The sun is already down by the time everyone is in our voice chat. Even though I spoke with Jonah all day, he’s the last to put in since he treks to a coffee shop every time. The meeting is pretty unofficially official. There’s no set time, but we show up every night no matter what. We pretty much always sign on as soon as we can after lessons. It’s always a welcome part of the day, especially when there’s news. Today’s meeting topic, of course, is me and Kay.

“I’m telling you,” I say in a hushed tone, “it’s not Kaylie.” I know voices don’t carry far in our house, thank goodness, but there’s no harm in being careful.

“Okay, but like, it’s been a year. They said someone took her. Are you sure you’re not just both traumatized?” Laney responds, and I’m glad we don’t have video going so she doesn’t see me roll my eyes so hard.

I hear Sunny sigh. “I think she knows her own sister, though. My brother did some effed up ess, but I never questioned if it was my brother or not. You just know.” Sunny can type curses with ease, but at home on the microphone it’s all censored and about 50% quieter than all other words, and I’ve still heard her chastised for just alluding to the actual bad words. “I believe Ana, even without photos.” Some noises of agreement punctuate her statement and Laney sighs.

Jonah’s microphone clicks on and the murmur of the coffee shop appears. “You have the photos though, right?” he asks before clicking his microphone off again. I attach and send them from my phone.

“First--Kay’s about 3 shades lighter and has dyed hair down to her waist, so, you know, there’s that.”

“She was trapped in doors for a year, Ana! Hair grows.”

Patrick snorts. “Yeah, but she’s still Puerto Rican too. She’s got curls like Ana. What, you think he got her hair pressed while she was kidnapped or what?” Mara laughs a bit too, nervously.

The picture of Kay shows her at dinner, pushing turkey around on her plate. You can see a bit of my mom in the photo too, mostly the ends of a long braided plait of hair and a bit of forehead. Kaylie’s photo looks brighter, more cheerful--her stuck in a baby’s swing at the playground laughing so hard she almost cried. I probably laughed more that day than any other time in my life, even when we were worried we were going to have to call the fire department to cut a newly teenaged girl out of a baby swing. I managed to pull her out and we laid down on the mulch and laughed even harder.

“I think we need more photos,” Jonah says, interrupting my spiral of thoughts. “I want to see their eyes.”

“They both have brown eyes,” Mara says. “I mean, I can see Kay’s eyes here, but Kaylie has brown eyes like yours, right?”

My eyes are a deep chocolate brown that, unlike a lot of eyes, don’t have that many flecks of color or anything like that. “Not really,” I say, enlarging the photo of Kay on my screen. “Kaylie’s eyes are hazel. Like my dad’s.” It’s silent for a moment, and then I hear a bit of typing. My dad’s mugshot pops up in our chat, courtesy of Laney. “Yeah, just like that.”

The group is quiet as they all study the face of a man I thought I knew all my life. Laney finally breaks the silence. “Get me another picture of your sister,” she says with authority, and I remember why she’s our leader.