she pressed post.
it was 4 AM. she had nine squares. she captioned each one. then she posted them all at once.
scene 1 — the upload
new account. handle @bad.apple.receipts. avatar: just a black square. bio: "every receipt. every timestamp. no commentary." she uploads nine. the screenshots she's been collecting for eleven days. she captions each one in her own voice:
$47.50 RECURRING
nine months
airdrop · 9:47pm
from a "friend"
SOMA post
from inside her place
strava gap
9pm-1am tuesdays
folsom · brunch
every other sunday
the rooftop
🍌🍓🍋 (six months ago)
lemon's $0
"thx for keeping it"
private folder
gps 2104 folsom
pulse overlap
3 weeks of
she posts at 4:03 AM. she sets the phone face down. she lays on the bathroom floor. it is cold and she does not get up.
scene 2 — by morning
9 AM. she opens the account. three thousand followers. the top comment is "oh my GOD which one of you is this." the second is "i KNEW it." the third is from someone with 400k followers she has never heard of: "reposting with permission?" she taps yes without thinking.
she does not respond. she screenshots the dms. she posts them as tile 10.
scene 3 — the week after
banana's interview at the firm: "we've decided to go in a different direction." strawberry's brand deals: three sponsors quietly delete their tagged posts. one issues a statement. she goes private and changes her handle. the friend group splits 6-2. mango stops responding. lemon blocks her on bowl, on imessage, on signal, on everything. lemon doesn't even say goodbye. she just disappears.
plum sends seven heart emojis. apple does not respond. plum was never her friend.
scene 4 — two months later
apple is alone. her own bowl is private now too. she has not spoken to lemon in 47 days. she has not been invited anywhere in 53. her mother called once and she didn't pick up. her therapist asks her how she's feeling and she says "fine." she pays $90 to lie to her therapist.
the account hit 80k. there's a new media subreddit dedicated to it. someone made a video essay. someone wrote a substack. someone got the receipts wrong and apple corrected them in the comments and that comment has 14k likes. she opens the analytics tab every morning. she watches the follower count climb. she tells herself "this is justice." she says it out loud sometimes. it sounds, every time, slightly less true.