when i get home, I go to my room, sit at my desk, and open my laptop.
Sheriff Turner’s words followed me all day, made me feel stupid. If you saw or heard something online, on social media the night of the party or since … I deleted all my accounts a year ago, but I should’ve thought of this, that if it was bad—if I was as bad as Tina says I was—there’s going to be something of myself, of my night, in the last place I want to see it.
I open a browser and stall for the longest time, chewing on my lip.
I need this part over with.
So get it over with.
I know which sites to go to, where everyone in my high school is, because I used to be in all those places with them. I could start out by searching for a girl with my name, but I’m not ready to be that specific. I type in a hashtag, #WakeLake, instead. I get nothing. Of course they wouldn’t be that obvious, but they needed something, something that would have tied them together online, so none of them missed a single moment of the party they were all at.
I find it.
#WakeUp
I click it and a story unfolds via status updates.
I move past a week’s worth of anticipation (can’t wait for #WL #yes #WakeUp) until I’m at the party itself. It opens with Andy Martin, who posted a photo of a table full of plastic shot glasses, half of them filled to their brims with amber liquid. It’s a jolt, seeing the rows of shots and I’m afraid that means it’s a memory. Did I drink one?
He captions it work in progress. #WakeUp Next, a photo of the lake’s placid surface, from Andy again.
#WAKEUP
Everyone does.
I scroll past everything that means nothing to me. Outfit selfies, On the Way selfies, At the Lake selfies. It’s all so endless and once upon a time, it would have been mine. I would have been adding to the pool, so ready for it, feeling every possibility of what lay ahead like none of it could be bad, and maybe, once—it wouldn’t have been.
I stare at lights strung up on trees, the place where all the cars were parked, blurry trails of people in motion, too fast for a camera. I can almost hear the music …
Pictures of Penny and Alek show up, one after the other. Their faces manage to startle me because I’m looking so hard for myself. There are hasty snapshots of them, some filtered into something more intentional looking. It’s like everyone wants a piece of them, desperate to take a photo of the golden couple, hoping it’ll get a like or a favorite from either of them later, just so they can feel a little golden themselves.
I scroll and scroll, until the shock of my name moves up the screen.
who invited grey #WakeUp There’s a shaky photo—me? I recognize the shirt, the skirt. Oh, God. It’s me. Here. Here, here, here. I am at the party now. My heart beats fast, faster than it does after a run. I’m here, I’m at the lake. Now. Then. I swallow and scroll down, past other people living their own nights. It’s about an hour after my arrival when a status update lands in front of my eyes and bites.
how does a girl get that wasted in an hour #damn #talent #WakeUp Doesn’t mean it was me. It doesn’t mean it was me, but the indictment is all over me because why couldn’t it have been me? Why couldn’t it have been about me? My hands start to shake. I scroll until another familiar name shows up. It’s not my own, but it’s as painful as a kick in the teeth.
Paul Grey WELL represented tonight #WakeUp Tina posted that. So many people have favorited it.
There’s nothing for a little while. Everyone else, the star of their own movies, reaching out to each other in @ replies, so they can know what’s happening where and make themselves there. I’m looking for moments I’m the walk-on, and then— wow sloppy drunk mess by the bonfire #WakeUp And all the people who aren’t by the bonfire want to know who??
I open the conversation.
RG.
Everything disappears but those initials—my initials—starred and starred again by my classmates. This is what Tina promised me I was, a sloppy drunk mess at the lake. I stare at the exchange, trying to will it into nonexistence, either it or myself, because I don’t want to be in a world where I’m those words, where I was those words. And what’s behind them? What does that mean? What was I doing? My head, infuriatingly blank. It won’t let me have my night. I scroll through the rest of the #WakeUp hashtag for more, worse. There are photos, lots. I go through them fast, forcing myself to look but there are none of me, just updates that might be about me.
that was pathetic #WakeUp and dumb drunk bitches #WakeUp A memory of Penny’s voice comes to me, soft and teasing.
You didn’t do anything stupid, did you?
Did I?
I keep going and all I see is #WakeUp #WakeUp #WakeUp #WakeUp and then, hours after me, hours after I think I must’ve been gone, Alek asks the question on everyone’s lips now: Where’s @PennyYoung?
I click to her stream and I find the last update she posted. It’s time-stamped when the night began, after she talked to me at the diner.
I’m here
at swan’s, tracey calls me into her office.
She sits behind her desk, looking as stern as I’ve ever seen her, and my stomach somersaults at the thought of her asking me about Penny, what Penny was doing here the same night we both disappeared because Holly doesn’t miss a trick. She has to have figured it out by now and told it to everyone.
But it never comes up.
“I’ve fired people for less than what you did,” Tracey says. “But I’m glad you’re okay. Consider this a warning. Now get out there and get back to work.”
“Thank you,” I tell her. I step into the kitchen, my skin crawling from the reprimand. I hate being scolded like a little kid. When Holly comes in, I ready myself for more of the same but she passes me, grabs her apron, and puts it on without a word.
I say, “Hi, Holly.”