The more she had to look at her own face, staring and staring at it to keep track of where her mother was going—trying to picture where it was and if she’d ever been there before—the more her face on the screen stopped feeling recognizable to her. That’s really me?

She thought of the video of the thing. How it had felt watching herself. Here she was again, sitting in as a spectator, in two places at once, cataloging her response to a situation she hadn’t created and didn’t want.

Avatar Carly stopped and smiled up from the phone, pinned in place for almost ten minutes. Carly kept an eye on the clock and screenshotted the map after the car hadn’t moved for a while. She texted the image to her own phone, which was, at that very moment, in the seat pocket behind her mother, tagging along on this ride to wherever. Then she deleted the picture and the text from Ada’s phone.

The app turned Carly’s face toward home. But App Carly bypassed the real Carly, still stranded at Ada’s. The car stopped at their house for another half hour. Then her mother and John came to pick her up, together.

Her mother’s forehead looked cramped, stuck in ridges that were propped up by stress-slanted eyebrows. She’d been crying. But she worked hard to sound cheerful and hopeful. Everything was fine. They got him to the hospital in time. The guy was going to be okay. He was getting help.

John was loose in the joints, a freshly oiled machine. He was relieved that the guy was finally where he needed to be. This whole thing, as messy and unpleasant as it was, had been a long time coming. He’d tried hard to keep Donna and Carly out of it. It was ugly. It was his past. He was so sorry that they’d had to see it. But in the end, he was glad it was out of his hands finally. It was over. Things would be better now.

Her mother was lying.

Her stepfather was telling the truth.

He kept checking Carly during the tag-team explanation of things, just as he had when she’d seen him on the floor in a tangle with the dead guy. John studied her, and Carly let her gratitude be the only thing he saw. It was easy to calibrate, to make it look like relief and happiness that things were going back to normal. He smiled at her. She felt Other Carly take control of her face. She smiled back. He thought they were on the road to fine.