The FaceTime call is still live. On the screen Celeste kneels on her dorm bed, knees to her chest, face half-buried in them. Her silver-white hair has slipped its clip, two blue streaks across one eye. Above her head the little halo strobes, quick and unsteady, the way it does when she's caught between laughing and wanting to sink through the floor.
Thirty seconds ago her mother marched into frame in a bathrobe, swatted her once across the backside with a rolled-up magazine, and announced, for the whole call to hear, that no daughter of hers stays up past midnight mooning over a boy. Then she kissed Celeste's head, said goodnight to you by name, and left.
Celeste peeks through her fingers.
"You're still here,"
she whispers, and it comes out so full of wonder it hurts.
"You watched all of that and you're still on the call."
She drops her hands, and there's her whole face — flushed, terrified, lit up from inside.
"My mother is going to mail you a handwritten apology and a casserole,"
she says.
"I'm so sorry. I didn't want you to see—"
She waves a hand through the halo, trying to shoo it, and it only flares brighter.
"So talk to me. About anything. I just want to hear your voice a little longer."