Once she had it, Zoe put her thumbs to work. #paradise #sunset #perfectday she wrote, hashtags flying out in machine gun succession, and then the obligatory #LuxeauResort. And, as always, she finished with her signature #nofilter.
Some of the other girls liked to write little stories, bad puns, or commentary in their hashtags, but Zoe kept it simple. That was her attitude, her whole essence: simple, fun, chill. Never fake, but never depressing, either. Her life was amazing, and she just felt it was her privilege—and her duty—to share it with her followers. Yes, of course she enjoyed the views, the likes. But it was really all about her fans.
Zoe hit “share,” and the image raced from her phone to her 1.2 million followers. It was stunning, when you thought about it, how the flash of her thumb across the screen could reach out from this cozy little island and touch over a million people around the world. Zoe didn’t usually think about it, though; it was just a natural constant. Like the sun, the sea, the sand. And the other girls.
Nat, Zoe’s roommate, came splashing out of the surf towards her, sopping but grinning. She brandished her phone, which was in some sort of waterproof case, with a fisheye lens setup goggling from the phone’s camera.
“I got the fish!” she shouted.
“Oh yeah?” Zoe smiled. Nat had been after those fish for days.
Nat jogged up to Zoe’s chair and bent over to show her the phone’s screen. Zoe propped herself up on her elbows as Nat flipped through the shots.
They really were gorgeous fish. They were a deep, burnt orange with cobalt slashes running along their flanks, and though they were no bigger than Zoe’s pinky—and Zoe was a tiny woman—Nat had captured them close up and in perfect focus. One of the fish even had its mouth open like a smooch in a few of the shots.
“That’s awesome, babe!” Secretly, Zoe felt that Nat probably tried too hard. What was the point of buying fancy cameras and splashing about and trying to convince a fish to pose for you when you could just take, you know, selfies and sunsets? And it didn’t seem to have done her any good—Nat had barely half a million followers, the second-fewest of all six of the girls at the resort.
But Zoe supposed everyone who was internet-famous had their own little niche, and that was all there was to it.
“There,” said Nat. “That one.” Zoe nodded. Personally, it wasn’t the one she would have chosen—one of the fish filling half the screen, the other coyly flipping its tail out of frame—but it made sense for Nat.
“Now let’s see about the filter,” Nat said.
“You’re not going to use that stupid resort filter, are you?” Luxeau had designed a custom filter just for the six of them, and while it was pretty classy, Zoe had drawn the line. She lived a no-filter life. Cameron, the contest coordinator, was always wheedling her to include it in a shot or two, but she’d held firm.
Of course, Nat used all sorts of crazy filters, all the time. Which was fine, Zoe supposed. Only some people had principles.
“No, duh,” said Nat. “I just got this cool new filter set that a follower sent me, I’m gonna try it out.”
She fiddled with the settings, and then swiped the first filter onto the screen.
The picture now showed a pair of grey minnows, a little out-of-focus, in a dim, greenish-grey sea.
“Well, obviously not that one,” said Zoe, decisively. She was no nature photography expert, but nobody on the internet would like that. It was so…ordinary.
“No,” said Nat, sounding puzzled. “It’s not supposed to look like that.”
Swipe, and the minnows disappeared, replaced with a pair of plastic fish, traffic-cone orange, floating in a dingy bathtub.
“Not like that either,” Nat said, her voice moving from puzzled to angry. “I tried it already on some online photos, and it’s nothing like that at all. Just really clear picture quality.”
Swipe again, and two fish skeletons sat on a paper plate, lying on the sidewalk. Swipe, and lines of green text sketched out vague fishlike outlines. Swipe, and…
“Oh my god,” said Zoe, throwing a hand up to cover her eyes and turning away. “What is that?” Beside her, she heard the sound of Nat gagging, but the other woman didn’t turn away.
“Maybe…a brain?” Nat whispered. “But then, what are all those wires? And the color–”
“Jesus, Nat, put it away!”
“Yeah, okay.”
Zoe peeked. Nat had the phone off, holding it down by her side. She was staring off at the perfect sun and frowning. “What the hell was that?” Nat murmured.
