What the Screen Knows

The iphone screen glowed in the dark bedroom at 3 AM, illuminating Lena's face as she scrolled through months of texts she wasn't supposed to see. Her friend — her best friend, the one she'd trusted with everything, who'd held her hair back when she was sick, who'd helped her pick this apartment — had been sleeping with Mark since October.

Lena had been running every morning since she found out, three miles before dawn, her lungs burning in the cold air, legs pumping toward some phantom finish line where the memory of them wouldn't exist. Some days she ran until her vision blurred, until she couldn't see their faces superimposed over the neighborhood sidewalks.

Now she stood in the grocery store at 10 PM on a Tuesday, holding a bag of organic spinach she couldn't remember picking up. She was supposed to host dinner tomorrow. Mark had promised to make his famous salmon. Sarah was going to bring wine. They'd all sit around the table and laugh and pretend none of it was happening, and Lena would smile and serve them spinach salad like everything was fine.

She dropped the spinach into the aisle and walked out into the rain. Water soaked through her clothes, plastered her hair to her face, washed away the makeup she'd carefully applied that morning like armor. People hurried past with umbrellas, but Lena kept walking, letting the water fill her shoes, weigh down her clothes, make her heavier and heavier until she felt anchored to the earth again.

Her iphone buzzed in her pocket — probably Mark asking where she was. Probably Sarah wanting to confirm dinner plans. Lena pulled it out and watched it slip from her fingers, shattering on the wet pavement. She stepped over it and kept walking, finally, toward something that wasn't running away, but merely moving forward, one wet step at a time.