Once alone, Karyn collapsed onto her pillow, and brought her phone up to her face. She unlocked the device, and found herself opening up her messages.
She scrolled through the conversations, skimming them as she went. She didn't really need to read all of them. Glancing at each one sparked a recollection. Yes, she'd had that conversation with Melissa last week. And she could remember feeling a bit naughty when she was sexting with Biff. And she definitely remembered the feeling of disgust when frigging Steve tried to slide into her DMs. There was a chat with Mrs. Stoneman about a history report. A chat with Coach Barry about scheduling practices. The more she scrolled, the more she seemed to remember.
After a few minutes, she closed messages and looked at her contacts. A quick scroll through the few hundred names there, and she realized she could put a face to every one. Ginny Cotton. Fred Orr. Talia Beckers. Seeing each name seemed to fill a small bit of the hole that she'd been feeling since she gave Lucy that phone.
Her next stop was browsing through the file folders. She found the music folder, full of recent pop hits and Jennifer Lopez's entire catalogue. This made sense. Yes. Karyn couldn't understand the songs that were in Spanish, but there was not a single song J-Lo had ever produced that wasn't just danceable on a primal level, Karyn remembered telling somebody once.
Downloads folder. There was a .pdf of an application for a local modeling agency. Karyn could remember filling it out the previous week, but she hadn't heard back yet. There were some memes about cheerleading, and Karyn lightly chucked at the memory of saving them to her phone. There were some digital report cards. Yes, she remembered getting those grades.
Finally, Karyn turned to her photos. And here was where the memories began flooding in. The trip to the Bahamas. Going to see the ballet. The sleepover at Melissa's house. The sleepover at Melody's house. The sleepover at her own house.
Karyn felt a slight headache coming on. There was something wrong about the sleepover at her own house. Why didn't that look like her bedroom. This was her bedroom. She knew that for certain above all else. Why did the bedroom in these pictures look different?
Karyn didn't like this feeling. She moved on.
There were pictures of the time she and the girls told their parents they were going to a movie, and went to a night club instead. There were pictures of the beach. Pictures of school. Of football games. A lot of pictures of Biff.
And then there were the selfies. And these gave Karyn a headache, too. Because the girl in the selfies, she was wearing Karyn's clothes, Karyn could recognize every outfit. And she had Karyn's hair. It was styled just like Karyn would style it. And she was in places that Karyn remembered being. But her face was unfamiliar.
Who was the girl in all of Karyn's photos? She'd have to figure it out later. Maybe she really wasn't feeling well, after all. Karyn put down her phone and shut her eyes to try to rest.
At the very least, reminding herself of her conversations, her contacts, and her memories had left her feeling a little bit better. A little bit more sure of herself.