The next day, Zoe was lying in a hammock strung between two palm trees a five-minute walk from the cabana, trying to decide between a face-selfie and one that showed her from navel to upper lip, cropped just below the nose. Honestly, both were amazing, but Zoe had to choose. Too many selfies in a row just came across as needy.
She had just gone for the second selfie—she liked this one’s air of mystery, as it showed the perfect hint of pout in her laid-back smile—when Nat came jogging up.
Nat was dressed down, in a white tank top and shorts. Cameron would probably chide her for that at lunch—the resort preferred when the girls wore bikinis. But Nat had an odd look on her face—halfway between spaced-out and intent, if that made any sense—and Zoe figured clothes were the last thing on her roommate’s mind.
“Do you know you can’t delete the app off your phone?” Nat said, not even bothering to greet Zoe.
“Sure, you can,” Zoe said. “You just hold down the icon, and–”
“No, I know,” said Nat. “But you can’t delete that one app.” She pressed her thumb down on the familiar image, and sure enough, it began to jiggle vulnerably, and the delete button appeared at the corner. But when Nat clicked the delete button, the app just beeped and returned to its normal happy state. The deletion had failed.
“Huh,” said Zoe. It was weird, but it didn’t matter. She’d never abandon her loyal fans. Besides, it was practically her job at this point.
“That doesn’t freak you out?” Nat’s stressed-out voice broke into Zoe’s reverie.
Zoe shrugged. “It’s just some weird phone thing, you know. Why get worked up?” Nat snorted, stared off into the distance.
“How did you get here?” she asked abruptly.
“I won the contest! We all did.” Zoe smiled, a little puzzled. Usually Nat seemed super smart, but sometimes she’d ask the dumbest questions.
“No. Like, physically. Was it by plane? Or by boat? Or–”
“A plane, I guess.” Zoe hadn’t thought about it in a while. She cast her mind backwards and found only a friendly blankness. “Yeah. Probably a plane.”
“And how long have we been here?”
“A week.”
“A week?”
“Yeah, I think that’s right.” Zoe was even less sure than that. But then, vacation was always like that, wasn’t it?
“Yeah,” said Nat. “I thought so too. But then I scrolled back through my pics, and, well, the dates all say three days ago…four days ago…but…”
“Yeah?”
“There’s too many. Way too many. I counted nearly a hundred of mine before the scroll stopped working. And this guy said–” Nat stopped herself. One of the resort rules was that contest winners could have “no public romantic partners,” which nobody had needed to tell Zoe; she knew what that did to her follows and likes.
“Oooh,” Zoe said. “What guy?”
“The one who sent the filters. He said…never mind.” Nat stalked off. Zoe frowned at her departing figure, then finished tagging up her torso-selfie, and posted it.
Nat missed lunch (berry-beet acai bowls, #cleaneating). Then, at dinner (kale and avocado salad, #whole30), Cameron asked if she’d taken anything good today—a none-too-subtle way to let her know that she hadn’t been posting, and he’d noticed. Nat grumbled her way through it, and bolted for the room she shared with Zoe before she could even get a good pic of dessert. When Zoe made it back, Nat was already in bed, the covers pulled up over her head, utterly silent.
When Zoe woke the next morning, Nat was nowhere to be seen, which was just fine with her. Really—what was the point of spoiling another perfect day in paradise? Zoe took a handful of quick pre-beach selfies, and a few more with her surfboard. She didn’t actually surf, nor did she really know how, but that was her little secret, right?
All in all, it was a very productive morning: the posts went out, and the hearts came flooding in, and by the time lunch came and went for the five girls (only still no Nat), Zoe was feeling very satisfied with herself.
But all that ended as Nat stumbled into the cabana.
Nat was a mess. She was dripping wet, which was ordinary enough, but she was also covered in sand. Weird, grey, coarse stuff. Not the white powder of the beach. And when she pulled her bangs out of her face, Zoe saw that her forearms had been scraped so badly that they were dripping blood.
“Oh my god!” said Gabi. Jade let out a tiny shriek.
“What happened to you?” Zoe shouted.
“I lost my phone,” said Nat. Her voice was flat and exhausted. “I was getting a picture of an anemone, and a wave hit, and it got knocked out my hands, and–” Her voice cut out, and she threw herself onto one of the chairs in frustration.
