Page 24

"Where did you find this?"

"It was on Instagram." Dara grinned. "Is that Captain Holloway?"

I took a breath. "Who posted it?"

"No idea."

I pulled my jacket from my locker and walked to my car. I sat down and gripped the steering wheel until my fingers ached. The air in the car pressed in on me, and I could feel my pulse in my wrists.

My face was out there. Everything I'd spent six years building was compromised.

I started the car and drove to Erin's.

Erin opened the door and I could see on her face that she already knew.

She pulled me inside. "I know. Someone filmed the play and posted it online. I told that audience before the curtain went up. No phones, no cameras."

Hazel was in the living room with Erin's kids. I sat on Erin's kitchen stool and pressed my palms flat on the counter.

"I'm sorry, Janine. This was my event. I'm going to find out who posted it and get it taken down."

"You told them no cameras. It's not your fault."

Erin was watching me, and I could tell she was seeing more than I wanted her to.

"Hey." I touched her arm. "It's going to be fine. Maybe he won't recognize me. It was a costume and a tiara. The video is blurry."

Erin looked at me for a long moment and nodded.

I called for Hazel. We went home.

Erin found the poster by the end of the week. A mother from the school who'd filmed the whole third act and uploaded it with heart emojis. When Erin asked her to take it down, the woman said she was overreacting, that it was a public event, that people loved it. Erin told her the audience had been asked not to film for the safety of the children in the cast. The woman told her that wasn't legally binding. It took three more phone calls before the video finally came down.

By then it didn't matter. The video had been reposted by parents, fire department fan pages, and strangers who thought a firefighter kissing a princess at a school play was the feel-good content the internet needed. I reported what I could. Erin flagged every repost she found. Some came down. Most didn't. By the time we'd done everything we could do, the video had tens of thousands of views.

That weekend, Alex showed up at six.

Hazel was at the kitchen table before he'd taken off his jacket. "You came back!"

"I promised."

They checked the crystal jars first. Hazel held one up to the light, and tiny crystals had started forming along the pipe cleaner, catching the light like sugar. She made Alex look at every single one. Then they lined up the volcano on the counter, and Hazel read the instructions from her book while Alex measured baking soda into the bottle.

"More red," Hazel said, watching him squeeze food coloring into the mix.

"It's already red."

"Redder. Like real lava."

He added more. Hazel poured the vinegar, and the volcano erupted in a slow fizz of red foam that oozed down the clay sides and pooled on the counter. Hazel screamed with delight and made them do it twice more.

I cooked dinner while they moved on to the foam experiment. The video sat in the back of my mind like a stone in a shoe. I'd looked at it a dozen times over the past week, checking the image quality, studying my own face in the frame. The costume helped. The tiara obscured part of my forehead. The video was filmed from a distance and the lighting was uneven. If you didn't already know my face, it would be hard to identify me from the clip.

If you did know my face, it would take about three seconds.

I watched Alex help Hazel wipe foam off the table, both of them laughing at the mess, and I pushed the thought down. This evening was good. This evening was warm. The video could wait.

Hazel fell asleep at the table with her chin on her folded arms with the crystal jars lined up in front of her. The volcano sat on the counter, still crusted with dried red foam. The kitchen smelled like vinegar. It was, by any reasonable standard, a successful lab.