c31

I wake up to the sound of a kettle boiling in the kitchen, and Evie is gone. For a moment, I have to remind myself where I am, to play the events of the last two days in reverse and remember how I got here. The apartment is soaked in light now, the exact opposite of how everything had felt last night. The beige had made everything look slightly dirty last night, shadowed. Today, it all looks bright and warm. I pad out of the bedroom to the kitchen and Evie is pouring hot water into a French press.

"Morning," she chirps, not looking up from what she's doing. "Half- and-half is in the fridge."

I've never seen my sister make coffee. Never seen her in her own space at all. I didn't even know she knew how I take my coffee. It's a strange thing to feel proud of, this little moment of simplicity. Of independence. But I feel it make the tiniest chip in the resentment I felt last night—the anger that she could have orchestrated this elaborate stunt despite how it affected everyone. How it affected me.

There are two insulated mugs sitting next to the French press, already filled.

"Think you'll be ready in fifteen?" she says. "I want to make sure we have time to get a couple miles in before Natalie comes by with your car."

The car. That's right. Instinctively, my eyes search the counter for my keys. Hadn't I left them there?

"She picked it up this morning," Evie says. "I thought you wouldn't care. She's handling the repairs, like she said last night. It should be fixed by the afternoon. I'm sorry about that, by the way…your tires."

She had said that, right? I rub my eyes, trying to wake myself up. The mention of Natalie and last night makes me feel disoriented again. Maybe I didn't sleep as well as I had thought. Maybe it's the crack of dawn.

I check the time on my phone. It's not that early—almost eight, but my eyes are stuck on the top right corner, the SOS symbol. Then I remember. No cell service. No internet. No car. I suddenly feel sweaty, trapped. Fresh air sounds good.

"Yeah," I say, trying to seem unruffled, casual. "Fifteen is fine."

"Natalie brought by some clothes for you this morning," she says, thrusting a freshly poured cup of coffee my way. "For the hike. She figured you wouldn't have brought anything."

"Oh," I say, trying to figure out how early, exactly, Natalie had been by. Why she had known we would go on a hike. "That's…thoughtful."

"Yeah," she says. "She thinks of everything."

Apparently.

I grab the leggings and T-shirt on the counter and head toward the bathroom, changing quickly. I stare in the mirror afterward, and realize I look nothing like myself. I wonder if it's the clothes or just this place. The exhaustion. I lean closer to the mirror, smoothing my hair back into a clip. I run my tongue over my teeth and they feel gritty. I open a drawer, searching for some toothpaste to squirt on my finger. The first drawer is mostly empty, but in the second I find a single tube of toothpaste next to some sunscreen. Nothing else. I "brush" my teeth, spit in the sink, and am about to throw the toothpaste in the drawer when I see it—a mark on the side of the drawer. A tiny stick figure, a strange smile, drawn in Sharpie. Evie.

"Ready to go?" she yells from the kitchen.

"Yeah, just brushing my teeth," I say, testing something. "Borrowed your toothpaste—hope that's okay."

Silence. I wonder if she heard me at first. But then she responds.

"More than okay," she says, the three words standing on their own for a bit before she goes on. "You're much more fun to hang out with sans coffee breath."

"Ha," I say, walking back into the kitchen where she sits in full hiking gear, ready to go. It feels good, to be laughing. Teasing each other. It makes me feel hopeful that maybe we can work our way through everything that's happened, that maybe we'll emerge from our hike and she'll get in the car with me, and all of this will be something we laugh about next month, next year.

She smiles, her green eyes flashing my way. "Ready?"

I shrug and start walking toward the door. "As I'll ever be."

There's a trail behind the neighborhood, not far from the fake graveyard.

"When I got here these scared the shit out of me," I say, studying the markers as we walk toward the trailhead, noticing how much less ominous they look in full daylight. "I mean, come on, Ev. You have to admit this is kind of ridiculous. You'd think, with all the money ReBrand has, that they'd have some other plan for a metaphor…something a little more chic and a little less Spirit Halloween."