“Anyway, I spent the whole afternoon looking for it under rocks, and in the sand, and everywhere, but I just couldn’t find it, and I never back anything up to the cloud, and now it’s all gone!”
Sympathetic heads nodded. This generation of web celebrities had learned the lessons from hacked nudes of its predecessors; nobody in a million years would back up their pics to a cloud. And nobody brought external hard drives on vaycay.
“Let me get you another one!” said Gabi. She’d done some sort of product placement deal with Apple a few years back, and she could practically make it rain iPhones.
“No, it’s…it’s fine,” said Nat. “I can take care of it. It’ll just be weeks, probably, before it gets here, and–”
“Good news!” said Cameron, sweeping into the cabana. He smiled, and his teeth were as perfect as his hair; his button-down was absolutely spotless. “I found your phone, Nat!” He pulled it triumphantly from his pocket and presented it to her.
It was out of the waterproof case she’d been using, but it was definitely Nat’s phone. It was the right model, the same standard black Nat loved. It had the dent in the corner and the faded #fearless sticker on its back. Nat took the phone from Cameron with an expression of pure shock.
“But—how?” she spluttered.
Cameron just smiled.
“Thank you!” she finally got out.
And then dinner arrived, and everyone’s attention turned to other matters: food, and photos of food. Roasted sprouts, baked yams, and poached eggs sparkled under the flashing lights, as Cameron looked on proprietarily. And then dessert: Häagen-Dazs-sponsored sundaes, dusted with gold flakes. The girls took their dessert pics, followed by a spoonful or two to eat, and then dumped the better part of the sundaes in the trash—except for Beth, whose metabolism was incredible. Then they headed off to bed.
Later that night, while Nat took what Zoe hoped was a relaxing bath in their crazy-oversized bathroom Jacuzzi, Zoe stood in front of the wall-to-wall mirror. She’d finished pulling a half-dozen hairs from her upper lip, popped in a sugar-free breath mint, and was getting ready to remove her makeup before bed, but found herself debating whether to take a few selfies in the mirror first. It felt a little cheap, but a bathroom shot in dim light with a careful pout was always a hit, and Zoe could use a win; she hadn’t posted anything popular all day. She could take one quickly, tag it #nightbabies, and go to bed feeling better.
She took a couple quick pics, deleted them in frustration, rearranged the angle, and turned around so that there was flattering backlighting. She was just about to start snapping again when Nat wordlessly climbed out of the tub, wrapped an old t-shirt around her hair, and made her way over to the sink. Zoe sighed and put her phone down on the counter. No point in taking pics if Nat was wandering through the shot naked, and given how touchy Nat had been lately, Zoe didn’t want to ask her to move.
Nat stood in front of the sink and washed her face in silence, scrubbing furiously. It was no good for her skin, but Zoe didn’t want to say anything. Instead, she came up beside Nat and began her own evening routine: she popped off her lashes, cleaned off her eyeliner and foundation with a series of wipes, and then patted down her face with a microfiber cloth; and all the while, Nat didn’t speak, didn’t even look at her or smile, and eventually, it was so awkward that Zoe just had to say something.
“Sure was lucky that Cameron found your phone, huh.” Zoe said, pointing at the phone that Nat had left teetering on the edge of the bathroom countertop.
Nat turned and stared at Zoe. Her face was a total puzzle.
“Listen,” she said, pointing at the countertop. “This is not my fucking phone.”
“But–”
“I know it isn’t, because I didn’t lose my phone in the ocean. I smashed it with a fucking rock.”
“You what?”
“I smashed it with a fucking rock, on another fucking rock, and then I dumped all the pieces in the sea, and then fucking Cameron showed up with this goddamn phone instead!”
“It looks just like yours,” said Zoe. In her experience, things usually looked like what they were.
“That’s what they want me to think! They did something to it!”
“Well, let me take a look at it,” Zoe said reasonably.
“No, don’t–”
But Zoe had already snatched it from the counter. Her fingers twinkled through Nat’s remembered password, and the device obligingly unlocked. Her thumb unerringly found the app, and Nat’s pics flashed instantly onto the screen.
“See, it’s got your account too!”
“Give it back!”
