c13

It feels off. From the minute I see the post and read the text I know something is wrong. The image, though, is familiar. Evie had showed it to me a couple years ago during one of our long drives between Vegas and Phoenix after a weekend spent together. I'd meet Mom halfway sometimes, but usually I'd drive the whole way, enjoying the distraction-free time with Evie. We'd turn the whole thing into an event, a road trip movie montage complete with curated snacks and playlists.

She thrust her phone into my line of vision, the photo frozen on her screen.

"It's fine, I mostly just use intuition to drive anyway," I'd joked, pushing her hand down. "Vision is merely a secondary benefit."

"Isn't it great?" she said. "The photo?"

My eyes darted quickly toward the image, only for a second, studying the photo. It was a cactus, not dissimilar to the thousands we passed on that drive, or on most drives we've ever been on together. On top of the cactus, though, there was a balloon, its red string tangled in the spikes.

"What's it say?" I directed my eyes back to the road. "The balloon?"

"Congratulations." Evie laughed. "Great, right?"

I roll through the memory in my head, willing it to go on, but it won't.

And then what? Did I ask her why she liked it? What it meant to her? If she was the one who took it, or if it was something she found online? It couldn't have been more than two or three years ago that she showed me, but when I search, the memory fades to black.

I glance again at the Instagram post, the balloon's cheery message sprawled across my screen, and I feel it in my gut. Something about this is wrong. I know it should settle me; this is proof of life, right? Something we've been desperate for. No one should have this photo but Evie. She's telling us herself that she's okay. But all I feel is dread.

"Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit," my mother says, bounding down the stairs. "She's…she's alive? She's okay?"

I silently nod from where I'm seated, phone in my hand, the post still pulled up, frozen. I have to remind myself that this assuages my worst fear, the one that had been slowly sinking into me with each passing day. The longer it's been since Evie disappeared, the more often I fall asleep each night imagining the worst-case scenarios. The specifics of her fear. Of what it would be like to know it's all ending. I imagine things I don't want to: Dirty hands crushing her windpipe, the world fading around her. A sharp blade pressing into soft skin. Rock cracking through a skull. Desert sand pouring into open wounds. I wondered if there's feeling then, or knowing, or if there's just pain. Would she have thought about how she was going to get out of this and survive? Or is it simpler, more primal? Maybe the only thought that would occupy her brain is: air, relief, the end.

I tried to calculate the exact tipping point so many times, the point of suffering that would make you wish for the end more than for life. I didn't want to think about any of it, but I had spent so many nights trying not to go there that eventually I just let the thoughts flood in. I was too exhausted to fight it.

So I know I should be relieved now. Elated. But all I feel is the same familiar sense that something is very, very wrong. I can't access the joy my mom seems to be feeling. I glance over at her, and then I see it. A cloud passes over her face. Anger.

"How could she do this?" she whispers, so quietly that I almost don't hear it. "To leave…to leave is one thing. But then to do this without even calling me first. Without even explaining why she left. People know us together," she goes on. "A unit. Evie and Erin. I mean, do you know what people are going to think now, Hazel? That I'm a monster. That I pushed her to do this. That she ran away from me like she's a battered child or something."

I cringe at the comparison.

"Before? Maybe some people thought she hated me. But now…God. What am I supposed to say to everyone? That I heard from her the same time the rest of the world did?"

I study her face, the anger mixed with panic. For a moment I had gauged that her reaction was something closer to mine, that she had an inkling that this post shouldn't be taken at face value. But this is what is bothering her?

"No brand is going to want to touch me now," she says. "Not after this."

I am tempted to say: Is that really the only reason? And: Haven't you known that was the case for a long time? But I don't. It's the same as it's always been, even now; Evie is as responsible for my mom's career as she is for her own. It's the first time I consider that maybe all the attention in the past two weeks had been welcome, somehow. The podcast. The rumors. Gavin's vlogs. The endless online mentions of Erin Davis, links to her old videos going around. View counts and engagement levels that had been stagnant for years finally going up. Maybe she's been enjoying being back in the spotlight, alone, more than I realized.

