c20

My brain is full of tiny red flags, all of them waving in unison, as I desperately try to remember the theory I had read online, the one that said this person took Evie just to keep her to himself. Wouldn't that be exactly the type of person who would insist on joining a search party? Who would get off on watching Gavin's videos, watching him cry about how he missed his girlfriend?

It was also exactly the type of person who my sister would ignore entirely, if she even noticed them at all. Dismiss as harmless if I had begged her to worry. I understood, of course, that a person like this was normal to her in the way that anything you grow up with becomes average, boring. Sometimes, when my anxiety subsided, I was grateful she could tune it all out. I knew that if she panicked at every creepy thing someone sent to her, she'd been panicked all the time. I didn't want that for her, either.

I think of when she was ten and some crazed fan sent her a doll that had been pieced together with mismatched parts, a face painted on to match Evie's. She had sent me a picture like it was nothing. Like it was funny.

"It's like, really weird looking, isn't it, Hazey?" she had said on the phone later, using a nickname that I only heard once in a blue moon. "Mom says it's because I'm an inspiration."

I tried to give my mom the benefit of the doubt for a minute. Maybe this was her way of shielding Evie from the darker side. From having to explain to her how truly messed up it was. When I visited Evie a couple years later, just after I had graduated from college, she was twelve but the doll was still there, sitting on the top shelf of her closet, staring down at us between some old dance costumes.

"God, that's creepy," I had said, pulling it from the shelf and holding it away from myself as though it smelled bad. "Can we please get rid of this, Evie? Please. I swear it's haunted."

"Get rid of Evianna?" She gasped. "I could never."

"It has a nickname?" I said. "Good God. Please don't tell me that was Mom's idea."

"No." She laughed. "I came up with it. She's like my uglier, scarier twin. No one wants to take her picture or film her, but you know…I kind of like that about her. She lives a nice, quiet, relaxing life up there on the shelf. Weird and free."

I stared at the misshapen, fading facial features on the doll, the messy shock of auburn hair, the freckles that had been dotted on with Magic Marker, that made it look like someone was trying to cancel out her face. It was the ugliest thing I had ever seen. It made my skin crawl.

"This is definitely when my job as a big sister requires to inform you that there is like an entire genre of horror films about dolls that come to life and kill their owners," I said.

"Oh, don't be dramatic," she brushed me off, taking the doll from my hand and tossing it back on the shelf. "It's not like it's real."

Was this like that stupid doll, I wondered? Has it always been this way with Evie, not fearing the things she should? I think of her texts to Ashlyn. Could I even imagine an Evie who was ever genuinely that scared?

I am scrolling on my phone now, ignoring Gavin, desperate to spot Charlie's comments anywhere I can find them. To somehow string them together in a way that makes sense, that will lead me to answers.

"Hazel," he says, insistently, like maybe this isn't the first time he's said my name since I started scrolling. "What are you doing?"

"What if this guy has her? What if he held a gun to her head somewhere, made her post that she's okay?" I ask. "I need to find him. To figure out who he is. Where he is. I need to. It has to mean something."

"What about the other 250 people that messaged me asking to look for her, too, Hazel?" he says. "And the hundred other people I have in my inbox right now, sending me their theories of what really happened to her? You can't do this forever. You'll go insane."

I glare at him and finally feel sober. "So, what? It's back to business as usual for you, then? Back to ads and videos and just pretending that she didn't exist? This just isn't good enough content for Dear Evie: The Feature Film?"

He looks at me with something like pity for a second, and I hate it.

"What I'm making…it's about the investigation. What happened. Not what's happening. It's over, Hazel. Don't you get it? She told us to drop it."

Every retort I can think of pulses through me, but I say nothing. I feel like he's scolding me.

"Think for a second how it would look," he says. "How it would go. If I keep pushing this thing, keep asking questions, ignore what Evie literally said herself—"

"You don't know if that was really her," I interrupt, my voice quieter than I mean for it to be.

"—ignore what the detectives said…" he goes on, pressing his point. "I'll look obsessive. Controlling. The psycho ex."

I stand, ready to walk out the door, confident that there's nothing else here for me, but he speaks as I turn to go.

