make it seem like they were having a heated argument about broccoli—and they both assumed they just forgot having that conversation. That it had really happened.The power of storytelling.

“That sucks,” he says, not sounding at all sympathetic. “Well, it’s already past this one’s bedtime—”

“He means himself,” Mara says.

“So—”

“Since you’re already doing the contest,” I say quickly, not letting him dismiss me, “and it makes so much sense to team up, maybe I could just, I don’t know, use you as my subject?” I barelydare to breathe. It would literally be his honor to reject me.

His eyebrows crinkle. “Why?”

God, what a great question.“Why what?” I ask, turning it back on him and giving myself a moment to come up with something, anything.

“Why should I?”

Mara shoves her elbow into his gut, but he barely flinches.

“Because I could potentially get into my dream major?”

“I asked whyIshould. What do I get out of this?”

“Your ego stroked, I don’t know. What do you want out of this?” I shift my weight to the opposite foot, trying to convince myself this would be better to work on with him than with a stranger. Maybe. “You’re charismatic. Not terrible on the eyes. Please just help me.”

“Not terrible, huh? I should add that to my Tinder profile.”

“Your mom says you’re not allowed on Tinder,” Mara says.

“It was a joke—”

I steal Mara’s focus. “Help me out here, kid.”

“Do it!” Mara says, yanking on his arm. “You love hearing yourself talk. This is the perfect opportunity.”

He pulls a face. “I’m not doing it for free. This isn’t a friendly favor.”

“That’s a relief, because we aren’t friends.”

His gaze darkens. “Thanks for the reminder. I would have never remembered.” He exhales all his annoyance with me in one long breath. “I have a portfolio due at the end of photography this semester, so if I do this for you, you have to model for me.”

My heart kicks into an unpredictable rhythm. “Excuse me?”

“We’re supposed to, like, photograph seniors in the wild, really get to the essence of their soul. And nobody wants to do it—well, except Taj, but I’ve already used him for other assignments.”

“I’ll save you the time. I have no soul. In here?” I point to my chest. “It’s just a hamster in a wheel, running running running—”