She's walking a few paces ahead of me, not stopping to look down, or back at me.

"I get it," she says. "That it seems ridiculous. It did to me to, at first. When Charlie told me about it, my first instinct was pretty much exactly what yours was. It seemed utterly absurd and also fucked-up. The kind of thing you hear about on a podcast and think, how on earth did that ever appeal to anyone…"

"Hence why you brought the idea to Gavin…" I offer. "As the docuseries subject."

"Yes," she says, pulling on the straps of her backpack.

"So what changed, then?" I say.

She looks back toward the houses, most of which are getting smaller in the distance.

"Everything," she says. "Last year changed everything."

My mind flies to last year, the conversation I had had with Mom. The deal we had made. Did Evie know about that? Had she somehow found out?

"Right," I say, directing the conversation elsewhere. "The cameras. Mom."

She's still walking ahead of me, her pace faster than I can keep up with, making it impossible for me to see her face. "Sure," she says. "And the newsletter."

My mind races to my conversation with Ashlyn, the way their friendship had fallen apart.

I try to sound sympathetic. "I heard about what happened. With Ashlyn. What she accused you of. The way things fell apart between you…how she ignored you later. It's horrible, Ev."

She stops in her tracks then, looking back at me, like this surprises her. "You did?"

"Yeah, she was at the search party that Gavin organized…" I say.

Evie faces forward again, continuing at the same pace as before. She exhales, a psh sound floating into the desert air. "I bet she was."

She sounds amused more than bitter or angry. But it confuses me.

"What do you mean?"

"Her and Gavin."

I stop walking then, calculating what she's saying in my head, but she's still going. I jog to keep up with her.

"Wait, what do you mean, her and Gavin?" I push. "Ashlyn and Gavin are a thing?"

"Sure are," she says. "Have been for a while."

I want to ask so many things, like what that means about Ashlyn's former fiancé. How it happened. If this was part of their fight. I try to do the math in my head. "He cheated on you? Last year?"

"Not exactly," she says. "We were never…exclusive, he and I. It was just easier for everyone to think that."

Now my head is really spinning.

"Hold on," I say. "Stop, Evie. Stop."

She pauses then, glancing back at me casually. None of this seems painful for her. It's old news.

"We were always better as friends," she explains. "The internet seemed to love us together way more than we loved us together, if that makes sense. And honestly, being in a couple was better than the stupid TikTok speculation of who we were seeing, flirting with, talking to…a long-term relationship makes you likable and also a little bit boring. Or safe, I guess.

So we just kept it going—publicly, anyway. And we stayed friends."

I think of the photos I had seen of them, the ways Evie had draped herself over Gavin at the beach last summer, his hand flat against her bare stomach. I had heard them FaceTime each other, had seen the way they talk. How is it possible that there wasn't more there? All that chemistry…

"Friends," I repeat. "Just friends…"

"Well, I mean, you've seen him," she admits. "I'm only human. We hooked up. A lot. It was fun. Easy. Exactly what we needed. Don't get me wrong, we talked about making things more serious a few times. But in the end, we always came to the same conclusion. We understood each other. And we liked things the way they were. It's what made the idea of working together actually appeal to me. We weren't partners in that way, so we could be partners in this other way."

"And then…"

"And then he met Ashlyn," she says. "And suddenly he did want something serious. With her."

"When was this?" I ask, though I already know.

She turns around and starts walking again, facing forward, her tone neutral. "The same time that she accused me of writing the stupid newsletter."

I swallow, thinking of the excerpts of the SABI emails Ashlyn had sent me, the sentences that sounded so much like Evie's voice, her sense of humor.

"So it wasn't you, then?"

She shakes her head, and because I can't see her face, I don't know whether it means no, or I can't believe you're really asking me that.

"Of course it wasn't you," I say. "Maybe it was Mom. Those cameras…everything she heard."

She doesn't reply, walking ahead, her hands set on her hips.

"Or maybe it was ReBrand. Maybe it was one of the ways they were planting stories about influencers. That would make sense, wouldn't it?"

"Yeah, Hazel," she says. "That would make sense."

