Chapter 3

I've always thought it was lazy to build a personality around what you dislike. Never "I love this book" but "I can't stand that best seller everyone's raving about." Never "I adored this TV show, this movie, this restaurant" but "You know what I think is overrated?" It's not that I don't have opinions that seem to contradict what the general public seems to love. Everyone does. I just hate the idea that I would share my distaste for the beloved thing that everyone else seems to love and would unknowingly make someone else question something that had brought them joy, laughter. That I would make them feel wrong or out of place. This is how I walked through my twenties, ten steps ahead of myself and everyone else, accounting for each emotion in the room, the tiniest ripple of embarrassment or discomfort. It made me quieter than some, maybe, but when you grow up without anyone doing the same for you, you learn.

But flowers are different. I hate them. I hate them enough that I go against every impulse that tells me to be agreeable and flat-out say it, actively, openly dislike the thing that is universally beloved. I don't want flowers, I'd tell boyfriends. Not ever. "Oh, because they just rot and die and smell and all of that?" they'd ask, or "None of them? Really? I mean I know some people hate carnations, but…what about roses? Peonies? Tulips?" None of them, I'd say. None of them ever. I've turned away florists at the door, avoided the aisle in the grocery store. Taken a different path at the farmers market. All of them reminded me of being fifteen, the way my dad had turned to me midrecital and said, "Shit. I forgot to get her flowers. For after. Your mom said it's a thing that the dads do. Think I should go now? I can sneak out during the older kids' parts."

"Yeah." I had smiled, eyes glued to the stage, imagining my sister beaming at a bright bouquet, feeling special. "She won't even notice. Go."

Go. I had actually said the word. Pushed him out the door. He would be dead fifteen minutes later, convenience store flowers miraculously unruffled in the passenger seat. Barely even bruised. I've imagined they were roses, maybe. Or carnations. Lilies. A medley. I didn't remember the specifics now, just that they had been the more fragile thing, the stuff that was supposed to die and decompose first. Not him.

The police said it was instant. He sped through a yellow light turning red, likely trying to make sure he didn't miss the end of the recital. The other driver feels terrible, they had said. But really, it's no one's fault. Isn't it, though? I had wanted to say. Doesn't it have to be? Someone had told him to go, after all.

I didn't say anything for weeks after that. Didn't cry, either. Instead, I watched my mother weep for hours on end, sobs wracking her body so intensely that I knew she had to be physically sore, using all those muscles for so long. Bodies aren't supposed to work like this, I thought at the time, watching my mother wail that first week, her face constantly pinched, contorted. Evie was different. Not so much sad as lost, like she wasn't fully processing what had happened. She was always wandering aimlessly around the bus looking for a toy those first few weeks. It always felt like she was looking for him, though, as if he had simply been misplaced. The two of them seemed to have grief that fit neatly into the other's. My mom would weep and she'd pull my sister into a hug. I'd watch Evie rest her cheek on her shoulder, stroke my mother's hair.

"It's okay, Mommy," she'd whisper. "It's all going to be okay."

I recognized the sadness in all of it—in myself, too—but I couldn't access a physical response. I wanted to comfort them, my sister especially, but my lack of outward emotion felt like a mockery of their grief, their ceaseless crying. So I stayed away, silently moving through rooms, leaving them to their shared sadness, painfully aware that there wasn't quite enough room for me, for whatever was going on in my head.

And then, after exactly two weeks of this, I walked in the kitchen to find my mom sitting at our small, fold-down table, silent. For the first time since it happened, there were no damp tissues spread around her, no snot running down her face. Instead there was just the laptop, our family camera, and a USB converter. Silently, she turned the laptop toward me. It was a YouTube video, a headline that I didn't read at the time but now know said simply DADDY‘S LAST DANCE WITH HIS LITTLE GIRL—AND NEITHER OF THEM KNOW IT.

