Page 118 of ClickBack

“Somebody who can keep an eye on it.”

“Does she want a man she doesn’t know sitting outside her house tonight?”

I look up from my phone. Graves meets my eyes in the mirror.

“Then you go.”

“And tell her what when she sees me?”

“That I asked you to check on her.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I’m trying to get this shit under control.”

He leaves the car in park. I hate that, too.

“You think I don’t want her safe?” he asks.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You keep giving me everything except a reason you can’t call her.”

I look at the phone. Her name is near the top of my recent calls. I could touch it. I can already imagine her voice when she sees the crown picture, the change from last night when she finally told me how people used to look at her. I want to be able to say I got rid of it before she has to look at it again.

“I want something to tell her besides it’s getting worse.”

Graves starts the car. “She might want to hear from you anyway.”

At home, the first removal notices come through. Maya sends links marked unavailable. A page deletes the school name. Another takes down an address, though I still can’t tell who copied it before that happened. I send the list to Graves and ask him to watch for anything more specific than comments.

He calls back. “Tori has it.”

“I sent it to you.”

“And I’m telling you she has it. Nobody has to wait for you to forward every link.”

I stop in the middle of my kitchen. “You got somewhere you need to be?”

“I’m at home, Jay. I can do my job from here. So can they.”

I hear his television. It makes me conscious of the empty room around me, the bright lights over a counter I haven’t used tonight.

“All right,” I say.

“Call her.”

“I will.”

My mother calls while I’m looking at the reporter’s post. Tori’s request for privacy appears beneath the same photograph that started this. I let Mom’s call go because I don’t have a version of tonight I can tell her without hearing myself in it.

Near midnight, I open Giselle’s contact. Then Maya sends another update, and I read that first.

There is a video now. Somebody has put the rink picture beside the crown picture, added music, and narrated the years between them. I turn the sound off. It keeps playing. Giselle at sixteen, Giselle last Friday, a freeze-frame of my hand holding hers.

She wanted to go skating. I made a day of it because I could. I never thought I would spend the following Thursday wishing nobody had seen how happy she was.

I carry the phone into my bedroom. Through the bathroom doorway, I can see her cleanser beside the sink. The little fan is on her nightstand, pointed toward where she sleeps. I sit on the edge of the bed and look at the screen again.