Chapter 5

I wake up to light streaming in through a window, stinging my eyes. My phone is on my chest. I scroll through the notifications with one eye open, slowly waking up as I read through the messages. Four notifications from LinkedIn about New York–based jobs that sound horrible but I should apply to anyway. One email from a recruiter that starts with "Unfortunately" and ends with "We'll keep you in mind for opportunities!" A 2:32 a.m., one-word text from a guy I had been hooking up with every seven weeks like clockwork for the last year.

Hazel, it said. That's it. Just my name, plus the single smiley face he sent fifteen minutes later.

I roll my eyes. I know this move. The name thing. It's not quite as direct as "You up?" Not so impersonal. But, of course, the meaning is largely the same. I think the goal is to be sexy and intimate, the way it is when someone says your name in bed. All a game to make you think that they know you, that they see you, they want you in a way that's somehow more interesting than the ways every other guy wants you. Please. I delete the text with a single swipe, thankful that I had fallen asleep before it came in.

There's one other text, from a name I don't recognize at first. I read the contact out loud, "Sierra Spanish," wracking my brain for who it could be. Then it clicks. We went to college together, were paired up for a group project in a Spanish class. We hadn't spoken since. And now she was texting me?

I know it's been forever, but I have to ask…Is this TikTok stuff for real? Is Evie okay?

And then I remember, a wave of nausea working its way through me when I realize I had forgotten. I stare at the ceiling, blinking the rest of the room into reality, remembering where I am and why. My mom's house. The couch. Evie, Evie, Evie.

The shame lights me up, makes me sit up straight, grab my glasses from the coffee table. I swing my feet to the ground and my toe lands on something that pokes me, then crunches beneath my weight when I stand up. I look down to inspect the area and realize it's my contact lens. Last night I pulled them out of my eyes and then was too lazy to go to the bathroom and throw them out. Erin will hate this.

"Look who's up," a voice chirps, as if on cue, from across the house, in the adjoining kitchen. My mom.

She's sitting at the kitchen table, hands wrapped around an earthenware mug, the kind that looks like she bought it from a third-generation artisan in Maine. I imagine her sharing it on Instagram: "My inbox is blowing up right now and I'm so, so very sorry I can't share a link for this exact piece. However, if you click through you can shop through 16 similar options—and all under $30, too!"

I roll my eyes without thinking and hope she can't see me, that the giant expanse of the open floor plan means she's too far away to catch it.

"Is there any news? Have you heard from her?" I ask, though I think I already know the answer.

I'm startled when a voice other than my mother's responds.

"I'm afraid not," the male voice booms from the just-out-of-sight kitchen. I already know it's Buxton. He walks to the kitchen table to sit across from my mother and sets his freshly poured cup of coffee down in front of him, translucent tendrils of steam rising from the mug.

How long has he been here? Have I slept through the whole thing?

"Morning," he says, the word loaded with judgment.

What kind of person sleeps in when their sister has been missing for more than a week? What kind of person isn't up all night, hysterical with worry?

I consider explaining myself, but everything sounds wrong in my head. It's been a long two days. A long month. A long year. I could sleep for a hundred more hours. A year. Sleep is the only time I'm not inside my own head.

I study my mother and I swear there's part of her that looks pleased. I can easily imagine a scenario in which she wants to make it clear to the detectives that she's the one who has her shit together here. She's the one to trust. To talk to. To focus on. That I'm the mess, and don't they have enough of that to deal with right now?

I walk over to the kitchen table, running my hands over my face, smoothing my hair, straightening my shirt. For the first time in my life, I'm thankful I fell asleep in my bra. I take a seat at the table across from the two of them, forgoing brushing my teeth or coffee, to make it clear that this is the priority. That it was an accident that I slept in this late. I look at my phone again, this time checking the time. It's almost eleven.

I wonder what my mom said to him, how that conversation went.

"She's always been a heavy sleeper."

"She said not to wake her."

"This is probably just her schedule now, being unemployed and all…back to being a nocturnal teenager, I guess. Kind of depressing."

Buxton raises an eyebrow the tiniest bit in my direction, like he's amused by my appearance, like I'm the one who owes everyone an explanation. I stare at the wall, determined not to let it bother me, straightening my posture against the feeling that I'm now even more on the outside of all of this than I was two days ago.

"Tell us what we should do," I say, my tone somber. "How we can help. We can't just sit here and wait forever."

