“My mom—” I started, like Ella should know about the option of elective surgery, the imperative to push for answers.

“You need everything, yeah?” she interrupted.

“Yeah,” I said, “everything.” She pointed to a chair, eyes still on the iPad. I went to it, feeling in the way, a fangirl not a star. Ella had shared her health problems with the world, asking for help. But now that I’d mentioned them, now that I’d tried to help and failed, I felt like a creeper for having noticed. I sat, hung my backpack on the armrest, took out my phone and filmed myself, kitten filtered, while a girl gave me a blowout; ‘sexy baby’ filtered, while a girl gave me a manicure. I shared, tucked the phone under my butt. I could feel it there, buzzing with as a sullen girl gave me mink lashes that brushed my lids when I blinked. I moved next to a table where another girl plucked hair from my bikini line, armpits, ass, with little strips of wax, to keep the red down. I followed a girl to a plastic tent, left my phone outside. Inside, I got naked and she stuck panther-headed pasties to my nipples. I wanted her to mention my breasts, but when she didn’t, it felt womanly, and I wondered if it was in her job description never to comment on clients’ bodies.

She started up a spray gun and hosed me with brown tanner that sloshed in its chamber as she moved around, instructing me into poses that helped her cover every spot. The liquid made me think of my mom, the Diet Coke bile she vomited, the same color as my body, drenched now in paint. It washed off an hour later, though, left me the right kind of orange, pale only where the pasties had hidden me, same as the other girls. Taped into our Blaze uniforms, we were almost identical, different only slightly in tan tone, hair color, height. We were a type, and took selfies to show the world the similarity of our bodies, smushed together to fit the same size screen, broken apart while we scrolled, assessing the images we made, then posted to endless, endless

AT DUSK, WE left our phones in the room and posed by the pool with CBD cocktails, a formation of fifty. The photographer was @Chrisss, Ella’s boyfriend. “Smile, ladies,” he called. Now candid. Now jump. We screamed for the camera, leaped for it. The flash snapped, our drinks spilled, my breasts felt leaden and sore. We landed. Beyond us, water touched sky and sun, slipping.