I pick up my pace, and I'm beside her now, but her expression is unreadable.

"So that's why Ashlyn didn't reply…when you thought someone was watching you…" I say. "Because she…wanted Gavin?"

"She was pissed Gavin was still working with me on the docuseries idea. That we wouldn't talk to her about it because we were trying to make sure something didn't leak before we were able to pitch the idea. She thought we were still hooking up. So when I decided to take it all into my own hands, to come here anyway, and then to stay and really do the work…well, I thought I was doing everyone a favor. They could have each other."

I'm putting together the pieces now, remembering my conversations with Ashlyn, Gavin, Charlie.

"So you did come here to expose what ReBrand is doing…how they're taking advantage of creators?" I say.

Evie reaches for a water bottle on the side of her backpack and takes a swig, wipes her mouth, but doesn't slow her pace. "I didn't understand anything about what they were doing, Hazel. I had it all wrong."

"And Charlie did too?"

She stops walking for a minute, guilt flashing across her face.

"Yes," she says, but I can't fully tell if she believes it. "She did, in the end. But she was the one who told me about ReBrand, who thought that they could help me, change my life…and she was right, even if she questioned things eventually."

I don't reply, waiting for her to continue.

"I love her, you know," she says. "Charlie. She's like a grandmother to me. Or a mother. She made me feel completely at ease in a time when I felt like I couldn't trust anyone. She gave me the space to write…to find comfort in that. But when she started working at ReBrand, I felt…I felt like she was doing what everyone else has ever done with me. Maybe she wasn't trying to monetize me, but she was trying to fix me. I resented it, even if by the time I realized she was right, she was the one second-guessing it all…the process. Just because the program wasn't a fit for her doesn't mean it isn't for me."

The program. I wonder if she hears herself. How it sounds.

"I know that some of it seems extreme on the outside…" she continues. "Or unorthodox."

"How about hypocritical, Ev?" I say. "They're making money from all of you…the lower-tier people, even the Tier Threes like Gavin who don't end up committing to anything…they're digging up this personal information about them, taking advantage of all of them just so they can…what? Spin some ridiculous story about how the internet is actually the enemy? But in the meantime they're making millions of dollars from it? From you? Come on."

"I know how it looks," she says. "But it's exactly why ReBrand will work, eventually. Maybe not in my lifetime, but one day. When all the stories about the Tier Threes, or people like me who give it all up, trickle through everyone's phone and apps month after month, year after year, then people will start to realize that none of it serves them."

"And until then, ReBrand will just rake in the cash, right?"

"How else do you think they could afford this?"

She gestures toward the neighborhood, which is now small in the distance.

"So that's the plan? Convince everyone in the world to join their weird, off-grid suburb?" I say. "Make sure no one can just show up without getting their tires popped?"

"It's a retreat. A detox center," she says. "And it works, Haze. It does. I'm happy."

I flash through every emotion I've experienced in the last two weeks. The fear. The paranoia. The many ways I've imagined my sister could have been hurt, maimed, killed. And meanwhile she was here. Happy. Hiking through the desert, alive and strong.

"I don't understand how any of that is worth making people worry like we worried," I say. I picture the TikTok Live, the figure approaching the car. "The video made people think you were abducted. Hurt, or worse."

"That…" she starts, and finally drops her hand, shifting her body so she's facing another direction, away from the sun and me. "Was a mistake. Natalie thought it would…I don't know, make people pay more attention. That if we had as many eyes on the story as possible, it would make everything that came after even more impactful."

She's walking again, and I'm trudging behind her. We must have walked a mile already, and I'm feeling sluggish, thirsty enough to drink a gallon of water. I can feel the first prickly sting of a sunburn crawling up my neck.

"Impactful how?" I ask.

"I'm not the first person to do this, you know," she says. "Not the first person to do the program here."

"Not the first Top Tier, you mean," I say, rolling my eyes, but Evie doesn't seem to catch my sarcasm.

"Do you know Dani Tan? The super-famous beauty blogger who disappeared a couple years ago?" she asks. "She was the first Top Tier and now she's…well, you met her already, I guess."