"I was just going through all of that with your mother, actually," he says, glancing at my mom, a slight grin stretching across his face until he realizes I'm staring at it. My mom sees first, though.

"Detective Buxton is very helpful." My mom nods, adjusting the sleeves of her Lululemon zip-up jacket, the one that cinches at the waist, smooths out her already perfectly taut stomach. She sits up straighter, and her nipples show through the Lycra. "We're in good hands here."

My eyes dart toward Buxton, whose face has turned the color of strawberry-flavored Laffy Taffy.

He's actually blushing now, here, while talking about this.

I've always known my mom is attractive. I spent most of my childhood envying her dark hair, the smooth waves of it that cascaded down her back, the way it shined. Her eyes the lightest shade of green. She's petite, but curvy—she was even before the boob job, paid for by her first full year of Instagram partnerships. My mom could have done nothing at all to alter her appearance and she would have been stunning, the type of person who people walk by in a grocery aisle and remember later, wondering if she knows just how gorgeous she is, if people stop and tell her. But since Evie was born, since all of it, my mom has been obsessed with looking younger. Convinced the cameras would pick up wrinkles, frown lines. She was hyperfixated with people knowing she was forty, then fifty, like the further in age she seemed from Evie, the less people would care. She was the first in line to try the latest skin treatments and injections, the chemical peels that left her face looking like scabbed leather for days. She'd google "Erin Elliot Davis age" every few months and turn the phone toward me when she found a result she liked: "This one says I'm still in my thirties. Can you believe that?" It all seemed to confirm for her that she should keep going, even now (especially now, maybe), at fifty-three.

And yet, somehow, even with almost two decades of cosmetic treatments under her belt, she's always managed to avoid falling into the clichéd category of women her age, a specific brand of middle-aged mom that the world still thinks is hot enough to be fucked but just barely. You'd think it all would have made her look like everyone else, that it would have whittled away her beauty, but it never did. I waited for a botched procedure, an ill-advised extra syringe of filler—hoped for it some years, really—but it never came. In the end, her face was just like Evie's, so beautiful it was untouchable. She couldn't poke or prod or fill the shape of it away, no matter how hard she tried.

I had become used to her blushing and flirting long ago, the way male waiters would forget to take my order in my mom's presence, giggling to their coworkers as they left our table. The stares. And any of it, even this with Buxton, the sheer inappropriateness of it, was more bearable than what I endured in high school.

"Absolutely loved those yoga pants Erin was advertising last week, Haze," my male classmates would tease. "Has she been practicing her downward dog, because it's really showing…"

"Does your mom like younger men?"

"Want a new daddy, Hazel?"

There's a chance I would have been teased regardless, probably, that the MILF thing was inevitable. But there was something about the ads, the social media, the promotion of it all that made her, or me, an even easier target. Everyone knew that it all existed, at least partially, because of how she looked. Every post said "Look at me!" and they were all more than happy to do it.

Buxton clears his throat.

"Well, we are making progress, which is good. We have located the spot where she last posted from, which is her last known location at this point," he says, sounding proud. "It seems to be in the same spot where she filmed that TikTok Live."

"Right. The one with the man," I say, confused as to why this detail hasn't been explored more. Why Buxton seems so proud of himself for doing the bare minimum. "The one who appears in the left side of the frame. We haven't just…forgotten about that…right?"

I play the clip back in my head, the clear figure of a man walking toward the driver's side window. The hat, the beard. Those details could have been a shadow, maybe. A trick of light. But there's no doubt that was a person.

Buxton shifts in his seat, his eyes darting sideways to watch my mom as if he's wondering if this bothers her, too, if he's let her down.

"I just think it's important to remember that there are a lot of people out there determined to sensationalize situations like these…capitalize on the commotion, the buzz, create something to plug into their newest video. It can…confuse the investigation. If we took the internet's word for it every time, we would never solve a single case. Trust me."

I blink at him, trying to control my frustration, to smooth it down.

"I mean, have you ever wondered why all those true crime podcasts start with somewhat plausible sounding theories from amateur online sleuths and end with…no resolution? It's because that stuff doesn't solve cases. It's entertainment."

I flex my jaw.

"None of this is entertaining to me, I can assure you," I say, meeting his eyes.

"I never said it was, miss," he says, his jaw tilting slightly upward on the miss, like he's trying to remind me of the power dynamics here.

"As I was telling your mother while you were asleep, the most important thing that we've established since we last spoke is her last known location," he goes on. "The good news is that there is no evidence of foul play at the scene."

