“And then I’m going to press down on you just right and make you come again while I’m inside of you,” Ever said as she dissolved into concentric rings of pleasure, like a stone thrown into a pool of still water.

◆◆◆

Izzy woke naked, draped across Ever’s warm expanse of chest. They’d gone back down the ladder into the house, to his bed, and fallen asleep there. Her mouth tasted like someone had been trying to stuff her T-shirt down her throat. She disentangled her limbs from his, hoisted herself up, dragged on her jeans, and put on her shoes.

As Izzy reached for her backpack, she saw a framed photo on a table by the bed. The woman had hair that swept darkly above wide cheekbones. Her body appeared lanky and strong, limbs a little too long for her jeans and flannel so that oddly small wrists and ankles showed. It was true: she resembled Izzy in an almost uncanny way.

The best thing that ever happened to you. Emma Lee.

This man and her, they were both only in search of ghosts.

Maybe they were ghosts themselves.

Or monsters, thought Izzy. Meet ze monstas.

Izzy fastened Dog’s leash and opened the front door to leave. The black cat sat there in the dark, mewling, watching her and Dog with virescent eyes. A gray mouse lay curled on the step, spilling its insides, an offering.

◆◆◆

Sitting in the truck, Izzy looked up Ever online, entering his first name and ze Monsta, and found his personal page. It wasn’t private. Everado Fontana. A photo of his face in dark sunglasses, hard to make out. A cover photo of him and the band in the desert. She clicked back through more pictures. Requisite guitar shots from below the stage, a few artsy studio shots, selfies in the same dark sunglasses, pictures of the black cat, Trout. Pictures of famous guitarists. The black-and-white portrait of three of Izzy’s favorite female singers leaning into each other dreamily, as if conjoined. Some political posts about the environment and the president’s immigration policies, health care, police brutality. Izzy remembered a time when she had posted things like that, when she and Cyrus discussed these things, a time when the outside world mattered—

Izzy found a picture from a year back of Ever and his cat and the woman whose photo Izzy had seen. But now the woman’s hair was shaved. Emma Lee Reed.

Izzy clicked on the name.

Ever’s love, Emma Lee, had used the same picture as her profile shot. On her page: a series of memorial messages.

I miss you!

I think of you every day, beautiful Emma.

I still can’t believe you’re gone, my darling sister, my best friend.

Under the profile shot—hundreds of comments. The last one was from Ever, dated a few months ago.