Nat lashed out, but she was a mess, practically shaking, and honestly, Zoe didn’t feel like it was a good idea to hand the phone back to her in that condition. She held it tight while Nat grappled with it, and Zoe grabbed on with her other hand until her fingers slid across the screen, and the phone twisted between them–
Flash, and the telltale sound of a simulated shutter. Nat staggered back. Her breathing was ragged.
“What the fuck did you do?”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t post it!” said Zoe, staring down at the phone. It was just a perfectly normal picture of Nat’s torso, a little blurred from the phone’s motion. Impossible to imagine posting something that hideously un-composed, but it was fine.
“See?” She held it up to Nat.
And that’s when Zoe saw her roommate.
From the collarbone up, Nat was still perfectly normal. But below that Nat had…changed.
Everything was still the right shape. Nat still had a chest, and arms, and fingers. But her skin was all gone. There were muscles, raw and wet like uncooked chicken, and there were wires and cables like out of one of those ads for faster internet, and there were pistons and gears like the insides of a sports car, and little specks of light and dust flickered and rippled across the surface, and everything was attached wrong, and everything was moving, and Nat’s blood and bile and oil were oozing and leaking and dripping onto the floor; and somewhere in that mess, Nat’s lungs heaved and a burst of goo splattered out and landed on Zoe’s cheek.
Zoe turned, set down the phone, grabbed the sink with both hands, and vomited into it. Fortunately, she hadn’t eaten much for dinner.
She had a few more dry heaves. In her peripheral vision, Nat’s hand, appearing to be five surgical needles, scrabbled the phone away. There was the sound of metal scratching on glass. And when Zoe rose from the sink again, Nat was staring at her, furious, total human, totally normal.
“Don’t fucking do that,” Nat said.
“I…I…What?” But Nat didn’t answer, just shoved the bathroom door open, grabbed it before it could slam, and stomped out.
Later in bed, trying to make sense of it, Zoe spoke to the ceiling.
“I think that mint was an edible,” she said. “’Cause I don’t know what you saw, but it was a little freaky for me.”
Nat’s voice was tired, ragged.
“There’s no fucking weed on this goddamn island, Zoe. Go the fuck to sleep.”
The next morning at breakfast, Nat still looked a little wrung out, but she was once again normal. No paranoid ravings, no horrible metal guts. Cameron brought out omelets and served them to each girl, but when he got to Nat, he paused.
“Hey, Tasha,” he said. “Are we gonna have any more problems today?”
“Nope,” she said, hunching over the egg whites.
“’Cause you know, I don’t like to be a bother about this, but as part of the terms of your stay, you’re required to post at least–”
“I know. We’re good.”
Nat vanished after lunch, though Zoe saw her once or twice pacing atop the cliff from which Jade always did her most spectacular diving (with her selfie-stick-mounted GoPro in hand). And if Nat didn’t seem to be taking many pictures, at least she was on her phone. That had to be a good sign, right?
And then it was dinner, followed by dessert—#treatyourself. Nat smiled and laughed as they made their way to the room, and it was practically like old times, until the door closed.
“Listen,” said Nat, her voice suddenly harsh, her movements urgent and a little crazed as she locked the door behind her and whipped out her phone. “I’m getting the fuck out of here, okay. I’m–”
“Nat, wait–”
“Just listen. I don’t know when Cameron will show up, but I’m betting that he will. I tried deleting the app, and I tried smashing the phone, and I tried the factory reset, but nothing worked, right? But then that follower—the guy I mentioned—he sent me some custom app, and it’s supposed to purge your phone, and I’m gonna fucking do it. Okay, Zoe? And I need you to…I need you to–” She broke off at the same instant Zoe found her voice.
“Nat, what the hell is going on?”
Nat hyperventilated for a second, then took a deep breath. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just know that none of this…that something’s wrong here. It can’t be real. I think the filters, I think they show us what’s real, but then I can’t understand why it’s all different, and…never mind. Just, I want you to have this, okay? In case something happens to me. Just…just don’t let it go.” She slipped a piece of paper into Zoe’s hand, and without thinking, Zoe pocketed it, staring at Nat’s face for any sign of sanity.
But Nat wasn’t looking at Zoe anymore. She had unlocked her phone, and Zoe could see the icon of a new app on the screen, red and angry.
“As soon as I tap this,” Nat said, and her thumb stabbed down onto the screen.