I try to swallow the lump in my throat. "And the bad news?"

"The bad news is that her car is not there, and we haven't located it yet."

A chemical taste fills my mouth, dry and scratchy. My mind races.

"But what does that…"

I trail off, and Buxton fills in the blanks.

"Best-case scenario is the simplest one. She drove there with her car and then she drove away with her car. We have a BOLO out for the plates, obviously, but nothing yet. The worst is that someone else moved her car. But it's not the more likely option of the two."

I stare at my mother, who is worrying at the sleeves of her jacket, pulling them so far over her palms that they almost reach her knuckles.

"My partner is working to obtain the security footage from the parking lot," Buxton continues. "It's stored remotely, and we had to obtain a warrant, which was a process. Turns out the parking lot is owned separately from the department store it's attached to…anyway, I'll be joining her when I leave here to go through all of that. Hopefully this will help us determine what exactly happened to both the car and your sister," he says. "I should probably be headed out to meet her at the office and work through all of that. But I wanted to stop by in person first. It's important that you all know you are in my top two priorities. My first, of course, being to find Evie."

He shifts his body toward my mom when he says this part, making eye contact in a way that makes me feel like they have some sort of understanding. His tone is so different from yesterday that I know immediately that something has changed, and I have a hunch as to what. I've seen it before, the shift that happens in men when they think Erin Davis is interested in them, too. That she's staring back. Maybe it was something else, or I'm reading too much into everything, but I would put money on the fact that my mother has done what she always does. That they had some conversation before I woke up that made him feel important, valued. Special. That she touched his shoulder or broke down in front of him. Left him believing that she needed him.

Fine, then, I think. If this is what helps him take my sister seriously, then so be it.

He talks for a few more minutes, emphasizing just how important it is that when we go public with this—if we need to go public with it at all—that it needs to be done as a collective unit.

"The worst thing that happens in situations like this is a splintering between the family and law enforcement," he says just before he walks out the door, where my mom is leaning on the frame, the slope of her hip curving outward, her crossed arms wrapped tightly around her tiny waist. "Things get messy real quick then."

"I bet. Of course, we'll wait for your direction," my mom says. "And you'll be in touch soon?"

"Absolutely, Erin. You have my number," he says. "That's my personal cell, by the way. Just so you know."

I nearly laugh from the kitchen as I pour myself a cup of coffee. We know it's your personal cell, buddy. We know.

I'm leaning against the kitchen island when my mom comes back in, looking deflated. The helpless, wide-eyed look that had been on her face all morning is gone now, replaced with something like exhaustion.

I raise my eyebrows at her, waiting for her to explain what, exactly, all of that was about. To say something like "All men are motivated by the same things, baby. It's biology, really." But she doesn't even look at me. She barely has since I've been here, not when it's been the two of us, anyway. It's like she doesn't know what to do with me.

"I'm going to take a nap," she says. "It's been a long morning. I can't…I can't think about this anymore. I need to do something else."

She turns and heads upstairs before I can say anything, and I listen to her steps as she pads up the stairs and walks down the long corridor of bedrooms on the second floor. I expect her footsteps to move away from me, opposite where I'm standing, but instead I hear her walking on the floor right above my head, in the room that was a home gym the last time I was here.

Maybe she changed her mind about the nap?

Or maybe she turned the room into a bedroom since I've been here last, switched it with the other guest room. It could be anything else now.

I spend the rest of the day in a loop on my phone: checking social media, refreshing Evie's pages, ignoring messages from friends, rereading Evie's and my texts, noting the tiny changes in her mood, overanalyzing meaningless updates about friends and relationships, screenshotting things that might mean something only to convince myself they're nothing five minutes later. I google her name again and again, anxious to see chatter about why she hasn't been on social media in more than a week appear anywhere other than the most niche influencer gossip forums.

My mom doesn't come downstairs for the rest of the afternoon, then the evening, not even when I text her.

Have you spoken to the detectives?

She leaves the message on read for two hours before she eventually replies:

No. Brendan said they'd call in the morning.

I only wonder who Brendan is for a second before I realize she means Detective Buxton.

I close my eyes for a moment then, exhaling as I wonder if this is the part that is somehow missed on all those true crime docuseries, all the procedurals. There's no episode for the waiting. For the desperation. The clawing reminder that you should do something but there's nothing to do. It's been a bad year, the kind when I spend most of my time holding myself up against past versions of myself. Thinner then. Better then. More successful then. But through it all, even in my lowest moments, I've never doubted that my relationship with my sister has always been the one thing I was good at. That I know her. See her. Understand her. That I would drop anything, in any lifetime, to help her. And yet, here I am. Completely unable to do anything but the same useless shit I've always done: scroll into infinity until my brain becomes nothing.

