Who’s watching?

Cursor scrolls over twice. Pauses. Meg types into her phone. How to delete Netflix account? Wrong results. She types again. How to delete a Netflix user profile?

Go to “more.”

Go to “manage profiles.”

Select “delete.”

The little square with the Minion face vanishes. He would not know which episode of his Breaking Bad rerun he’d left off on. Meg swallows. Then she turns off the TV.

Two nights later: Hulu requests your login information.

She sets down the remote. She’d forgotten this one had been his.

Meg types into her phone. Hulu free trial?

She makes an account. She types in her credit card for when she forgets to cancel and Hulu charges her automatically. Was there money for another streaming service in the budget? She’d been on a money-saving stint, though the reflex stung, now, with nothing to save for.

Three online dating apps download onto her phone. Three usernames, three passwords, the same profile pic for each. Scroll back two months in the camera roll: Dorneyville, 1:42 p.m. She changes the filter to Dramatic Warm.

Fill in required fields. Allentown, Pennsylvania, age 32. Looking for...looking for what? Something to fill in the gaps, like calk in a ceiling crack. Like drywall after her mother’s chimney leak in 2017.

Text from Mom, last night, 7:31 p.m. There’s plenty of other fish in the sea.

Scroll back two months in the camera roll. Photos of Ireland: a thumbs up in a poncho outside of a bar, a half-filled Guinness, the wing of a plane through a rain-blurred window.

Her personal Gmail account climbs with messages. Sephora, American Eagle, Sallie Mae. Buried in the debris is an email from him, 3:42 a.m. on a Saturday, when he was still in Ireland for work. His last message to her. Connected to that email is a draft of her response, typed and then backspaced and then never sent. Her actual response lingers in their old text thread, glows green like a week-old bruise: I got your email. That sounds fine.

A notification from her period tracking app. Due in two days. An Apple Wallet charge for $16.93: organic tampons, ibuprofen. Six months ago in her phone search history: how to track ovulation? Best vitamins for pregnancy preparation? Best school districts in Allentown, PA?

Scroll back through two months of the camera roll. That selfie she’d taken in Dorneyville, holding up an orange-vanilla twist in a cone. The amusement park across the street reflected in the window behind her: big, looping rollercoasters framing her profile. He knew this was where she went whenever she felt down. Her text to him then, from the bench in the parking lot of Ice Cream World: I miss you.

On July 11^th her inbox floods with more messages. Happy birthday! From American Airlines (the international tickets she’d bought slept unused in her Archived folder), from Wells Fargo (she’d applied to be pre-approved for a mortgage last month), from Bass Pro (the fishing gear she’d bought him two years ago was left in the apartment).

Text from Mom, 6:33 a.m. A unicorn emoji with star eyes. Can’t believe my baby is 33. Have a great day!!!!

Eight Facebook notifications. People posting one-lined, all lowercase well wishes on her wall. She sees her profile pic still has him in it and deletes the app off her phone.

At work her phone lights up with the IT guy’s number. He takes over her work laptop from his office miles away. She watches the cursor move without her touching anything. He gets to the login page for her work account.

“What was your last password?”

It’s still his name, and her throat narrows, and she hopes that Jeremy cannot hear it. She watches the cursor click “reset password.” A list of rules appears.

Password must be at least seven characters

Must contain at least two numbers and two special characters

Cannot be a person’s name

Cannot be an email

Cannot be a previously used password

Meg begins to cry into the phone.

Jeremy stutters. “Are—are you OK?”

“Yeah—I’m just—god, I’m so sorry.” She wipes her cheeks with her palms. “I just went through a breakup and...there’s just—there’s been a lot of username and password changes, I guess. I’m sorry.”

“...Should I call back at another time?”

“No—it’s OK. I really want to get this fixed. So, I don’t—you know, so I don’t get locked out of my work account.”

Jeremy clears his throat. “Sure thing.” He pauses. “Do you have a new password to use?”

“Yeah.” She spells it to him. “IceCreamWorld asterisk asterisk seven eleven.”

“That’s funny,” he says, and she watches him type it on the screen. “I used to go to that place all the time as a kid.”

“Across from Dorney Park?”

“Yeah. We could never afford the actual amusement park, so we’d just sit across the street with dollar soft serve and watch the roller coasters. I remember you could hear—”

“The screams from across the street, yeah.”

There is a pause, a lump of nostalgia in her throat, and she could sense, though she could not see him, that he is smiling.

Her eyes flutter, clearing the tears from a few minutes prior. She watches as her new login is accepted, and her screen returns to normal, and Jeremy cedes his virtual hold of her desktop.

“Did you have any other questions? Anything else I could help you with?”

She thinks of the twenty-five thousand in her savings account. She thinks of the email from Wells Fargo saying she’d been pre-approved for a mortgage. She thinks of the email from her landlord asking if she was renewing the lease. So many plans had been made, her life mapped out like a Monopoly board, and now, with the snap of fingers, it was over.

“No—no, I’m good, thanks.”

“I hope...you have a good rest of your day,”

“You too.”

Scroll two months forward. Her personal email account climbs with different messages. American Airlines tickets to Barcelona for her and her mom, the Ireland tickets exchanged for an October girls’ trip. Paws of Love letting her know she’d been accepted as a dog shelter volunteer. And her realtor, Roberta, letting her know the closing date of her new house. Life goes on. She is trying.

She sits on the bench outside of Ice Cream World. Summer is settling now, end of September. The green leaves of the valley hills are fading; there’s a smoke scent in the air. Dorney Park is only open now on weekends until Fright Night on Halloween. She watches the riders climb up the tall, red roller coaster, a simple arch along the horizon line, then she watches them free fall down the other side. She can hear their screams from across the street.

She watches a man leave the shop, rainbow-sprinkled soft serve in one hand and his phone in the other. He holds up the phone, he snaps a shot of the park. Meg’s phone buzzes in her lap. She looks down and sees the photo, captioned, Reminds me of Dad.

She blinks. Then she stands, moves toward the man who somehow has sent this text to her.

“Hi,” she says, out of breath from her hurried walk. “I think you sent that to the wrong number.”

The man stares at her. He has a preemptively receding hairline, wire-rimmed glasses, cargo shorts. “Shit,” he says, like he is embarrassed but also like he can’t believe his luck. “I meant to send that to my sister. Her name is also Meg? But you’re...Meg from work.”

Meg swallows, and suddenly it makes sense how this man has her number. Their call from two months ago, the lump of nostalgia in her throat.

They both smile, calm now. The man holds out a hand, tentative.

“Jeremy,” he says. “From IT.”

Meg takes his offer, and their first touch is clumsy, makes her cheeks flush red.

Jeremy pushes up his glasses, and Meg somehow knows what he will say even before he says it, and this makes her grin. With only the park across the street, it feels like the whole horizon is open.

“How are your passwords?”