After the terrifying intensity of what had happened that night, it’s no wonder how my mind has got to this place. Booker left with Archie right after Roxy that night from The Indigo Lounge.

Someone looking back at me from the No-Names. I’m thinking of the woods, and unmarked graves.

Celeste.

The first thing I thought when Celeste went missing was that she was trying to scare me.

Black plays in front of my eyes and spreads through me like ink.

I loved her missing. When she was missing it was easy to pretend that she’d never even existed at all.

I didn’t react when Dad told me she’d died and he interpreted this as me not understanding death, which I did, but he didn’t realize. So he explained it to me and I pretended this had illuminated some deep truth and I forced myself to cry, but the reality was I was ecstatic. Maybe unable to truly comprehend the finality of it – a feeling I still have, even now – but aware enough to know here is what it means: that she’s not coming back.

This is why Dad has always hated the podcast. He interprets its existence as some obscene vestige of grief, a coping mechanism, when, of course, that’s never been what it is.

Roxy Raines. I remember the first time I heard her name: in my sister’s mouth.

Celeste liked the nihilism, the sort of searching of the lyrics – she was weird because her tastes changed as suddenly as her mood. She liked to play parts. Roxy was the catalyst for one of them, a welcome folky reprieve from the occasional screamo. It was when Roxy’s album was rereleased that Celeste found her on Spotify, I think, and wouldn’t stop listening.

Now I remember. Now I remember …

It’s true that I’m even here because of Celeste. The one autonomous decision I’ve made in my whole life is still because of Celeste.

And I see her. I don’t know if I’m asleep and I don’t know if I’m awake but I see her again, staring at me.

It’s normal at first, as I knew her. Forever seventeen. I’ll soon be older than she was when she disappeared. But maybe she’s been ageing. Maybe she’s still out there and she’s older now, and while I’m thinking this and she’s staring at me through the fog, her hair grows in front of me, all the way down to the ground – but it’s not just her hair, it’s her hair and her nails and her face, bits of rotted flesh sloshing off her and slapping against the ground.

I can’t even scream.