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I walk back into the house and immediately start packing up my overnight bag, the one I had thrown a few pieces of clothing into back when Gavin first called me, when everything somehow felt both more horrible and more bearable than it does now. My mom doesn't say anything as I walk down the stairs with my bag over my shoulder. We both know that there's no need for me to be here now, not really.

"Headed back to my place," I say. I expect her to stay seated, to ignore me as I walk out the door, same as she did last year, but she stands to see me go.

"You know I'm here if you need me," she says slowly, like it feels as awkward for her to say as it does for me to hear. "Right?"

"Yeah…" I say, my body tensing. "I just…need some space right now. After everything."

"I get it," she says, and her face says that she really does.

She gives me a half hug that I don't lean into, but as I start to pull away, she whispers something in my ear.

"Baby…" she says, her arm gripping me closer to her. And though I know I shouldn't, maybe it's the exhaustion that makes it so easy for me to settle into the affection for a split second. To let myself be comforted and admit that I need it. Or I need her, maybe.

"If you know where she is, you need to tell me," she finishes, stroking my hair. "You have to."

I pull away, feeling somehow even lonelier than I did ten seconds ago.

Before I can see her reaction, I'm in my car, my bag flung in the passenger seat. I drive the whole four hours and forty-five minutes to my apartment in silence. No music. No podcasts. No thoughts, if I can help it. The silence feels like safety.

The view out the window is unchanged from the last time I was here, the same familiar shades of brown and green sandwiching the highway. The sky stark blue above. Eventually I let it all blur together until it's nothing but color, until I can feel it more than I can see it. I pick at a patch of dry skin on my face with one hand as I drive with the other. I can't remember the last time I drank water. Put on moisturizer. I feel as brittle as the scruff of desert plants out the window, the few things that have managed to adapt and survive here over time. Miracles, really. Any other living thing would die out here in time. As I approach Vegas, I feel that, too. Like there's not a single good thing that could survive in me either.

I feel guilty that part of me wants them to be wrong. That part of me wants to believe she didn't just choose this, to leave us. Leave me. The feeling that there is something I'm missing, that everyone is missing, sinks through me and sits at the bottom of my stomach like a rock. It piles up against every rumor I'd read on the internet, every conspiracy theory that has crossed my mind, everything I know about my mother, myself. Everything I thought I knew about my sister. It's sitting beside everything else I've pushed down over the last two weeks, a tiny monument to my panic.

But I walk myself through it again: if it were true that she didn't leave of her own free will, other things would have to be true, too. It would mean she is hurt. Or scared. Or dead. The detectives were right. If this was her choice, then it's better than the alternatives. And I have to live with that.

When I pull into the parking lot of my apartment building, it finally hits me. The grief. The loss I'm now left with. The feeling that I'm supposed to be thankful for because it's not death or violence. Because my sister is apparently still in the world, even if she's not the sister I knew.

Without thinking, I open my phone, the surest way to stop feeling. To focus on something else. I check my DMs on Instagram, and there are five new messages since I've last been on my phone. Two of them are a version of "Hey, girl! Saw the news. Can't believe you're going through all of that" that were sent by people I had known years ago, in past jobs, college. Not even friends, I realize as I click through, but acquaintances. It shouldn't surprise me; acquaintances are all I've had for a while now. I can imagine the series of events that led to them messaging me, the BOGO margaritas, the friends they looked at and told "Actually, omg, I totally forgot—I, like, know Evie Davis. Well, I know her sister. See, we're friends on Instagram and everything" before sending the message.

I delete both of them without reading them all the way through. There's a third message from Ashlyn, Evie's former best friend, sent right after the search, with her number included in the body of the message. I had thought to call her but was waiting for the right moment, maybe. For the right words to admit I didn't know about anything she had implied.

The fourth is from a distant relative, a cousin of a cousin of a cousin who always seemed to come out of the woodwork whenever my mom or Evie were on the news.

She's just brought so much joy to my life, you know? I can't believe this.

I roll my eyes.

People have talked about my sister this way for years; I'd once gone to get my hair colored and the stylist couldn't stop saying it once she realized who I was.

I've just loved watching her grow up.

I can't believe how old she looks now! How mature!

I remember when she won her first gymnastics competition!