I put the pieces together. "Natalie? That's her?"

I conjure up an image of the Dani Tan I had seen online before and can't reconcile it with the person I met last night.

"The blonde hair helps. And the lack of makeup," Evie offers. "People see her around and guess, but no one ever really puts it together. But there have been others, too. When there are enough of us here, who have left all of that money on the table and a lifestyle rooted in comparison and disconnection, and we've found something better…well…"

"You'll influence everyone else to do the same?"

"Something like that."

She pauses, studying the endless stretch of desert in front of us. It's undeniably gorgeous here. The dusty grays and scraggly Joshua trees look wavy in the heat, a bone-dry watercolor. It's suddenly obvious to me that everything around us is exactly where it should be, and we're the ones intruding.

"We should head back," Evie says eventually, as if she feels it too.

She turns and we're facing each other now.

"I don't get this, Evie," I say. "I'm trying. But I don't."

She smiles, just a little, the corners of her eyes wrinkling slightly. "I know."

"I just want you to be…"

"Normal?" she asks, and it comes out with a little laugh.

"Happy," I correct.

She grabs my hand then, squeezing it. "I'm getting there, Haze. I promise I am. And for the first time, it feels sustainable."

"Because you're away from Mom?"

"Because I'm away from all of it. I don't think I knew how to access happiness that wasn't tied to the thoughts of a million strangers' opinions before this. A million and two, because your and Mom's opinions mattered more to me than anything. It's like I had all of these tiny strings tied to me, pulling in different directions. When it was good, when everyone was happy with me, I went up and up and up. No one could touch me. And when it was bad, I was down for days. Weeks. Stuck. Does any of that sound like happiness to you?"

I imagine my sister with a pair of scissors, cutting the strings away from her body only for new ones to appear in their place. "No," I say.

"I'm sorry for how this has been for you, Haze," she says. "I am. I knew it would hurt you, maybe, or scare you, but you know me. I can't…I can't gauge it. Can't picture the scale of things. Or measure consequences. Not like other people. For a while I thought it was because I was just…broken. Fucked-up. Drawing on walls because I was, like, malfunctioning. Getting teachers fired because I was evil. Now that I've been away from it all for a while, I'm realizing I just always believed there could be an upside in reach. Always a way to spin my choices. I mean, think about Dad. Losing him was the worst thing that ever happened to us, and it created this life that Mom had always dreamed of. It gave us vacations and cars and college funds."

I freeze at the mention of college. Money.

"It didn't make any of it less sad," she goes on. "But it made it easier. To distract ourselves with a million other things."

I nod, taking in everything she's saying.

"I was selfish. I've been selfish," she says, her eyes focused on mine, unblinking. "And I'm sorry."

Relief floods my bloodstream, and I realize instantly this is what I've been waiting for. Not just to know that she was okay, but to know that we were. The two of us.

"I forgive you," I say. "Of course, I forgive you."

She beams, dropping my hand as she walks back toward the neighborhood. "Ditto."

What did she say?

"Ditto?" I ask.

"Yeah, ditto," she says, her tone light. "I forgive you. For the money stuff."

My stomach twists. "The money stuff…"

I watch the back of her shoulders as they shrug.

"Hazel, it's fine. The money stuff with Mom. The student loans. You knowing how much of my money she had taken…"

It feels like the temperature has risen fifteen degrees is as many seconds. I'm on fire, panicking.

"I…"

"It's okay," she says, looking back at me over her shoulder. "I get it. It was easier to make a deal with Mom than to just ask me for it. You were embarrassed. Stuck. I saw how guilty you felt afterward, how awkward you were around me. How you avoided me. Screened my calls. I was hurt, but it didn't take me that long to figure it out. How you had seen my bank account…the way Mom had mentioned you'd hung around that night after I left. When I asked her about it outright and she told me that you had asked for money, some of my money…I had the common sense to know that wasn't the whole story, of course. That she held something over your head in return."

"She did," I try. "But…"

"But I acted like I didn't want to go to college anyway, right? That I wanted to keep working with her?"

