Everlong by R. Raeta

Author:R. Raeta [Raeta, R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-26T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

When it happens, it is by accident.

Sam is using the camera on his phone, taking a picture with a dry expression and his middle finger raised high—for Finn, he tells her, but does not explain why—when he sees it. Immediately he stills, his lips slowly curling into an excited smile. “Lil! Lil, look!”

She does (because how could she not?) but it takes her longer than it should to realize what she is seeing. On the screen is Sam and a woman—a girl—that she barely recognizes. A girl that blinks when she blinks, moves when she moves. A girl that is her.

With shaking hands, she takes the phone and brings it closer until the frame is filled with the image of her face. She touches her cheek with tentative fingers, reacquainting herself with the pale, faded freckle on her chin—a souvenir from the days before her mother decided to start caring about her complexion. “How?” she breathes.

Sam is laughing, shaking his head and running a hand through his hair. “Digital! No mirrors!” He says it like it's obvious, but she still doesn’t understand. She doesn’t care. His grin is infectious, and the arm he throws around her shoulders is warm. “Smile!”

He needn’t have bothered to tell her; she is beaming and her cheeks are burning from the force. When Sam taps the button at the bottom of the screen, there is a sound of a camera shutter and she holds her breath. For perhaps the first time since she has awakened, she allows herself to hope.

He wastes no time pulling up the image, his smile impossibly wide as he shows it to her. “Welcome to the 21st century, Lil.”

On the screen is them, but for her it is more. In the thousands, perhaps millions, of colored pixels that make up her image, is proof that she is more than a ghost of a girl wandering in a time never meant for her.

It is proof that she exists.

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