Page 72 of Runaways

The bell above the door dings. "Welcome to Poplar Café," I tell the man. "You can grab a seat wherever you'd like, and I'll be right with you."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Jodie asks.

"Absolutely not. I just want to do my job, and then I want to wake up tomorrow to a normal day where no one knows me or cares about anything I did. And they don't take my fucking picture."

Grabbing a menu and a pot of coffee, I approach the man who just walked in. "I'm Lilah, and I'll be your server today. Can I start you off with some coffee?"

"Hey, you saved that girl, right?" a woman behind him says. "Do you mind if I take your picture?"

The rest of my shift went by normally, for the most part. Only one other person asked if they could take my picture, to which I also declined, and sometime before the seven hours elapsed, my heart rate slowed, and I felt stupid about my full-blown meltdown.

"Hey, Lilah," my coworker, Zoey, says as she passes me on her way to the back room. "Guess what?"

"You're late," I say, signing out of the cash register. "And the register was short again yesterday, so Jodie asked me to tell you to make sure you're reconciling the drawer at the end of your shifts."

"Okay, Jodie-lite. Calm down."

"Whatever. Text me if you have any problems closing. If there's anyone still lingering in the dining room after midnight, tell Gabriel. He'll get rid of them for you."

"You're no fun," Zoey says. "You didn't even guess, so I'll tell you—you've gone viral. See?" A video of me in the street earlier plays on her phone's screen. "Congratulations."

"What?" I ask. "What do you mean,I've gone viral?"

"Oh, right. You're too cool for social media. Viral is when—"

"No, I know what viral means!" I say, snatching the phone from her hand.

Six million views. It looks like it was uploaded from the security camera at the boutique across the street, so the quality is poor, and you can only see my face for a few seconds.

"Okay. I mean, that's not really that bad, is it?" I accidentally say aloud.

"I mean, you look okay in it," Zoey says.

She's lying. Her voice does that thing where it goes up at the end, but that's not what I mean.

"No one looks good when they're making a surprised face like that," she continues. "And I'm going to assume you save your nicer tops for when you aren't working, but you really never know when you're going to get caught out like this, so that's something you should think about."

"What? No, I mean…six million isn't that many, right? And you can barely tell it's me."

Zoey shrugs. "Six million is twice the population of Chicago, but sure. It's not the only one, either."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, that's the one with the most views because it captured the incident, but there are more photos and videos from the aftermath, too." She takes the phone back, and I watch as she typesWinter Falls car accidentinto the search bar.

Six different stills populate on her screen.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

"In this one, you're not making that face, but your hair looks a little frizzy."

"God fucking damn it!" I yell, kicking the lockers. "Fuck!"

"Um, are you—"

"Just leave me the fuck alone, Zoey."

"Well, you don't have to be such a bitch about it. It's not like I—"

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