After yesterday, I’m slowly coming to realize how much damage my disappearance did to Paula. She’s right: the only way we’re going to move forward is to focus on the future. The past carries too many painful memories for us both. For her, it’s all she missed in my life. For me, it’s the people and plans I’ve had to leave behind. We’ve both been devastated by Dad’s actions. Perhaps even beyond repair.

Craig seems to understand what we need. He’s the one talking about the future. What we’ll do tomorrow. Things I might want to try, while Paula refuses to leave the past. Maybe it’s because it’s the only thing she and I share? Although there’s a part of me that is starting to get the feeling that maybe it’s because I’m not that little girl who’s been living in her memory all this time.

I’ve changed. She’s changed.

And sometimes you can’t force something to happen that’s not there.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter

THIRTY-THREE

Once again, I find myself in the guest bedroom I’m living in now. It’s become my safe space. Craig, Sarah, and I are going to the grocery store in a little bit, so for now I … I’m not sure what.

I turn on the TV. I haven’t watched the news since I got here. I decide to google my birth name. The main article on the Tampa Bay Times home page reads, Homecoming for Missing Teen. It states that I’m back in Tampa and getting to know my family, but a spokesperson for the family (they have a spokesperson?) has requested privacy. So, of course, that one age-progressed photo fills half the screen. “A source close to the family says she’ll be attending a local public school.”

Who’s this source? Randy? Paula’s right, Randy’s a jackass.

There was not one word, except for Dana’s ill-fated attempt at fame, from anybody in Valley Falls. Here in Florida, we have a spokesperson, and someone “close to the family” is blabbing my school plans. Why can’t people shut their mouths and mind their own business?

I close out the news app and look at the other options, something to entertain me for a while.

I click on a few apps to see what the Gleasons have been up to, but none of their accounts have been active in days. The last post from Marian (or “Ariel Jasmine” as she named her profile after we spent a weekend binge-watching Disney cartoons) was from my birthday. A selfie of all of us with cake on our forks at lunch.

Nothing since. From any of them.

I’m a little relieved to see that I haven’t been left out of anything big since I got here, but it also makes me miss them even more.