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I shook my head quickly. “No. Not that I saw. I kept an eye on him the whole night. I made sure I knew where his hands were, at all times.”

I hadn’t seen her since yesterday, but even in that short gap, something had changed. She wasn’t just sad anymore—her eyes—she looked terrified. I lowered my voice. “What happened?”

“This,” she said, pulling out her phone. She unlocked it and handed it over.

I took it and fell in.

U know you liked it.

Fifty pictures of animal butts.

U know you liked it.

A hundred pictures of animal butts.

U know you liked it.

I have proof.

The tide of butts relented, into dinners, shoes, horizons, bridges, cars, faces, three-chins, tongues out, laughing and?—

Tell the cops u lied.

A picture of Lacey. Close up. Eyes closed, like she was Sleeping Beauty or Snow White. Her hair across her face like it was blown there, the background a soft-rippling red that I was sure was fabric but that looked like blood.

Or else.

I dropped the phone, coming to my senses just before I surged, power snapping between my fingers. The words were dancingin my mind, along with everything else I’d downloaded, all of her photos, everything from today on ZB, tainting anything wholesome?—

the photo of a sunset?—

you liked it

a picture of a dinner out?—

tell the cops you lied

like poison in a well.

“Jessie?” she asked, worried as she picked up her phone.

The real world of Lacey’s room slowly settled around me. “I’m here,” and I saw her eyes searching mine.

“Did Liam send that?”

The photo haunted me—and I could close my eyes and recall the timestamp of each text. “I don’t think so. We were doing homework. He wasn’t anywhere near his phone.”

“Okay.” She rocked back to kneeling. “I’m gonna call it off.”

“What?”

“The cops. They can’t make me testify. They don’t even want me to anyway.” She looked from her phone to me. “What if there are more? What if he has pictures of the whole thing?”

“If he does, then they can catch him.”

“But what if all the pictures are just of me, not him?”

My mind was racing. What if I’d kept holding onto her phone and I hadn’t sparked—would I’ve been able to somehow go through ZB and see who was posting the pictures on the other side? “Lacey—don’t give up.”