Isa didn’t realize at first that she was getting notifications. She thought her phone was ringing, since she had it on silent usually. In her half awake state, she tried to answer it. Seeing that wasn’t the case, her half asleep brain decided the best course of action was to turn it off.

Which meant that she jolted awake a few hours later, by Jerri yowling as if she hadn’t been fed in a thousand years. She groaned slightly, then picked up her phone to check the time. After waiting for the eternity of the startup sequence, she confronted the inevitable.

She was late for work.

But instead of rushing around, she sat on her bed and stared at the phone, filling with notifications from usernames she had never seen before.

She had never gotten more than maybe thirty or forty likes on any posts. Maybe something like a hundred during for her graduation. But this post already had over five hundred likes, and they kept coming. And so many comments. There was also new followers and the like count growing on some of her older pictures as well.

It was a nice picture, but not worth the attention. She looked at it again, trying to see if there was anything unusual about it. Trying to see the mask, but of course it wasn’t there.

She hadn’t ever made her Instagram private because she was mostly connected to her friends and some science meme accounts.

Should she make it private? At least, for now? That would be wisest until she figured out what was going on.

She navigated to the setting and…

Jerri head butted her leg, and meowed.

“Okay sweet girl, let’s get you taken care of first.”

Isa called in sick for work and spent the morning archiving a bunch of her old posts. Some of her new followers had started going into her timeline and interacting with her old posts. Thankfully, her Instagram was mostly the same boring stuff everyone posted. Travel, food, her cat, the usual. She mostly archived awkward selfies and boring pictures with cringy captions. And, what should have been most important, she hid the ones with other people. Whatever was going on, she didn’t want them being pulled into it.

She saw what happened with Arjun and Kassie, and she didn’t want anyone else to face negative consequences. And besides, not everyone wanted to be in the spotlight.

She put on some makeup, just a little more than the usual light amount she usually put on. She found a cute dress that she liked but never wore.

It would be an experiment. Would the next photo be so popular?

She held up her camera and tried to find a cute spot in her place. But it was all little piles of clutter and mismatching furniture (but not in the cute way).

She then realized how hungry she was. It was already past 11 and she hadn’t had breakfast. The coffee waffle bar would be a perfect place for a cute picture!

It was a bit too cold and rainy for what she was wearing, so she was shivering slightly as she entered the warm relief of the coffeeshop. She looked around, but no one paid any special attention to her. No free waffles or awestruck baristas. The nutella waffle was divine though, so the trip was definitely worth it. Isa ate about half of it before she remembered to take a photo.

There was no way a half devoured waffle would make a good picture. So she finished it instead and ordered another latte.

She cleared off her table, and sat with the new untouched latte. She took out her phone and checked her notifications on Instagram. She started to skim them, but then stopped and closed the app. All the comments were positive, telling her that she was gorgeous and amazing. Yet, after a few minutes she couldn’t keep reading them. It was just the same thing over and over.

She checked her texts, but there was nothing unusual there. Nothing from Kassie or Arjun. Maybe she should tell them what’s going on? None of her other friends or family seemed to have noticed her newfound virality.

She opened the camera app and took a picture of the coffee mug next to the window, with the grey street outside blurred.

She turned on the front facing camera to take a couple selfies. When she looked over them, without the coaching of Kassie and the jokes from Arjun, the pictures all looked stiff and unnatural. Did she always look like that in selfies?

She put the phone down and drank the latte.

The mask was obviously the cause of the picture going viral. The whole thing was too weird for that not to be the case.

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All her energy of the early morning was gone.

She sighed and opened Instagram again. She scrolled through her pictures, then posted the picture of the coffee cup.

It could be an experiment. Does it have to be a photo of her face? Would anything she posted have the same reaction?

She would have to do some research on how magic worked. Too bad she didn't have access to the academic library anymore.

Maybe Arjun found something in his mad midnight research.

She sighed deeply, steeling herself to go outside again. She felt ridiculous for wearing the dress in this weather. For wearing it at all. She needed to let her boss know she was “feeling better” and go to work.

She touched her face where the mask had been, trying to feel it under her skin, but nothing was there.

Isa spent most of the afternoon prepping her samples for analysis. Again, work seemed pretty normal. One of her co-workers had brought in a new coffee maker for their section of the office, but that just felt like ordinary good luck.

Isa was taking her notes at the end up the day, when her boss, Marlene came by her desk.

“Isa, can you please come to my office for a moment when you finish what you are doing?” Marlene smiled, “Don’t worry, it’s good news.”

Isa wouldn’t be able to concentrate until she knew what was going on. The reassurance that it was good news did not help the sinking feeling in her stomach.

She followed Marlene, and made small talk about plans for the weekend. Isa didn’t have any, but Marlene was going camping with her husband and two kids.

