Son couldn’t help but chuckle at the snark her past drunken self had displayed, even felt a bit jealous about it; she had long heard that alcohol could crank up one’s charisma, she just never knew how effective it truly was. “I’m sorry for what I said back then. There was substance in me.” 

“Oh, not at all,” the girl flustered, “Everyone had some substance in them. I’m sorry if this comes off like I’m here to demand an apology… I’m just, you know, a newcomer, wanted to make friends, that’s all.” 

“You do know I’m also a newcomer, right?”

“Aren’t you a junior?”

“Yes. Nonetheless, a newcomer. Sit if you want, don’t stand there like a stiff.” 

The girl quickly sat down next to her; the fumbling shyness in her every locomotion made her somewhat puerile if not endearing in Son’s eyes. After all the business with the school, the cop, and the unrelenting peers, this unassuming blonde girl sure looked innocent and disarming; but could it be another one of their plans?

“How’ve you been? A crazy few weeks for everybody, I’m sure. The missing person, the fire, and those nasty pictures on the forum…” 

“Do you have it on your phone? The forum. Would you mind showing me the pictures?”

The girl looked hesitant, taken aback even, but she eventually produced a smartphone and, after several minutes of clicking and swiping, she presented to Son the horrid sceneries; pictures of the burnt-down condo and the interior taken just hours after the fire had died down by trespassing students with the bold spirit to disregard the bright yellow police tapes. There were forty-six pictures in total; the first one was specifically dedicated to the back door through which the trespassers entered the buildings, and the rest just depicted the same, tar-black remnant of an already derelict slum; nothing stood a chance before the sundering flame, the top three floors collapsed onto themselves, and every wall on every hallway was caked in blackened soot. The meager amount of furnishing the condo did have was obviously no longer, but Son nonetheless recognized one of the pictures to be the same room where she first met that group of individuals that had now consumed her life, and rose in her the faintest sense of unbefitting nostalgia and regretful solace; the past that preceded everything that had happened, not just the fire.    

“Are you alright? You look exceptionally pensive.” The girl commented. 

“Yeah… yeah…” Son didn’t realize her brows had been interlocking this entire time; she always thought she had better control over her facial expression, “sorry. The pictures are just… Do the cops know about this?”

“I don’t see them having anything to do with the cops… I mean, I don’t think the cops can do anything about the pictures even if they wanted to. Ask the forum to take them down? There’s enough on their plate currently, their sheriff’s nephew has gone missing for crying out loud.” The girl said with a casual sigh, “How unpredictable life can be, am I right? One day you are the glamorous socialite everyone flocks towards, and the next day you end up on a missing person poster…”

It hurts. Despite all the recent woe and suffering these people had put her through, her heart ached hearing about his disappearance, and the way everybody commented on it with such nonchalant detachment as though what went missing wasn’t a live and unique human being but rather a piece of social capital, free for exploitation and commodification.

“What I heard from the forum was that the football team captain did him in along with them mob members.” The girl continued, narrating benignly without a care in the world, knowing full well whatever was transpiring wouldn’t affect her the slightest beyond this small-talk session at tea time, “The Idahos. Fuck, man, you think the school would do something about these illiterate rascals but no, apparently teachers just gave up on disciplining students now…” 

Where is Fluorite Tanning? 

“You know, I lost my cat a while back. Stressful as anything. I love that little critter but out of nowhere I just come back home and bam! The backdoor was ajar and the little guy was missing. I thought it was lost forever, to be frank. With the number of strays you see on the street, one could only assume that the kitty joined up one of its brethren and wandered the street at night…”

Where is Fluorite Tanning? 

 “But! And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but there are these four weirdos… and I mean that in the best possible way, there are these four weirdos on the forum charging people money for… leg work? I honestly have no idea what they do, but for fifty bucks, they managed to find me my kitten back! Weird, weird people though, really don’t want to visit that crumbling house again…”

Son’s hands were shaking. Fluorite Tanning was the only person who could possibly attest to her innocence at the moment, and the only person with the incentive to do so. The realization that Fluorite had not been seen by anyone for the past two days and yet nobody had said a word about it, not even Whelk or Joy who were Fluorite’s closest associates since primary school, struck a fear into her so resounding, she could barely hold herself straight in her chair listening to this faceless stranger nagging away.