Chapter 5: The Video
I typed back immediately.
*What video?*
Three dots appeared.
Then:
*Someone recorded the whole thing.
Brooke's part, and mine, and Eliza finishing.
It's already been shared in a few group chats.
I don't know how far it's gone.*
I turned to Eliza.
"Did you know someone was recording?"
She shook her head.
"Who?"
"Marcus says there's a video.
It's already in group chats."
Her face changed.
Not panic — something more complicated than that.
She reached for her own phone and I watched her scroll.
I watched her stop.
"Mom."
She held the screen toward me.
The video was forty-three seconds long.
It started with Brooke's voice — sharp, clearly audible — and the laughter that followed.
Then Marcus walking to the stage.
Then Eliza taking the microphone back.
Then her voice, cracked at first, then steady, then strong.
The camera stayed on her face the whole time.
Her birthmark.
Her eyes.
The moment she decided not to stop.
The caption someone had written above it read: *she finished her song.
she finished her whole song.*
It had been shared two hundred and twelve times.
"Eliza," I said.
"I know."
"This could—"
"I know, Mom." She was still looking at the screen.
"I don't know if that's good or bad yet."
I didn't either.
Marcus texted again.
*I just wanted to warn you before it got bigger.
Also — Brooke knows about it.
She's been trying to get people to take it down.*
I showed Eliza.
"Of course she is," Eliza said quietly.
We drove home mostly in silence.
Eliza had her phone in her lap but she stopped checking it somewhere around the third traffic light.
She just looked out the window.
At home, she went upstairs without eating.
I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea I didn't drink and watched the video three more times.
By the time I went to bed, it had been shared over a thousand times.
I didn't sleep well.
I kept thinking about Diane's face.
The way she'd said *visible* like it was a liability.
The way she'd said *thick skin* like it was a kindness.
In the morning, Eliza came downstairs and sat across from me at the table.
"It has forty thousand shares," she said.
I put my mug down.
"Are you okay?"
"People are saying really nice things." She turned her phone around so I could see the comments.
Hundreds of them.
*She's so brave.
That boy is a hero.
Who is the girl who laughed?
Someone find her.*
Then Eliza scrolled a little further and stopped.
"And then there's this," she said.
She handed me the phone.
It was a post from a public account.
A screenshot of the video with a caption that read: *This is staged.
The boy is her cousin.
The whole thing was set up for attention.
Don't be fooled.*
The post had been shared four hundred times.
The account had no profile photo.
Created two weeks ago.
"Who would do that?" Eliza asked.
I looked at the account.
Blank.
New.
Anonymous.
I thought about Diane walking away through the lobby.
Her practiced smile.
The way she'd said *I'm not suggesting anything* while suggesting everything.
May you like
"I don't know yet," I said.
"But I'm going to find out."
