DAY 0: FRIDAY

THE UNINVITED GUEST

DESPITE her singular accomplishments in the field of cold-case resolution, Cameron P. Muñoz, ex–teen podcaster extraordinaire, nationally recognized amateur sleuth, and locator of the most famous missing girl in Washington State, would herself admit she’s not the most perceptive person in the world.

But even she knows that someone’s following her home from school.

She refused a ride home from her best friend and fellow onetime investigator, Blair—a refusal she’s already regretting, as the looming December clouds are threatening downpour.

And now she’s got a stalker.

Again.

Great.

In the first months after Cam and Blair broke their small hometown’s legendary missing-girl story, reporters clouded around them like a swarm of summer gnats. Cameramen set up camp in Blair’s cul-de-sac. Journalists lurked in the bushes outside Cam’s apartment.

Both of them had to change their phone numbers.

Both of them had to change their phone numbers again.

Because everybody was calling: journalists, pundits, talk-show hosts. People from the internet who wanted their story, wanted their methods, or wanted them dead. Cam learned quickly to stop googling her own name, out of sheer horror at what she found: page after page of threats and recriminations and theories and lies.

you are o ugly how do you look at yourselves

if u hate the cops so much dont bother calling them when i rape u

shld both just die so i don’t have to listen to them talk anymore wtf

Obviously, these idiots should have considered the possibility that one of the I-5 corridor’s many serial offenders is responsible for this heinous crime

verbal diarea,worthless. why do u hate white people anyway racist bitchs

Et cetera, and much worse.

Like, a lot worse.

Cam-doesn’t-think-about-it-ever worse.

The kind of worse that she filed in a black hole inside her head and left there.

But that was a year ago. Since then, thankfully, most of the world has moved on. There’s always a dead-er white girl with a more spectacular demise and better hair. Cam hasn’t had to run from a reporter in months.

She’s out of practice, and she’s no track star like Blair.

Whoever this is, she’ll have to face them.

A block before the front door of her building, she stops short and turns around.

The person behind her freezes, staring at Cam like a stunned deer.

Whoever they are, they’re no reporter. They look about ten years old. Skinny and furtive, dressed in a knitted grandpa cardigan with leather elbow patches darkened by damp and a pair of too-large men’s trousers cut off above the ankles and a wool newsboy cap.

What the hell? Cam thinks.

“Cameron Muñoz,” the urchin says.

“What,” Cam says warily.

“I’m Mattie,” the person says. “You have to help me find my sister.”

Oh.

That explains it, then.

“Not on your life,” Cam says, and turns back around.

The pitter-patter of feet behind her. Bony fingers grasping at her elbow. Cam jerks her arm away from Mattie’s hand.

No,” Cam says again.

“Please,” Mattie says. “I’m not some rando. I’m a freshman at Oreville. I know all about you. Nobody else can help me. You found that girl Clarissa. You and Blair. You found her when the police didn’t do anything. That’s why I need your help.”

That’s when the rain starts, a downpour that cuts through fabric like an icy knife.

Please,” Mattie begs.

Cam does recognize this urchin. Huge sad eyes in a pinched white face, scurrying past her in the halls of Oreville High.

Mattie is already wet through to the skin.

“I’ll give you five minutes,” Cam growls, stomping the rest of the way home down the watery sidewalk. Mattie freezes for a moment, as if unable to believe the plea really worked, and then runs after her.

Cam’s mom, Irene, is still at work. Cam offers up a silent prayer of thanks. Irene is a tolerant person under most circumstances, but Cam has no desire to explain a sopping child dripping rainwater all over the kitchen floor.

“Your lips are turning blue,” Cam says. “Stay here. I’ll get you dry clothes. If you touch anything, I’ll kill you. And I know how to hide a body where it will never be found.”

This isn’t at all true, but Mattie nods, teeth chattering.

Cam doesn’t want to turn her back on this weirdo.

But she also doesn’t want this weirdo to go into hypothermic shock in her apartment.

That will be hard to explain to Irene.

Cam gathers up a towel from a pile of what she’s pretty sure is clean laundry on the living room floor and a sweatshirt from a pile of what she’s pretty sure is clean laundry on her bedroom floor. Her pants will be far too long for her mystery guest, so she filches a pair of sweatpants from a pile of what she’s pretty sure is clean laundry on Irene’s bedroom floor.

Mattie hasn’t moved, standing stiffly in the kitchen and shivering so violently Cam worries her odd visitor will fly apart at the seams.

“Here,” Cam says, handing over her bundle. “Bathroom is down the hall. You want something warm to drink? Tea? Coffee?”

“C-c-coffee,” Mattie says, and takes the clothes. “Can you call Blair?”

“No,” Cam says, and turns to the coffeepot.

Ten minutes later Mattie is sitting across from Cam at Cam’s kitchen table, engulfed by Cam’s sweatshirt, skinny ankles sticking out from Irene’s sweatpants, wet clothes tumbling in Cam’s dryer.

Mattie takes a sip of coffee.

Cam’s interviewed enough people to see that now that Mattie’s here in front of her, Mattie has no idea where to start.

But Cam’s not about to lend a helping hand.

When the coffee is gone, Mattie leaves.

End of story.

Cam’s middle-aged black cat, Kitten, wanders into the kitchen, lashing his tail and eyeing the refrigerator. He gives Mattie a long, suspicious look, then turns his accusing gaze to Cam as if demanding to know what she’s thinking bringing a damp stranger into the sanctity of his demesne.

