c15

The only thing that distracts me from the eeriness of the message is the state of my apartment. As soon as I open the door, stale air hits me. I tiptoe around piles of clothes, no idea which are clean and which aren't. I navigate what seems like a dozen empty, discarded shipping packages, reminders of online shopping I certainly shouldn't have done and definitely can't afford. I kick two cardboard boxes to the side as I make my way to the couch, taking inventory of the chaos. The trash can is overflowing with moldy take-out containers. At least three sticky-looking bottles of wine are poking out of the recycling bin, the contents gone long ago. And if I close my eyes and concentrate, I can hear the faint sound of a fly or mosquito buzzing somewhere. They're probably wondering how the hell they got here, too.

Every bit of it, from the trash to the clothes to the bug, is worse because of where I've just spent the last ten days. Every bit of my mother's house had reminded me of the ease of new things, of comfort. Of when I moved back home four years ago.

When I first came to Vegas, I moved into an apartment that looked like it could have been located anywhere in the country. Everything in it was gray and sparkling new, right down to the fake wood floors that were approximately the same shade as a sidewalk. There was no prewar molding or exposed brick or one-hundred-year-old character, but I was okay with that. I had had enough of character and the catches it comes with in Brooklyn, the tiny, nocturnal creatures that I'd wake to find on the pillow next to me or hear scurrying around the basin of our tub in the dead of night. I told myself that for this phase of my life—this very brief phase—I simply wanted to be comfortable. I could have spent even less on rent, but the apartment was still so affordable compared to what I could afford in Brooklyn, it was impossible to resist. It had central air, a dishwasher, an in-unit washer and dryer, a shower with actual water pressure. Nothing about it was glamorous or charming—the location wasn't even particularly convenient—but it felt adult. Like, for the first time, I was doing the things you have to do to succeed. I was getting somewhere.

My first night in the apartment, I sat on the living room floor and fantasized about a savings account balance that wasn't laughable, a number that I could watch grow. I thought about carrying groceries through my front door and cooking dinner in the ice-cold air-conditioning, the smells of food being sucked out the vent above the stove instead of sinking into my comforter and couch cushions and pores. I pictured myself hand in hand with a version of me a few years from now who would be so grateful I did this. Who was back in New York with a reporting job to be proud of, with a life that was so much bigger than this, and comfortable too. Where having dreams and goals didn't mean everything else was so hard.

And then that plan fell apart, too. Within two years, I lost my job, moved to a shittier, cheaper apartment, and found another waitressing job to make ends meet—one that I'm likely now in risk of losing after so many days of taking time off while my sister's been missing. Except this time, I'm not in a city I love, commiserating about it all with someone who gets it. I'm stuck in a studio again, another place with a tiny bathroom and minimal natural light. No roommate this time, but somehow that's only made it more depressing. The only time I ever feel compelled to keep this place clean is when Evie is coming over. Though I guess that's over now, too.

I drop my bag on the floor and assess the mess, trying to gauge where to start. If I want to start. I look around at the clutter, vintage furniture covered in old picture frames, vintage glassware half-wrapped in yellowing newspaper. So many beautiful things without homes. Evie and I loved thrifting together. We'd visit estate sales of fabulous women in gigantic mansions on the outskirts of Vegas. She would comb through their costume jewelry, and I would find the most unique furniture and home décor that I could—bergère chairs upholstered with loud floral fabric, velvet love seats, threadbare Persian rugs. I'd buy it all and imagine how I'd style it, even here, in this tiny studio, and then I'd freeze. Nothing ever seemed to come together how I'd imagined, how I saw it on the interiors accounts I followed on Instagram. The pieces sat strewn around my room, piled with other secondhand finds. A guy had slept over once and told me my apartment felt like a fabulous, "carefully curated yet chaotic" thrift store, and I had laughed, told him he didn't have to try that hard. He was already in my bed. I knew what the space actually was: proof of someone whose grand ideas always outweighed their follow-through.

I look at a pile of dirty clothes teetering on a mid-century modern lounge chair. I had loved its lines when I bought it, the smooth curve of the seat, its faded leather. Now it feels like a waste in here, a reminder of all my mistakes. I'm glad it's hidden.

My mind flashes to the paranoid place I'm trying to avoid, the one where something feels wrong, and I recall the Instagram message again before I push it away and tell myself that it can wait. I can be paranoid later. I can trust what Detective Williams told me. I can respect Evie's decision for her life while I try to grab hold of my own again. I need that, for my own sanity. For my mental health. There's something in the back of my mind that tells me I need to get my shit together. That whatever comes next will require my focus. A clear mind. And for that, I need to clean my apartment for the first time in months.

I twist my hair into a bun on top of my head and put my hands on my hips, pacing around the room, picking up things as I go and throwing trash away. I spot a mildewy towel on the floor, still in the exact same place I had left it on the day Gavin had called me. I wince at the memory now, the way I had chosen to get ready, to shower and polish myself before I got in the car and drove to my mom's house. I should have been in the car before I'd even hung up the phone, already on my way to find out what was going on. To help. But I couldn't fight the urge to arm myself before I got there, like I had to be better than I was as is, even then.

