I frowned, confused, as I scanned the room again. The camera wasn't on her desk, or the nightstand, or on the shelf next to her dresser, where it usually was. She'd had it last night for the photo shoot, but it wasn't next to her green overnight bag or dumped on the floor in her closet, either.
"Where's your camera?" I asked.
She stiffened but didn't respond.
"Honey, your camera. Where is it?"
A long silence. Then, muffled against the pillow, she said, "I don't know."
"What do you mean?"
"It's gone," she said flatly.
"Gone? What do you mean, gone?"
"Someone took it."
"Took it? When? From Rowan's house?"
"I don't know. Last night it was in my camera case by my overnight bag. When I woke up this morning, it wasn't there anymore."
"Do you think someone might have borrowed it? Maybe one of the other girls wanted to look at the photos?"
"Maybe." But she didn't sound convinced.
"Could it have gotten left at the beach when you were taking pictures?"
"No. We never went down to the beach. We were only at top of the bluff. I put it back in the case last night, okay? I know I did."
"We'll find it, honey. I'm sure it just got mixed up with someone else's things. One of the girls probably picked it up by mistake."
She said nothing.
A buzzing sound vibrated from beneath the covers. Mia propped herself up on her elbow, tugged her phone out, and stared at it grimly. She'd changed into long-sleeved plaid pajamas, hiding thescratches on her arms, and she'd scrubbed the dirt from beneath her fingernails, too.
Her thumb flicked over the screen. Her frown deepened. She tilted the phone away from me to keep me from seeing, but I glimpsed something pink on the screen and a blurred image of something I couldn't make out. I couldn't make out the caption above the image, either. "What's that?"
"It's nothing."
I thought of Camille's daughter, Zara, how she'd helped Mia set up encrypted messaging last year, teaching her about privacy settings with the alacrity of someone who actually understood code. Zara was perpetually on her laptop or spouting some new tech jargon she’d learned. "Are people texting about what happened?"
"It's just something on Instagram. Some girl drama." Mia shoved the phone under her pillow.
I wanted to press her further, but her walls were up. Pushing now would only make her retreat further. She was a stubborn, moody teenager on her best days. I'd get nothing from her now.
I sighed. "You can tell me anything, you know. I'm here to listen."
She didn't respond. Her arm tightened around her gray stuffed sloth, Flash Slothmore, named after theZootopiacharacter she'd loved at four years old. She still slept with it every night, though she'd die before admitting that to anyone. Only Leah had known.
I sat with her for a while longer, listening to the sound of her breathing. The shadows in the room grew longer and darker as the thick silence of the house settled deep into my bones. Outside, the distant crash of waves against the bluffs echoed in a relentless rhythm.
"Do you need anything, honey? Water? Something to eat?"
"I just want to sleep."
I leaned down and kissed the top of her head. "I love you, sweetheart. So much."
She didn't answer, though she leaned slightly into the kiss before pulling away again.