You and me both, buddy, Cam thinks.

“Start talking,” she says.

“I want to talk to Blair too.”

“You are in no position to make demands,” Cam says.

“Please,” says Mattie for a third time. The line of Mattie’s mouth is resolute.

Small as her uninvited guest is, Cam realizes, it will not be as easy to get Mattie out of her house as she hoped. She is a warrior of the mind, not the body.

She glances at the window, gives herself the satisfaction of imagining hauling it open, dragging Mattie from the chair, and giving Mattie a good solid push.

His mind apparently made up about the visitor, Kitten takes a flying leap into Mattie’s lap, settles in, and starts to purr.

“Traitor,” Cam says, and texts Blair.


“All right,” Blair says. “Start from the beginning.”

She came when Cam texted. She always does. Though Cam’s message made absolutely no sense.

And now that she’s here, she’s even more confused.

It is extremely Cam to collect a scrawny nonsense-spouting stranger off the street, and it is equally Cam to make Blair come over and help her deal with it.

Cam’s always been there for Blair too, so at least it’s an even exchange.

But Blair never asks Cam to do anything that out of the ordinary.

So maybe it isn’t.

“Make it fast,” Cam says. “I don’t know when Irene is coming home, and I do not want to explain you to my mother.”

“My sister is Lola Brosillard,” Mattie says as if Cam and Blair should know who that is.

“Who?” Blair asks.

But, Cam thinks, the name is familiar. All that time she spent online, looking for Clarissa.

Lola Brosillard.

“Your sister ran away,” Cam says, remembering. “Three years ago?”

“Five. And my sister went missing,” Mattie says. “She didn’t run away.” Mattie looks down at the coffee cup. “Lola’s six years older than me. She got in trouble a lot,” Mattie says to the mug. “Sometimes she would disappear for two or three days. But she always came back. She promised me she’d always come back, and she did.”

“What kind of trouble?” Blair asks.

Mattie grimaces. “Sometimes shoplifting. Dumb stuff, though, nothing big. A couple times she got caught drinking in public. I know what it sounds like. But she’s a good person. She just doesn’t like doing what other people think she should.”

“And then she went missing?” Blair asks.

“One night the summer after her sophomore year Lola and my brother, Luke, had a party at our house. Our mom was out of town, and they were supposed to be watching me. I never minded when they did stuff like that, though. Lola would let me stay up late and watch scary movies. And she’d buy me ice cream.” Mattie smiles at the memory. “After their friends left, Luke and Lola went to bed. I was already asleep. My brother had a dream that somebody was in the house, a stranger. Except it wasn’t a dream. In the morning, Lola was gone. The glass in the patio door was shattered, like someone had tried to break in from outside. Ruth—our mom—got home right after Luke woke up, and she called the police. They came, but they didn’t do much. Just took pictures of the door and wrote a report. Nothing was stolen, so I don’t think they really cared.”

“Your sister was gone,” Cam says incredulously. “They didn’t notice?”

Mattie shifts in the chair. “She ran away a few times before,” Mattie says. “Ruth called the police the first time. They found her at her boyfriend’s house. It wasn’t a big deal, but Ruth kind of lost it. I was in the other room when the cops brought her home and Ruth wouldn’t stop screaming at her. ‘How could you do this to me, how could you embarrass your family, how will I show my face in town.’ That kind of stuff. After that, she stopped calling the police when Lola left.”

“But she called the police this time,” Blair says. “Why?”

“The window was broken,” Mattie says. “She probably needed the police report for the insurance company.”

“She didn’t tell them your sister was missing?” Blair asks in disbelief.

“I did,” Mattie says. “Because of the window. And Luke’s dream. It felt different than the other times. I knew she hadn’t run away.”

“Different how?” Blair asks.

Mattie frowns. “Just … different.”

“Then what?” Cam asks.

“They didn’t believe me,” Mattie says simply. “The cops put it in their report, but I could tell. And Ruth yelled at me afterward for dragging our family business out where other people could see it, and Luke told Ruth to leave me alone, and then we never talked about it again. And Lola didn’t come back. So I was right, but nobody cared.”

Cam stares. “Your sister didn’t come home and you didn’t talk about it?”

“I called the police again a week later,” Mattie says. “But they don’t listen to little kids. Ruth wasn’t worried about it. Luke was her favorite; he still is. Ruth and Lola fought all the time. I mean, all the time. About everything. Lola’s clothes, Lola’s friends, Lola’s attitude. You know how when you’re a teenager, you’re supposed to be mortified by your parents? With them, it was the other way around. Ruth didn’t want people to see her and Lola together in public. This one time, Lola dyed her hair red—like, fire-truck red—and Ruth just screamed at her when she saw it. ‘You’re making yourself ugly on purpose to humiliate me,’ stuff like that.”

“That sounds horrible,” Blair says. “I would’ve run away from that too.”

“But she didn’t,” Mattie says. “I’m telling you, that night was different. I know she didn’t run away on her own, because she never came back. She promised me she would never leave me alone with Ruth.”

“You think someone kidnapped her?” Cam asks.

“Why else would someone break into the house and not take anything? Why else wouldn’t she come home?”

“Who would do that?” Cam asks.

“I don’t know,” Mattie says.

“What about the other people at the party?” Blair asks. “Did they see something?”