All this time I'd been trying to understand my sister, and she was the one who had my number all along. I wonder what else she hasn't mentioned, what else she could be saving for the right moment.

"Yes," I say. "I thought…I thought if you never knew, then it wouldn't make a difference. How you felt about me, about the money, the industry…none of it would change. But it was wrong of me, Evie. It was your money. I never even got any of it, in the end, just so you know. But still…I've felt horrible. It was just like her, what I did. To assume it didn't matter. That you wouldn't notice."

"It's okay, Hazel," she says. "It is. There are far worse ways to hurt someone than with money, right?"

The question doesn't feel rhetorical, but I don't know what to say. What she expects me to say.

"You mean Mom, right?" I ask.

She doesn't reply right away.

"Yeah," she answers finally. "Mom."

We walk in silence the rest of the way to the house, and when we arrive, my car is in the driveway, complete with four new tires.

"Ta-da," Evie says, gesturing toward the vehicle. "Good as new."

I'm relieved it's there. That I have a way to leave. But I don't want to leave my sister, either.

"You can go whenever you want, you know," Evie says as I follow her through the front door of the house. "We're not going to keep you here. Despite what you might be thinking."

But you're here, I think.

"I mean, someone thought the tire strip was a good idea…"

She laughs, nodding. "It was a bit much," she says. "I do admit."

I'm so happy to be joking with my sister, free from guilt and fear and questions, that I almost don't ask the next question that pops into my mind. But then I do.

"So what about you, then?" I say. "Your car is in Palm Springs…or it was, anyway."

"There are community cars here," she says, turning the key in the front door. "Mostly for emergencies. Leaving the car there was just…easier. Less of a chance of being followed here by some crazed fan who knew my license plate number. Or Mom. Or Charlie."

"Or me," I say.

"Well," she says. "Yes."

She hands me a glass of water and nods toward my keys, back on the counter where I left them yesterday.

"If you want to stay for a few more days, Haze…" she starts, but I hold up a hand.

"No," I say. "I understand. This is your choice. If you're safe and happy, then okay. I can let you do this."

Her smile stretches out slowly, pushing all her freckles together, and I can see everything in her face then. Her at five, my dad, the ways I could have been better for her. The ways I should do better now.

"Thank you," she says.

"I should head out, I guess," I say. "Back to Vegas. Real life."

Evie is back in the kitchen now, loading our water bottles into the dishwasher.

"How's the job hunt going, by the way?" she says.

I pause while taking off the boots Natalie lent me. How does she know I lost my job?

"Oh, it's…going," I lie.

"Mom told me," she says. "When she mentioned the student loan stuff…I didn't want to embarrass you. You seemed so determined to make me think that everything was okay."

"Yes," I say, busying myself with the other shoe, grateful she can't see my face from where she's standing. "I'll figure it out, Evie. Don't worry about me."

"If there's anything we've established here," she says, her voice moving closer, "it's that the whole ‘don't worry about me, I'm fine' thing doesn't really work for us."

I chuckle, trying to keep things light, easy. "True."

She's standing above me now, in what would be the dining room, and I push myself off the ground to meet her. "I'm going to change, and then I'll be out of here."

"In the bathroom?" she asks. It's an odd question.

"Yes…" I say, unsure. "If that's okay."

"Perfect!" she says.

I quickly change into my clothes, splashing my face with water to remove the sweat and dust from the hike. I want to shower, but it feels like overstaying my welcome. I keep waiting for Evie to say, "No, actually, stay. Let's keep talking. Let's go through it all. Let's watch Lost. Let's do nothing. Let's pretend like everything is how it was before." But I know it's not coming. I can feel the space for me here shrinking by the minute.

I study my sunburn in the mirror and cringe, imagining how the drive home will worsen it, the setting California sun beaming through the windows. I remember the sunscreen in the drawer and open it, my eyes searching for the tiny stick figure again. The "Evie was here" mark. Something about it comforts me, reminds me that she's still the same person she's always been, and I am, too.

