She put the phone down. She looked at her laptop screen, paused on a frame of her own face mid-laugh at a campus comedy show. The caption underneath read: "How to survive syllabus week (it's giving chaos)."
For the first time, she felt hollow.
Her roommate Priya stuck her head over the top bunk. "You know what's not a movie? The fact that the heat is broken again, and I can see my breath." She put the phone down
She thought about the actual college entertainment she consumed that wasn't for content. The way she and Priya had screamed at the season finale of The Last of Us . The stupid, non-shareable joy of watching Love Island at 2 a.m. while eating ramen straight from the pot. The way her friend Leo had made her laugh so hard during a Mario Kart race that she’d forgotten to record the winning moment. Her roommate Priya stuck her head over the top bunk
Then she reopened her editing software. She deleted the past ten minutes of voiceover. She started fresh. The way she and Priya had screamed at
"Content," Maya whispered, pointing her phone at Priya’s frosty exhale. Priya threw a pillow at her.