“Luke gave the police their names,” Mattie says. “And the cops interviewed them. At least they did that much. Everybody left around two in the morning. When they went home, Lola was sitting on the patio looking at the stars.”

“You saw the police report?” Blair asks.

“I interviewed them too,” Mattie says. “After I called the police the second time, and realized they weren’t going to help.”

“You tracked down your sister’s friends and interviewed them?” Cam asks.

“I was young, not stupid,” Mattie says defensively.

“I didn’t mean that in a bad way,” Cam says. “It’s impressive.”

Mattie stares at Cam suspiciously before deciding Cam’s not joking.

“What about her stuff?” Blair asks. “Like her wallet? Or her phone?”

“I never found them,” Mattie says.

“The police didn’t think they were stolen?” Blair asks.

“They thought she took them with her. She had a credit card our mom gave her, but nobody used it after she disappeared.”

“And the police … dropped it?” Cam asks, still disbelieving.

“Maybe if Ruth had told them to look for Lola, they would’ve. But like I said, I think she was relieved Lola was gone. I think she’d be happier if I ran away too.” One hand rises unconsciously to touch Mattie’s own raggedy close-cropped hair. “I’m the one who did all kinds of things to try and find her. I set up search alerts on Ruth’s computer until she made me turn them off. I emailed people who run missing-persons websites. My brother helped me make posters and put them up all over town.”

“Your mom didn’t help with the posters?”

“No,” Mattie says flatly.

Now Blair remembers. Leaflets fluttering from telephone poles. A dark-haired, broody-looking, beautiful girl, unsmiling in her photograph.

HAVE YOU SEEN LOLA?

She’d been a kid then herself. She’d wondered where the girl had gone, who’d taken her. She remembers the shivery feeling she got between her shoulder blades, understanding that whatever happened to missing girls, it wasn’t good.

“I watched all the footage from our security camera from that night and days before and after. However Lola left that night, she didn’t go out the front door. But the camera only covers the driveway and the front porch.” Mattie pulls a notebook out of the backpack, shows it to Cam and Blair. It’s thick, every page covered with tiny handwriting, stuffed with dog-eared printouts. “You can read all my notes,” Mattie says.

“That’s all right,” Cam says quickly.

“What about your dad?” Blair asks.

“He lives in Hawaii. He left Ruth for his secretary when I was five. We don’t hear from him much. Ruth got all his money in the divorce because he cheated on her, and he’s still pissed.”

“But Lola disappeared,” Cam says.

“I don’t think he cared by then,” Mattie says.

Blair thinks of Clarissa’s parents, locked away forever in the same house she’d lived in.

Of Clarissa’s dad, his haunted, broken face.

Of all the people who’d missed her, searched for her, kept her memory alive, in all the long years between when she’d disappeared and when Cam and Blair, against all odds, had found her.

But if what Mattie’s saying is true, this other girl vanished, and nobody cared enough to look.

It happens; Blair knows this. Learned this again last year, thinking about all the other missing girls who weren’t like Clarissa: weren’t white, weren’t pretty, didn’t have the kind of lives that made for splashy magazine profiles full of glamour shots. Girls who went missing like a stone sinking into dark water, without a ripple to mark the place where it had gone under.

Still.

Not even her own parents?

She swallows hard.

Jesus, she thinks. Poor Lola.

“Your brother?” she asks.

“He doesn’t know anything,” Mattie says. “He couldn’t remember what the person who took her looked like in his dream. I asked him if Lola had any enemies, but he said nobody they knew would want to hurt her. Him and Lola are—were—really close. Almost as close as me and Lola. They’re fraternal twins.”

“If Lola disappeared five years ago, why are you coming to us now?” Cam asks.

“Because three days ago a girl walked into a police station in eastern Oregon and said she was my sister,” Mattie says.

“What?” Cam asks in astonishment.

“I think you might’ve buried the lede a little there,” Blair says dryly.

“She told the cops she had been kidnapped from our house five years ago by people who had been watching our family,” Mattie continues, ignoring the interruption. “They were planning to hold her for ransom. Once, she tried to run away when they stopped for gas, and they chased her down and almost killed her. They kept her drugged and drove her around the country and eventually she got Stockholm syndrome and didn’t know how to get away from them. Finally they left her in a basement in an abandoned house in this random tiny town in Oregon and after five days she figured they weren’t coming back. So she escaped and found the police.

“Ruth drove me and Luke down there right away. It was an eight-hour drive, but when we got there, this girl was sitting there waiting for us. Totally calm. Ruth lost it. She was hysterical. Crying, screaming. ‘My baby’ this, ‘my baby’ that.” Mattie scowls. “That was a big show for the cops. Luke went into the bathroom and puked. Everybody’s freaking out all over the place, the secretary’s crying, Ruth’s crying, Luke’s crying, the girl starts crying, this cop in a cowboy hat keeps trying to hug us all—it was a circus.”

“It seems normal to get emotional during a reunion like that,” Blair says carefully.

“I didn’t,” Mattie says. “Because she’s not Lola.”

Cam and Blair stare at Mattie, speechless.

“She … What?” Cam says finally.

“I knew it the second I saw her,” Mattie says. “I never saw that girl before in my life. I don’t know who she is or what she wants. She says she’s Lola. My mom and brother say she’s Lola. She looks like Lola. But she isn’t.”

Cam’s mouth is hanging open slightly. Blair’s sure she looks just as astonished.