I pick up the towel with my pointer finger and thumb and toss it to the mountain of dirty clothes that I've told myself I'm accumulating for one massive load of laundry. I'm about to take the trash out when my phone buzzes in my pocket.

I dig it out and see a Salt Lake City number on the caller ID. I've answered every random phone call since Evie went missing, on the off chance that it will be her on the other end of the line.

"Hello?"

"Hazel?" a voice squeaks. "It's Ashlyn."

My stomach drops. "Hi," I say. "I…"

"I got your number from Gavin. I…I know I sent you my number and I'm sure you've seen it by now…and maybe you don't really want to talk to me at all, but…I just…I had to get in touch."

I take a deep breath, my heart racing. What does she know?

"I was wondering if we could talk," Ashlyn says, and it's the first thing she's said that hasn't sounded like a question. "For real."

"Now?"

"Yeah," she says. "I…I think that's best."

I hear the sound of muffled laughter and conversation in the background, like a TV is blaring in the next room.

"Are you back in Utah?"

A beat of silence.

"I mean, now that it's all…over, I guess…" I add, my mind begging me to bring the conversation closer to where I know it needs to be: Evie.

She clears her throat, and I can hear the sound of air whooshing past the speaker now, like she's moving to a different section of the house. Or going outside.

"Do you really believe that?" Ashlyn asks.

My heart races.

"That it's over? That she posted that?" she presses.

I want to scream: No, I don't, not even a little bit, but I steady myself. Instead, I decide to offer a tiny bit of truth, of vulnerability. One admission for another.

"She didn't talk to me," I say, and it startles me as it comes out. "About whatever happened between you two. She wouldn't talk about any of it."

It feels like a confession.

"That makes sense," she says, like she isn't surprised at all. "She never did want to burden you with any of it."

It's meant to be kind, maybe, but it's the worst thing she could have said. The last thing I wanted was to be another adult Evie had to tiptoe around, whose happiness she had learned to manage.

Ashlyn inhales deeply for a second or two and there's a faint cracking sound, a popping. I imagine her pressing her hands flat on a table as she exhales the breath, using the leverage to twist side to side, cracking her back. The sound makes my skin crawl, but something about it is so raw, so plainly human, that it feels satisfying, like a win. A window into Ashlyn that no one could see but me.

"It started with these emails," she begins. "About a year ago, this newsletter started popping up everywhere. It was about the industry, influencers. Who was making what mistake. Who was getting canceled. Who should be canceled. Everything wrong with influencer culture. It would call out specific creators who were making too much money or taking shady brand deals or lying to their followers…it was pretty brutal. I mean, it was good. Don't get me wrong. There's a reason it got so popular. I actually read it every week, despite the fact that I was terrified of seeing my name there. Of doing something wrong and being called on it…" She laughs a little. "I guess that was part of the point—to force us to do better. I don't know. Either way, like I said…it was brutal."

Evie had never mentioned anything about this to me. I would have remembered.

"And then, one day, there I was. They were writing about me."

"Who's they?" I ask.

"That's the thing. No one knew. It was totally anonymous. People had theories, of course, but no one knew for sure. And at first, I didn't really care. I mean, people hate on influencers all the time, for a million different reasons or no reason at all. I was used to it—to people messaging me to say that I was evil or selfish or stupid. The first time I saw my name in SABI—that's the name of the newsletter—I was horrified, but almost relieved. It had happened. I could stop waiting. But then, week after week, more was written about me. It was relentless. And all of it was stuff that no one should have known. Not my manager. Not my parents. Not my fiancé, even."

As she talks I feel like I'm walking into a familiar room, but every detail is different from how it should be, everything ever so slightly out of place. And I think I know what's coming next.

"I should have unsubscribed. Blocked the email. Pushed it out of my brain. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. Obsessing over who would have this information…how. And then I started to notice who else was in these newsletters all the time…what they had in common."

It sounds like she's gearing up for something. I steady my breath.

"And like, look…it's not that it was just me, or just Gavin. You know Serena Baker? That homesteading mom with, like, nine children who lives in the middle of South Dakota with a $40,000 stove? She was in there constantly, too, but the stuff they wrote about her was…I don't know, knowable. Like if someone wanted to google that she was the heir to a fertilizer fortune, they could have. The stuff about me, about Gavin, too…it just seemed different. More private."

I only recognize what she's saying as sounding paranoid because I'm familiar with paranoia from constantly measuring it in myself, making sure too much of it doesn't slip out.

"Evie was in there too, obviously. I mean, of course. She's too popular not to be. But her stuff was…I don't know, it was either common knowledge, like Serena's stuff, or it was…tame. Boring. It wasn't the same, once you started to pay attention. And look, I'll admit I got a bit crazy about it. Obsessive. But after a few months…I just couldn't ignore this gut feeling. I just felt like I knew. I felt like it had to be her."

