ONE LIKE
Stephanie lay in bed, too much chatter in her head to sleep. The kids. Alex. Where was it all going?
She couldn’t seem to get the gears to engage. She felt like a passive observer, swept along in the momentum of life around her.
She picked up her phone to make sure the alarm was set. She needed to prep for her superstring lecture early before she woke the kids. Never enough time.
The Instagram icon, kind of a cute animated version of an old Kodak Instamatic, had a red one on it. She remembered the notification and opened it.
She clicked on the heart icon to see current activity and there it was.
Jordanparrish99 liked your picture.
Goose bumps sprang up on her arms and the back of her neck and she felt a chill run through her entire body. It reminded her of one of those silly horror movies when a ghost passes through someone. She felt her throat tighten. She clicked on the picture. Her and the kids on the beach in Hawaii. The only picture she’d ever gotten around to uploading. She and Jordan had signed up when Sophie had become an obsessive Instagrammer.
Obviously it was a mistake, either an ancient “like” that got stuck in electronic limbo and suddenly resurfaced or, more likely, a side effect of some old email address getting hacked by spammers. Still, she couldn’t shake the ridiculous thought that it was somehow Jordan’s ghost reaching out from the ether.
“Stupid,” she whispered out loud as she logged out of the app and rechecked the alarm. She clicked off the screen and pulled the comforter up under her chin.
She didn’t fall asleep until the first gray light was already glimmering sullenly around the edges of the curtains.