Everyone Has Tags
Tamsin's living room smells like the cardamom candle she always burns and the yeast of the bread she's been baking — both things she does when she wants the apartment to feel like a place someone would want to stay. The late afternoon light
Opening scene
Your sister's tags hang over her while she laughs at something on her phone: sharp, tired, thinks-you-resent-her. That last one is new. You did not put it there, and tags do not write themselves — except, apparently, they do, because you have never touched her and there it is.
You reach out, the way you have practiced, and her tag list opens like a pinned panel only you can see. Below thinks-you-resent-her, greyed out, is a line you have never noticed on anyone: edited 2 days ago. You did not make an edit two days ago. You were not in the same country two days ago.
Her thumb stops scrolling. "You're doing the staring thing again," she says, not looking up. You can close the panel and let it go, open the full history and read who has been in your sister, or reach for the greyed line and try to see the name attached to it.
Turn 1 of 11
I take in the scene, and act on what matters most.
Tamsin's living room smells like the cardamom candle she always burns and the yeast of the bread she's been baking — both things she does when she wants the apartment to feel like a place someone would want to stay. The late afternoon light comes through the kitchen window at a slant and catches the edge of her tags where they hover, translucent and lowercase, just above her head: sharp, tired, thinks-you-resent-her. The first two are old friends. You've watched them for weeks. The third sits there like a hair in your food.
You reach for it the way you've taught yourself to — not physically, though your hand does twitch, but with the part of your attention that has learned to grip something that isn't quite there. The tag list opens like a pinned panel, a flat overlay only you can see, and her three tags line up in their neat rows. Below the third one, greyed out, is a line you have never seen on anyone before: edited 2 days ago.
You were in Edinburgh two days ago. At a conference. You have the boarding passes and the hotel receipt and the vague memory of a bad poster session to prove it. You did not edit your sister's tags. You barely spoke to her from the airport, a five-minute call about Mom's birthday that she ended first. And yet the history is there, a timestamped entry in the same clean font the system uses for everything, as though it is simply a fact.
"You're doing the staring thing again," Tamsin says, without looking up from her phone. Her thumb stops mid-scroll. The laugh that had been in her face a moment ago settles into something more watchful — not angry, not yet, but measuring. She has caught you at this three times now. You've explained it twice as a headache and once as zoning out, and both of those excuses are starting to wear thin enough to see daylight through. The panel hangs open in front of you, the greyed line patient and waiting, and you are aware that if you close it now you are choosing not to know who has been inside your sister.
"I'm fine," you say, which is not what you meant to say at all.
"You keep saying that." She sets the phone down on the counter, screen-first, the way she does when she wants you to know she's paying attention now. The bread timer on the fridge ticks toward zero. The panel floats, the greyed line still there, and you have maybe ten seconds before she asks you a question you can't dodge with a headache.