"Make a wish, Sarah!" someone shouted over the muffled bass of a song Elias hadn't heard in years.
She closed her eyes, took a breath, and blew. The smoke swirled, the screen went black, and the video looped back to the beginning. VID-20200104-WA0003.mp4
Sarah leaned in, her face illuminated by twenty-four tiny, flickering flames. She looked younger—not in years, but in the way her shoulders sat, light and unburdened. She didn't know that in two months, she’d be stuck in that same flat for ninety days. She didn't know that the friend laughing on the left would move across the ocean and never call, or that the person filming—Elias himself—would eventually lose this phone in a taxi and only find the footage years later in a cloud backup. "Make a wish, Sarah
The video was shaky, filmed in the low, amber light of a crowded basement flat. In the frame, three people were huddled around a cake that looked more like a structural hazard than a dessert. It was his sister’s 24th birthday. Sarah leaned in, her face illuminated by twenty-four