Last Girl Ghosted(34)

Outside another siren, this one distant, the bleat of someone’s horn and an angry shout.

“When you’re ready to open up about whatever you’re hiding, please give me a call. I can help. You can trust me—Miss Greenwood.”

You can trust me. Can I? Can I trust anyone?

I look down at the card and put my hand on it, give him a weak nod, stay quiet.

I think he wants to help you, says Robin. He wants to keep you safe. Sometimes she’s angry. I can hardly blame her. I failed us both.

The footfalls of his boots echo on the hardwood floor, then he exits the town house, closing the door softly behind him. When I head to window to watch him walk up the street, he’s already gone.

While I’m standing at the window, my phone buzzes. There’s a text from an unknown number.

Don’t believe what he tells you about me. There are more layers to my truth than you can imagine.
The missive sends a little jolt through me, and I fumble with the phone to text back.

Who are you? I type quickly.

Where have you gone?

Who’s Mia?

Explain this to me. Make me understand.

Please.

I walk out onto the stoop, the cold wind whipping around me, causing me to shiver.

Are you nearby? I text. Are you watching me?

I think I can feel you, scan the street for shadows, dark forms in doorways, behind trees. But the block is mostly empty, just a couple of kids walking up the opposite side, burdened with big, heavy school backpacks but laughing at something.

Why are you doing this?
I try to call the strange number but it just rings and rings. No voice mail picks up.

No answer to my texts ever come.

Finally I go back inside, a hollow in my center.



sixteen


If I can’t find you online, Adam, maybe I can find Mia Thorpe. I sit on my couch and pop open my laptop, enter her name into the search bar.

It isn’t hard for me to find her, at least the digital trail she’s left in her wake.

Between her Facebook page, her Instagram feed, her blog Mia Writes, she’s laid bare, more or less, for all the world to see. I scroll through her Facebook profile—the expected collection of happy snapshots—girls day at the beach, martini night, birthday parties. On Instagram, she’s artful—staged shots of books she’s reading, the view from her window, lots of café shots with cups of coffee and treats, her own line drawings, which are elegant and yet somehow childlike focusing on subjects like birds and flowers, simple landscapes, some abstracts. Her preferred filter is Clarendon—a brightening, prettifying sheer over the life she was living.

But these are just glimpses, moments staged and curated. The surface of Mia, what she wants the world to see—someone young and pretty, light and carefree. In her blog, she goes deeper. The last entry is an essay called “The Dark Doorway.” And in it, she writes about her battles with depression.

I feel like when my mother died, she took with her the Mia I saw when she looked at me. I could never find that girl in my own reflection. To Mom, I was special—bright, powerful, beautiful—her angel. To the rest of the world, I was just a girl. Small for my age, shy, passingly pretty, smart enough. Just Mia.
Some days, the despair is like a dark doorway. It stands open, waiting. If I walk through it, I know I won’t come back.
I know the feeling.

I look for pieces of you in her feed. But you don’t show up among the people in her life—all young and attractive, like her, bright, laughing, and full of life. I search for your shadow in the crowds on the dance floor, at parties. But you’re not there. She doesn’t mention meeting anyone, doesn’t post a selfie with her new beau. Her posts in each feed end around the same time, more than nine months ago. No more artsy Instagram shots, no more nights out with friends, no more essays about grief and despair.

I find her on Torch by searching through the site by age, height, hair color, gender, and poetry for preferences. It takes a while; there are a lot of girls in the world that match the shallow parameters I’m searching. But finally, there she is. Her profile image is grainy; she looks off camera with a slight smile, wears a fuzzy white sweater, her golden curls a glittering cascade down her shoulders. No bikini shots or suggestive phrases, promises of no-strings encounters.

I’m looking for friendship first, then the love that could grow from that.
Mia and I would have been friends, had we ever met. It seems that you have a type. Though Mia and I don’t look alike, I feel the connection. There’s something kindred. Another soul looking for a way into the light from darkness. I think about the other women Bailey Kirk mentioned, all survivors of trauma, forging a path to normal.

I search through Mia’s friends on Facebook and Instagram, thinking maybe I’ll find you among them, or some link or lead to you. But no. If it were easy to find you, I’m guessing Bailey Kirk would have done so already.

Finally, I scroll through the comments friends left after Mia disappeared.

Where are you, Mia?
Please come home! We miss you so much!
We love you, honey. Please come back to us.
Don’t do this, Mia. We can’t go through this again. Please let us know you’re okay, sweetie. I love you.
That one gives me pause. So—Mia has disappeared before. I try to click through to that profile, someone named January Crandall. But the account is private, not allowing friend requests. I think about messaging someone else—there are a couple of people who comment more than others, are featured most in her images.