"This is a nightmare," she says.

On that, at least, we agree.

"Are you sure it's her?" I finally say. "Could she have been hacked?"

My mom's head snaps in my direction and she blinks, as if she hasn't considered this.

"The real world…" I say, quoting the post as I study it. "It doesn't even sound like her."

I watch the comments populate on the post. It now has 12,000 likes.

By the time the detectives call us to tell us they're investigating the legitimacy of the post, that they'll be in touch soon, it has 50,000.

And when they arrive at our house that evening, hours later, it's approaching half a million.

As soon as I see the detectives' faces, I know that something is wrong. Not because they look sad, or worried, but because, for the first time since I met them, they look relaxed. Buxton looks more at ease than he has since I met him more than a week ago. Williams looks so well-rested that it occurs to me that she's been exhausted during every previous conversation we've had. And as the four of us sit around my mother's kitchen table, I know. I know that they're going to tell me that the message was real. That they've confirmed it was her, somehow. And that she isn't coming home, not because she's hurt or lost or in danger but because she simply doesn't want to.

I also know that I think they're wrong.

"Evie is an adult," Williams says after she shares what they've learned, that the Instagram message led them to an unnamed source who was able to corroborate that the message was real, and ultimately confirm that Evie is alive and well. "And that means that, technically, she's not a runaway—even if it feels like that to you, Erin."

My mom bristles.

"So, what? You're just not going to tell us what this source is?" my mom pushes. "Who they are? This is absurd."

"What if…what if she was forced to post that? Blackmailed or…threatened?" I ask.

I flash back to one theory I had read on an internet sleuths forum yesterday. It proposed that the man who had approached her car during the TikTok Live was an obsessed, lifelong Evie fan, a man named Charlie who had commented obsessively on all of Evie's content, especially the younger stuff. He had left hearts in the comments of every dance recital video, every swim competition montage, and people online had noticed. On all her videos, all of my mom's vlogs, he was the person who showed up in the comments the most often, they said. By far. I went back and checked myself after I read the theory, feeling guilty that I had never noticed. His wasn't the only username that popped up repeatedly, not by a long shot, but they were right. His comments were always there. He had been watching Evie's content for years. More than a decade.

"What if it was him in the Live?" someone had theorized. "What if he took her and brought her back to somewhere in the middle of nowhere, insisted that he wants her to stay little forever? I could see it."

After scrolling to the end of the comments in the forum, I could see it, too.

Obsessed fans aren't exactly a novelty in Evie's world, though. Or my mom's either. I think of two years ago when Evie and I had been lounging by the pool and Mom emerged from the house, waving her phone in the air.

"Done," she says. "They're officially banned."

I had no idea what she was talking about, but when I glanced over at Evie for an explanation, she looked relieved. She leaned back in the chair, and I could see every muscle in her body relax. "Thank God," she said.

My mom did a little fist bump into the air, and Evie smiled, doing the same motion in return, like a victory dance. I felt like a third wheel. My mom started to walk toward us, but then her phone rang. She held up a finger signaling that she'd be right back.

"Some lunatic on Instagram," Evie said. Her eyes were closed, lids translucent in the light. Every vein was illuminated, tiny blue rivers cutting through sunlight. "They wouldn't stop bombarding every sponsored post and story with comments, lies, insults…disgusting, next-level stuff. I mean, not just one or two comments a month, but I'm talking every single day, multiple times a day. For months now. To the point that brands have been bringing it up in meetings, like, ‘Uh, who's this weirdo? Should we be worried? Should you?'?"

I didn't know if I felt worse that I hadn't noticed this person in her comments already, or that this was the first time anyone had told me about it.

"That's horrible. I wish you told me sooner."

She turned her head toward me so that her chin was touching her shoulder when she smiled, eyebrows raised half an inch. "Hazel," she said. "Come on."

"What?"

"You would have freaked out," she said, laughing. "You would have been guarding my door with a steak knife or something. Day and night."

"And that would be a bad thing how, exactly…"

"Oh, it would have been great." She laughed. "Not creepy at all."

