Chapter 7: Which Wrist

"I'm so happy you're well enough to come," Paulina said again, with tears on her cheeks.

Eighty phones pointed at Lucia's gauze mask.

"I'm well enough," Lucia said.

She walked down two steps until she stood level with Paulina, and she looked at the wrist.

A hard blue brace wrapped Paulina's left hand from the knuckles to the elbow.

"That looks painful," Lucia said. "Is it the left one that's broken?"

"You know it is," Paulina said, and her voice trembled for the crowd. "You did this to me."

"Show everyone," Lucia said. "Raise it."

Paulina lifted her left arm slowly, for the cameras.

"That's the arm you're filming with," Lucia said.

Paulina went still.

In her right hand the ring light was clamped to her phone, with the lens pointed at Lucia's face.

In her left, braced and bandaged, she held a coffee.

"You've held that coffee for ten minutes," a boy in the crowd said slowly.

Somebody laughed, a nervous snort that ran along the front row.

"It's my good wrist," Paulina said. "I mean the other one. I mean..."

"Which wrist is broken?" Lucia asked.

"The left! It's the left!"

"Then explain why you landed on your right arm in the video," Lucia said.

Paulina's mouth opened.

The ring light shook.

Fifteen thousand people were watching her live, and the comments scrolling beside her face had changed.

A girl at the back shouted, "Look at her left hand!" and then half the quad was shouting it.

Paulina lowered the phone, and the stream cut off.

She ran for the dorms, and nobody followed her.

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