Sibby is sitting beneath the window, cross-legged, playing with the little white dog.
I sit up in bed and prop myself on my elbows, and she looks up at me, smiling.
“This dog is dead,” she says. It barks at her, agreeing.
“You haven’t grown up,” I tell her. “You look the same as you did then.”
She giggles and stands up. “Your memory is messed up,” she says. “Watch. I’ll show you how old I really am.”
She moves toward the door.
“Wait!” I say, panicked. “Don’t go!”
She smiles at me. “I’ll be right back. I just need to change, so you can see how different I am now.”
She steps out of the room, and the door closes with a little click. I glance at the floor and realize the dog is gone.
I get out of bed, stepping carefully, quietly. I don’t want to wake up Mrs. Rose. I don’t want Sibby to know that I’m following her.
I open the door and step through, but I’m not in the hallway. I’m in my bedroom. It’s dimly lit, just the light of my laptop glowing through the gloom. I sit down in front of it and put my headphones on, then pull my microphone toward me across the desk. I tap the mic, which sends a hollow echo into my ears, then press record.
“This is Radio Silent,” I begin. “I hope you’re out there, Sibby. I hope you’re listening.”
Something is off. I stop recording and return to the beginning of the timeline, pressing play.
The voice that speaks back at me is a child’s voice. My own, seven years old. Unfiltered.
I jerk awake, slapped with panic as I take in my unfamiliar surroundings, then a long let-out breath as I remember where I am. My phone tells me I’ve been asleep for over two hours, and there’s a text from Burke asking if I’m okay. I’ll text him back later.
Mrs. Rose is in the living room, sitting in front of the television, watching some stupid game show. She looks up as I step into the room and smiles.
“Thank you,” I say. “For letting me sleep.”
“That’s quite all right, dear. We all need a good nap now and then.”
I glance past her at the picture window that looks out onto the street. The news vans are gone, as are the throngs of vehicles from earlier today.
“Seems to be,” she says, not taking her eyes from the TV. “I doubt they found anything, or it would have been on the news.”
“Well,” I say, “I think I should probably get home.” I wonder if I’m being rude, just picking up and leaving like this when she’s been so kind, but Mrs. Rose seems completely content where she is.
“It was nice to see you, Delia,” she says. “Come by anytime.”
As I follow the narrow path between boxes and bags and piles of stuff to get to the door, I think with a twinge of guilt that it’s unlikely I’ll be back. I can only imagine how crowded with crap her basement must be if there’s this much stuff overflowing in the living area of the house.
It’s started to snow by the time I get outside. Tiny, sparkling molecules puncturing the crisp, dry, suddenly very cold air. I remember something my mother used to say—little flakes, big snow—and I wonder if that means we’re in for a dump.
I pull my phone out and see that I’ve just gotten a text from my father.
Heading out to pick up the boys and take them to this afternoon’s game. Mom working late. Lunch in the fridge.
As I walk home, I realize I feel more rested and relaxed than I have all week.
It doesn’t last.
As I round the corner onto my street, I notice a news van parked outside my house. I stop in my tracks, wondering if I can turn back without being noticed, but it’s too late. The passenger door opens and a flash of red swirls toward me.
“Delia Skinner?” Quinlee Ellacott, moving astonishingly fast down the icy sidewalk for someone in heels, approaches with her microphone thrust out in front of her like a sword. Behind her, a young woman gets out of the driver’s seat, hoisting a camera over her shoulder and hurrying to keep up.
My skin crawls as I register the predatory look in Quinlee’s eyes. Has she made the connection between me and the podcast, or is this just an awful coincidence? I put my head down and duck past her, moving toward my front door, but she and the cameraperson spin around on their heels and follow me.
“Delia!” Quinlee yells. “Dee? Do you prefer Dee? People are wondering, do you think this new case is somehow connected to the disappearance of Sibby Carmichael? Are you worried for your safety?”
I realize that Quinlee has deftly stepped around so that she’s now on my other side, in the middle of the sidewalk to my front door. Her camera operator is also good at this, and together the two of them duck and weave, blocking me from my path, like a couple of sheepdogs.
“Excuse me,” I mutter, trying to move past her. With practiced agility, she walks backward down the sidewalk, leaving me no room to get around.
“Delia, what do you remember about that day in the woods? Do you have any information that could help Layla Gerrard?”
“You can’t use my name,” I say. “I was a minor then, and I’m still a minor now.”
She smiles, and the effect is of a predator honing in on prey. “Delia, darling, you know that the internet is a wild, chaotic place, right? You’re absolutely right that I can’t use your name in my broadcasts, but I can’t help it if someone takes it on themselves to drop your name into the comments or quote tweets it out along with one of my videos. Privacy is dead, sweetheart. You’re far too interesting to stay hidden.”
“You’re an awful person,” I say. “Why won’t you just leave me alone?”
“I’m just doing my job,” she says, taking a half step toward me. “I’m giving people the news, and like it or not, you’re part of the news. Come on, Delia. Let me interview you. We’ll blur your face. We’ll even alter your voice.”
