Page 34 of Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

Blake opened the refrigerator, casting himself in a buttery rectangle of light. He took out the pizza they’d ordered for dinner last night, grabbed a slice, and stuck it in his mouth, practically inhaling it.

“Whose car was that?” she pressed.

No answer. He took a seat at the kitchen island, opened his laptop, his back to her. Finally, without looking around, he answered.

“I just went out, okay? With Gregg. We just drove around.”

“Who’s Gregg?”

“He’s a senior at Lake Forest. I met him onRed World. You don’t know him. He got a Bronco for his birthday, so we just tooled around. Did you know the McDonald’s in Chester is open twenty-four hours? We didn’t do anything.”

She didn’t believe him.

“What’s his Photogram ID?”

“No way. You’re not following him.”

She locked the front door and set the alarm. She’d change the code so that he couldn’t get out again without setting the alarm. Then she sank into the couch, defeated, listening to him clattering on his keyboard.

He wasn’t going to tell her anything else. She decided to drop it, and she’d do some detective work. Gregg from Lake Forest High with a new Bronco. What did a senior want with a freshman? Especially a giant nerd like Blake?

Cruising through the various social platforms, she didn’t find anything about a Gregg, but she saw that her best friend Coral had posted a silly picture of herself up too late studying for their chem exam. Her friend, with her wild, pink-tinged hair and thick glitter eye shadow, clutched a can of Red Bull.

#APchemsucks #thestruggleisreal

Violet watched again the video of her mom arriving on Falcão Island, riding next to Gustavo, the foliage all around her impossibly green. Violet froze the frame on Adele’s face: she’d never seen that expression before. Her mother looked young, unfamiliar; her features were lit with excitement.Nother mom, who was always kind, loving, but often worried or stressed. The woman in the video looked confident and free, someone on an enviable,postableadventure.

Anxiety thrummed.Mom, she wanted to write.Come home.

Verbally, Violet was all positive vibes and support. Inside, she was not a fan of this endeavor.

She scrolled through Malinka’s WeWatch page and Photogram account, looking at the beautifully curated and filtered images of Enchantments, Malinka’s tent, the lush green forest, and wild blooming hydrangeas. Malinka’s Yes I Cangearwas epic—that fluffy sleeping bag, the ruffled hoodie, the purple polarized sunglasses, the glittery fairy lights. So expensive.

Then Violet did a news search on Extreme, just to see what, if anything, other people were saying about the challenge.

But the first link that popped up wasn’t about the game, it was for the podcastStranger Than Fiction.

“New Leads in the Chloe Miranda Case.”

She clicked and was greeted by the face of a beautiful girl with big dark eyes and a mane of honey curls. She smiled, but there was something distant, something sad about it. She had a delicate tattoo on her collarbone:Mom, written in a looping cursive followed by a tiny black heart. She looked familiar. Underneath the image, some bold type read,Where is Chloe Miranda?

Violet’s mouth went a little dry as she started to read.

Twenty-five-year-old influencer Chloe Miranda went missing last year during a hide and seek challenge hosted by Maverick’s Extreme Games and Insane Challenges.

As we approach the one-year anniversary of Chloe’s disappearance,the Miranda family has raised the reward amount to five hundred thousand dollars for any information leading to the truth about Chloe. Predictably, this has led to a number of calls from around the country from people who have claimed to see her. None of those leads, so far, have panned out.

For those of you new to this case, Chloe Miranda went missing during a hide and seek challenge hosted by Extreme Challenges and Insane Games. A longtime fan of Maverick Dillan and a graduate of New York University, Chloe Miranda signed up to participate in the Extreme Haunted Hide and Seek event at a supposedly haunted site called Eaton House for the cash prize. She hid with the rest of the contestants. And was never seen again.

Wait. What?

“Hey,” she said. Blake turned to her. “Did you know about this?”

She read the passage aloud.

“Chloe Miranda?” Blake answered. “Yeah, of course I knew about it. What are you, living under a rock?”

Violet felt her mouth drop open. “Shehidand was never found. She’sstillmissing.”

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