They said this like she was some distant niece they were keeping up with through Facebook instead of someone they'd never met and probably never would. But it was always the same, this sense of amazement and gratitude. People seemed to regard watching my sister get older as some sort of gift, even when they had their own children at home. It was like they were somehow too close to those kids to notice the changes. Too tired to view any of it as a gift or privilege when it wasn't packaged as carefully as my sister's life was, all the pain and strife edited away.

"These are the same people who get mad when I do change," Evie told me once, not long before I lost the job at the Vegas newspaper. "Who message me things like ‘So disappointed to see you no longer embrace your natural beauty' when I get highlights or post about antiaging skin care." She rolled her eyes.

I knew she was joking, that maybe she was just trying to deflect the attention to remind me of the darker side of admiration, that being beloved isn't all that great. But I was distracted. Just as she had started talking, an email had popped up on my phone from my boss, telling me about a correction I needed to make online as soon as possible. I had written about a new company for a digital story and had spelled the CEO's last name incorrectly. I scrolled through our correspondence, and sure enough, I had made a mistake, even though I could have sworn I had double-checked the name before. Triple-checked.

"Be better than this," my boss had written in the body of the forwarded email, and I knew I should have been. I quickly corrected the issue from my phone, scrambling to do it in as little time as possible, to show it was important to me, too. I could feel my face get warm, embarrassment coursing through my body as I reread the words again and again. Be better. Be better. Be better.

But I didn't want Evie to see me react to any of this. Didn't want to her to ask if everything was okay. I was determined to make her believe that my work was somehow meaningful. That real work could be rewarding. That she should want to do something with her life other than post ads on social media. I didn't want to admit that this job that was supposed to be an easy, breezy stepping stone to a big, important career wasn't actually easy or breezy at all. That I hated the work. I hated the hours. I hated that I left New York for this. And all of it meant that I made mistakes constantly. I was a poorly paid cog in a machine that ultimately made money for some man somewhere. Even if it required a degree and came with a 401(k).

Evie had a million people telling her every month that her life, her outfits, her face, her thoughts were all so very cool. What she needed was someone showing her that there was a different way to be valuable in the world. A more boring way, sure, but a different way. I wasn't about to let her know that I was beginning to suspect that way was bullshit, too.

"Well…" I said, tuning back into the conversation, about what she had said about the people who complain when she changes. "They still stick around anyway, don't they?"

"What do you mean?"

"They are still there, right? In your comments? Your DMs? Still giving you the likes, the views, the follows? The numbers for big brand partnerships?" I said, still typing away on my phone, sending off the final email saying that the issue had been fixed. "That's pretty convenient."

I could hear the edge in my voice, the way it was so obvious that I was dismissing her perspective because of my own shit, my own work frustrations. I hoped she didn't catch it, but at the same time, I didn't understand how she could be complaining at all. How could she not see what a privilege it was to be her? How even the people who were the most committed to seeing her fail were still there watching, still feeding into all the statistics that directly corresponded with her ever-increasing paychecks? Even the people who hated her the most were helping her be more successful. Even they couldn't help themselves.

"I guess." She shrugged, like it didn't really matter, like she didn't really need those people.

And wasn't that a privilege, too? That they needed her more than she would ever need them? I considered pushing it, but in the end I changed the subject.

"The interview I worked on is finally live," I told her, turning my phone to show her the story, complete with the spelling correction. "I'm super proud of it."

I glance down at my phone again, mindlessly refreshing my feed, pushing away the memory. I'm about to close Instagram and make myself go inside when I think to check my message requests folder. There's one message from a username made up mostly of numbers. Spam, probably. But I click on it and read anyway.

It's truly been the honor and thrill of my life to watch your sister grow up into the beautiful and talented young woman she's become. I would love to connect with you to discuss what I've learned about her over the years.

I only make it through the first line before goosebumps prick my forearms, shoulders, and legs, a chill spreading through me. The sentiment, of course, isn't entirely foreign to me, but it's the intensity of the words that sticks with me, the way they seem to have real weight behind them. A knowing. I feel a fizz of adrenaline in my chest and I try to follow it down to the root. To decide whether I should believe it or not. Trust it. "My little worrier," Mom would always say when I was little, too scared to jump off a diving board or get on a skateboard. As I got older, it only got harder, a constant seesaw of: Am I scared of this because I'm scared of everything? Or because I should be? But this doesn't feel like blind anxiety. It feels like a sign. A lead maybe, or perhaps just a reminder from the universe that there are plenty of reasons to follow this gut feeling I have, the one that says very clearly that I should keep going, keep pushing. That Evie might not be safe at all.

