Orly. Must be wondering where his beloved enforcer got to. Atlanta wonders, too. Thinks maybe she shouldn’t have let that bad man go. Hopes against hope he doesn’t pop his head back up out of whatever hole he crawled into.

But that’s a problem for another day.

Today is a different barrel of monkeys.

Shane taps a key. The screen comes on. Atlanta’s on it. The camera’s already showing her own face—everything she does, her digital doppelganger does at the same time. She pulls her red hair back and through a blue rubber band. “I feel like I should be wearing lipstick.”

“This isn’t a dating video.”

She hrms. “Yeah, you’re right.” There’s a part of her that wishes Steven had come. As a friend, at least. She called him—multiple times, actually—but he never called her back. She hopes that bridge didn’t burn beneath her feet. She still remembers the kiss.

“You sure you don’t need a script?”

“I don’t need a script.”

“Okay. Just hit the space bar when you’re ready.”

Her tongue snakes out over her teeth, then her lips, to moisten them. She shifts nervously. The space bar looms—she almost hits it, then doesn’t, then finally stabs it with a finger.

A red circle blinks on the screen. Next to it in white text: RECORDING.

She takes a breath. Looks up. Then at the pinhole.

She starts talking.

“They say it gets better, but that’s a load of horseshit. Like one day you wake up and things are just easy. That bullies come and bullies go and eventually everything sorts itself out. It doesn’t. That’s not how the world works, and it won’t ever work that way. Somebody’s always going to be there to try to hold you down against the ground and kick you while you’re there. They’ll find a reason for it. An excuse. You’re black. You’re gay. You’re a girl who said no, or a boy who wants to be a girl. You’re different from them, and they make themselves feel better by making you feel like dirt.”

She stares hard into the camera.

“It doesn’t get better.”

Another deep breath.