My chest caves in with an inhuman pressure. Delete…Ario? I turn to Briggs as if he’s somehow the voice of reason, but his sharp, ex-boybander cheekbones don’t even twitch. With a tremoring hand, I scroll through my camera roll. There are six pictures of Ario—the lock screen selfie, two from our Denny’s night, one in the bookstore where we met, and two kissing pictures.

Terror boils my neck as too many eyes—judgmental eyes—watch me open these intimate pictures. Pictures that I treasure, but are so, so private. Ario is only shirtless in some of them—maybe a little peek of treasure trail—but my brain is battering against my skull like I’ve been caught red-handed with the scummiest, vilest porn imaginable.

I hate that my first instinct is to delete them, even before this woman directed me to do it.

If I delete Ario’s pictures, they’re not gone. A Recently Deleted folder keeps a recoverable cache for thirty days. I’m here for a few days so as soon as I get my phone back, I’ll just recover the pictures before Ario is deleted permanently. I vanish all his pictures and smile as I return my phone to the lemon-dressed nurse.

But she refuses to touch it.

“Go to Recently Deleted,” Ramona says. My smile dies.

“Why?” I ask innocently.

“Ben.”

At her command, Briggs unsheathes his taser and approaches with it drawn at my head, like a pistol. On instinct, my neck ducks into my shoulders. “This isn’t Glee, mate,” he purrs. “This isn’t Love, Simon. You don’t get to do what you feel like. When Ramona or me or the director tell you to do something, my darling little punk, you do it. Or my good luck charm will go clickity-click before you get time to argue. You won’t be warned again.”

Noiselessly, my neck still bent, I tap open my phone’s Recently Deleted folder—there, everything having to do with Ario awaits my execution. Any evidence that he was ever part of my life. I tap Select All and each picture fills with check marks. On one side, Delete All. On the other, Recover All. While Briggs and Ramona watch my thumb hover over the screen, Molly’s lips tighten—she knows her turn is next.

“We made sure your mother got access to your social media accounts,” Ramona adds, salting my wound. “She’s already erased pictures there and on your cloud as well.”

“Please,” I say, my voice cracking like I’m thirteen again. If I delete these, that’s it. I might as well delete every memory in my head. I don’t know what would happen to me if Ario was truly, completely erased from my life. If all of this bullshit was for absolutely nothing. How could I get out of bed?

Briggs’s taser tickles the little hairs on my ear.

“If you don’t delete them yourself, you’ll get a shock and I’ll delete them anyway.” Ramona’s ruby-red smile stiffens. “And it will start your recovery on a bad note.”

“What recovery?” I break. “What am I doing here?”