When they arrived in the book filled office, with stacks of paper on the desk, Marlene sat down and Isa sat across from her.

“I have good news for you, we got an increase in our funding. You have been doing such good work that I am able to give you a raise! It will be two thousand more per year,” said Marlene, and she was smiling broadly.

Isa smiled as well, but it felt forced. The raise was fantastic, of course. But it was sudden, not tied to a performance review, and a funding increase in the early fall seemed weird too.

“Thanks so much!” Isa said, trying to infuse gratitude and enthusiasm into her voice.

Marlene seemed not to notice, and was beaming, “Well, that’s all I have for you, I’m sure you want to get your things packed up and head out for the day.”

“Yes, thanks, I do have a couple more notes I want to finish up,” Isa said, and left. She checked her phone, but didn’t look at Instagram. She saw a couple of texts from Kassie and Arjun, making plans to help Kassie clean after work.

Isa felt a bolt of guilt, she totally forgot that Kassie’s apartment was still a mess. She quickly agreed to come help again.

Arjun was already there when Isa arrived. They were working on the living room and getting all the books sorted out again.

“So did they find anything out?” Isa asked as she started sorting the books by color. Kassie was artfully arraigning them on the shelves in a sort of gradient. Kassie mostly bought books because she was interested in them, but Isa suspected at least some of them were bought for aesthetic.

“Yeah, the apartment’s security cameras caught the culprit. It was a guy I went on a date with a week ago. I still had his number saved, though I didn’t know his last name.”

“Did you break his heart really badly or something?” asked Arjun.

“I don’t think so, it was just a normal coffee date and then neither of us tried to contact each other after. One of those mutual ghosting things,” Kassie shrugged.

“That’s super creepy that he figured out where you live,” said Isa.

“Tell me about it. I deleted my profile on the app,” said Kassie.

She seemed calm, but Isa knew she was probably pretty shaken. Kassie rarely showed how much things bothered her.

Kassie continued, “Also, my parents are totally freaking out and want me to move back home with them.”

“Will you?” Arjun asked, raising an eyebrow.

“We found a compromise; I’m going to move to a new place and get a security system installed. They’re already paying for me to stay in a hotel this week,” Kassie sighed deeply.

It occurred to Isa that maybe they should be packing her stuff into moving boxes instead, but she didn’t say anything. She wondered if Kassie’s parents were richer than Kassie let on. It would have been tough for Isa’s family to support her in the same way.

“I have some bad news too,” Arjun said, “There was a crash in one of the crypto currencies I invested in.”

Kassie and Isa both looked at him.

“Yeah, yeah, I know it was risky, but I did a lot of research and it seemed really promising,” Arjun said, his voice flat.

“How much did you lose?” Isa asked, wondering if it was somehow a match to her raise.

“10K,” said Arjun, putting his face in his hands, “I haven’t sold it yet, but I’m pretty sure I got scammed.”

Kassie whistled low, and Isa swore.

There was a long pause.

“How about you Isa, anything interesting?” Kassie asked, as she got back to work on the books.

“The picture you took of me got almost a thousand likes on Instagram, and then I got a 2K raise,” Isa said quietly.

Arjun sat down on the floor, abandoning the project, “Well, there’s definitely magic going on. Good or bad magic, I don’t know. Some kind of reciprocal luck magic?”

The other two sat down next to him, no one having it in them to keep organizing books.

“Did you learn anything concrete about magic on those forums?” Isa asked.

“What forums?” Kassie frowned.

Isa waited a moment for Arjun to say something, but when he didn’t, she gave an explanation about the texts he sent.

“Why didn’t you mention this before?”

Isa gestured around, “There’s been a lot going on and it didn’t seem important.”

Kassie sighed, “Fair.”

Arjun finally spoke, “I skipped work today again to keep researching….yeah I know I shouldn’t. I don’t want to. But I can’t stop myself. It’s like there’s a little itch in my brain and I need to scratch it by reading about magic. It’s better when I’m not alone. But when I’m home, I just can’t stop being on my computer or phone, until I just collapse and sleep.”

“I always thought magic would be better than this,” Isa muttered.

“It’s been good for you,” Kassie said.

“I don’t want to see you guys suffer!” Isa’s voice raised.

“You always kind of take advantage of us,” Arjun pointed out.

“This is different!” Isa said, and looked at Kassie, hoping for back up.

Kassie looked away.

Isa wanted to cry.

No one said anything.

Isa stood up, “I think I’m going to go home now. I don’t know why bad luck is happening to you, but maybe it will stop if I’m not around you.”

“Isa…” Kassie trailed off.

Isa sniffed, and left. She went to her car and cried for twenty minutes, ignoring the phone calls from Kassie. Arjun didn’t call.