Mr. Vega asked us to come to the media room on Thursday after school. He had finished the school record of the leak: the export log, the public caption, Ash’s admission, and the short excerpt the student account had used. That excerpt would stay in a restricted conduct file. It did not include the full original recording of Eli, which had never been on a school computer.
Wren and Eli arrived together. I brought the black backup drive and my laptop. Mr. Vega showed us the old media-club folder without playing anything. The rough cut still sat under my name. He had removed access from the project and made sure the school had the evidence it needed. Now he selected the rough cut, deleted it from the club archive, and checked that it was gone from the ordinary shared folder. He told us the restricted record could not be used for a film or a class project.
“How long does the school keep the record?” Eli asked.
“Through graduation and the following school year, under the district’s conduct-record rule,” Mr. Vega said. “Then the records office reviews it for removal. Here’s the written policy and the records clerk’s address if you want to ask for that review date yourself. I can’t promise copies on other people’s phones are gone.” He slid the page to Eli and Wren. “The excerpt we keep is the short piece that was posted, not the full recording of you at the river. Only staff handling the case can open it. It isn’t in the media-club archive.”
Eli asked him to put that distinction in the case record. Mr. Vega added it while we watched. Wren read the line before we went on.
I couldn’t make the copies on other people’s phones vanish. The gossip account had taken down its original post and put up a correction, but I knew a few students had saved the clip. What I could do here was stop our own archive from giving anyone new access and stop pretending my private backup was something I needed for art.
“And the home file?” Wren asked me.
I plugged in the drive. The folder opened to the summer we were fifteen. Before we came, I had checked my laptop’s edit and preview folders, trash, and the active project drive again with Ms. Cho. The temporary copies I’d cleared on Wednesday were still gone. I had never synced the river file to my phone or a cloud account; the camera card had been reused long ago. Until Mr. Vega removed the school rough cut, that and the home original had been the two remaining copies we controlled. I pointed to the original file without opening it. Eli leaned forward just enough to read the name and date.
“That’s it,” he said.
I deleted the river-outing file and emptied the trash on the laptop. Wren asked me to check the drive again. I did. The file was gone. Other summer videos remained: a bakery picnic from that August and a rainy-day game at my house. They were different afternoons. I showed her the dates without opening them. Wren had asked me to delete every copy of the river day, not every trace of that summer.
“I don’t have another copy,” I said. “I can’t erase what other people saved from the post. I can tell you what I controlled, and it’s gone.”
Wren looked at the empty space where the file had been. “That’s what I asked for.”
Eli took his hand off the table. “Thank you for doing it with us here.”
“I should have done it two years ago.”
“Yes,” Wren said.
She said it without trying to hurt me. I had earned the answer. We signed Mr. Vega’s short record that the club copy was removed after he secured the school evidence, then left the room. Eli had rehearsal, so he went toward the auditorium. Wren went to the pool for orientation. I walked to Mom’s kiosk with the empty backup drive in my bag. It held other summers, but not that one minute.
On Monday, Bellwether answered my aid request. They offered enough to cover part of the course, not all of it. Mom and I sat at the kitchen table with the letter, my Sunday shift schedule, and the freezer receipt. The new fan had been quiet all week. We added the aid, what I could earn, and the deposit she’d already paid. There was still a gap, but the course offered two installments. With an extra morning at the kiosk each week, I could cover them before the final date.
Mom looked at the course list. “They teach interviews in the second week.”
“I saw.”
“You still want to make films?” she asked.
“Yes. I miss working on Tessa’s cut. I don’t miss trying to decide what Wren and Eli should let me show.”
She touched the edge of the aid letter. “Then learn the part you don’t know yet. That’s what the course is for.”
I nodded. It was the first time we’d spoken about the course without treating it as a prize or a bill. I wanted to be better at the work itself, and I had paid for some of that learning in ways the form couldn’t list.
“You’re sure you want those mornings?” Mom asked.
“I wanted the course before I wanted the award. Yes.”
She drew a line under the total. “Then we’ll enroll you.”
We did it at the table. The confirmation gave me a place in the summer class and a schedule for the first payment. It did not erase the money we’d spent or give Mom back her winter. I would work the mornings and take the bus to Bellwether when the course began. The plan fit on one page, and this time both of us had seen every number before we agreed.
That evening I went to meet Wren by the pool. The summer placement would begin in June, after school ended, but the program was running spring orientation sessions now. She had finished a practice safety lesson for younger teens and was locking the equipment shed. Her new program shirt was folded in her bag; she still wore the old blue pool one, damp at the collar. She waved when she saw me, then took her time checking the padlock.
“How was orientation?” I asked.
“A kid asked if fish can read our warning signs. I said no, and he wanted to know why we bother putting them up.”
“That seems fair.”
“I told him people are the ones who keep going past them.” She started walking toward the river path. “He said fish are smarter than people.”
“Also fair.”
We took the upper route she had chosen for her assessment. The red ribbons were gone. She no longer needed them to know where to turn. Near the bench, she stopped and watched two younger children race their bicycles on the safe side of the rail. Their mother called them back when they got too far ahead. They slowed, complained, and waited for her.
“I keep thinking about that old sign at the hardware store,” Wren said. “The wet-paint one with the fingerprint.”
“I saw it last week. They covered the print with paper, but you can still see the blue edge.”
“We used to collect those.”
“You did. I supplied half of them.”
“You supplied the blurry half.”
I laughed. She did too, for a second. Then she sat on the bench and made room for me at the far end.
“I don’t want to pretend we can go back,” she said. “I still get angry when I think about asking you to delete it and hearing you say yes.”
“You can be angry.”
“I know. I don’t need permission.” She looked down at her hands. “I also don’t want every conversation we have to be about that day.”
“Neither do I.”
“Then come to the market Saturday. We can look for bad signs and get lunch. One afternoon. If it feels strange, we can go home.”
“I’d like that.”
“Don’t bring a camera.”
“I won’t.”
She studied me, then nodded. She had offered an ordinary afternoon, not the old friendship returned in a single sentence. It was enough for me to say yes to the afternoon and let the rest stay open.
We walked back toward the ferry landing as the shops began turning on their lights. Mom would be closing the kiosk. Eli was at the auditorium, finishing the sound for a play I had promised to see. Tessa’s film had already been shown, and the town was busy making tomorrow without any of us directing it.
At the crossing, I felt my phone in my pocket. There was a shot I would once have stopped for: Wren in her blue shirt under the streetlamp, the river behind her, Mom lifting the kiosk shutter down in the distance. I left the phone where it was. The light changed, and Wren and I crossed with everyone else.