“What do you make of it?”

“What do I make of it? I think it’s crazy, that’s what I think. I think you should just forget you ever got it and maybe change your number. That’s what I think.”

“But seriously, Elsie. I’m not playing. This is really freaking me out.”

“I’m not playing either. It was clearly meant to freak you out. There’s some sicko messing with you, and I’m sorry to say it, it’s probably got something to do with me.”

“No, that’s not what I said. I’d never say anything like that. Elsie, you don’t think this is your fault, do you? You can’t possibly.”

“No, I don’t think it’s my fault. But I think I’m the one who caught people’s attention, maybe. Whatever it is, you can’t let it get to you.”

“I don’t know,” Clara sighed, taking a small sip of her glass of wine and looking through the glass into something only she could see, “maybe I should just do what it says.”

Elsie, who was sipping on a cosmopolitan and looking prettier than Clara could ever remember seeing her, almost spit her mouthful of drink all over the little cocktail table. Clara had felt completely cold and clueless about what to do next when she’d read the cryptic text message sent to her phone. She wasn’t sure what to do so…at first, she did nothing. She did nothing while she listened to her boss further explain the intricacies of how they might or might not remain an autonomous company and how they might or might not all keep their jobs. It was ludicrous to her that something like that was even a question, but it was and that on its own would have been enough to make her feel pretty awful. The text message took things from pretty awful to truly terrible. For several long minutes, she hadn’t even been able to stand up. She had just sat there like a stone while everyone around her, including Finnley and the still guilty-looking Bradley milled around her and tried to figure out just what the fuck was going on. When she had finally forced herself to move, she hadn’t done anything about the text. She couldn’t, not yet, because she hardly even believed it was real. She kept expecting one of her friends to fess up to having played a prank that turned out to be not so funny in the end. She’d stayed in the office several hours, doing her best to help the others navigate the shit show that was now an average day at Cubed.

It wasn’t that business was bad. It was quite the opposite, in fact. When Clara thought about the business, of its lifespan, she broke it into two parts. There was the part that had come before Elsie’s case with Caleb, and then what had come after. Before the Big Case (which was how Clara thought about it; the Big Case with two capital letters) they had been a little company keeping itself going with a steady stream of discrete cases that left them with a certain level of anonymity. That anonymity had been broken wide open when everything had blown up with Elsie and Caleb. That was a story that had broken into not only national news, but that had attracted the attention of the entire world. Caleb was simply too high-profile not to have a whole host of people looking into his new lady friend, and even if that hadn’t been the case, there was all of that violence to think about. Media people couldn’t keep away from things like that. They couldn’t help themselves; it was like they were drawn to the scent of blood. Ambulances had been called and because Elsie had already been seen out with Caleb on more than one occasion, the paparazzi tended to keep an eye on her. They followed those sirens, and after that, it was only a matter of time before the whole story broke wide open. Cubed had been mentioned more than once when that happened, and ever since then, the calls for business had come pouring in. The problem with that was that there weren’t enough of them to do all of the work they were getting, nor were even half of those calls legitimate. With the fame came the crazies, and weeding through them was a task Clara would best describe as taxing. Then there was the fact that with such a bright spotlight on them, Cubed had a much more difficult time actually getting their job done. In short, Clara’s previous life of orderly chaos was starting to list dangerously on the side of just plain chaos. She’d finally called Elsie the next day, and the two of them had planned to meet for drinks. Looking at her now, it was pretty obvious that Elsie hadn’t had a clue what their night out was really about. And why would she, after all? It wasn’t exactly a normal thing to have to tell.

“I’m sorry, you’re going to have to repeat yourself. I don’t like to make people do that, but I think I must have suffered some kind of a blackout. I thought I just heard you say you should just go along with it?”

“No blackout. That’s what I said.”

“Jesus, you can’t possibly be serious.”

“But I am, though. This can’t be just nothing, right?”

“Sure, it can. It can be exactly that. You can’t let yourself start thinking that messages from crazies actually mean something. Seriously, Clara, you can’t.”

“But what if it is something? There was something about it. I know that probably doesn’t make any sense—”

“It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know it doesn’t make any sense, but there was something about it. That’s the only thing I can really think to say.”

“It sounds to me like you’re being paranoid, if I’m being honest. I think you may be working yourself too hard.”

“Oh yeah? And who’s fault is that, might I ask?”