“But…” Blair says. “No offense, but that’s insane.”

Mattie nods. “Exactly. A bunch of people followed Lola around when she was fifteen, kidnapped her, drove her around for five years, and just left? No way.”

“I didn’t mean—” Blair tries to assemble a coherent response. “She has to be your sister. Right? Why on earth would someone impersonate your sister five years after she disappeared? How did she get to Oregon? Why would she make up a whole story about being kidnapped? How would she even know Lola was gone in the first place?”

“I don’t know,” Mattie says.

“What about your brother?” Cam asks.

“My brother doesn’t believe me either,” Mattie says. “He says I was so young when Lola disappeared that I don’t remember her as well as I think I do. He says I’m having a hard time accepting the truth, because it was so hard for me when she left. And that she only seems different because of what she went through.”

“That sounds a lot more likely than some girl with a secret plan who happens to look exactly like your sister lied her way into your family five years after she went missing,” Cam says.

“Her story can’t be true,” Mattie retorts, flushing angrily. “Why didn’t the kidnappers ever ask us for ransom? Why did they hang on to her for five years and then leave her behind for no reason? None of it makes sense. Ruth buys it, but she’ll believe anything she hears on Fox News. Evil terrorists stalking families for no reason and kidnapping their kids is the kind of thing she thinks happens all the time. She probably thinks they were drag queens trying to sex traffic Lola.”

“That’s a fake story made up by bigots,” Cam says.

“I know that,” Mattie says, irritated. “That’s my point.”

“But you said your mom fought with Lola all the time,” Blair says, redirecting quickly. “Now she’s happy Lola’s back?”

“She’s happy she can pretend this girl is her daughter,” Mattie says. “This girl wears pretty dresses and says she’s so happy to be home and tells Ruth what a great mom she is. The real Lola never would have done any of that.”

“Make her take a DNA test, then,” Cam says.

“I thought of that already,” Mattie says. “I said she should take one when we went to the police station and met her. Ruth told me I have a morbid imagination and want everyone else to be as miserable as I am. I can steal strands of her hair from the bathroom or whatever, but I’m not old enough to get a credit card or bank account on my own, and even if I was I don’t have three hundred dollars.” Mattie pulls out a cell phone. “Look at this picture.”

Cam and Blair look. The photo is a close-up candid shot of a teenage girl. Her face is turned toward the camera, but she’s looking at something behind whoever took the picture. Her eyes are huge, a startling shade of green that makes Blair think of beach glass. Her hair is a dense black cloud, her skin even paler than Mattie’s winter-white face. Her mouth is open slightly, as if she was in the middle of saying something when the shutter closed.

“She’s beautiful,” Blair says.

Mattie nods. “That’s my sister. Now look at this one.” Mattie swipes through pictures, holds out the phone again. Another close-up shot, but this time the girl has her face turned partly away, as if she doesn’t know her picture is being taken. Her hair’s a few shades lighter, but her eyes are the same glass-green, her skin a matching cream. Her cheekbones are a little sharper, her face a little less rounded. She’s older than the girl in the first picture by a few years.

“This is her now?” Cam asks.

“That’s not my sister,” Mattie snaps. “That’s her.

“The hair is different,” Blair says neutrally.

“Lola dyed her hair,” Mattie says.

“So maybe she stopped,” Cam says.

“The hair doesn’t matter,” Mattie says angrily. “I’m showing you that it’s not her.

Cam glances at Blair. “It sure looks like her,” Cam mutters.

“It’s hard to tell for sure,” Blair says tactfully. “The pictures are at different angles. What about the police? Did they try and find the kidnappers?”

Mattie gives Blair a world-weary look that says You too? as loud as spoken language. “She didn’t give them anything to go on. She says their faces are a blur and she had no idea they’d taken her for so long. Ruth took her to a psychiatrist the day after she got back. The shrink says she has ‘trauma-induced amnesia’ and she might not ever remember anything. Very convenient for her.”

“Mattie,” Blair says gently, “your sister might have changed a lot in five years. You just told us yourself that she ran away a lot, got in trouble—”

“You’re just like the cops!” Mattie says angrily.

“That’s not what I meant,” Blair says. “You’re right, the kidnapping story is wild. Maybe it is a lie—because Lola doesn’t want to tell your family what she was really doing. Maybe she just wanted to come home, and didn’t know how else to do it. Lying about where she went doesn’t mean she’s someone else.”

“Your mom thinks it’s her,” Cam says. “Your brother thinks it’s her. Right?”

Mattie scowls. “I don’t know what my brother thinks. He won’t talk to me about it. He told me to drop it and be glad she’s home.”

“If he thought this person was pretending to be Lola, why wouldn’t he say something? You said they were close. Why would he go along with an impostor? How would he not know she’s a fake?”

“I don’t know,” Mattie says. “I don’t know, all right? All I know is, that girl isn’t my sister. I can feel it. She looks like Lola, but it’s not her. I know how it sounds, but you have to believe me. I know Lola better than anyone else.”

Blair, looking at Mattie, thinks: That’s what you’ve been telling yourself for years. That’s what’s kept you going.

That doesn’t mean it’s true.

Still—

What a story.

“Fine,” Cam says. “Let’s say you’re not making this up, and some random Lola doppelgänger found your family five years after your sister ran away—”

“Went missing,” Mattie corrects fiercely.

