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There are cameras in my sister's bathroom.

My sister, who was worried in the weeks before she disappeared that someone was following her, recording her, bugging her phone.

She was right.

Every possibility crashes over me in seconds: An HVAC repairman who recognized Evie and quickly formulated a plan. A contractor who saw a beautiful eighteen-year-old girl who didn't seem very cautious and took it as an opportunity. A jealous ex-boyfriend or hookup I'd never met who knew exactly how much people would pay for scandalous photos of Evie Davis.

I climb down from the chair carefully, making sure I stay quiet as I descend. I am fighting the instinct that tells me I need to show this to someone, to have them confirm it, to run down the list of possibilities until we land on the thing that makes the most sense. I want someone to say: Yes, this does mean that things are just as twisted as they've felt from the beginning. But as I turn to walk back into Evie's room, I can't help but look at everything differently, to imagine what it would mean if there were even more cameras. I look at the bed where I had just been sleeping, where she slept. I spin around and assess every surface that faces the bed, her most private space. My stomach turns, imagining someone else doing the same thing I'm doing now, standing in this room and trying to figure out where she would be the most vulnerable. How to use the knowledge against her.

I look everywhere. Beneath her vanity. In the deepest parts of her closet. On the undersides of lampshades. In her drawers. It's not until I stand on a bench at the foot of her bed, trying to get a different vantage point, that I see something on the ceiling fan that looks ever so slightly off. Unlike in the bathroom, there's no light that's immediately visible. Instead, there's just a small white circle that seems to stand out from the rest of the fan. It's on the central hub of the fan, the same color as it, too, but it doesn't sit flush. If the fan was on or I wasn't actively looking for something, I'd never notice it. It's roughly the size of two quarters, maybe smaller, and when stand on a bench to get closer, I can tell that the material is different from the rest of the fan.

"What the fuck," I whisper.

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I see it: a tiny flash of lime-green light on the fan. It's barely the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen, but it's there. "What the fuck," I say, louder this time, and watch it flash again. Goosebumps rise on the back of my arms as I take a photo of it and upload it to a reverse Google image search.

A million instant responses confirm it's a voice-activated recording device. Less than sixty dollars on Amazon. And it's roughly ten feet from where my little sister sleeps every night. Slept.

I step down from the bench and away from the fan, staring at it as I consider my next move. I want to rip off the device and destroy it, but I know I can't. The police will need to take fingerprints. Maybe whatever is recorded on this thing and the one in the vent is key to finding my sister. But is it possible that they searched the whole room and didn't find this?

Is it possible that if they did, it wouldn't matter to them?

For a moment I sit with what either scenario would mean: they had never taken my sister's disappearance seriously. I trusted the detectives because I had no one else to trust. Not my mom. Not Gavin. Not even myself, after learning how much Evie kept from me. So I trusted the people who did this professionally, and I let myself believe that they would take my sister's disappearance more seriously than the rest of the world did. How could I have been so naive? I think of Buxton flirting with my mom, the way both detectives had seemed so eager to be done with my sister. The case.

I need to make a plan, a checklist of next steps. I take a deep breath.

I'll sleep. And in the morning I'll get some water, then some coffee, and call Buxton and Williams. I'll explain the creepy doll, the devices I found, leaving out the way I was searching my sister's room from top to bottom in the middle of the night. I'll force them to believe me when I say my sister is not okay.

I check my phone, which is nearly dead. It's almost five a.m. My heart is racing. I remind myself of the list again, to calm down: Get a few hours of sleep. Call the detectives. Make them believe you. I repeat it again as I do a final scan of the room, and then once more as I open the door to the dark hallway and walk down to the guest room, moving as silently as possible. I try to turn on my phone's flashlight and the battery promptly gives out, powering my phone down.

I open the guest room door and run my hand over the wall, trying to find the light switch, but when I finally do, it doesn't work. I try a few more times before remembering what my mom had told me the last time I was here—that that switch doesn't work, and to use the lamp beside the bed instead. "You'll need it with those blackout curtains," she had said. "You can't see a damn thing with those. Makes for the best sleep." She was right.

I can barely see my hand in front of my face now, let alone a clear path to the lamp. I squint in the darkness with a hand stretched out in front of me, attempting to make my way to where the nightstand is by memory, running my hand over the top of the bedside table to make out the lamp, and then find the switch. As I feel across the smooth ridges of the lampshade and then underneath to the switch, my fingers hit something soft and warm. Something that moves.

Knowing what another human hand feels like in yours is human nature, even in the dark. The shock of it makes me pull back my hand instantly. There's someone else in the room with me, who has been sitting there silently as I stumbled through the room and grasped for the light switch.

I jump back, gasping as the light clicks on, and there, sitting on the edge of the bed like she's been there for hours, is my mother.