The thought that my voice could be altered and sent out into the world terrifies me. What if the effect is similar enough that someone connects me to the Seeker? My lower jaw starts to shake uncontrollably. I’m blank. I want to get away from here, but I don’t have the will to push her out of the way.
The noise comes out of nowhere. A long bellow that seems composed of three sounds at once, a low guttural moan, an insistent holler, and a high-pitched, ear-piercing shriek. Quinlee reaches up and yanks her earpiece out, a horrified grimace on her face, her microphone dropping to the ground next to her. She scrambles to her knees to pick it up, and I notice the camerawoman glance past me and then hurrying to get out of the way.
The noise continues, and as awful as it is, I’m so grateful for it that I don’t mind if it keeps going all day. I turn around and realize what I’ve been hearing. A distinctive blue and silver Nova is crawling down the street toward me, and Sarah Cash is behind the wheel with a determined grimace on her face, pressing insistently on the horn. She stops next to me and opens her window.
“You coming or what?” she yells over the sound of the horn.
She doesn’t need to ask me twice. I hurry around the car and slide into the passenger seat.
As Quinlee hurries toward the car, her camera operator close behind, Sarah presses down on the horn again.
“Duck down,” she says. “Don’t give them anything they can use.”
I take her advice, crouching forward and putting my head in my hands. She presses on the gas, and we lurch forward. As we pass the news van, she gives another quick blare of the horn, and then we’re around the corner and off.
“You’re cool,” she says. “We’re out of the minefield.”
I sit up, intending to respond, but the words don’t come to me, and it’s only now that I realize that I’m trembling. She glances over at me and shakes her head.
“What an asshole,” she says. “As if it wasn’t crystal clear that you didn’t want to talk to her. Not that it makes a whole lot of difference to the leeches. You want a smoke or something?”
I manage to shake my head. I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths. I’m glad that Sarah doesn’t say anything while I collect myself. When I open my eyes again, she’s cruising along Main Street, one hand thrown casually over the steering wheel, the other at her head, fingers running through her hair.
“I didn’t realize you smoked,” I say.
“I don’t,” she says. “It just seemed like the right thing to ask.”
I laugh, surprised that I’m finding anything funny right now. “Thanks,” I say. “Seriously. I should have been able to just walk around her, but I froze.”
“Well, at least she didn’t get anything she can use,” she says. She presses on the horn twice quickly, releasing two blasts of noise. “They don’t make car horns obnoxious like they used to. So where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “What do you have in mind?”
“Let’s just drive,” she says, “and see where we end up.”
I’m relieved that Sarah doesn’t ask me about what happened, as we drive out of town. Instead, she hands me her phone and tells me to pick out whatever I want to listen to, and as I skim through her music, happy for the distraction, she talks to me. It’s not like she’s trying to fill up an awkward silence; instead, she’s easy, smooth, and comfortable to talk to, as if there’s nothing weird about what just happened. As if having a sensationalistic news reporter show up on your doorstep is something that happens to all of us every few months or so.
About ten miles out of town, she slows and pulls off at a rest stop, a gas station with a diner built into the side.
“Come on,” she says. “My treat.”
We navigate around the slushy puddles that have collected against the parking lot curb. My boots are frosted with white already from the buildup of salt.
Inside, the diner is warm and comforting, almost empty. Old country music is playing on the stereo, and we slide into a booth that’s up against a wide window that catches the cold winter sun and turns it into a warm greenhouse of a space. When the waitress, an elderly woman who strolls over to the table in her own damn time, offers menus, Sarah looks at me.
“Not really.”
She smiles at the waitress but holds out her hand to refuse the menus.
“Just a couple of coffees, please.”
The waitress walks away without comment. A moment later, she walks back with a pot of coffee and reaches in to flip our mugs right-side up. With a practiced flourish, she reaches in with the pot and fills us each up, then walks away without a word.
“Delightful,” says Sarah, holding the mug to her face and inhaling deeply. “Garbage coffee is my favorite.”
I take a sip. It’s superhot and bitter, not nearly as good as the coffee they serve at Fresh Brews, or the stuff my parents make for that matter. But Sarah is obviously enjoying hers so much that I can’t help but smile.
She puts her mug back down on the table and cups her hands around it, warming them.
“So. You going to tell me what happened to you?” she asks, staring across the table at me.
I drop my head, wondering how to even begin with a question as loaded as that. I half expect her to laugh, to apologize for her phrasing, tell me she didn’t mean to say it that way, but when I look up across the table at her, she’s still looking at me intently, and I realize that she meant the question exactly the way she asked it.
“Do you remember when you asked me about the girl who went missing ten years ago?” I begin.
She nods, clearly curious about where I’m going with this.
“Sibby was my best friend,” I say. “I was there when she went missing.”
I have to stop for a moment to think about how to begin because I realize that I’ve never had to explain this to anyone. Everyone in this town, everyone in my whole life, has always known what happened to me.
Sarah stares at me, waiting for me to continue. I take a breath, and then for the first time in ten years, I tell my story.