I rub my eyes as I feel tears coming on, the deep, biting kind that come from exhaustion that you feel in your bones. No. I don't deserve to be upset. Not when I will probably wake up tomorrow and all of this will be fine. It has to be fine. I sit up, shaking the emotion away. I want to curl into a warm bed, slide my hand under a cool pillow, and forget I exist.

First, I need to find a bed. A place where I can close the door, set my alarm, be alone. It's not even eight yet, but it doesn't matter. Maybe my mom had the same idea hours ago. Pretend not to exist until Evie comes home. Pretend it's not real. I stand at the top of the stairs and remind myself of the layout: Evie's room, my former room, and the former home gym to the left, Mom's room and another guest room to the right. It isn't until I'm opening the door of Evie's room that I realize I need to see it, be in it. Feel close to her. I take a step inside and it's only then that I consider that maybe I shouldn't be here. I imagine the swirl of my fingerprints illuminated on the doorframe. But then I remember what the detectives had told me, that they'd already searched her room.

I soon ignore all of this, though, because these are the questions you ask when someone isn't coming back. When something truly horrible has happened. When a person isn't going to show up tomorrow and say it's all a big misunderstanding. I won't ask those questions.

The stillness of the room chills me instantly. Everything is perfectly, neatly in its place. The bed made. The drawers closed. Her small antique vanity perfectly organized, products closed and clean. A stack of books on her bedside table with the spines all lined up evenly. Every surface gleaming. I wonder if my mom just had the housekeeper tidy up as I drag my fingers across the top of her dresser and note the utter lack of dust. But my mom is smart enough to know how that would look. Isn't she?

I open the door to Evie's walk-in closet, the familiarity comforting me before it quickly dissipates when I realize that this is the first time I've actually seen it in person since she's had it redone. It feels familiar to me not because I've been here, stood next to her while she tried to choose an outfit for a date or a photo shoot. It's familiar because I've seen it on Instagram, the same as her other followers. I open a drawer and there's her jewelry collection, the one that she did a tour of on TikTok six months ago. I can hear her voice in my head: "Number one rule: never get rid of jewelry. It's small enough to keep forever. I get a new piece every place I go, for every major life event—even if it's just costume jewelry. One day I'll be able to point to a piece and see my first kiss or my most memorable brand event or my first time in Fiji." I laugh out loud, remembering how much people had hated the Fiji line. It's not like I blamed them.

"Ev…your first time in Fiji," I had texted her, teasing. "How many more times will there BE?"

"I know, I know," she wrote back. "Not my finest work."

And then: "But you know what I meant."

I run my fingers over the heavy charm bracelet that she found at an estate sale last year. Her video about it went viral when the original owner's granddaughter recognized it. As it turned out, she was a fan of Evie's and insisted she keep it, even though it was a family heirloom.

I walk out of the giant closet, closing the doors behind me, taking in the rest of the room, remembering the first time I was in this place, this exact spot. It was just after my mom had bought the house, but before we had officially moved in. This house was her first major purchase after the viral video, the followers. When the brand partnerships initially started pouring in—the five-figure deals with mommy-and-me clothing brands, and detergent brands, and dance class companies, all of them desperate to have this adorable little girl, her mom, and their story attached to their image—we had moved from the bus to an apartment fairly quickly. ("Easier for deliveries," my mom said, gesturing toward the tower of fan mail and free products that took up half of our miniature living room.) Evie was too young to be fazed by the change in scenery, but leaving the bus broke my heart, because it meant leaving my dad, too. My mom seemed so desperate to be done with any version of life that reminded her of him that I didn't dare ask if part of her was sad, too. I was too afraid the truth was what it looked like on the surface: that she was happier now than she had ever been then. That a bigger, brighter life outweighed the sadness. I didn't want to know what it meant about me that my sadness outweighed everything, that it felt like it always would. I was drowning in it, and Evie and my mom were floating up, up, up.

I was seventeen when we moved into this house, and I can recall knowing, even then, that I would never feel attached to it the way I was to the bus, or the apartment even. Things were already too different by that point. But Evie was thrilled, which made it bearable. It was the same for me then as it was for all the followers, the fans: her joy made everything better.