“It’s not mine, if that’s what you’re trying to get at.”

“Okay, maybe not completely, but it got so much harder when you left! I didn’t even realize how much work you were actually doing until you stopped. Isn’t there any way you would come back? Isn’t there anything that might convince you to come back?”

Elsie smiled widely but shook her head no, which was basically what Clara had been expecting. Cinderella hadn’t exactly gone back to cleaning up the soot in her stepmother’s fireplace after getting with her prince, had she? Of course, she didn’t. That wasn’t the way fairytale stories like this worked. That would be moving backwards and that kind of thing never happened in happily ever afters. Besides, what would be the point in her coming back now? What would be the point when Travis had just told them the future of the company was no longer anywhere close to certain? Clara knew this, she knew these things. What she didn’t know was what the hell she was trying to do, and she ran her hands briefly over her face, as if doing so might allow her to smooth out the lines of worry she imagined had formed over just the last two days. As if doing so would allow her to erase her version of the world and replace it with something else. It was only the feel of Elsie’s hand on her own that brought her back to the present, and when she looked up, she saw that her friend had genuine concern in her eyes.

“Honey, is everything okay? Is this really about me coming back to work? Because if so, things must be worse than I thought.”

“No,” Clara sighed, rolling her shoulders and trying her best to fight the mounting tension in her neck, “it’s not. I mean things are weird, but it’s not like they’re dire or anything.”

“Well then how about you walk me through it? Is it the job or something else? Is it the text?”

“Is there a bubble for all of the above?”

“I’m so sorry, Clara. Really, I am. Tell me what I can do.”

“Tell me that you really don’t think that text is something I need to worry about.”

What she wanted to do was tell Elsie everything. She wanted to tell her about how she’d grown up in a room with a dozen other little girls, all of them waiting for people who didn’t love them to come back and take them back to homes that didn’t exist. She wanted to tell her about how whoever had texted her, whoever this supposed nobody crazy was, had known enough about her to know that she came from nowhere and nothing. She wanted to tell her these things to make her understand why she was so afraid, but in the end, she was too tired, and so she said nothing else at all.

Elsie grasped her hand tighter and her grin grew even wider still. She used her other hand to raise a finger to the bartender for another round of drinks. When all of her attention was focused back on Clara, there was a hint of mischief in her eyes that Clara had seen before. It hadn’t ever been there before the whole thing with Caleb Grant, but it had been after—and more and more as she became more used to her new life. It was a look that acted like a flashing neon warning sign that things might get a little bit crazy, but it was also sort of intoxicating. It was a look Clara could get distracted by, and that was something she was more than willing to welcome.

“Clara, there’s nothing you need to worry about. I swear to god, nothing, okay? You’ve gotta loosen up. I think what you really need is to have some freaking fun! Bad dates and freaky texts, those things can’t be making things feel too awesome for you. You need to relax! Have some fun! Do some dancing! I’m pretty sure it’ll be better than Prozac.”

“Prozac, huh? You saying you think I need medication?”

“Nope, not yet. We’ll try drinks and dancing first. See where that gets us.”

And so Clara allowed Elsie to create the distraction she needed so badly. It was nothing particularly special, she supposed, just the sort of thing two girlfriends did when one of them was having a difficult time, but for her, it felt like the best thing in the entire world. Being with Elsie when she was so unencumbered and just plain happy made it feel like the things she built up inside of her own head were only fantasy, fictions she could quite easily shake off. Which was exactly what she did for the next two and a half hours. She danced and drank, and by the time she was ready to go home, she felt like she had gone back to her version of normal. It wasn’t exactly what she would have chosen for herself, this version, but it was hers, and after the frenzy she’d worked herself into over that one text message, she was glad to welcome it back. Truth be told, she felt more like herself than she had in a very long time and the relief of that flooded her body with a fatigue that felt like being drunk. She wanted nothing more than to return to her apartment, crawl into bed, and spend the entire weekend sleeping. When she told Elsie this, there was a bit of eye rolling, but in the end, the friends agreed to part ways.

There was a massive hug that for some reason made Clara feel a little bit like she was going to cry. When they separated again, Elsie reached out and cupped her face affectionately.

“Hey, you know you could come and stay a night or two with us, right?”

“Aw, that’s really sweet, Elsie, but it’s not necessary.”

