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Lila tossed her hair and smiled pertly at the camera. Henri held up two fingers, then one. When his hand closed into a fist, Lila said, “Welcome, Foodgurlz. Today, your Foodgurl is sampling a croque monsieur from this lovely little café, Café Too-louse, right here in my hometown of Philly. You may rem—”

“Toulouse,” Henri interrupted.

Lila blinked. “What did I say?”

“You said too louse, like the bug. It’s too loose, like not tight enough.”

Lila scoffed irritably. “It’s whatever I say it is. Honestly, if they’re going to charge me to review their restaurant, I’m gonna call it whatever I want.”

“So… should we just keep going?”

Lila sighed. “No, we’ll retake it. I don’t want to deal with the comments. One more time.”

She took a deep breath and smiled again at the camera. Henri counted her down again, and she said, “Welcome, Foodgurlz! Today, your Foodgurlis sampling a croque monsieur from this lovely little café, Café Toulouse, right here in my hometown of Philly. You may remember a review I did recently of A Taste of Versailles, where I said that it was too bad that all French food is made to look pretty and taste lame. Well, you guys suggested this place in the comments, so here I am giving French food another try, and I have to say, I am really excited to see what this cute little diner has to offer!" Her smile vanished. "Okay, you can cut there."

Henri turned the video off and checked something on the camera. “What do you think?” Lila asked. “Too long for TikTok?”

"We can make it work. We only need a shot of you receiving the food, a shot of you eating, and a sentence or two of review. If we get crunched for time, I'll bump the speed up to one and a quarter."

“Good. Whatever you need to do is fine with me. I just can't keep getting killed by these perky-tit college kids.”

“You are so much more beautiful than any of those kids,” Henri replied.

She frowned at him. “He says while staring at his camera.”

"Well, she is. She's a Sony ZV-1. She's the best compact camera for bloggers you can buy. You look fine, too."

She made a face. "It's gross that you talk to your camera like it's a girl."

“It’s gross that you care what some pimple-faced boys who only watch these videos to jack off think about you.”

“Yeah, those boys are seventy percent of my subscribers, and as soon as Maybelline stops covering my wrinkles, they’re going to drop me, so I need a new base. That means girls, and that means TikTok. Hold on, here comes the food.”

Henri lifted the camera, and as soon as the server got out of the way, Leah held the sandwich up and said, “Oh my God, girls. This looks—”

“Hold on.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh my God. Now?”

“Aaaand… now.”

“Oh. My God, girls. This looks delicious. Let’s see if it tastes as good as it looks.”

She bit into the sandwich and immediately rolled her eyes back in her head and moaned. That’s for you, boys. “Oh… my goodness, this is so… so…”

Henri looked at her over the camera. What’s wrong? he mouthed.

“Um…” she waved her hand in front of her throat, and Henri cut the camera.

“What’s wrong? Are you all right.”

“Yeah, I… I just got dizzy for a moment.”

Her heart pounded in her chest, and her ears began to buzz. “Holy…”

She didn't finish the epithet. She tried to stand, but her legs went slack, and she fell to the floor instead. The buzzing in her ears became a roar, drowning out Henri's panicked cries. She never felt his arms come around her shoulders, and though her eyes were open, her vision had faded already, so she was spared the look of terror in his eyes.

Her last coherent thought was, Thank God we’re not live streaming this.