All I could see then were their faces. They were right there, dancing, happy, giggling. It seemed impossible that this was taken only hours before everything was so hopelessly wrecked, before I said "Go" so easily, a smile on my face. I said nothing, stunned by the vibrance of them, the lightness. The sudden recognition of a before, an after. I felt like I was suffocating, like I needed to watch the video a thousand more times, and also like I wanted to destroy it forever. To erase it from the face of the earth, from my brain, my soul. It felt like something was tearing inside my chest, but I couldn't look away. Unconsciously, my hand went to my mouth, then my heart, like it was trying to keep everything from spilling out of me.

"I know," my mother said, shaking her head like she couldn't believe he was gone either. At least she understands, I thought. And then she kept talking.

"Already two hundred thousand views just in the last few hours," she went on. "And it just keeps going. Can you believe it, Haze? This is really happening."

No, I thought, I can't believe it. I can't believe any of this.

But my mother was right about this too. This was really happening.

And there was nothing, and never would be anything, I could to do stop it.

Even now, a few questions into our interview, I know that the detectives won't ask about my dad, at least not right away. Maybe the information is in a folder somewhere, a result of a preliminary Google search some junior detective did as background research before they started their interviews. Maybe they'll get to it eventually. But this guy, Buxton, he's exactly the person who would turn up his nose at the mere idea of Evie long before considering what kind of circumstances needed to exist for her to build her career. I knew who he was the second I heard him say the word influencer, the way it came out of his mouth with the slightest hiss, the same way it has with most guys I've dated, the ones who questioned what Evie and I had to talk about, anyway. "What's that supposed to mean?" I'd ask, and they'd back down, say something about her age. But I knew that it was because of the thing all of them were thinking, but always too afraid to say: that she must be dumber, must be shallower. Guys like Buxton talk about Evie as if she's a hologram, or a soulless, AI-generated robot instead of the person I love most in the world, someone I would die for.

"So this was her job?" Buxton asks, as if he wants to emphasize just how absurd he thinks the concept is. "Social media? That's it?"

I study him for a second, wonder where he's going after this. If he'll get in his car and turn on some right-wing vlogger's podcast, nod along as they whine about how it's hard to be a white man today, if he'll skip through ads about protein bars that taste like banana pudding or remind himself to order some soon. If he'll get home and spend an hour on the toilet, scrolling through his own Instagram feed. If he'll then sit in some faded gray recliner and play video games, or just watch people play video games on a streaming app.

"She has an audience," I say. Am I really explaining this? "Just like any other type of celebrity, brands see the value in that. She's a walking billboard, and her followers trust her recommendations. So, yes, that is her whole job. Always has been."

Williams's eyes narrow just slightly in my direction, but she just listens.

"And these fans of hers—all those millions of them…" Buxton goes on. "They love her? No bad apples in there?"

I stare at Williams as if to ask Is this guy for real? but she stays silent except for a small, almost undetectable sigh. I take this as confirmation that we, at least, are on the same page.

"Well, I mean, sure," I start. "Some people love her. Adore her. Would cry when they meet her, send her their deepest confessions. And then there are people who hate her. The ones who send her death threats, or creepy dolls they've made that look just like her or items of their clothing, or photos of their dicks."

Buxton visibly bristles at the last word, as if I'm supposed to believe he's somehow shocked by the word, the act. I almost laugh.

"She has, what, more than four million followers across all platforms by now?" I guess. "Something like that. Double that if you count TikTok, which is where everyone her age is right now, anyway. If you were to do a breakdown of all those millions of people, there's the ones who love her, sure. And absolutely the ones who hate her. But it's the people who sit in the middle of that Venn diagram who can be the scariest ones."

"What do you mean?" Williams says, breaking her silence.

"Her following…it's this amalgamation of love and obsession and admiration and envy and hatred and…ownership," I explain. "It's utterly fucked-up. In every way."

Buxton and Williams are silent for a beat, taking in what I'm saying.

I wonder for a moment if maybe this isn't the right setting for cursing. I hate that even now, I'm considering my audience, just like my mom would. Just like Evie would, too. "People see the numbers and think it means she's beloved by everyone and, yes, it's true, she has a lot of fans. But it's more complicated than that, too. Even the adoration is mixed up with all the other shit, too."

