The ring light folded in three places. Marta leaned it against the wall beside the bookshelf and wiped the tripod clamp with the hem of her shirt. On the couch, Lucía pulled the mask up over her forehead like a visor, the beagle snout pointing at the ceiling.
“That was a good one,” Marta said.
Lucía scratched her jaw where the elastic had pressed. “Which part?”
“The bit where you stopped at the door. The hesitation.”
“I wasn’t hesitating. My knee hurt.”
Marta opened her mouth to speak, but stopped herself. She picked up the tripod and carried it to the hall closet. When she came back Lucía was at the table, textbook open, the mask set on the cushion beside her like something she’d been sitting with.
They ate pasta carbonara. Lucia’s favourite. Marta’s phone was face-up between them, and twice the screen lit with notifications she didn’t check. Lucía talked about a biology test, and Marta found herself asking the right questions. At one point Lucía reached across for the parmesan and her sleeve brushed the mask, nudging it toward the edge of the cushion.
Neither moved it back.
Before bed, Marta opened the app. Twelve hundred new followers since Thursday. She read three comments, then closed her phone, setting it on her nightstand, screen down. In the living room the ring light leaned where she’d left it, and the mask sat on the couch in the dark.
The ring light didn’t go back in the closet after Tuesday’s session. Marta propped it in the corner by the window where the afternoon light was best. It was easier. The mask had moved to the shelf above Lucía’s desk, between a jar of coloured pencils and a biology textbook with a cracked spine.
They filmed on Tuesdays and Saturdays now. Marta held the phone steady while Lucía worked the carpet in the hallway — down on all fours, the mask’s jaw clicking with a hinge she’d installed herself. A small mechanical sound, like a latch not catching. It didn’t appear on camera, but Marta knew it was there.
Afterward Lucía went to her room and Marta sat at the kitchen table. Marta watched the video once before opening the analytics.
She’d learned words for what she was looking at. Retention rate. The algorithm favoured videos under ninety seconds where the first three seconds contained movement.
Tuesdays performed better than Saturdays. Marta had a theory about Tuesdays. She hadn’t said it out loud.
She scrolled past the comments. Teenagers, mostly. Heart emojis, dog emojis, the word “queen” repeated in ways she didn’t entirely parse.
There was a message request from an account with no profile picture. Her thumb hovered over it for a second.
She didn’t open it. She set the phone face-down on the table and got up to make tea. While she waited for the water to boil, she leaned out of the window to take in the courtyard, four floors below. A woman was folding laundry on a drying rack, shaking each piece once before folding, and Marta watched her do this three times before the kettle clicked.
One cup. Lucía’s door was closed.
The second mask arrived in a box Lucía had ordered herself. Better made — the fur layered, the ears upright, the jaw hinge silent. She’d paid for it with birthday money. Marta watched her unbox it at the kitchen table, tissue paper spread across the surface, and said it looked good.
“The old one pulls to the left,” Lucía said. “You can see it in the last two videos.”
Marta hadn’t noticed. She wondered how many other people had.
She looked at the new mask in Lucía’s hands and tried to find her daughter’s face behind it, but the mask was on the table, and Lucía’s face was right there — unobstructed — examining the stitching along the jawline with the same intensity that she brought to her biology diagrams.
They filmed. Lucía came out of her room already wearing the hoodie Marta had bought — lavender, matching the colour of the banner on their account page. She hadn’t asked her to wear it. She’d left it folded on Lucía’s bed three days ago and here it was, absorbed without comment.
Lucía adjusted the hoodie once before Marta started recording.
After filming, Marta sat at the table. The analytics were open. The number at the top of the screen was larger than the population of the town where she’d grown up. There were more message requests now. A row of blank profile pictures, like passport photos that hadn’t been taken yet. She scrolled past them slowly, reading nothing, until her thumb stopped.
Four seconds. Maybe five.
She set the phone face-down on the table. She filled the kettle. She took two mugs from the cabinet and poured both cups. She carried one down the hall to Lucía’s door, which was open the width of a hand, and set it on the floor outside.
She could hear her inside. The small sounds of someone sitting on a bed, shifting weight. The creak of a page or a screen.
Marta went back to the kitchen.
She drank her tea. Down the hall, the cup sat on the floor outside the door that was open the width of a hand, and the steam rose for a while, and then it didn’t.