You won’t believe who Apple saw at the archive —Aura
Who?? —Nadia
Delali Tomaklo from Georgia on My Mind —Aura
Apple said she was asking lots of dumb questions —Aura
So I guess she really was acting on the show —Aura
Nadia, standing at her table in the lab, stared at the text for a long moment. The name Delali Tamakloe was oddly fresh in her mind, but she couldn’t quite remember why. She scanned her brain—had there been a re-airing of an old episode recently? A red-carpet dress that had ripped off a Sphere designer? Had she run into her on a shopping trip in New York? Nadia looked up from her phone. No, not a shopping trip, a research trip. The very first trip she’d taken to find the source of the disturbances, a project that the broken map had forced her to give up on until the Gathering. She lowered her pipette onto the countertop, scared her trembling arm would shake all the atmospheric magic out of the tool. Nadia knocked gently on the glass window of Dr. Diop’s office. Dr. Diop looked up from her computer.
“Hey, do you mind if I head home early?” Nadia asked. “I need some ResElix for these cramps.”
Dr. Diop offered a vague nod and looked back to her screen. “Feel better,” she said in a tone that communicated, “Fuck you.”
* * *
In her room, Nadia opened her laptop and set her browsing mode to typic. In the search bar, she typed “Delali Tamakloe,” her fingers fueled by an absurd hunch. How could it be a coincidence that she had seen Delali near a Brooklyn disturbance site just a couple of months before Delali showed up in the Sphere for the first time? All celebrity witches were well-documented, even the low-key ones—they came back for Winter Holiday and the Gathering, and often got red-carpet dresses from Derra, who went by various different names in the typic world. But Delali Tamakloe? To her knowledge, Delali Tamakloe was not a witch. Nadia sorted the search results by date:
Delali Tamakloe and the De-Intellectualization of Beautiful Women (Teen Vogue)
Did Delali Tamakloe Use Her Celebrity Status to Get into University? Sources Say Yes (TheCut)
Delali Tamakloe Exposes the Scam of Higher Education—As She Should (Refinery29)
Former Classmates Claim Delali Tamakloe, Star of Hit Sit-Com Georgia on My Mind, Skipped Out on Graduation Requirements, Coasted by with Little Effort (New York Times)
Delali Tamakloe to Head Up Biopic Sit Awhile, Directed by Up-and-Coming Director Mazy Kutekwa (Deadline)
She scrolled past all the warring headlines about Delali’s dropout drama, plucking out the articles she thought could be useful to her:
Girls Night Out – Delali Tamakloe Celebrates 22nd Birthday with a New Clique (Daily Mail)
Delali Tamakloe Spotted in Tompkins Square Park with Girlfriends—No Adrien in Sight! (TMZ)
Fading Star? Who? Weekly Podcast Says Delali Tamakloe is Still a THEM—but with Some Caveats! (ONTD)
There She Is! Fans Caught Delali Tamakloe Keeping a Low Profile at Upper West Side Café (Eonline)
Delali Tamakloe Spotted on Romantic Night Out with Old Flame Adrien (ONTD)
Back in the Game? Former GMM Star Seen Entering University Library with High-Powered Agent Lionel Burress (Celebitchy)
Not So Little Anymore! Delali Tamakloe Packs on the Pounds at University—See the Dining Hall Menu That’s to Blame! (Daily Mail)
Delali Tamakloe Spotted at Lunch with Rumored Biopic Costar Jacob Elordi (People)
Nadia clicked the Daily Mail link first, opening a page littered with spammy ads. She scrolled past the article text until she found a picture, dated September first, of Delali standing outside a building with two other girls. The picture was far away, but when she zoomed in, she was sure it was the bar she’d visited on her second trip. She noted this down. She opened another article to see pictures of Delali outside a Brooklyn Heights apartment building, and her heart quickened. She clicked through ONTD, through Eonline, jotting down dates and locations for every single place Delali had been spotted since September. She found the stack of disturbance briefings and flipped through them, crossing the approximate locations with Delali’s whereabouts on any given date. Delali’s movements didn’t overlap with all of the disturbance points, but they overlapped with at least half of them, including the very first one. Nadia turned to her computer again and typed in a series of keywords: Delali; Tamakloe; buys; apartment; Brooklyn; all-cash.