But there's also a piece of paper folded neatly into a square, taped next to the drawing. I crouch down. HAZEL is written on the front in Evie's handwriting.

I grab it and begin to open it, but then there are voices from the kitchen. Not just my sister's.

"Is she…staying?" I hear Natalie ask from the other room.

She's back, I guess.

"Just leaving," I answer, stuffing the note in my back pocket and opening the door. "Thank you for the tires."

"Our pleasure," Natalie chirps.

"I'll walk you out," Evie says quietly.

As we make our way to my car, I open my mouth to ask about the note, but nothing comes out. I can't shake the feeling that there must be a reason she didn't just hand it to me. Is she afraid to talk about this with Natalie so close? Is it a coded message? Is there something else she needs to tell me that she can't bring herself to say out loud?

"I used your sunscreen in your bathroom drawer," I say instead. "Hope you don't mind."

She nods, like she understands. "Great. I was hoping you would."

It feels strange, to be so cryptic after so many hours of honesty, but I choose to trust her. That's what this is all about, right? Trusting my sister to make the decisions she wants to make, regardless of how I may feel about them.

"Look, Hazel, you won't…tell Mom about this, right? About where I am?" she asks.

"Never," I say. "I can't think of anything I'd want to say to her again…ever, really."

"You and me both."

We laugh for a minute, and then it fades, like there's more we should say but we're not sure where to start.

I open the car door. "I should go."

She nods, and there's my push.

I'm about to climb into the driver's seat when she stops me. "Hey, Haze?" she asks.

I look at her, waiting.

"You remember when you asked me once if I ever wanted to just throw my phone into the ocean…or off a cliff…into a volcano? Something like that?" she asks. "A long time ago."

My mind sorts through memories, remembering the text. The game with Sasha. How Evie had seemed so uninterested in the idea. "Yeah. I do."

"I said I couldn't imagine it, I think. That it would feel like a different world. But now I'm realizing that I think what I really meant was…it would feel like throwing myself off a cliff, into the ocean. Swan-diving into a volcano. I couldn't imagine existing without it. It felt too pathetic to admit. It is pathetic, right?"

I remember the game I would play with Sasha, the way neither of us would follow through with what we were saying we needed, either. That we'd open the apps back up, scroll until our minds were mush. "It's not pathetic."

"I guess this is me seeing if I survive it," she says. "If I even exist without it. If I matter."

"Of course you matter," I say instantly, but I know what she means. I've wondered the same thing before, if the perception of me is what is keeping me afloat more than anything else. If anything beyond that even matters, really.

"And so do you," she says. "Fancy job or not. Fancy apartment or not. Money or not. Boyfriend or not. Whatever. None of that ever mattered to me as much as you thought it did. I would have looked up to you no matter what you did, Hazel. You could have told me anything. You still can."

My heart aches at what she's saying, the kindness of it.

There's a beat where I know I should reply, say something, but I'm frozen. Afraid of the way my voice might crack if I start talking.

Finally, she smiles at me, though it's a little sad now. "You know there was this kid in middle school who used to tease me relentlessly about YouTube and Instagram…the followers, all of it. And then when he learned Dad had died, it was this whole other thing. ‘Too bad your dad missed out on all the free shit you get sent every day,' blah, blah, blah…"

"That's horrible," I say, but she waves my comment away.

"It bothered me at first, until I realized that it didn't matter. He might have a dad. Two parents. But I had something even better. I had you. And you were cool and funny and beautiful. And you got it. You got me."

I want to cry now, but it feels too dangerous, like if I let go even a little, I will fall apart. Why is she making it even harder to drive away now?

"It's what made all of this…the last year…so much harder," she adds. "Because I love you so much. Always have."

"Same," I say. "So much."

Natalie appears in the doorway now, walking out toward the car. "Almost time for meditation hour, Evie," she says. "You ready to go?"

I picture the two of them in some beige room, sitting in silence for hours. I raise my eyebrows at Evie.

"Okay, yes, it is a little crunchy here," she says, smiling. "Whatever."