"Evie?" I ask. "You thought Evie was writing about all of you?"

"Yes."

"About…herself?" I add.

"I know," she says. "I know how it sounds. And honestly, when I brought it up to her last year, I was relieved because she denied it immediately. She laughed. She said, ‘Ash, do you really think I have time for that shit? Come on,' and I wanted to believe her, so I did."

"But…?"

"But I also wanted to be sure. I felt like I couldn't be honest with her otherwise, like I was holding things back, trying to make sure that they didn't show up in the stupid newsletter. I was paranoid and secretive and worried all the time. It was ruining our friendship. Eventually I just thought…well, I'll do a test. I'll truly eliminate the possibility from my brain once and for all. So I started creating stories…to see if they'd end up there. Stuff I wouldn't tell anyone else. Stuff that was completely false," she says.

I try to keep my voice neutral, but it's hard to hide my skepticism. "Isn't that kind of…risky?"

"Yeah," she says. "But she had told me it wasn't her, so I thought I was just…I don't know, easing my own anxiety. One last thing and then I'd know for sure. Finally relax. Go back to the way things were."

I stare at my apartment as I wait for her to go on, the in-progress cleaning that had gone nowhere. The hazy-with-age, gold-rimmed mirror where Evie had done her makeup once. The dresser where she had picked my clothes up one by one and tried to date them, always aging them ten or fifteen years on purpose, just to tease me. The antique dish she bought me when I moved to Vegas, as a place to put my keys every day.

"And then?" I press.

Ashlyn exhales. "And then I realized that I had been right the whole time. The first thing that I had told her—some made-up story about buying my dog Arlo from a pet store instead of adopting him at a shelter—ended up in the newsletter the next week," Ashlyn says. "But even then, when I confronted her, gave her the chance to be honest, she denied it. Said I was spiraling. That I could have told that to anyone. That she would never do that to me."

I can imagine how much the accusation would hurt my sister. Can feel it even now.

"She tried to convince me for a while, but eventually she just got angry," Ashlyn says. "Said I should find bigger things to worry about, that I should go focus on making $50,000 for a teeth-whitening ad, or I should maybe consider what it means that my fiancé thinks early-onset male pattern baldness is the worst thing that can happen to a person. That maybe I should worry about myself before I spiral over some email."

Ashlyn stops suddenly, like she realizes that maybe she didn't need to tell me all of that, to expose all her most vulnerable spots so plainly. But it does sound like Evie. I don't doubt that she's telling the truth.

When I don't reply right away, Ashlyn lowers her voice. "That was the last time we talked," she says. "Until…"

My body tenses. I had been almost disappointed when Ashlyn told me about the emails, not because Evie hadn't told me about what Evie had accused her of, but because it seemed so meaningless. What could any of it possibly have to do with where Evie was now? I didn't expect there to be more.

"Until the texts," she finishes.

"What are you talking about?"

She sighs. "You have to understand…I hadn't heard from her in weeks, Hazel," she says. "No apology. No truce. Nothing. And then, all of a sudden…there she was, texting me, asking for help. And suddenly it was her sounding like the paranoid one, the obsessive one, the spiraling one, the one who was reading too much into something. I thought…no, no way. I'm not just going to go back to being friends without at least an apology."

I want her to get to the point, and I suspect that the fact that she seems to be avoiding it isn't a good sign.

"What did she say, Ashlyn?" I ask, trying to make myself sound assertive, if not a little annoyed. "What was she so paranoid about?"

"She thought she was being watched."

Image description: Evie's last Instagram post before her disappearance, a candid photo of her laughing with Gavin's hand wrapped around her waist. His body is mostly out of shot. She's wearing low-rise cargo pants and a cropped tube top. Her hair is slicked back into a braided ponytail.

Comments:

lucyinthesky4 weeks ago

I can't get over this look omg

seanhunt294 weeks ago

the things I would do…

bodyloveclub4 weeks ago

mother is mothering

richarddawsonuk3 weeks ago

feet pics?

soleilskin 3 weeks ago

um, GLOWING! we love working with a self-confident QUEEN!

clementinedenner2 weeks ago

LIKE THIS IF YOU'RE OK EVIE

amyamyamyyy2 weeks ago

How's it feel to be ghosted in the most embarrassing way of all time @gavinramirez? You deserve it. Evie could always do so much better.

girlgamerreally2 weeks ago

he's seriously so cringe

tomasrojas2 weeks ago

$$$ SIX FIGURES FOR EVIE DAVIS NUDES $$$

eviedavispicsss1 week ago

omg what if this is the last evie davis fit we ever get

xcxmarie1 week ago

really?

anonpanda1 week ago

lucky for you every other influencer looks exactly like her, so you've got outfit inspo for daysss girlie

whereiseviedavis20m ago

Tell us where she is, Gavin.

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