She reached for the sunscreen stick on the side table between us and applied some to her nose where freckles had started to bloom.

"If there's anything I've learned in this fucked-up world of social, it's that taking care of shit like this…it honestly just comes down to what everything else does: knowing the right people." She shrugged. "When you know the right people you can take away someone's ability to hide behind a screen faster than you might think. And, as you know, Mom knows everyone."

"She does," I said, my voice straining to keep my tone neutral, measured.

"I mean, don't get me wrong, she's terrifying, too," she said. "Just in a different way than you."

"Ah, yes, an ‘I will ruin your entire life, both online and otherwise' kind of way rather than an ‘I can maybe use my car keys as a weapon if cornered' kind of way," I mused.

"See?" She smiled, turning to face the sun again. "You get it."

I tell all of this to the detectives. The banned accounts. The theories circulating online. Williams gives me a look that is all pity, that seems to say she's disappointed that she can't tell me more, or maybe that I haven't guessed more myself. I hate it.

"Based on our source, we are confident that she wasn't coerced by anyone," Buxton adds.

Their source.

Who could that possibly be? What aren't they telling us, and why?

"Unfortunately, disappearing is not a crime when it's your choice. Not when you're over eighteen," Williams adds. "I know it may feel like we're being deliberately obtuse here…that we're leaving you in the dark now. But please understand that we gave more care and attention to this case than we would to a lot of others that are very similar. You'd be surprised how many young adults simply choose another life one day. But because of her notoriety, because of the implications of that TikTok Live, because you all claimed it was so extremely out of character for her, we went above and beyond here, despite what you may think. But again…she is an adult."

"An adult…" my mom sneers, her forehead resting on her hands. "She lived here. She worked here. With me. Her mother. She didn't even clean her room. Do her own laundry. File her own taxes. How, exactly, is that adulthood? Please. Tell me."

"It's what the law says, ma'am," Buxton says, and I wonder if I'm the only one who notices a small trace of a satisfaction in his expression, like part of him is glad to see her feel bad after she made him look bad on the podcast.

"I'm sure this is difficult after the…trauma of this experience," Williams offers. "But as hard as it might be to understand, this is the best outcome we could have hoped for."

"Oh, is it?" My mom laughs. "Is it really?"

"Mom…" I start, already exhausted by this conversation. Embarrassed that she's giving them even more reason to believe that Evie would want to leave her. Us.

"I have lost everything, Hazel. And they're sitting here saying that there's nothing I can do about it. That it's all fine. Best-case scenario," she says, her voice breaking. "No daughter. No business. No credibility."

Both detectives look at me for a moment, like they wonder if I realize what she's just said, how she's erased me in real time as I'm sitting right next to her and, somehow, invoked money now. The business of it all. I feel my face go hot at their expressions, embarrassed that they think this would surprise me. Haven't they been paying attention? Don't they know that I know my place here?

I know when my time is up, too. When it's time to go.

I spend the rest of the meeting trying to name the strange feeling that's seemed to burrow its way into my chest and stay there. I know I should feel lighter, free of the anxiety that's organized the contents of my brain since my sister went missing, the worries that have robbed me of sleep, of focus, of comfort, but I don't. I can't stop going over the Instagram post in my mind, all the ways it doesn't sound like my sister.

But maybe this is what my sister sounds like now. Maybe this is how she talks. Maybe it would seem exactly like her if I had been paying attention for the past six months, if I had taken the calls that I had started to ignore because I was too depressed to talk, too guilty, too insecure to admit all the ways I had failed.

My friends had looked so disappointed when I said I was moving back west, taking the only thing that resembled a reporting job that I could find. I couldn't do it anymore, I said. Weird hours. Clothes always smelling of grease. Never enough energy to hustle to get the job I had gone to college for, or to pay off my student loans.