"We can have, like, two million sleepovers," Evie said, spinning around the center of the giant space, the second-biggest bedroom in the house. My mom had said it was only fair that way. I would be moving out in a year for college, and after all, Evie was the reason we could afford this house at all. I registered that it was unfair, maybe, but I hardly cared. My life there was already on a countdown. It was more important to me that Evie was happy, that she'd be happy when I went to college. She was seven then, and obsessed with the idea of sleepovers, but our mom wouldn't allow them—too much risk, she'd say, as she posted Evie's latest sponsored content to her 700,000 followers, each post featuring a disclaimer that read, "Account run by mom 3 3 3." So instead, Evie and I had sleepovers, just us. At least once a month, we would pile in her room, the ground covered with every blanket and pillow we could find in the house, the floor turning into a giant cloud, and we'd watch movies, tell stories, do crafts. She'd tell me about what was happening at school, the latest drama of the second grade.

"All I said to her was that no one needs a full sandwich," she said one night, casually describing why, exactly, a friend wasn't speaking to her right now, as she drew on a piece of printer paper with a marker. I watched her trace a semicircle in the upper right-hand corner, connecting it with a million outward spikes. I remembered drawing a sun the same way as a kid and loved that even ten years apart, it turned out that all seven-year-olds' artistic interpretations of the sun were the same.

"What are you talking about, Ev?" I'd asked, more confused than concerned. "You told her she shouldn't be eating the sandwich?"

She shrugged as she continued drawing, moving on to sketching the outline of a house, a triangle roof sitting on top of a square, her knees curled up toward her chest.

"It's just, like, soooo much bread," she said. "I didn't say it in a mean way. I just said that one slice of bread is better. You know, like, healthier."

I felt my face go hot as I realized her meaning, exactly what was behind her story, dread gripping me.

"Where did you learn that?" I asked, trying to make my tone seem neutral, though I knew what she'd say.

"Mommy," she said. "She said one piece is better."

"She told you that?"

Evie nodded, her brow knit together as she concentrated on the drawing. She had moved on to stick figures. The owners of the house, I guessed. I stayed quiet, though, unsure how to navigate this.

"I think it's working, too," she added, drawing a dress onto one of the stick figures, another triangle for a skirt. She nodded toward her stomach. "Less tummy."

I felt nauseous.

"Did Mom say that too?"

Evie stopped drawing then for a minute and stared at me, as if she suddenly sensed something unsafe about the conversation, like she had made a mistake. Revealed something she shouldn't have. But then she shrugged again, returning to what she was doing. Drawing another stick figure.

"You know it doesn't matter how many slices of bread you have," I said. "Right?"

"Then why don't you eat it?" she asked, her eyes still on the paper.

So she's noticed, I thought. She wasn't the only one who'd gotten the bread lecture from Erin and acted accordingly. I was just the one who had listened to it for longer, for so long in fact that I had cut back on bread long ago, gradually restricting it more and more throughout my teenage years until it wasn't part of my diet at all. Until there was nothing left for my mom to raise her eyebrows at. I wanted to be angry at my mom, to blame her for how Evie was feeling, but that wouldn't be entirely fair, I thought. Evie had been watching me, too.

"I eat it all the time," I lied, trying to seem casual, fun, and knowing I was failing. "It's the best."

Evie nodded, concentrating instead on the final touches of the drawing, placing a rectangle chimney on the triangle roof and adding flowers to the ground, the scale of them so that they were the same height as the house. I felt guilty, sick that my sister felt this way and that I felt this way and that I had let history repeat itself. What was going to happen when she was ten, or twelve, or fifteen? How much worse would it be then? What would happen when I wasn't here?

"So what's your drawing?" I asked, even though it seemed fairly straightforward. I was desperate to shake the feeling, to move on to a different subject.

"Dream house," she said. "Our art teacher said we could make it anything we wanted. Like, it could be magical or have a lake full of dolphins or whatever."

"It's really cool, Ev," I said, my eyes landing on the two people next to the house, one much shorter than the other. I pointed toward them. "You and Mom?"

She shook her head. "You and me."

The memory floods back to me now, here in this room, while I'm staring at the floor. I imagine it covered with layers of blankets and pillows and quilts and blankets once again. Suddenly, I want so badly to be seventeen again, for Evie to be seven. To be here together, safe and surrounded by soft things. I crave the chance to do things differently so intensely that the want of it makes me brace myself on the edge of the bed and sit there for a minute. I practice my breathing. Hold for seven. Release for eight. Or was it six? Five? What was it again? Mouth, nose? I'm nearly hyperventilating when I catch something out of the corner of my eye, a sliver of light poking through the door from the hallway. And in the crack, staring back at me, is my mother.

