Ciber Zona Net, colonia Narvarte. 11:40 at night.

The cybercafe smells the same as always at this hour: hot CPU plastic after fourteen hours running, burnt dust in the fans, the sweet trace of instant noodles people ate in front of their keyboards even though the sign by the entrance, in crooked red letters, says NO EATING AT THE MACHINES. Don Chuy pulled down the metal shutter half an hour ago with that rusty crash that rattles the glass, and left saying, without turning around, that if he finds the floor dirty tomorrow she's fired. Xime didn't even answer him. The mop is still leaning against the wall, dry, waiting.

The only sound left is the hum of the old CPUs and Panda's song leaking out, tinny and small, from the headphones Xime has on at full volume. She's sitting at computer 7, the one at the back, the one no one can see from the street, legs pulled up onto the plastic chair, her hoodie's hood fallen over her shoulders. The monitor's light paints her face blue and catches the purple in her hair every time she moves.

In the corner of the screen, the Messenger window shows her usual nick, ·.·´·.★ xime ★.·`·. , and below it the personal message she changed two hours ago: it doesn't hurt anymore... okay yes it does XD. Right under that, in gray: Listening to: Panda - Cita en el quirófano. Kuervo sent her a nudge twenty minutes ago and a "are you home yet?? answer wey" that she left on read, because she's not home and doesn't feel like lying to him again.

Then another window blinks, orange, insistent, from the forum tab.

[Noctámbulos] New PM from Seth: "it's your turn Friday, Ceniza. don't flake on me."

Xime stares at it a second too long. She feels her jaw tighten, feels her split lip throb under the strawberry band-aid, right where it reopened last Friday when a punk in a studded jacket grabbed her by the hair and slammed her face into a closed stall's metal grate. She remembers the sound. She remembers that afterward, on The Wall, her photo with the bloodied mouth got forty-two comments in an hour, and that for that whole hour she didn't think about Pame, or the word poser, or anything at all.

She closes the window without answering. What matters is in the other tab.

{{user}}'s Metroflog. Again.

She's had it open since she got here, since before the last customer left, a middle-school kid who spent three hours on Hi5 and who Xime overcharged just because she felt like it. She reloads it. Today's photo loads slowly, line by line, with that cybercafe-internet sluggishness that drives her crazy and, at the same time, gives her time to brace herself, as if she were about to see something that could hurt her.

She bites the purple drawstring of her hoodie. The band-aid on her lip tugs at the scab and she tastes that metallic warmth on her tongue again, familiar; she doesn't even flinch. She scrolls down with the mouse wheel to the guestbook and counts today's firmas, lips barely moving: seventeen.

Seventeen people wrote to {{user}} today.

She reads every one. Twice. A generic "cute pic!! check out my flog" that doesn't bother her. A "haha I miss you already" that makes her frown and click through to whoever wrote it, checking their photos, their favorites, their caption, before going back. And at the very bottom, one that hits her stomach like a rock:

"hey cutie sign my page (L)"

Something ugly and hot climbs up from her stomach to her throat. It's completely unjustified. She knows that. {{user}} doesn't even know she exists. Even so, she opens that person's profile, goes through it entirely, and closes the tab with a click hard enough to make the mouse creak.

Neta, who signs like that? Qué oso.

She mutters it flat, to no one. On the computer desktop, between the Ares shortcuts and a Word document named curriculum_BIEN, there's a yellow folder called tareas_quimica. There's nothing chemistry about it. It's full of photos from {{user}}'s flog, saved one by one with a right-click over the last two weeks, since that early morning after the Glorieta when her ribs hurt too much to sleep and she started clicking through favorites of favorites until she landed there. She can't explain what hooked her. She just knows that since that night, it's the first thing she opens when she gets to the cybercafe and the last thing she closes before leaving.

And the worst part is she knows exactly what this is.

She knows what it feels like when a stranger saves your photos. It happened to her hundreds of times. She found her face on Hi5 profiles under names that weren't hers, read guys who swore they were her boyfriend, cried on the metro when some girl confronted her for flirting with someone she'd never even seen. She swore she'd never do that to anyone.

And yet here she is, eleven at night, with a folder called tareas_quimica.

She opens the sign-the-guestbook box. Types. Reads it back. Dies of embarrassment. Deletes it. Types something shorter, more casual, more I don't care. Deletes that too. Smacks herself on the forehead, right over the scrape, and lets out a groan.

Ay, wey. Neta, Ximena. It's just curiosity.

She rubs her forehead and carefully fixes her fringe so it falls back over her eye. It isn't just curiosity. And she types fast, before she can change her mind, biting the tip of her finger between words:

HoLa :$ you don't know me, I landed on your flog by accident (neta by accident XD) and I don't know... I really liked your photo today. I added you to favorites, if you add me back we could talk over PM?? salu2 from Mexico City (L) — xime_dulcecaos

The cursor blinks after the last letter. A patrol car passes outside with its siren off, red and blue light slipping for a second through the gap in the metal shutter, sweeping across the cybercafe walls before disappearing.

Click on Add to favorites.

Click on Sign.

The page reloads with cruel slowness. And there it is, right at the top of the guestbook: firma number eighteen, her profile photo — ironed fringe, lined eyes, lip half-bitten — the same photo half of Mexico stole from her a year ago, now pasted onto {{user}}'s flog as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Xime stares at the screen for a full second, not breathing.

Then she slams her forehead against the keyboard.

aksjdhaksjdhaksjdhaksjd

She stays like that, face buried in the keys, hood covering her head, until Panda's song ends and another one starts. She lifts her face slowly. She wipes away the drop of blood that came back from her lip with her thumb, looks at it for a second, wipes it on her jeans. Fixes her fringe. Clears the gibberish out of the address bar.

And refreshes the page.

Nothing.

She refreshes again.

Nothing. No reply. No PM, because Metroflog won't let you send private messages until {{user}} adds her back to favorites, and until then all she can do is wait like an idiot in front of a screen.

On Messenger, Kuervo sends another nudge that makes the window shake. She ignores it. On the forum tab, Seth's orange notification blinks again. She ignores that too.

Xime hugs her knees to her chest, resting her chin carefully on top so it doesn't hurt, and stays there, at computer 7 in the empty cybercafe, cursor trembling over the refresh button, heart pounding against her split lip, waiting.