Page 36 of Missing White Woman

I hope you rot in jail. #JanelleBeckettRIP

Murderer. #Justice4Janelle

That last one already had 224 likes. Billie would have cried at the low number. I wanted to cry at the high one.

All because some woman who’d rather put on makeup than get a job had posted his Instagram handle. Not for the first time, I hated the entire World Wide Web. How you could find anything on it. Say anything too. Who needed proof when you had thousands of likes, comments, and views? I started to talk, then closed my mouth. Swallowed before trying again. I got out just one sentence, but I put my all behind it. “This is not good.”

“At all,” Adore said.

Then we spoke at the same time.

Me: “They know about Ty.”

Her: “They’re going to find you.”

“What?” I said. Then: “I didn’t tag anything with Paulus Hook or take any photos inside the house. It’s like Billie said: they don’t know who I am.”

“Yet, Breanna. They don’t know who you are—yet. They’ll find you just like they found him.”

I went with the joke again. “Don’t worry. I don’t share pics of my feet.”

“You’re in videos at the scene,” she said.

“You said I was in a group. I probably only stood out to you because you knew who I was.”

She said nothing, just motioned for her phone and I kept on.

“He didn’t tag me in anything. I don’t comment on his photos. He doesn’t really comment on mine. At least not any lovey-dovey shit. We’re not that couple.”

She tapped her screen a few more times. “You do take photos in the same places, though.”

And when she handed it back, my last Instagram post was up. The park. There were just two comments underneath it. Neither wishing me death.

I was surprised she knew my handle. For a second, I thought maybe she’d been checking up on me since college, even if I hadn’t done the same. But a bigger part realized how easy I was to find online. My handle was a variation of my name. And it probably helped I hadn’t changed my name or gotten a new address.

“You think Ty and I are the only people on Beyoncé’s internet happy to be at Central Park?”

“No, but I do think you and Ty are the only two people following each other and happy to be at Central Park at the exact same time.”

“He has thousands of followers. Thousands of people he follows. It’s going to take them a while to get to me.”

“But they will.”

“Ty’s missing. That’s all I care about right now.”

I handed her phone back, then walked over to the landline by the couch. Picking it up, I hit Redial. Ty didn’t answer after any of the four rings. The voicemail kicked in and there was his voice. It didn’t calm me this time. If anything, I wanted to record it. Upload it to Twitter myself. Tag #Justice4Janelle. Hope it went viral. So people could hear him. Be reminded he was human, not just a photo on social media for them to comment on from the safety of a device.

When I glanced over at Adore, she was busy typing away.

“This is fine,” I said, even though it wasn’t at all. I glanced at the clock, then at the television. The makeup-ed news anchor droned on silently. “Isn’t it seven? You said the press conference was going to start at seven.”

“Maybe they’re running late.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, Bree.”

“Can’t you ask your friend? What if it’s canceled?”

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