“You behave,” I say, pointing my finger at her. She licks it, and I turn, grabbing my bag and locking the car, leaving it running. It’s relatively cool outside, but I would never risk leaving her in the car without the air on.
At first, it feels like every single person on the sidewalk and in the passing cars is looking at me. I imagine their heads turning, the whispers starting, a low murmur that’s much louder in my head than it is in reality.That looks like… do you think it is? Oh my God, it’s that guy!
But by the time I reach the front door of the library — the recipient of quite a bit of my money — nobody has approached me. Life is moving on around me. None of the people on this street have any idea who I am, and this time, the difference in appearance seems to be enough to grant me a whole new life.
I walk inside and head to the new computer lab, provided conveniently by an anonymous donor. It’s nice, with warm lighting and a surprisingly cozy feel for a place filled with technology. The woman at the front signs me in, and I’m able to access the internet relatively easily under Rowan Travis.
Pulling my headphones out of my bag, I plug them into the jack and settle them over my ears, waiting as things load. Perhaps the next donation should be to bring high-speed internet to this little mountain town.
I type her name into the search bar and wait.
Finally, Lola Kennedy shows up on the screen, and my heart stutters when I see her.
That wide smile, her hair much lighter in all these pictures. Her profile picture shows her in a little white tennis dress, standing in front of the Space Needle.
Hiya! I’m Lola, and I love fashion, shopping, and exploring. Come along with me to try the best coffee and have fun times in Seattle.
Her Instagram and TikTok are benign, with not much being posted in the past few weeks. I start to think that her social media might not reflect her time with me at all.
It’s only when I click over to her YouTube that I see it, her most recently uploaded video. I scroll through her history, heart thudding. It doesn’t look like she posts on YouTube that often; her previous video was from two months ago.
There’s a simple thumbnail that shows her sitting criss-cross in the forest, the trees seeming to bend down toward her. The title reads, simply,A Week with my Thoughts.
My heart starts to beat faster. I click on the link and soft music plays. It opens with the soft crunch of the forest floor, an empty shot of the woods that lasts long enough to scratch at my brain, making me beg for action.
Then, Lola walks into the frame, sits down and criss-crosses her legs like in the thumbnail. Not to the camera, but somewhere just behind it, she says, “Maybe nature isn’t about somewhere you go.”
And with that, I’m swept into the video, watching her as she explores the area. Douglas firs, Western Hemlocks, spruces and pine trees shivering in the wind. It cuts to the image of a woodpecker working steadily on the side of a tree, the sound reverberating through the forest around her.
She shows Ospreys and even a few ducks in one of the little reservoirs off the river. Watching the footage is like being in the mountains myself, catching the brown streak of a deer running through the woods, turning your head at each sound and sight.
I see the drone footage, the dead phone. Lola, laughing at herself, acting silly, then asking how we can move forward with technology serving us, rather than the other way around.
She’s bright, levity in human form. Then, serious and reflective. The video seems to hold the full range of human emotions, and a sort of wavering between maturity and a childlike wonder. When I finish, emotion is thick in my throat, and I sit back from the computer, looking around like I’ve just come out of the movie theater, having completely forgotten the world around me.
There are thousands of comments, and I read through every one. They’re all glowing, praising her creativity, her vision, and I see the journalistic touch coming through here. All at once, I want to read everything she’s ever written, and I’m sure it’s all good. That the thing she wanted to do before influencing wasn’t a fluke. She could have been a great journalist.
And she is.
More than that, I’m not mentioned at all. There’s nothing about me in this video, even thoughIsee myself everywhere. In the references to hiding and disconnecting. The joy of solitude and the pain of loneliness.
It’s like somehow, Lola has managed to do both. To make a video that doesn’t include me, and yet her growth throughout the progression of the story points to an outside influence — me.
And it was the same for me. Having her there for just a week felt like its own little lifetime. The kind of event that you’ll remember for the rest of your life, an exodus from mundanity.
I’m so caught up in my thoughts about the video — and reading through a Reddit post where people speculate about where this sudden serious content came from — that I don’t hear the approaching footsteps behind me.
“Rowan?”
At first, a trill of anxiety rolls through me at the sound of my name, my paranoia telling me that someone’s recognized me.
But then I recognize the sound of that voice.
“Belle.” I turn and pull the headphones down around my neck.
The first thing I see isn’t my sister, but a little bundle strapped to her chest, staring at me with wide blue eyes. My entire brain goes blank, and I meet my sister’s eyes, opening my mouth to ask who the baby belongs to, until the realization hits me.
“Belle,”I repeat, eyes going wide. I stand up from my chair, which rolls back dramatically, my gaze skipping from my sister to the baby on her chest, who coos and reaches out to me happily. “You are… this is… oh my God, why didn’t you?—”