Buxton has leaned forward from where he's sitting, positioning his elbows on his knees, his hand stroking nonexistent facial hair. His eyebrows are pushed together again, like he's trying to get a better view of me or he's skeptical about something I said. Or skeptical of me.

"It's all darker than people realize. And way darker than you can grasp when you're eighteen," I say. "This is why I'm—"

I catch myself. I know better than to pile irrelevant family drama onto this situation. Not right now. I can count the ways it would make everything so much worse. I know my mom and I need to be a united front here, even if it kills me.

"This is why we're so worried about her," I go on. "Having the level of fame that Evie has isn't like being an actor or singer. Her thing isn't music or movies or writing or art. It's her. Her entire life. That's what people think she owes them. That's what she thinks she owes them."

"Well, I mean, if it's her job…" Buxton says.

In unison, Williams's and my heads both snap in his direction, as if we know what's coming but hope he doesn't say it.

"Then, doesn't she? Doesn't she owe them that? Or…like, something at least," he finishes.

I stare at him, heat rising in my temples, but Williams speaks before I can.

"I think we've gotten a little off track here. The point is to find your sister, Hazel. That's all we're here for. None of what she does or why matters unless it's something that helps us find her and clear all of this up," Williams says.

I nod, suddenly too tired to push back. I know she's right. That maybe Evie's social media presence shouldn't matter when it comes to finding her. But it's all I can think about. It's a neon sign flashing in my brain since last night, when her boyfriend called me and I learned that my sister had been missing for six days.

"Absolutely not," I said out loud in my empty apartment, Gavin's name scrolling across the center of the screen.

No way I would help this kid win back my sister after the fight I'm sure they've just had, probably so much like the other dozen fights I had heard about during their first year of dating. Nope. I wouldn't participate in some over-the-top display of flowers or I‘M SORRY spelled out in pepperoni on a delivery pizza, holding his iPhone for him while he fell to his knees in a faux-dramatic pose.

But then, despite my first instinct, I answered anyway. Maybe Evie needed a ride from somewhere, or her phone died, or she was going through something with my mom.

"Hazel?" he said before I could even say hello.

"Gavin."

I already wanted to roll my eyes. Gavin Ramirez just had that effect on people.

"Hey." He cleared his throat, and it occurred to me that his voice sounded higher than usual. Younger. "So…have you talked to the police yet?"

I paused what I was doing, removing my hands from the keyboard in front of me and closing my laptop, where I had been filling out job applications for three hours. It turned out that trying to find a job was a job, too. Benefits include no benefits at all and a rapidly decreasing sense of self-worth.

"What?" I asked, my blood pressure rising. "What are you talking about?"

A beat passed, the silence hanging between us.

Police. What does he mean, police? I thought, my mind racing full speed toward the worst possible scenario. At first, of course, it was a car accident that I considered. Speeding through a yellow light. Taking a turn too fast. No one's fault. But then, the other fears started to creep in, the ones that are just as realistic when it comes to my sister. I imagined that someone finally did it. Finally made good on their worst threat. Finally got too angry, too jealous, too entitled. For a long time, I had seen my sister's career as something held up by a thousand impossibly taut threads. There was no telling which one had finally snapped.

And then I remembered who I was talking to. Who I was really talking to. Not just Gavin, Evie's on-again, off-again boyfriend of the last year. No. This was also Gavin Ramirez, the self-proclaimed king of pranks. Gavin Ramirez, who had recently entered some sort of new, dark tier of internet fame, thanks to the viral TikToks of him approaching women and asking them to rate themselves on a scale of one to ten. "Interesting," he would finally say in response to their self-rating before walking away. Men loved to reply to the videos, of course, with ratings of their own, though I suspected they liked the look of the women's eyes at the end more—the confusion, the way so many of them seemed slightly unsettled by the interaction, disarmed.

The first time I saw one of the videos, I had texted the link to Evie.

"Really, Ev?" I had written.

"He's not actually rating them himself, Hazel," she had texted back with the eye-roll emoji. "It's a social experiment."

I hadn't replied, distracted by something else at work, a job I still had then, but she texted again after a few minutes.

"A dumb social experiment, yes, I will admit," she wrote. "But an experiment nonetheless."