"I want answers, too. I do," he says. "But I can't beg someone to come back if they've already said they're not going to. Even if I want to. They would eat me alive for it."

I know he means the internet, but I wonder if that should really matter. If he really wanted to know where Evie was so badly, if he really cared, then how could he take any of the possible judgment or fallout into account? How could that be more important than finding my sister?

But I don't want to fight. To beg him to care. To convince him. I'll do this on my own, same as always. Same as everything. Maybe that's why I've been here so long—to feel like I'm not alone in it. Suddenly I can't stay a moment longer.

"I should go," I say, gesturing toward the door. "I didn't mean to take up so much of your day." Gavin stands and raises his arms as if to give me a hug, but I walk by him, through the house, out the door, and to my car.

Even now, after everything, touching him feels too dangerous, a starting point instead of an end.

My car is scorching hot from baking in the Arizona sun for the last couple of hours, the steering wheel too hot to touch. I check my phone while the AC kicks in; no texts or calls. Part of me still believes, every time I pick up my phone, that this might be the moment I finally have a missed call from Evie.

I open Instagram. There's another message in my inbox from a username I don't recognize, and I tap through. I'm committed to following every lead now, no matter how unlikely, how dark.

It's a picture. The sender and I don't follow each other, so I have to tap the screen to reveal the image. I expect to see a screenshot of some story about my sister, a rumor, a #WhereInTheWorldIsEvieDavis shot in Amsterdam. But it's not.

The picture takes a minute to load, and my eyes drift from the screen to Gavin's house to the screen again as I wait. When I look back for the third time, the image is there staring back at me. It's a closeup of what anyone else would think is a scribble, a child's messy drawing. But I recognize it right away. It's a photo of a face I know well, though the last time I saw it was almost a decade ago. A chill crawls up my back.

It's Evianna. Evie's ugly, horrible doll. And it's staring right at me.

r/WhereIsEvieDavis

Daily Thread / June 29 | June 29, 2023, 9:23 a.m. EDT

SwipeUpForBS

Look. I need to speak my truth. I never thought this day would come, never thought I'd be here, but I need to be honest. I miss Evie Davis. There! I said it! It's done. I miss her. I can't believe bitch just up and LEFT US HERE. High and dry! Where are my links! My OOTDs! My GRWM videos that make me feel like shit about my body, face, and life! Forget everything I said before. I want them back!! Nay, I need them back! I have a sickness.

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KendallICanFixU

Omg. Yes. Same. Ok, I've found my people. I am regularly struck with this feeling to go check her stories and then I remember. Did I enjoy hating her before? No. Do I miss hating her now? Yes. Yes I do. It's so depressing.

EmotionalMotionSickness

Sometimes I just watch Gavin's stories just to feel something now. Just to remember. Shit has gotten DARK.

LostOnline2001

Speak for yourselves. I feel free. I haven't shopped on Amazon in weeks. My 9-year-old has finally stopped asking when she's going to post a new TikTok. It's wonderful.

PrincessLeona

Lol who lets their 9-year-old on TikTok

LostOnline2001

There are plenty of other places to parent-shame on this cursed website if you're looking for one…but this ain't it.

PrincessLeona

I just think it's funny that someone can criticize Evie Davis and then let their elementary-school-aged child on an app that is actively rotting their brain

123LetsGoB1tch

Is anyone else still feeling weird about ALL of this? I'm still not buying that she's just living a new life somewhere. I can't. I simply won't. That Darker interview? The weird-ass way she sounded in that Instagram post or, like, allegedly did, I guess? Nope, no way. Something is very sus here. It's gotta be.

LostOnline2001

Y'all honestly think that she didn't plan all of this? She's probably still actively making money off of all of us as we speak as she lounges in some sprawling beachside villa in Mexico, free of her crazy-ass mother and her toxic boyfriend and her boring friends. There's no conspiracy theory. She literally told us what was going on here!!!! Point blank! Let it go!!

User4815162342

What about her sister, though? Weren't they close?

EmotionalMotionSickness

EVIE DAVIS HAS A SISTER? WTF?