He kept very little on there—Contacts and Maps and Music and a few photos. Cyrus said he didn’t like to keep photos on his phone, he’d rather have printed ones, old school, although Izzy argued with him sometimes, wanting him to save more pictures of them together. “I don’t need it,” he’d said. “I see you every day, which is better.” There was a photo of Cyrus and Izzy that Ted had taken at the Oasis of Mara. She had her arms around Cyrus, was gazing up into his face, while he—sunglasses on—stared into the camera. There was a photo of Cyrus’s truck, and one of their house. A photo of Izzy, Seth, and Nephy from the day last spring in Bombay Beach. And a photo of Cyrus’s birth certificate.

Engulfed by a shadow that came from within her, Izzy opened Cyrus’s Notes. He never used his phone for this as far as she knew, but here he had typed the words: What is this darkness? It’s always inside of me. Like what Iz talks about. For her, it’s almost a psychic thing. Like she knows when she’s in danger. Maybe it’s the same for me. Or maybe I’m just fucked up. But this Melissa Larkin. Something’s not right. I can feel it.

Most of Cyrus’s texts had been erased. There were a few, though, under Nephy.

Did you take the test? Cyrus had typed months earlier.

And Nephy had typed Yes, with a series of happy face emojis; a row of little idiots, Izzy thought, feeling like one herself.

You sure it’s mine?

Yes.

“It’s not like this never happened before,” Seth had said after Cyrus went missing. So many people she’d gone to hadn’t seemed that concerned, like they expected him to leave her? Maybe she just hadn’t wanted to believe it, not wanted to see. But there had been times, now and then, when he hadn’t called, he hadn’t come home. Denial is a stage of grief before pain, but pain can lead back to delusion, she knew, especially for those who are wounded early enough, and deep.

Something gnawed at Izzy, sharp and precise as Dog’s teeth. It wasn’t hard to see the pattern. How hadn’t she known? She had not wanted to know.

Nephy with her smug smile, her talons, her secret bruise. Even in this benumbed state, Izzy could feel the fault lines in her body expanding like the ones under the desert floor, everything shaking. Blood whirled and pooled behind her eyes like the Salton Sea. She could almost taste iron on her palate.