Screenshots Don't Lie Quotes

I was only fourteen, Addie.” Her lower lip trembles. “I feel so stupid for believing everything he told me and letting him do all that stuff to me. It messed me up so bad. I just want to keep him from doing it to anyone else.” She sniffles loudly. “Please come with me.” Her shaky voice is breaking my resolve—I’ve never seen her be anything but perfectly poised. I wring my hands together. “They’re probably not even going to believe us. I don’t have any proof at all. We only talked on Snapflash, and all those messages are gone.” “Nate and I talked on Snapflash too,” she says. “But I took screenshots.” “You did?” She bobs her head. “At the time, I did it because I wanted to remember what he was saying to me. But they’re all there. All the lies he told me.” She digs into the bag hanging off her shoulder and pulls out her phone. She brings up a photo on the screen, and that’s when I see it. You’re my soulmate. The same words he had written for me. But for Kenzie. I’m

Girl friends You on my lock screen. My phone when it calls. The seven-minute voice note, so you know it all. The cute shit. The bad bits. Everything we don’t even need to say. Sorry, again, for the total essay. Your note on my bed. Never being left on read. That whole summer. Our secrets. The evenings that left us sleepless. Having crushes that need stalking. Being together and not talking. Late nights. Hydrolites. The calmness of knowing your advice is always right. My clothes that you wore. Your shoes, unbuckled, still lying on my floor. Screenshots. Our mistakes. Running commentary from our first dates. All my secrets that you know. Every debt that I owe. How many times do I say this before it is too much? I love you with all my skin and bones.

I don’t even understand the language properly, all the strange abbreviations and the failure to properly punctuate or use capital letters, emojis scattered across the pages like grapeshot on the screenshots of Facebook messages that comprise one of the files. There must be a key to teen speak, a way of understanding. I grit my teeth and get on with it.