I think of all the theories online, the Evie fans speculating about what really happened, discussing how they just have a really bad gut feeling about it all. My skin prickles with fear again, but this time it's because I'm realizing that I'm the same as them now, desperately clawing for a way to get closer to Evie, to get more of her. That after years of having access to her all the time, of taking it for granted, it's suddenly gone, and none of us have the faintest idea what to do with that now.

Re: How to Disappear from the Internet

From:Such a Bad Influence

July 15, 2022

Admit it: It sounds nice. Delicious, even. You log off social media, you shut off your phone, put your laptop in a drawer, and you feel yourself start to dissolve. Suddenly, your world is smaller, quieter, more still. Softer. You see people in person more often than on a screen. You don't worry about perfectly packaging and displaying every new outfit, every vacation, every milestone for the world to see just so. You don't worry about editing those moments, either. You don't worry about inventing them altogether. It feels like going back to something and like starting over, too. But is it even possible?

We all know that person. A friend, or a friend of a friend, who has somehow found a way to give up their smartphone or sign off of Instagram for good. They say they're happier, lighter, free. But it's never as simple as that. Think of the last time you dated someone new and immediately searched for their name only to find a slate wiped clean, no digital footprint whatsoever. Did it make you feel safer? Or did it make you suspicious? Did it make you wonder what they were hiding? When they told you "I just don't like social media" or "I don't like putting everything out there for the world to see" or "Instagram isn't my thing anymore," did you feel intrigued? Or did it make you want to ask where, exactly, they were on January 6?

We've all toyed with the idea of leaving it all behind, right? Considered who, exactly, we would be without it all. I have too, as I've watched the Dani Tans and Madison Lees of the world disappear from my feed and wondered if they'll stay away for good. Lately, though, I'm wondering if a freer, happier, internet-free version of any of us (or of Dani and Madison and all the rest) is just fantasy.

Being alive today means being online, leveraging that version of you to benefit the real-life, less optimized you. Maybe you're in high school and you've wiped your entire feed and started from scratch, offering up only one photo a month or so—striking the perfect balance between visibly popular and somewhat mysterious, too. Or maybe you're older and you don't think any of this applies to you, even though you've curated your LinkedIn profile just so for a job search.

Have you used your face, your body, your interests, your humor to convey who you are, what you like, what you want? Have you posted an affiliate link or clicked on one? Have you simply realized that people feel safer with the doctors, designers, writers, accountants that they can find online and know immediately? A dentist who you know nothing about: sketchy. A dentist with a golden retriever named Stanley: charming, trustworthy. Appointment booked.

But besides the obvious benefits of being on the internet, it's still easy to romanticize the opposite choice. To wonder if leaving it all would make you better. But there's another thing that happens when you attempt to leave the internet, the thing that no one really considers. It's your absence from it that defines you. You are a curious exception to an accepted rule of our modern world. And no matter how long you spend away from it all, nothing changes the fact that the internet? Well, the internet is forever.

· Evie Davis has been accused of Facetuning her body in Instagram posts again—pinching and pulling the dimensions of her waist, her hips, her butt until she manages to convey the exact type of body that is just real enough to be attainable but just fake enough to be inspirational, too. The darker version of this piece of gossip: her mom is still the one editing her photos, her body. I mean, would *you* put it past Erin Davis?

· Rachel Song has officially created the latest, greatest TikTok parenting trend: cracking an egg on your unsuspecting toddler's head. I mean, what could be more adorable? What could be more charming than a prank on a small human who still relies on you for validation, security, love, and comfort? What could be better than using their surprise and disgust for views?

· Self-proclaimed animal lover and "low-key" vegan Ashlyn Price is in hot water after a Bernedoodle breeder tagged her in a post, which announced that a puppy from their latest litter found a home with Ashlyn and her fiancé. The post disappeared quickly, but not before Ashlyn's followers (and haters) noticed. The problem? Ashlyn had previously shared that her puppy was adopted from a shelter—saved from a puppy mill, in fact. Oops!

That's it for this week, friends. Check in next week for more about the influencers we love to hate and hate to love.

SABI