“That sounds exhausting.”
“Please be polite,” my father says.
Always about keeping up appearances. Not that any of my siblings have once in my life called me to say hello.
I wince, faking. “Okay. But I’m having stomach distress. Would it be okay for me to take the call in the bathroom?”
Next thing I know, they’ve got me in a car, headed home.
The rickety old house I rent with my friends is on a quiet street with a steep incline. Seeing the chipped blue paint and the flowering shrubs out front, I start crying again. The lights are all on inside, and when I cross the wooden porch and try the door, I find my friends waiting right there for me.
Taylor and Marko throw their arms around me, and we all laugh and cry, dancing around.
“We thought you were gone,” Taylor says.
“I was scared I’d never see you again,” I tell them both.
Marko is in the blue bathrobe and a pair of baggy white boxer shorts with red hearts, and Taylor wears a heather gray t-shirt dress. The living room has been given over to preparations for the upcoming drag climate rally, and there are big glittery signs and banners hanging everywhere, along with a couple of mannequins fitted with in-process dresses of theatrically high glamour.
I collapse on the old couch, which creaks loudly, tears streaming down my face. “I’m so happy to be home.”
After some more reuniting, my friends help me with a shower and a tiny bowl of easy-to-digest food, oatmeal with blueberries. I get into my comfy T-shirt and boxers, which are like heaven on my skin, and crawl back onto the couch.
“I’m so exhausted,” I tell them.
“You should go to sleep,” Marko suggests helpfully.
I rub my eyes. “Not quite yet. My family is trying to make me do a press conference in a couple days, by the way.”
Taylor sits on the armchair across from me. “Excuse me?”
Marko joins me on the couch. “They never disappoint, do they?”
“I’m going to do it for Hank’s sake,” I tell them. “And just to get this over with. But does that really seem necessary? Like, will anyone truly care?”
They exchange a look.
“What?” I ask.
“You’ve been on the news,” Taylor tries.
“And bybeen on the news,” Marko adds, “Taylor means the country is obsessed with your disappearance.”
“You’ve been all over TV, newspapers, trending on every social media platform.”
“More and more stories kept coming out. Rumors about the accounting firm. These drug smugglers who were apparently in the Puget Sound that night.”
Taylor keeps talking as she flips through her phone. “And people tracked down your social media, so there are pictures of you at climate protests with Marko, and tons of pictures of you dancing at the club.”
I blink. “Wait, what?”
She turns her phone in my direction, open to TikTok, and starts scrolling through trending videos showing me or Hank, old photos and screenshots.
“Everyone has a theory,” Marko tries to explain. “Gay lovers run away? An embezzling Ronnie and Clyde? Or were you murdered, or kidnapped? Wereyouthe murderer, or was Hank?”
“There have been false sightings in Japan, Idaho, and at an arctic research station,” Taylor adds.
I try to take it in. “Damn.”