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to say, "Oh, is that what he told you it is?" but I had to remind myself, as I had so many times throughout my sister's teenage years, that this wasn't some twentysomething colleague I was talking to at a wine bar. This was an eighteen-year-old living a very particular kind of life, still living in a house with the nightmare that was Erin Davis. I needed to give her the room to fuck up on her own terms, to date questionable people. I needed to give her the benefit of doubt, the space to make a mistake that she so firmly believes isn't one, at least right now. That's the thing about being eighteen—you're always going to do the thing you want to do anyway. And she deserved that kind of normalcy.

And it's not like I could gesture toward my life, my romantic choices, and say that I was doing much better. Not when I was still being regularly ghosted by guys named Carter and Cade who said things like "The vibes are there, but they're also not, you know?" directly after having sex with me. The thing about the Gavins of the world is that when you want one, no amount of common sense or advice can sway you. It was true for me at eighteen and it still is, if I'm being honest. We all have to learn the hard way.

But it was a relief yesterday, when I remembered this conversation with Evie. I could breathe again. Of course that's what this is, I thought. A social experiment. A harmless prank that is only actually harmless to him. That's what it has to be.

I pulled the phone away from my ear for a moment and tilted my head toward the ceiling, pinching my nose with my free hand.

"Are you fucking kidding me, Gavin?" I finally said. "You're unbelievable."

"Hazel, I—" he said, his voice still sounding so very young, so small. Had he always sounded this way? Did he change his voice for videos? I wouldn't be surprised.

"This is fucked-up, even for you. You don't just joke about serious shit like this. You can't," I said. "It's not funny."

I waited to hear it—the eventual laughter that had to come. I could picture it, even: Him in some dark room, hunched over the phone in an absurdly priced gaming chair, sugar-free Red Bull cans scattered around the room. His YouTube friends spread around him in bean bags like giant, teenage-boy-sized lice, manspreading into infinity. All of them holding their breath, waiting for the prank to work. Not wanting to interrupt the footage, the audio recording of my fear. But it never came.

"Hazel," he said again, a little louder this time. "This is not a prank. I wish it was, but it's not. I swear to God. I thought Erin had talked to you…I thought you knew."

Erin. My mom. She knew this before me? That something was wrong with my sister?

My skin prickled.

"Told me what? What is going on, Gavin?" I said. "You're scaring me."

He exhaled into the speaker. "Fuck," he said. "Why am I the one telling you this? The person you hate with the passion of a million blazing suns?"

Those were Evie's words. I could practically hear her say them. Evie.

"I don't care about any of that. Please just tell me what is going on. Is she okay? Is anything okay? What the fuck is happening?"

"No," he said, his voice quiet again. Soft. "Nothing is okay. No one has seen Evie since Monday."

I quickly did the math, digging through my brain for the day. Sunday. It was Sunday. Almost a week. But…that wasn't possible, right? That couldn't be. She was in Los Angeles. It was a work thing. A brand trip. Right?

"No. Wait. What do you mean? She's…she's with Soleil, isn't she? That…sustainable razor company? That's what it is, right? Isn't she with, like, a hundred other people who all have a million more followers watching their every move? All of them are there with her, right? Posing photos of the same flower arrangements or whatever," I ramble on, rattling off the reasons why my sister is very much not missing. All the reasons why it's impossible.

"She was," he said. "But that ended days ago. And she hasn't been online…no texts, no calls, no posts, nothing. Erin thought she was meeting with the brand for longer. I thought she was just pissed off at me for some stupid shit I said."

My brain feels like it's about to split in half.

"I figured your mom would have called you…I know you guys are, like, no contact or whatever." He trailed off, suddenly sounding embarrassed to be talking about a situation that was so intimate, so personal. But he wasn't wrong.

My mom and I weren't entirely no contact. We were cordial enough to one another—if something involved Evie. It was less like I was her older daughter and more like I was a long-lost biological mother and she had adopted Evie. My mom couldn't deny our connection, couldn't deprive Evie of it, either. But she could only allow so much, lest she be replaced. And she certainly wasn't going to try to build a relationship with me that went beyond that, not anymore. She'd given up on that long ago, and so had I. Still, I thought she'd have the common sense to loop me in for an emergency.