“Went missing,” Cam corrects, enunciating the words sarcastically. “Why come to us? What are we supposed to do about it?”

“I need help,” Mattie says. “I’m only fourteen. I don’t have a driver’s license. I have to live in the same house as this girl. You can ask questions. Talk to people. Nobody in my family knows you, so they’ll tell you things they won’t tell me. You found Clarissa Campbell. You can help me find my sister. She’s somewhere out there, and she needs me. You have to help me find out who this other girl is, and what she wants. You have to help me get rid of her.”

“We—” Blair begins.

Mattie steamrolls over her. “I’ve listened to your podcast about a thousand times. If I could do this myself, I would. Believe me. But I need someone this girl doesn’t know. Someone who can go around and talk to Lola’s old friends again. Find out where she is and why she can’t come home.”

“What if she’s dead?” Cam asks calmly.

“Cam!” says Blair.

Cam ignores her. “What if you’re right? What if this girl isn’t your sister and your real sister is dead?”

Mattie’s face is resolute. “I’m not afraid of the truth. Anything is better than living in a house with—that. Anything is better than not knowing.”

“We tore up our whole lives looking for Clarissa,” Cam says, as fierce as Mattie. “We got sued. We got stalked. We hurt a lot of people. We got hurt ourselves. Why should we go through anything like that again for you?”

“Cam,” Blair says again. “She doesn’t know about all that.”

“They,” Mattie says.

“They who?” asks Blair.

“Me,” says Mattie. “Not she. They.”

“Got it. Sorry,” Blair says.

“I know what happened to you,” Mattie says. “I didn’t want to ask you to do this. My family has a lot of money, but I can’t pay you. I don’t get an allowance. I understand why you don’t want to help me. But I can’t do this alone. Ruth is having a welcome-home party on Sunday.” Mattie almost spits the word “welcome.” “Just family, but you can come. I’ll tell her that you’re peer mentors from school. I’ve already planned it out. See what you think. If you decide I’m crazy then, I’ll leave you alone. I promise. Please.

“No,” Cam says at the same time as Blair says, “We’ll think about it.”

“We’ll think about it?” Cam repeats.

“Cam, can we have a moment?” Blair asks.

“No moments,” Cam says again. But Blair’s already halfway out of the kitchen.

Cam gives Mattie a murderous look and follows Blair into her room.

“What the hell, Blair?” she hisses before Blair’s even closed the bedroom door. “This kid is nuts. They think a person who looks exactly like their sister—who their mom and brother think is their sister—isn’t really their sister based on, like, vibes? They haven’t seen her in five years! Of course she’s different!”

“Maybe,” Blair says. “I’m sure you’re right. But what if it’s true? At least, some part of it?”

“Blair, come on. There’s no way—”

“What if there is?” Blair grabs Cam’s hand. “What if there’s something? What if—what if something bad happens because we didn’t help them? Come on, Cam, aren’t you bored? Don’t you miss having something to do? Something meaningful?”

“No,” Cam says.

“We solved a murder, Cam! We brought closure to all of Clarissa’s friends and family. We did something totally amazing, just you and me. Don’t you want to feel like that again?”

Blair’s talking fast, and her eyes are bright.

Cam hasn’t seen her this excited since—

Since they found Clarissa.

Blair’s been her friend through everything. Through all the worst things Cam’s done.

And everything bad that happened last year is Cam’s fault. All of it.

Which means she owes Blair, big-time.

Cam’s not sure why, but Blair wants this. Wants Mattie’s ridiculous story to be real. Wants the two of them to follow it and see where it leads.

Cam can say no to Mattie.

She can’t say no to Blair.

No matter how badly she wants to. No matter how loud her instincts are screaming at her to push Mattie out the front door and never think about them again.

“I’m not making another podcast,” Cam says. “Ever. About anything.”

“Mattie’s not asking us to make a podcast,” Blair says. “They’re asking us to go to a party.”

“That’s not all they’re asking us, Blair,” Cam says. “Come on.”

“I know,” Blair says. “But aren’t you curious? If they’re making all this up for some reason, don’t you want to know why?”

“If they’re making all this up, they need a therapist,” Cam says. “Not us.”

“Just come to the party with me,” Blair says.

Cam studies Blair’s face. Something changed for Blair in Cam’s kitchen. Somehow she went from just as incredulous as Cam to trying to sweet-talk Cam into humoring a delusional fourteen-year-old.

“You’ve been listening to too many true-crime podcasts,” Cam says.

Blair rolls her eyes. “I didn’t even listen to the one we made.”

“You didn’t?” Cam asks in surprise.

“I hate the sound of my own voice,” Blair says. “Come with me to this party. It’ll be weird. But it could be fun.”

“Fun,” Cam says sourly. “Sure.”

“Please.”

“Fine. Just the party,” Cam says, her heart heavy in her chest.

Blair’s whole face lights up. “Just the party,” she agrees, too fast. “That’s it.”

Cam’s not fooled. She knows she’s giving in to a lot more than a party.

She lets Blair tell Mattie yes.

Lets Blair have the delight of watching Mattie’s face transform with a disbelieving smile.

“Thank you,” Mattie says. “I can’t pay you,” they say again, the grin vanishing.

“We don’t care about that,” Blair says.

Mattie stands, gently tilting Kitten out of their lap. They gather up their notebook and their backpack.