At that exact instant, there was a gentle knock at the door.
“Oh, fuck,” said Nat, and she shot into the bathroom.
“Tasha, Zoe, it’s me!” came Cameron’s voice. “Are you decent?” he sang through the wood.
Zoe heard the bathroom lock shoot closed, and Nat’s muffled voice hissed, “Stall him!”
“One sec, Cameron, there are nipples everywhere!” Zoe said.
The pounding on the door got louder.
“Let me in!”
Cameron sounded pissed, which never happened, and Zoe hesitated but, like, what if Nat had just gone crazy and just needed some help? Zoe reached for the door, but the handle turned on its own, and Cameron was standing in the doorway.
“Where is she, Zoe?”
Zoe said nothing, but her frantic glance at the bathroom gave the secret away instantly. Cameron marched to the bathroom and tried the knob. No dice. He put his shoulder into it, slamming against the doorframe, once, twice, and on the third try, crack, the wood gave way, and Cameron went stumbling into the bathroom.
It was empty. Completely empty. Cameron cast an angry glance around it, and then a puzzled one. And then, finally, he left.
Zoe spent twenty minutes of good sunset time going through that bathroom, swishing the bathtub curtain back and forth, even though she knew there was nowhere to hide, nowhere to go. Finally, confused and exhausted, she put herself to bed.
In the morning, Nat’s bed was empty. But someone had come in during the night and fixed the bathroom door, which bore no signs of Cameron’s assault. Zoe dressed perfunctorily—white tank, grey shorts—and made her way to breakfast. Nobody asked about Nat.
Halfway through the meal, which was serve-your-own yogurt (no Cameron-served omelets this time), Zoe heard the crunch of footsteps up the sandy hill. She turned.
Cameron was standing there, his arm around the shoulder of another girl. She was slender, brown-skinned, dark-haired. She looked kind of—but not too much—like Nat.
“This is Gia, everyone,” Cameron said. He smiled, every tooth perfect. “This is your new roommate, Zoe!”
Zoe introduced herself to Gia and asked a few questions about her—the sort of pics she took, how many followers she had—but her heart wasn’t in it. Nor was it in any of her selfies that day; she was still all spun around. She couldn’t make heads or tails of what Nat had said, or how she’d disappeared.
That night, she lay down in bed, and as she slid her hands into her pajama pockets, she found the paper Nat had passed her the night before. She pulled the slip out and read it by the light of the tropical moon that poured through her window.
“Address on back. Use the filter. You’ll see.”
It was signed: @NatAttack
Zoe flipped the paper over. It looked like a web address, but not any normal web address. Just a bizarre string of numbers and letters.
Zoe held the paper in her hands, weighed it. She could tell Cameron about it, give him the paper, and the whole thing would go away.
And then, carefully, one character at a time, she typed the web address into her phone, and hit enter. It loaded instantly, and the progress bar zipped across the screen. The internet here was fast. And sure enough, when Zoe opened her app, there was a new filter there.
Zoe nodded, rolled over, and claimed whatever beauty sleep was left in the night.
The next day, Zoe thought about Nat. She thought about Nat as she showered, and as she exfoliated, and as she brushed her teeth, and as she plucked her brows, her lip, her chin. She thought about Nat as she watched Gia perform the same ritual silently and efficiently beside her. Zoe thought about Nat. Then about Cameron, the hotel, the island, the contest, the girls. Gia was a beautiful girl, and she seemed like she’d be a good roommate.
She wasn’t Nat, though.
Zoe thought about Nat all throughout breakfast: what she’d done right; what she’d done wrong. And so, she spent her beautiful day in paradise just as she had spent all of them. She took pic after pic, every one of them no filter, and she made them count.
And then, at dinner, she looked at all the other girls sitting around the table, each one of them so beautiful, so flawless, and she smiled.
“I’m just so excited to have Gia with us!” she said. “Let’s get a first-night-here selfie!”
The other girls cheered, and they packed in around Zoe, each girl turning to her own magic angle. Zoe slid her phone from her pocket, and she turned the filter on. Then she lifted the phone and held it up before all of them, and pressed the button.
The screen flashed, and Zoe stared into it, hair perfect, teeth just right, waiting for the glare to fade. Waiting to see.