Episode 15: "An Interview with THE Evie Davis" |

The Contentious Podcast

May 22, 2022

Luna Thompson:Welcome back to Contentious, y'all, the podcast where we talk about all things content creation. Today we have someone who has been on the internet since they were born, I'm pretty sure. Like, it's possible their follower count was larger than yours as they were actively coming out of the womb. I mean, am I wrong, Evie?

Evie Davis:I don't think that's exactly how things went, but [laughs]…thank you? I think?

Luna:It's a compliment, babe. Trust me. We all wish we had the audience you have. The sheer longevity of it is insane. The engagement you have? Unreal.

Evie:Well, thank you. It's definitely a crazy thing. I'm so grateful so many people have stuck around. And you're killing it, too, obviously.

Luna:I mean, look—I'm no Evie Davis, but who is? Except you, obviously. That's why we're so excited to finally have you on the pod. And you just hit a big milestone, right?

Evie:Yeah, yeah. A million on Instagram. It's so nuts.

Luna:And even more than that on TikTok, right?

Evie:I think so, yeah.

Luna:Holy shit. And you're, what? Seventeen?

Evie:Yeah, my birthday was this month.

Luna:Un. Real. I mean, you know how people talk about you, right? The OG influencer, the queen of content? The creator who has somehow managed to be all things…I mean…fashion, lifestyle, beauty…mental health! How did you do this? Tell us everything. We want to know it all, girl. There are like a thousand baby influencers out there listening to this taking step-by-step notes.

Evie:[laughs] I mean, I don't know. I just post what I like. It's all I've ever done. I can't believe people are interested, to be honest. Or still interested. I mean, I'm thankful. So thankful, of course. But it's surreal. I try not to think about the numbers too much.

Luna:But, come on, you have to sometimes, right? How can you not?

Evie:Honestly, my mom handles a lot of that. The logistics of stuff. The insights. I mean, I know what's going on, but I'm not tracking things all the time. It gives me anxiety, really. So I'm glad my mom is there.

Luna:Right. Of course. I mean, it makes sense, I guess. Because—in case anyone out there is truly living under a rock—your mom is Erin Elliot Davis. I mean, she's kind of a badass. Right?

Evie:[laughs] Yeah, she's pretty great. I don't know what I'd do without her.

Luna:And she's a huge influencer in her own right, really—with that age group, anyway. If this podcast wasn't for our generation of creators, I would have totally had her on, too.

Evie:She would have loved that.

Luna:Maybe we'll make an exception for her sometime. I'm sure some of our millennial listeners would recognize her. She does more Instagram stuff, right?

Evie:She does it all, really, but…yeah. I guess so. She's killing it.

Luna:Totally, totally. But let's talk about you more. And before I get into the influencer biz of it all, the people have some questions. My DMs literally imploded when I mentioned you were coming on. I'm sure you can guess what people are wondering.

Evie:I'm scared to guess, to be honest. [laughs]

Luna:All right. You and Gavin Ramirez. What's the deal?

Evie:[laughs] Oh, God, Are people really still talking about that?

Luna:The king of YouTube and the queen of…like, every other social platform? Um. Yes, of course they're still talking.

Evie:I mean…I don't know, I don't want to start anything here.

Luna:It's not like it's a secret, is it? You two?

Evie:No, I mean…it's not that. I don't really have secrets. I just don't want to speak for someone else.

Luna:He'll survive.

Evie:Well…I guess I can say we're…having fun?

Luna:[squeals] I love this for you. A true power couple.

Evie:I don't know about that…

Luna:Oh, stop, you know it's true. But enough about your love life. Let's get into the real reason you're here: your career. Second to the Gavin thing, the most common question was what advice you had for up-and-coming influencers. Kids who look at you and want what you have. The brand deals, the money, the platform. All of it.

[long pause]

Luna:Evie?

Evie:Yeah, I'm sorry. Just thinking about the question…about the advice I'd give. I guess the truth is I don't…I don't really feel qualified to answer that.

Luna:Oh, please! I mean, if you aren't qualified, then who is? Don't sell yourself short here. You know this business better than anyone.

Evie:[laughs] Not anyone.

Luna:What do you mean?

Evie:I've never been as good at any of this as my mom is.