“What kind of stuff?”
“You name it. Drugs and alcohol, of course. Religion—she’s tried a few. She’s been into punk, goth, manga, cosplay… The last few years it’s been conspiracy theories—she’s on these chat groups where everyone piles on with ever-crazier ideas, with no one to inject the antidote.”
“And you think that’s about belonging?”
“I do. To feel like she’s part of a movement, that people want her there, appreciate her, see her as one of them. Being seen—it’s oxytocin, pure and simple. She gets addicted to that feeling and goes wherever the tide washes her. That was partly why I blew up at her. I can’t even remember what theory it was she called me about, but she’s always trying to recruit me into hercrazy. She’ll be all, ‘Please, you have to just watch this one video.’ Like she’s trying to save me from my naivety. Ironically. Or, ‘I’m just asking the question! I’m really interested in what you have to say!’ But she never listens to what I have to say. I did my master’s degree in research, and it bugs the hell out of me that she thinks watching videos on the internet is ‘research.’” Lana stopped. “God, I shouldn’t be bitching about her.”
“It’s a safe space. Is it possiblesheditched her phone? Worried about being tracked? If she was into conspiracy theories…”
“Not without telling me. I know we argued, but I’m her anchor, and she’s mine. It’s the one place she truly belongs—with her sister.” Lana’s sinuses prickled. She blinked hard.
“Sounds like the loyalty runs both ways.”
“It’s just part of her.I’mpart of her. When we were kids, she ran with a popular crowd, while I ran with … well, no one. But I had this force field, and it was Vivi. I mean, our parents are great, but they don’t like hearing anything negative, maybe because they feel like we’re blaming them for making us weirdos.” Lana was surprised to find herself at the top of the gully. She climbed onto the bridge, her body releasing tension she hadn’t realized it was holding. Solid ground plus distance from a guy she was so magnetically attracted to that it took effort not to clamp on to him. “Though they still assume we’ll tire of the world and go home to have kids and grow organic veggies.”
Griffin bounded onto the bridge as if released by a rubber band. “Living the dream.”
Lana unzipped her backpack and dug in. “At school, the only thing that made Vivien go against the tide of whatever group she was swept up in was if it clashed with her protective instincts for me. Like, once, some of the cool girls were trolling me, and she told them to stop, though she knew it would make her a target. And it did, but it was a price she was willing to pay. No question.She chose me over her need for acceptance, without stopping to think. And then I go and… Ugh.”
Griffin crouched beside her. “No blaming yourself, remember? You do have to establish boundaries. People will take as much of you as they can.”
Lana suspected he was talking from a different set of experiences. She found the power bank and plugged the phone in. “It’ll take a few minutes to get enough charge to turn on—if it turns on at all.” The charging icon flashed, so it wasn’t dead. “Let’s get walking.”
Griffin put her backpack on. As they crested the hill, the view made her catch her breath. The sky was striped in amber and mauve, the waves contoured in terracotta and silvery-blue, their frothy tips backlit in gold by the sunset. On the horizon, a saffron sun was melting into the ocean. As with any beautiful sight in the last few weeks, it weighed on Lana. Was Vivien out there, watching this sunset? The waves were more subdued, not so much crashing cymbals as whispering secrets.
“‘They rustle up hoarse and sibilant,’” she murmured.
“Walt Whitman.”
She looked at Griffin in surprise. She hadn’t consciously decided to say the line aloud, but it was the kind that ached to be spoken. “You know the poem?”
“‘I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been wash’d on your shores.’”
Lana got a stabbing feeling in her belly, but not an unpleasant one. She laid a hand on it.
“‘I too am but a trail of drift and debris, I too leave little wrecks upon you.’” He shrugged. “I have a good memory for poems. So many years memorizing lines.”
“811.3.”
His brow contracted. Damn, she’d recited the Dewey decimal number for mid-nineteenth century poetry. What a geek. Hedidn’t say anything. For a time, neither of them spoke, as if in agreement that their own words would be inadequate after Whitman’s. In her hand, the phone vibrated and the screen lit up. Her mouth dried.
“Let’s keep walking while it boots up.” She needed to be doing anything but standing there with nerves tumbling through her belly.
The path wasn’t wide enough for two, so she followed Griffin—or rather, her feet did of their own accord while she stared at the phone. The lock screen came up and she halted, punching in the code. “Holy shit, I’m in.”
Griffin turned.
She rubbed her lips together. They were dry, but she didn’t want to waste time getting her lip gloss out. “No emails,” she said, opening the app. “Like, none at all. Though there’s only one bar of wi-fi—wait, no, that just disappeared. But there should be a history.”
“You sure it’s the email account she used?”
“Absolutely. Nothing in the sent folder, drafts, trash… Damn.” Lana kept poking around. “No call history, no photos … no files … no search history. What the hell? Everything’s been wiped. Wait,” she said, loading the text messages. “There’s a text here from Vivi—the only one going in or out.” It took Lana a couple of attempts to open it, her fingers shook so much. Griffin slipped behind her to read, touching her elbow to steady her. It did nothing of the kind.
“‘I’ll never contact you again after this, I promise,’” Lana read aloud. “‘I won’t say anything to anyone. I’ve deleted everything, I swear. Just please, please, I need to see you. They’re after me, they know. But I know who they are now.’”
Lana read it again, silently. Griffin lightly cupped her upper arms. It felt like all that was holding her up. “She sent it the dayher phone first pinged from here. So, therewassomething going on.”
“So she deleted everything, sent that last text, and tossed the phone?”