It was so clear that they thought I was giving up, especially Sasha, but to me it was what had to be done. I would get my shit together. I would be closer to my sister. I would spend her last few years of childhood showing her that success didn't have to look like one thing. And then, by the time she was eighteen, I'd have enough money saved to go back to the East Coast. I'd have clips and bylines and a resume that I could build into an actual career. My own apartment. A life that would make Evie want something different than the only world she had known. Maybe she'd come with me. Decide a career in social media wasn't really for her. Do something different, just like I was doing.

I knew that Sasha wasn't wrong. That leaving New York was a little like failing. That I had had this big dream and I had let it die for something more practical. But I had a plan. I was like my mother that way, I guess.

But I wasn't Erin Davis—not in the ways that mattered. And when everything fell apart in Vegas, and I somehow ended up in a shittier, darker place that I had ever been in New York, I became a version of myself I didn't like. I ignored Sasha's texts until they didn't come anymore, too embarrassed to admit I had somehow failed at this, too.

It was all a perfect example of why Evie couldn't have possibly looked up to me, or considered a different type of career for herself. I had nothing in me anymore that felt admirable, like something she would envy, or want, or dream about. I know now it's why I made the choices I did last year. Why when my mother offered me an out, I took it. Why I didn't stop to think that I could lie for only so long. That eventually it would be hard for me to even look at my sister, let alone feel close to her.

I know this is why I missed something. Because I had to have missed something, something big, for what they are telling me about my sister to be possible.

By the time the detectives get up to leave, my mother's rage has morphed into messy, heaving sobs. Williams and Buxton share a look that says this is their cue and announce that they'll call us with any new information as they wrap up the investigation. It's so casual that I wonder if they're going to add, "And if you want to leave us a review on Yelp, that'd be much appreciated," but they just shake my hand and walk out the front door.

It's not until I've closed it that I realize I need to ask one more time. In a split second, I open the door again and follow them to their car, closing the door behind me.

"You're sure?" I ask, and they both spin around, though Buxton looks more surprised to see me than Williams, who seems to relax when she realizes it's just me and not my mom. For the first time since we met, her face is all empathy.

"We are fairly certain, Hazel, yes," she says. "I know it's hard. But these things happen."

"I just, I know her, and it feels like…" I start. But no. I will not be like my mother. I will not assume ownership of my sister. I will not be so desperate to have a person in my life that I will ignore what they want, what they say, what they do. Not when I don't deserve their trust at all. I will not. I will not. I will not. And yet…

Williams walks toward me, leaving the driver's side door halfway open.

"Hazel," she says, putting her hand on my shoulder. "I don't know why. Sometimes this is how it goes. It's not really our job to know the exact ‘why' when it comes to adults. But…I mean…"

She pauses, glancing at the house looming over us, and I understand. What she wants to say is: Look at who she lived with. Look where she lived. Do you blame her?

"From what I can tell, your sister has been working and moving through this world like an adult for a long time now. In a lot of ways," she says quietly. "The money, the choices, the pressure…those are all adult things. Now imagine handling all of that while you're living with your boss…your mom? Your best friend? I don't know. I don't claim to understand all the dynamics here. You know more than I do. But I think we can both agree that your sister was more mature than most people probably give her credit for."

Again, she glances toward the house. I know what she means. That my mother underestimated her. But I'm not my mother. Even if I've made some bad choices, I'm still not her. It's different.

"I just…she and I were close…" I say. "She would have told me…"

"Maybe she did, I don't know," she offers, and it feels like pity. "In her own way. Maybe you just missed it. Sometimes in cases like this, everything only becomes clear later. It takes time. Distance."

I nod, a reaction more than an agreement.

"Can I give you some advice?" she says, and I nod again. "Go back to your own life. Get out of here. Evie made a choice, you know? A hard one, probably. We have to respect that. You owe it to yourself to make some choices of your own now, don't you think?"

I resent the implication that I don't know how to do that. I want to tell her that I've been making choices for a long time now. A choice not to want the same things my mom and Evie wanted. A choice to leave home. To make my own way, my own career. All things that have only left me more alone.

But I just nod again, and she squeezes my shoulder gently before getting into the car.

"It'll get easier," she says before ducking into the driver's seat and rolling her window down. "You'll be okay, Hazel." But I believe that part less.