Cam retrieves Mattie’s still-damp clothes from the dryer, puts them in a grocery bag. “You can give the sweatpants back later,” she says, grumpy. She doesn’t want a “later” with Mattie.

The rain hammers against the kitchen window.

“Um, so,” Mattie says, glancing outside. “I sort of walked here.”

“I’ll give you a ride home,” Blair says. “Come on.”


“Here we go again,” Cam says after the door has shut on Blair and Mattie’s backs.

Kitten squeezes his eyes shut and purrs.

MEREDITH PAYNE-WHITELEY ENTERS THE CHAT

Blair’s senior year so far has been calm. Track meets and homework. Family dinners, the same every night: Mom’s Stepford-wife cheer, Dad’s eternal just-got-home-from-a-long-day-at-the-office grumpiness. Her younger brother, Scott, leaves appalling messes in their shared bathroom no matter how many times Blair complains about it and falls madly in love with a new girl every six to nine days, which Blair can track by the level of his cologne usage.

Last year is something they don’t talk about, in true Johnson family fashion. No complex emotions are to be discussed, let alone displayed, in the Johnson home. And her parents blame Cam for the whole mess anyway: the lawsuit, the reporters banging on their door for months, Blair’s dad’s colleagues who stopped talking to him because his daughter’s podcast accused a pillar of the community of being a sexual predator. (The fact that his daughter’s podcast was correct did not enter into their excommunication process.)

Blair knows she should be grateful. Her parents have every reason to be pissed with her for all eternity. But something stings about her family’s willingness to attribute everything the podcast accomplished to someone else.

Because, though the podcast was Cam’s idea, Cam could never have pulled it off without Blair. Blair’s the one who got Clarissa’s family and friends to talk. Blair’s the one who steered the madcap engine of Cam’s brain. Blair’s the one who figured out what was really going on with Clarissa and her teacher, and Blair’s the one who came to the rescue when Cam got herself imprisoned in a basement and almost murdered.

She doesn’t want her parents to hate her. She doesn’t want anyone to hate her. But she sure would like some credit.

Last year, she realized for the first time that she might not be the most boring girl in the world. That she might have something worth saying. Last year, hundreds of thousands of people hung on her every word.

This year?

Crickets.

This year, she’s back where she’s always been. Good old Blair Johnson. Not the smartest, not the prettiest, but such a nice girl.

And she hates it.

Which is why, when her phone rang last week with an area code she didn’t recognize, she answered the call.

“Blair Johnson?” said the voice on the other end of the line. A woman’s voice, clipped and assured, with a trace of an accent Blair couldn’t place. “This is Meredith Payne-Whiteley, with CMA. Do you have a few moments to chat about your career?”

Blair had had to google “CMA”—Creative Management Agency—after she hung up, and then she had to google “creative management,” and then she had to google “literary agent.” She’d spent most of the call making bewildered noises of assent as Meredith Payne-Whiteley explained to her, Blair Johnson, that she, Meredith Payne-Whiteley, would like Blair Johnson to put together a book proposal. (Blair had also had to google “book proposal.”) That she, Blair Johnson, had unlimited creative potential and an incredible market foothold and a major platform waiting to be leveraged.

Blair hadn’t understood a whole lot of what Meredith Payne-Whiteley said, other than something about a lot of money and a plane ticket to New York to develop some ideas in person for a new project.

“But I don’t have any ideas for a new project,” Blair had blurted.

“That’s part of my role,” Meredith Payne-Whiteley said smoothly. “We’d be a team, Blair. I’ll support you every step of the way. And with your reach, there’s plenty of material you can tackle. We can look for a cold case that would be a good market fit—something with a high-concept twist to intrigue a jaded audience. Something we haven’t seen before, something attention-grabbing. Of course, serial killers always do quite well.”

“What about Cam?” Blair asked.

“My understanding is that you were the primary content creator,” Meredith Payne-Whiteley said. “I’ve worked with creative teams before, but I’m not sure that’s the right step forward here.”

Blair doesn’t have to google “primary content creator” or “creative teams” to get Meredith Payne-Whiteley’s drift.

Which is why she’s kept the call secret from Cam.

And why the secret is eating through her.

She can’t possibly say yes to Meredith Payne-Whiteley.

The podcast was Cam’s idea. More importantly, Cam is her best and oldest friend. Cam would never forgive her for going it alone with another dead girl. For shutting Cam out of a world she created and invited Blair into.

And Cam’s right. A lot of things went wrong last year. A lot of bad things happened. Blair thinks of Cam’s pleading face in her bedroom while Mattie sat in the kitchen. She’s pushing Cam into something she doesn’t want to do, and Blair knows it.

But she can’t possibly say no to Meredith Payne-Whiteley either.

Because when is she ever going to get another chance like this? All she’s ever wanted is to be a writer. Meredith Payne-Whiteley is holding her biggest dream out to her on a platter, saying take what you want, it’s yours in her brisk, authoritative voice.

Blair’s not like Cam. Cam is brilliant and confident and fearless and has had her entire career track planned out since she was ten years old. She’s so sure of herself she only applied early decision to MIT and didn’t bother with a backup.

Blair has no doubt she’ll get in. They don’t make brains like Cam’s very often, and people tend to notice when they do.

Blair, on the other hand, has never been able to imagine life beyond high school as anything other than a vague blur. She hasn’t applied to the college of her dreams. She hasn’t applied to college at all. The writers she loves best didn’t go to fancy schools. They went around the world and had adventures. Or they survived wars. Or they had complicated love affairs with lots of different people at once. Or they were heiresses with interesting friends and laudanum habits.