But Erin Davis was still Erin Davis. I should have known.

"That's why I was calling you," he explained. "They said not to talk to anyone until everyone's been interviewed…the brand trip people, Erin, her friends. They wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page, I guess," he said. "With the detectives. Or the police? I don't know what the right terminology is, who's who…I just thought…I thought maybe she had talked to you. Maybe you knew something. Maybe you could tell me if I had done something wrong?"

This was probably when the anger should have started to settle in, arranging itself side by side with my fear. It should have made me curse my mother for the millionth time, because how dare she. How dare she not tell me that my sister was missing, possibly in danger. But of all the things Gavin had told me in the last five minutes, this part of things was the least surprising. This part of things made the most sense of all. My mother would want this all for herself, would be greedy to claim this type of panic as her own.

But Evie disappearing? Not responding to texts and calls, dropping off of social media without a single word? Without telling me? No. Nothing about that checked out. But maybe I had missed something…something vital. I had been a little preoccupied.

"No, I haven't…" I shook my head. "I haven't talked to her in a couple weeks, honestly. Things have just been…busy, and I haven't had the cash to drive all the way—"

I stopped myself then. I didn't need to share any of this with a kid, someone who once made a video about how much he spends on protein powder in a month (spoiler: too much). My sister's dipshit boyfriend. No, it didn't matter why Evie and I hadn't been talking much lately. All the reasons for that went far beyond the logistics of me being miserable, of losing my job while Evie made millions. We didn't have time for any of that, anyway. I didn't need to follow that rabbit hole any further down right now. I needed to know Evie was okay.

"What do I need to do?" I said instead. "How can I help? Who do I need to talk to?"

"I'll connect you with the detectives," Gavin offered. "They left me their contact information when they came by this morning."

"Thank you," I said, and now it was my voice sounding small, young.

I thought back to what he had asked, if he'd done anything wrong, and something about it kept repeating in my head.

"She—she probably is just taking some time away. Mad at you. Pissed off at my mom. Sick of working all the time," I suggested, grasping at explanations that could exist, ignoring all of the reasons it could be something darker—all the worst-case scenarios I've tried to brush off over the years as impossible, or unrealistic, but never could. The fears I know well from being a woman in the world, even one without millions of people tracking my every interest, my order at Shake Shack, my favorite time of day to take photos in that Target parking lot with great light.

"So," Gavin said, "I guess that means you haven't seen the video. Have you?"

I hadn't. I knew I hadn't because I hadn't seen much of anything that Evie had posted since I lost my job last month. I had hidden her content shortly after, muted her stories. I wasn't proud of it, but the juxtaposition of her happy, light posts with my current situation ate at me, and I hated that. I would watch an Instagram story that I knew had made her at least five figures, and it made my stomach churn with envy. I didn't want it to, but I couldn't stop it. I didn't want to have to hide any of it, but I didn't want to hate it more. And if I never saw it, there was nothing to hate, nothing to compare myself to. Besides, I knew the truth: @evelyn isn't Evie. So what did it really matter if I muted her? If I missed a smoky eye tutorial, a Trader Joe's haul?

I still checked in every now and then, and that was enough. I could see she was going on dates and applying face masks and going on trips with brands. Evie didn't need one more person watching it all anyway, one more flame-emoji reaction she'd never see in her DMs buried underneath thousands of other messages. She needed someone who was above all of that. Above the admiration, the jealousy, the greed. And not looking at any of it is what allowed me to be that person, at least in this particular phase of my life.

But it also meant that I missed things. I missed that it had been nearly a week since my sister had posted on social media. A week since she had texted me. I missed the ominous TikTok Live that Gavin texted me a link to after our call, a screen recording that was circulating everywhere now. The one where a man comes into view in the very last minute, right before everything goes dark. I missed the last thing she sent out into the world. I missed that she hadn't FaceTimed me, hadn't called. I missed that, actually, my sister was nowhere to be found at all.