Re: What influencers owe us—and what they owe their kids

From:Such a Bad Influence

August 1, 2022

You know that thing when a celebrity complains about being famous, and suddenly everyone hates them? They say it's hard to have photos taken of them when they're leaving the gym or taking their kids to school. It's hard to go to the grocery store when there are magazines with their faces on them lining the aisles, headlines about who they're dating and who they're cheating on. And maybe you think, for a second: Sure, that sounds miserable. Candid photos on your worst days. Zero privacy for your family. Baseless (or true) rumors destroying your relationships. But then you remember: It's not just any gym they're going to. They're seeing the world's best trainer for three-hour-long sessions, sessions that are the monetary equivalent of buying a pack of gum for them and a month's rent for you. They're not taking their kids home from just any school, but the best of the best. Their school lunches are made from things like kumquats cut into tiny, cute shapes and pea protein snacks that taste like Doritos.

And my God, they're not actually going to the fucking grocery store. They're not standing in the aisle like a normie and debating whether or not to get that Kinder Bueno because it's been a hard day and, you know, they deserve it. No, they're getting groceries delivered by people who are also probably doing them the favor of organizing their CBD-infused, ethically sourced iced teas by color or shape or carbon footprint. And their fridges? Their fridges—all their kitchen appliances, really—are sexier than you on your very best day. They are more sensual, more organized and inviting than you as a human being can ever hope to be. They are so nice to look at and to use that they would never forget the healthy dinner they (or their private chef) had planned and cash in on that $5 coupon for Papa Johns. They've never even heard of Papa.

Still, can we all really assume that they don't work hard, too? Even the most bitter of us can probably admit that using your personal image and interests and face and body and platform and everything to sell items, or build interest, must be draining. Or confusing. Both. At least actors get the unique gift of making money by being anyone other than themselves.

But what about when what they're working so hard at (or not working so hard at, depending who you ask) isn't packaging their own lives, but their kids' lives? What, exactly, happens then? I know how it goes, too. You see an ad from an influencer that features her kid in diapers, shilling a bottle, a onesie, a medicine, and you wonder how that kid will feel about that choice one day. If they will ask where that money went, exactly, or if the money matters as much as the fact that they could have never agreed to the photo, or the ad. We turn up our noses at things like this and say that if it was us, we'd do things differently. But would we? Do we? Aren't most of us sharing photos that our children might grow up to hate? Aren't we putting them out into the world anyway? Do any of us know where the line is as we conduct this giant social experiment in real time?

Last week in Colorado, an eighteen-year-old sued their parents for personal damages after the parents had spent years sharing personal and "sometimes embarrassing" photos of the kid on various social media channels. In other words: The kids that have grown up on our phones are grown. And they are not happy. But does intent make a difference? Does money? If someone like Erin Davis had never made a cent from sharing her daughter Evie's every move on the internet, would it still feel as rotten? Would it look so different from how your parents and their friends shared things on social media a decade ago, when there was virtually no discussion about what it meant that a child could never, really, consent to having their photo shared publicly?

I still sometimes share the memes, the viral videos of toddlers doing ridiculous things. It's harmless, right? Cute. Funny. But if Erin and Evie Davis have taught us anything, it's that sometimes a viral video of a cute kid isn't only that. It can grow to be something else entirely. Does that mean Erin should have never posted the video that made them internet famous in the first place? I can't say I know the answer to that.

I've been thinking a lot about these questions lately, about how, exactly, influencers who turn their children into content—and money—should be held accountable. How the privacy and potential assets of these children should be protected. I don't claim to have all the answers, but we can't leave it up to the kids, right? We can't wait for everyone to turn eighteen and sue their parents.

After all, by that point some of them will have been brainwashed into starting influencer careers of their own, continuing the cycle of monetizing their lives without understanding the stakes.

As always, here's what else is trending right now in the world of content creators:

· August Lawley continues her journey to make "thin body pos influencer" a thing, this time advertising a popular weight loss program that's "not a diet" by touting it as "a holistic lifestyle change to boost confidence." Follow along so you, too, can learn how to pay money to feel bad about yourself.

· I have it on good authority that lifestyle influencer and GirlBoss? extraordinaire Eden Thompson has been posing as an anonymous Redditor on a popular internet snark thread. But it gets better: not only is she snarking on influencer "friends" and defending herself in the comments, she is also posing as a POC, for reasons that are unclear. Talk about a series of bad choices. Nothing on the internet stays secret for long, Eden.

· Ashlyn Price is back at it with giveaways, this time shilling out $500 in cold hard cash to one lucky winner. All you have to do to enter is to like every single photo she's posted in the last month. And she's doing this Every. Single. Week. Ah, sweet, sweet bribery. It never goes out of style.

That's it for this week, friends. See you next week for more tea that will make you realize that everything you see on your phone is fake.

SABI