“No, I know, but it doesn’t have to be necessary, right? It could just be something for fun. You did a lot to help me out at the beginning of the whole thing with Caleb. You’re the one who helped me to understand that I can be who I am and still be girly. You helped me to see that I can have different sides to me, and I’ll never forget it. You’re part of the reason I have the life I have right now, and I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to repay you for that.”

“Elsie! I had no idea you felt that way!”

“Well, I do. You’re a really good friend, Clara. One of the best I’ve ever had. I know you don’t need me to take care of you, believe me, I know that. You’re incredibly capable all on your own, probably more so than you realize. I’m not asking you to come stay with us because I think you need to. I don’t want you to think of it that way. It would be fun though, right? And believe me, Caleb wouldn’t mind it. There’s no need to worry about that. He’s good with pretty much anything I want, which is one of my favorite things about him.”

“Ha! I bet. It’s so sweet of you to offer, and I really appreciate it. On any other night, I’d say definitely, but I think tonight I just want to crawl into my own bed. I want to feel normal again. I’ve been in such a funk these past few days. I think a weekend of doing nothing but sleeping and watching bad movies will be pretty much magical.”

“Alright, I gotcha. You know I hate sleeping anywhere but in my own bed, too.”

“Which is currently Caleb Grant’s bed.”

Clara said this with a raised eyebrow and a devious little smile, and even in the dark of the bar, she could see Elsie’s face break out into a furious blush before punching her lightly in the upper arm. They hugged again, kissed on the cheek, and then headed off in opposite directions. The night was just as hot and muggy as the last two months had been, and quite possibly the worst they’d had that summer so far. It was the kind of weather she typically hated, but on this night it hardly bothered her at all. Even walking on a street full of other people, a New York street that never even approached slumber, she felt like she was walking in a world all her own. There weren’t many nights like this one, nights when a person got to feel like the whole world belonged to her and she felt like she was floating somewhere in the atmosphere above her rather than walking with her feet on the solid ground.

It was because of that disconnect from the world around her that she never noticed that something might be wrong when she arrived at her apartment. She didn’t notice that the key never clicked when she turned it, which was only the case when the door wasn’t actually locked. She didn’t notice that the lamp on the front entryway table, the light she always kept on so that she felt safe when she returned home on her own, was shut off and the entire apartment was dark. She was too lost inside of her own head to notice any of these things, although later she would wonder if there had been some part of her crying out that something was wrong. She had to believe that had been so. She had to believe that there was a part of her that had that self-preservation instinct that would protect her from horrors like the one she walked into that night.

“Bo? Bo, buddy, where are you? I’m sorry I’m home so late. And that I’m walking through my apartment talking to a cat.”

She walked through her small apartment slowly, trying not to startle her cranky cat or make him any angrier than she already had. He was an older cat, going on twelve years, and was cranky and set in his ways—the way an older human might be. He was used to a certain kind of routine, and she’d already broken it. The last thing she wanted to do was break it again. It wasn’t until she got halfway into the place that she started to get an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach. Even when Bo was pissed at her—which happened enough to be funny considering he was only a cat—he could never let her get past the entrance to her tiny kitchen without coming up and wrapping himself around her ankles, meowing loudly for a hearty helping of food. Except that—this time—Bo was nowhere to be found. Even the rattle of his food bowl didn’t do anything to summon him.

“Bo, honey? Where are you? I’ve got some food for you, okay? Come on out.”

Still there was nothing. Suddenly, she wanted to be anywhere but inside of her own apartment. Suddenly, the silence enveloping her felt like more than just par for the course. It felt oppressive, dangerous, even. Just like a little girl afraid of the dark, she wanted to turn on her heels and run, to lock her door and not look back. She would call Elsie, tell her she’d been an idiot, and had gotten herself spooked, and she would ask if it would be okay if she took her up on her slumber party offer after all? That was what she wanted to do, but what she did instead was step into her bedroom on legs that felt like they were made of Jell-O. There were no lights here, either, no lights except for the lights of the streets coming through the fluttering curtains of her one bedroom window. There was a smell in the room that hadn’t been there before, and Clara could feel her gorge beginning to rise in response. It was coppery, like someone had filled the entire space with pennies, and as she reached for the light switch part of her already knew what that smell was. Still, the shock of what she saw was almost more than she could handle, and when she started to scream, she was sure she would never be able to stop.