They most certainly did not take Introduction to Creative Writing with a bunch of other eighteen-year-olds from good homes.

Cam’s been getting letters from places like Stanford and Caltech since she was a freshman.

Even after the podcast, nobody’s courting Blair.

Blair knows her parents love her, but sometimes she wonders if her future is just an afterthought for them. Her two older brothers are at the University of Washington, where her parents met when they were students there themselves. It’s a given that Scott will go to UDub too. The Johnson family assumption is that Blair will go first to community college, polish up her GPA, and eventually transfer to the Johnson alma mater once she has her AA.

UDub is a Johnson family tradition, and Blair knows her parents don’t have the money for an out-of-state school, let alone a private one. Their plan for her is a perfectly acceptable one for someone who doesn’t have another, bigger, secret goal, a goal she hasn’t shared with anyone other than Cam.

It’s not Blair’s parents’ fault that her brothers have overshadowed her for her entire life.

It’s not her parents’ fault she hasn’t ever told them what she really wants.

Maybe it is their fault, though, that they’ve never asked.

Blair’s been putting off the question of her future for a long time. But as her senior year progresses, her future is looming ever closer. Cam can tell Blair about multidimensional theories of space-time until Blair’s ears fall off, but in this dimension time progresses in a relentlessly orderly fashion.

In six months, Blair graduates. Her future will have arrived whether she likes it or not.

And now: this thing with Mattie.

Dropped into her lap as if Meredith Payne-Whiteley herself sent it express.

The perfect opportunity.

Another missing girl.

Another mystery.

And talk about a high-concept twist. Mattie’s theory that the returned Lola isn’t their sister doesn’t make any sense.

But something happened to Mattie’s missing sister in the last five years.

And something made her come back.

Blair knows there’s a story there. She’s sure of it.

But for some reason, Cam’s fighting her. It’s as if Cam’s somehow guessed her secret. As if Cam’s trying to keep her from the thing she wants most.

Blair doesn’t get it. Cam was the one who wanted to find Clarissa in the first place. Cam’s the one who had to talk Blair into joining the search. And now that they have another mystery handed to them gift wrapped, Cam wants to bail?

Which means, Blair decides, that for now she’s on her own. Once Blair makes some progress, she’ll have no trouble getting Cam back on board.

She’ll tell Cam about Meredith Payne-Whiteley.

She’ll tell Meredith Payne-Whiteley she and Cam are a team.

She’ll tell her parents about her dreams. And when Meredith Payne-Whiteley gets her a book deal, they’ll know she’s serious.

But first, she needs something to show for herself. That’s all. She’s not doing anything wrong.

So why does she feel so bad?

BAD DREAMS

When she was younger, Cam used to get in trouble in math.

Seventh grade, pre-algebra, Mr. Rosen. The most irritating teacher Cam’s ever had, which is saying a lot. On the third week of class he returned her homework—her beautiful, perfect homework with its tidy lines of solved equations—with REDO scrawled across the top in ugly red letters.

“These are all correct,” Cam said, appalled.

“You need to show your work, Cameron,” said Mr. Rosen, with a sanctimonious twitch of his mustache.

“That is my work,” Cam said.

“The steps, Cameron,” Mr. Rosen said, his voice dripping with stagy disappointment.

“What steps? There are no steps,” Cam said.

Mr. Rosen leaned in. Up close, his breath smelled of stale coffee and condescension. “Cameron,” he said. “Did your father help you with this?”

Cam blinked. “Not fucking likely,” she said.

Irene got called into the principal’s office over that one—Mr. Rosen was quick to injury and keen on respect for elders—where she had to explain that no, it was not fucking likely that Cam’s father had helped her with her math homework, considering he’d been dead for nearly a decade, and no, she, Irene Muñoz, was not helping Cam with her math homework either, and perhaps the problem here was not for once the admittedly big mouth of her daughter but rather the patently inferior quality of the instruction she was receiving.

Cam was quietly transferred into Mrs. Litow’s eighth-grade algebra class.

A week later, she was quietly transferred into Ms. Ritter’s tenth-grade trigonometry class.

And nobody doubted Cam was doing her own homework after that, although Mr. Rosen still gives her filthy looks on the rare occasions they cross paths.

Cam despised—still despises—Mr. Rosen, but she hadn’t understood what he was asking. Not then, and not for a long time. Not until she realized years later that for most people, the movement between an unsolved problem and its solution didn’t happen in their heads. That the beauty of a perfect language describing the interaction of bodies and time and space was as opaque to other people as, say, Shakespeare was to her.

Shakespeare, she thinks, doodling in the physics textbook Irene ordered for her online. Shakespeare, and talking about her feelings. Physics, at least, is not a problem. Oreville High doesn’t offer AP Physics C; she’s doing it as an independent study, fording her way through particle systems and linear momentum on her own.

But linear momentum is not helping her understand the kinematics of human interaction.

Why Blair has been acting so weird the last week, for example.

Even Cam can tell Blair has a secret.

And for the first time in the entire history of their friendship, Blair’s not telling her what the secret is.

But Cam has a secret too.

Cam’s secret? Being imprisoned in a basement and threatened with a gun and almost getting her best friend and her mother killed along with her has kind of messed her up.

