Chapter 7: The Video They Didn't Know I Had
The rice was still in the bowl when I got home. My roommate Jen had dumped a whole box of instant white into our biggest mixing bowl and left it on the counter with a sticky note that said DON'T TOUCH TILL MORNING.
I didn't listen.
My leg throbbed under the bandage, a deep pulsing ache that got worse every time I put weight on it. I was in borrowed sweatpants Jen had cut up the side to fit over the gauze. My actual uniform was in a trash bag by the door, still damp and smelling like fountain water and copper. I'd taken three ibuprofen in the ER and they hadn't touched it.
"You're supposed to leave it twelve hours," Jen said from the doorway. She was in her scrubs, just off her shift at the clinic.
"I know," I said. My hand hovered over the bowl. "I can't wait twelve hours."
She came over and stood next to me. "Maya, if there's water inside it'll fry itself if you turn it on too soon."
"It's a waterproof pocket for a reason," I said. "The vest is supposed to keep it dry even if I go under."
I pushed the rice aside and found it. My old iPhone, the one with the cracked corner I kept because the CaterCo app only worked right on it. I had started recording before I picked up the tray. I always did on those estate galas, ever since Mrs. Abernathy in the kitchen told me to keep something running if I was assigned to the heiress's terrace.
I wiped the grains off on Jen's dish towel and held the power button.
The screen stayed black for a second too long. Then the apple showed up.
Jen exhaled. "Okay. Okay, it's alive."
I sat down at our kitchen table and pulled my leg up on the other chair. The video app was still open. The last file said 18:42, 00:34 seconds. I pressed play with my thumb and turned the volume all the way up.
At first there was just noise. Clinking glass, wind, my own breathing close to the mic inside the vest. Then the orchestra, that low suspenseful stuff they played over the terrace speakers.
And then movement. The phone had been sideways in my pocket, so the image was dark fabric and then a wild swing as I fell. You couldn't see much — a blur of white marble, the sky tilting, then water hitting the lens.
But the audio was clearer.
I heard my own gasp as I went backward. A scrape of a shoe on stone. And underneath it, a laugh. Short, bright, surprised.
Then a voice, a woman's voice, very close to the mic, saying something I couldn't make out at first because of the splash.
I played it again. Louder this time.
Jen leaned in.
On the second play, I heard it. Right at the moment my shoulder hit the rim — a footstep, a soft thud against my ankle, and that laugh overlapping the splash. It wasn't after I fell. It was during.
"Stop it there," Jen said. "Play that three seconds again."
I did. We both heard it. The shoe against my shoe. Not a stumble. A push.
I paused it and the last frame froze on nothing — just blue water and my black vest filling the screen, shaking hard.
"It's not clear," I said. My throat was dry. "You can't see her face. You can't even see the foot, really. It's just a shadow and a sound."
Jen rewound it a third time. "But you hear her. That's her laughing while you're falling. That's not someone feeling bad for you."
I nodded. The quality was terrible. The lens had been covered half the time, the autofocus hunting, water droplets blowing out the exposure. If I showed this to anyone who wasn't already listening for it, they'd say I imagined the footstep. They'd say the laugh was someone else, or I was hearing things over the music.
It wasn't enough. Not by itself.
"I need to save it before it gets corrupted," I said. I unlocked my laptop and plugged the phone in with my cracked charging cable. My hands were shaking a little and Jen put her hand on my shoulder without saying anything.
I dragged the file onto my desktop and renamed it 2026-09-28_1842_terrace.MOV. Then I opened my cloud drive and uploaded it. The bar moved slow on our apartment wifi. While it uploaded I found a blank USB stick from my drawer — the one I used for my pay stubs — and copied it there too.
Jen watched me type. I opened a note and wrote: "Maya Reyes, CaterCo server, Estate terrace gala, approx 6:42pm, phone in left vest waterproof pocket recording continuously, fell into fountain after contact with foot/ankle, retrieved phone approx 10:15pm, uploaded 11:03pm." I added the file size, the length, the phone model.
"You're logging it like evidence," she said.
"I have to," I said. "If they say I edited it, I need to show when I saved it."
The upload finished. I ejected the USB and handed it to her.
"Put this in your locker at work," I said. "Just in case."
She slipped it into her scrub pocket. "What did they think you had in that pocket tonight? When you reached for it in the water?"
I looked down at my bandaged leg. The throbbing had gotten sharper while I sat still.
"They thought I was grabbing for my phone," I said. "They were right. They just didn't know it was already recording."
Jen turned the volume down. The frozen image was still on my screen, all water and shadow.
"It's something," she said. "But it's not a face, Maya."
"I know," I said. "I need the terrace camera. Without that, this is just me saying I was tripped and her saying I clumsy-carried a tray I was too small to carry."
May you like
I hit save on the note and closed the laptop. The phone buzzed once on the table — a text from CaterCo scheduling asking if I could still cover Sunday brunch.
I didn't answer it. I sat there with my leg up and listened to the apartment fridge hum, and played those three seconds one more time just to make sure I hadn't imagined the laugh.
