“One time when they had an opening it was full of our friends pointing at the wall and going, ‘that’s me!’” Nico said. “They bring the camera everywhere. I bet they have it tonight.”

“Do you?” Marina said.

“Oh, yeah,” Aubrey said, smiling and not looking at her. “I take a lot of pictures at parties just for, like, myself, Instagram, you know. I don’t do it that much anymore, but, y’know, I like to have the option.”

“We could get more drunk and take pictures of each other,” Nico said.

“Sure,” Aubrey said. “I’m not taking it out here, though, and I don’t really feel like taking it out downstairs; it’s like, as soon as I take that thing out everybody is suddenly not being themselves, they’re acting. I bet Perrin would be fine with us using her bedroom.”

They crawled through the window and Nico sprawled out on Perrin’s bed, his arms splayed behind him. The room was small and neat — museum postcards pinned to the walls, an incense burner next to a jewelry rack and a little makeup mirror on the dresser, cream-colored bedding. Nico reached behind the bedposts and found a switch for some red LED lights that snaked around the top of the walls.

“Cute,” Aubrey said approvingly as the room turned a deep, computer red. “Maybe I’ll keep the color in these for the first time in forever. Grey to red. Probably not though. Keep those on, I like that kinda dim light.”

They finished attaching the lens to the camera and pointed it from across the room at Nico, who smiled a coy smile at it. Marina watched Aubrey get progressively closer to Nico’s face with the camera lens until it was almost right up against it. Nico covered parts of his face with his hands and giggled while Aubrey snapped pictures. Eventually he grabbed the camera out of their hands with a single graceful gesture and took one with the flash on right in Aubrey’s face when they tried to take it back from him.

“Oh fuck you,” Aubrey said, laughing. “Here, you two can amuse yourselves with that thing, I’ll be back. If you break it you owe me six hundred dollars.”

I get it, Marina thought. This is fun. It’s a game.

“Honestly, when you suggested this I was worried I’d have to get naked like everyone in those photographs,” Marina said once Aubrey was gone. She sat on the floor facing Nico, who was still sitting on the bed.

“I mean, we could,” he said.

“Display the body,” Marina quoted, imitating Nico’s lisp.