Shifting into gear, Allard steps on the gas. We lurch forward, winding our way into the Sequoias. Beyond the whir of the tires, all is silent except for my sniffles.
“You need to forget Ella Karman ever existed,” she says before my thoughts can return to all that is lost. Meeting my eyes in the rearview mirror, she hands a piece of paper over her shoulder. “Your name is Elisha DeWitt, now.”
Savoring the rarity of real pages, I run my fingers over the smooth surface, resisting the urge to tear the perforated row of holes running down each side of the page in case it serves some purpose known only to Allard.
“I’m not sure she existed in the first place,” I whisper, examining my pretty face printed at the top of the article, amber eyes flashing bright and full of life under the headline:
ELLA KARMAN, DEAD:
NOT-SO-SWEET SEVENTEEN KILLS DOZENS
Every detail of Ella Karman’s seventeenth birthday was planned, down to the custom driverless BMW X-pro18, a gift from her Super-Influencer parents Noah Karman and Tiana Santos. It was scheduled to arrive in the driveway of the Lake Tahoe mansion they’d rented for the occasion at precisely 10:47 p.m., honoring the exact moment Ella was born. But Ella never showed up. Instead, she seduced her closest friends into joining her on a yacht anchored offshore for a private, champagne-fueled fiesta. Little did she know, she was leading them to their death. Or did she? In what is being called an act of terror, the yacht was riddled with explosives.
“How did you get this?” I ask. “So soon…”
“Lil’s Life Stream was on. Millions watched tonight’s events play out in real time. It’s hardly news anymore, though her feed went dark the moment the yacht exploded.”
Gravity descends, its weight pinning me to my seat, and it’s like I’m at the bottom of the lake, unable to catch my breath. The words twist, and I scan the rest of the article through a cascade of tears.
Our brightest stars, the biggest up-and-coming Influencers, snuffed out so quickly when the bomb went off. Their families are devastated. How will they ever recover?
Biting my lip, I imagine the horrific images being played out in cinematic detail for the world’s entertainment, and anger flares in my belly. “It’s all lies.” I wad the article into a ball so I don’t have to see my wavy black hair and poreless olive skin, so eerily like my mom’s. “My parents wanted us dead. ‘Nothing like a little misfortune to bring the eyeballs to you,’ it should say. They’re totally going to profit off this.”
“Do you really think your parents are behind this?” Allard asks.
“They have to be. They had everything to lose. Their secret was going to come out.” I wince, familiar anxiety I’ll be overheard closing my throat. But, whatever, it’s not my secret anymore. “The only reason I was born was so Mom could post her baby-bump pics. It was good for their image—the perfect Hollywood power couple needed the perfect Hollywood baby—but I wasn’t theirs. They used a donor embryo and grew me on a surrogate farm. She faked everything. Her whole get-your-pre-baby-body-back magical fitness empire is built on a lie.” I expect Allard’s eyes in the rearview mirror to register surprise, but they remain flat.