I put my hands up in defense as I climb into the driver's seat. "I said nothing."

"We'll talk soon, okay, Haze?" she says, backing away from the car. "I'll reach out when the timing is right. When I'm good. Promise."

I nod, and I hope she knows that what I'm trying to say is: I hate this. I love you. I'll leave if you want me to, anyway. For you.

I roll up the window and back out of the driveway, exiting the neighborhood the way I came. I drive for forty-five minutes before I arrive at a gas station, pulling into a parking spot to read the note. I wanted to be still when I read it, not looking over my shoulder. I open it slowly, taking a deep breath as I do.

It's typed, which surprises me. Is there a computer there I didn't see? Did she bring this to Joshua Tree?

1. Go back to Charlie's. Read the journals. Start from the beginning.

2. Have you ever heard of ghostwriting?

3. What do you think of this for the first chapter?

And then I keep reading.

For as long as I can remember, there have been a million mes in the world. The me that my mother wants, which splinters into a thousand other versions, too—versions of me that she can mix and match, depending on which iteration will get the most likes, the most cash, the most engagement. There's the me that men seem to want, someone who is just enough of everything: Just old enough. Just sexy enough. Just confident enough. Just natural enough. There's the me that my sister wants, someone who is a little more like her, who shares the same insecurities, the same struggles, the same pain. That's the only version I ever really pine after, the only one I wish would stick. If anyone deserves it, it's her. But the thing about knowing all these versions of me exist, and pulling them in and out of rotation since I was a child, is that eventually, they made it hard to even think. To form a single thought that was mine. To make a single choice. I couldn't do anything without wondering who I was doing it for: My parents, the internet, my sister, my boyfriend? The likes, the clout, the money, the fame, the approval? I felt paralyzed. Overwhelmed. Convinced that any choice I made would be something I was doing for someone else—anyone except me. So at some point, I decided that there would be only two of me. That if I was ever going to survive social media, my mother—any of it—there could only be two.

There would be the version of me at home, the one who writes every day in a diary that I know my mom will read. The version who will give her what she wants in heaping spoonfuls. The one who survives. And then there would be the real me, the one who writes here. The one who doesn't hold back, who tracks every violation, every manipulation.

It was the only way I could separate that world from my own. To know that there was a difference. To be able to recognize and point to my real thoughts. My real feelings. My real self. So I've recorded every horrible thing in these journals for years and stored them somewhere I knew they would be safe.

For a long time, I didn't know what I would do with them, if anything. They existed mainly to keep me balanced. Sane. To remind myself of the truth. And then I learned about the cameras. The ways my mom had been watching me more closely than I ever realized for most of my life—at least since I was nine, based on the boxes I found. She knew exactly how to optimize my pain because she could see it every day, even when I hid it from her. I realized it wasn't a coincidence when I started purging after most of my meals and suddenly a campaign benefiting the National Eating Disorders Association landed in my inbox. I realized that my mom knew how to pitch my pain. It wasn't a coincidence when I would come home with a bag of candy or chips or fast food and my mom was at my door first thing the next morning, talking about what amazing things Noom is doing now, how they're looking to enter a younger market, too. And it certainly wasn't a coincidence when, directly after a major fight with a boyfriend or friend, my mom was there with a camera, cataloging the day—the ups and downs of growing up, as she said. They were my ups and downs, sure, but they were everyone else's, too. That's what made people care. My mom would look at my face and see I'd been crying and know other people would wonder, too. That curiosity was a type of currency.

I could have told her at any point that I knew, I guess. I could have thrown away the cameras. Disabled the recording devices. I could have demanded she burn the diary photocopies. I could have threatened to go public the moment I realized the extent of how she was controlling me. The content my audience would consume about a child who never could have chosen this career, who grew into a young woman who made the most of what she had.

In the end, though, I wanted to provide them the opportunity that they never gave to me, not even once: I wanted to let them be themselves. And that's exactly what they did. And every night I went to sleep knowing that, at the very least, I was protecting myself. I was keeping a record of it all, too. And, someday, everyone would know that that version, and that version only, was the truth.