And being relentlessly harassed by the entire internet on top of her mother, her journalism teacher, her best friend, and her best friend’s entire family being relentlessly harassed by the entire internet has messed her up more.

And the fact that all of it is her fault?

That’s messed her up most of all.

Cam and Blair haven’t talked about it. Not head-on. They’ve saved unhinged screeds from the worst of their hate-emailers in case somebody comes after them in real life. They’ve commiserated over the persistence of certain reporters. They’ve expressed relief the lawsuit fell through before either of their families was bankrupted.

But they haven’t talked about it.

Cam doesn’t know how to talk about it.

She has no idea if Blair is still mad at her, and she’s too terrified to ask.

She can’t ask her own mother.

Because what if she does ask, and they say yes?

What would she do then?

Cam hasn’t told Blair about her nightmares.

She hasn’t told Sophie, her girlfriend.

She didn’t want to tell Irene either, but it’s hard to hide the fact that she wakes up screaming in the middle of the night at least once a week when she lives with her mother in an eight-hundred-square-foot apartment.

She hasn’t told Blair or Irene about her panic attacks. Thankfully, they don’t happen that often, and they haven’t happened around other people—yet. But they descend on her without warning and transform her from a perfectly functional human being with an exceptionally functional brain into a shattered wreck, trembling and sweat-soaked.

And she hasn’t told Blair that her nightmares got so bad over the summer that Irene frog-marched her to a therapist. The therapist was called Dr. Bird and she looked like one: a frowsy, diminutive white woman with a thatch of disordered, dull-brown hair dressed in a dull-brown skirt and a dull-brown sweater that engulfed her like a nest. She cocked her head and looked at Cam with her round, dull-brown eyes and asked Cam how her dreams made her feel.

“How do you think they make me feel?” Cam shouted. “How would you feel if you were dumb enough to get trapped in a basement, you pigeon?”

The rest of Cam’s first therapy session had not gone much better. Cam waited in the car, seething, while Irene had a hushed conference with the therapist. On the drive home Cam told Irene she was never talking to someone as stupid as Dr. Bird again. Irene didn’t say anything for a while, and Cam knew she was trying to work out how to talk Cam into going back.

“She thinks you have PTSD,” Irene said finally.

“You don’t say,” Cam said.

“It might help you a lot to talk to someone, Cam,” Irene said.

“I talk to you.”

“No, you don’t. And I meant someone who can support you better. Someone objective. Even if you don’t want to talk about what happened, she can teach you tools that will help you cope with—”

“Please don’t make me do that again,” Cam said.

Irene didn’t like it, but she didn’t push.

Cam’s nightmares got better on their own.

Mostly.

And now: this thing with Mattie.

Dropped on them like a falling piano.

And Blair wants to stand directly underneath it.

Cam’s sitting at her desk, looking idly out at the familiar view: the scabby patch of winter-depilated grass in front of her apartment building; the park across the street, where a tall blonde lady is walking a little three-legged dog in a festive neckerchief; the lone streetlight flickering in the descending twilight.

Kitten is asleep in Cam’s unmade bed, his paws twitching as he runs after dream mice. Irene’s home from work and clanking around in the kitchen, which means she’s cooking, which means dinner will be either spaghetti with red sauce from a box or spaghetti with white sauce from a box.

Cam might be unforgivable, but at least she is warm and cozy and working through scientific problems of great difficulty with the powers of her formidable brain.

In six months she will be free of Oreville and far enough away from Blair and Irene that she can’t ruin their lives any more than she already has.

She will be free at last of her guilt, surely, and the people she loves will be safe.

The last thing she wants is another missing girl.

But the one thing she can’t do is say no to Blair.

Dear Mats,

I’ll never send this. You don’t know the whole story, and I guess it works better for me that way. But I know you have a lot of questions.

Why did I do it? Where have I been?

What else have I done?

There are some things a person can’t explain entirely. Even when I was a child, I always wanted to be someone else. It didn’t take me long to learn that most of what other people see as us is what we choose to tell them. Not just with our stories. With our bodies, our clothes, our smiles, our eyes. I learned early on that the rules are only there for people who follow them. There are a thousand other ways, over and around, for people who don’t want to go through.

You’re different; I know that. You want me to be the person you remember, and I’m not. You believe in true things that stay that way. You believe in a straight path through to the end. But what happens when you get there? What if the end you find is just another beginning? Just a thread from a tapestry so large you can’t even find your own place inside it? What if there’s no such thing as the end at all? The end implies a storyteller, someone who knows what’s happening and what’s to come. Someone in charge. Someone with the answers, even if the characters can’t see the arc they’re living. I understand why you want to trust that something can be true or false, that everything in our lives is moving forward toward a purpose. But Mattie, hear me out. What if you’re wrong, and none of this means anything at all? What if the only true story about you is the one you choose to live?

It’s a funny thing to say, but: I really like you.

I probably won’t ever know what you think of me, although I can guess. That’s how it goes. And I might not get to know who you’ll become when you grow up. If you’ll be like me—well, that’s unlikely. If you’ll be like Luke—no, that’s unlikely too. You won’t be like Ruth; that’s not a question. I think you’ll be exactly like yourself. Unpredictable and fierce. Determined. Devoted to the truth. I don’t know if I’ll be around long enough to see it. I guess you never know.

Big dreams have small beginnings. Maybe I can teach you that much, while I’m here.

Love,

Lo