“Internet’s back,” Henry told her as he slunk into the office.

“Thank God,” Ellie said to his retreating back. He only left the door open a crack.

Mer had left early that morning, wrapped up in a decadent red wool peacoat with a fur-trimmed hood. “You look like Little Red Riding Hood,” Ellie had told her, and Mer laughed.

“Don’t worry, I’ll steer clear of any Big Bad Wolves,” she told Ellie as she kissed her cheek.

“I can’t believe Eli lets you travel by yourself.” Ellie just shook her head. She hadn’t even been allowed to go to a local club alone.

“He doesn’t,” Mer had said. “My guards are already waiting at the bottom of the hill.”

With Meredith gone and Henry holed away in the office, curiosity began to itch at Ellie’s brain. What were the threats exactly? Was it really that bad? It seemed like forever since she’d been on Instagram or Facebook. At this point, she was even craving a few Snapchat stories, even though the transient nature of the platform seemed strange to her.

Quietly, so Henry couldn’t hear what she was doing, she pulled her phone out of her bag in the hall closet and connected to the cabin Wi-Fi. A simple search for her name and “death threats” unveiled pages of Google search results. “Ellie’s a slut who deservz whatever the Turban terrorists got pland,” read one comment in a story about her. “U wana keep that bitch out of troubble? I got plenty of dick she can keep busy wit!” Somehow she stumbled onto what appeared to be an ISIS fan group. “White nationalist seductress paid by Washington to seduce God-fearing men into trespassing against Allah.” Well. At least that one could spell.

Story after story, headline after headline, the words sunk into her head. She was reminded of that professor from sophomore year who'd preached the importance of cognitive reconditioning. “Especially in a society where sarcasm and self-deprecation is revered,” the professor had said, “speak kindly to yourself. Your brain is really good at making what you think a reality. And if you aren’t kind to yourself, who will be?”

That professor was right. All of this lambasting wasn’t doing her any good. Instead, she watched her fingers type in “Fac” as if they were operating on their own. The URL bar autofilled “Facebook” and, even though she’d disabled her account after the Sean fiasco, all it took was her signing in again to open a raging newsfeed.

Facebook was covered with threats, too. Acquaintances from high school and childhood were sharing the same threatening stories to their pages. A few tagged her. “OMG, Ellie, did you see this???” “What’s going on?” She couldn’t escape it.

Just as she was about to close the app, Facebook played its dirtiest hand. “Your memories on Facebook. Ellie, we care about you and the memories you share here. We thought you’d like to look back on this post from 1 year ago.” The suggested photo was of her and Sean last year on Valentine’s Day. She was clutching a brooch bouquet of peonies, her favorite flower, and smiling widely while Sean beamed at the camera with his arm wrapped around her. “Now you don’t have to wait until May for them to blossom,” he’d told her. Fuck you, Facebook.

Leaving the app, she set down the phone and gazed out the window. What the hell is going to happen to me? She'd come to the cabin to escape and relax. To figure out life. And now? It was all temptation and confusion with Henry, seemingly nonstop embarrassment, and now apparently she was in need of presidential security from a stream of death threats. And for what? For catching her boyfriend fucking some stranger at graduation?

With a sigh, she picked herself up and wandered into the kitchen. From the office, she could hear Henry quietly clacking away. Ellie dug through the cupboards, rifling through the brown paper bags Henry had tucked away. Pulling out organic cashew butter and a tin of locally sourced jam, she crafted a deluxe version of her favorite childhood comfort sandwich on artisanal crunchy bread. Pulling her legs beneath her on the padded kitchen chair, she started to devour her lunch just as Henry walked in.

In silence, with barely a look in her direction, he got to work making his own lunch. Every bite she took sounded deafening in the quiet. The silence grew more awkward with every moment, each of them pretending the other didn’t exist.

Finally, Henry cleared his throat, his back to Ellie. “What are you up to today?” he asked.

Ellie scrunched her nose as she swallowed. “You don’t need to do that,” she told him.

“Do what?”

“Feel indebted to me. Or Eli. You’re only still here because you feel like you owe it to him. We both know that.” Shut up, Ellie. You’re such a fucking little girl. Stop making all these mistakes and dragging everyone else into it!

Henry turned whip fast, a butter knife in one hand and a deep scowl etched into his rugged face. He’d given up the daily shaves. Now, that stubble made him look older. Dangerous, even. “That’s not true,” he told her. “I care about you.”

“Yeah—but only as a friend. Right, Henry? Only as Eli’s little sister that you got roped into babysitting.”

He set down his plate with a snap, but didn’t sit. Instead, he loomed over her, wolfing down his own sandwich while still standing. Two could play this game. Ellie continued her own meal, refusing to be the first to drop eye contact.

“You know,” Henry began. “When I was a kid, a group of kids at school used to make fun of me for living with Aunt Mary.”

“What?” This was an unexpected turn in the conversation. “Why… why are you telling me this?”

“It was Eli who finally made them lay off me. He said something to them—to this day, I don’t know what. I’m sure he made some shit up about me being a badass or something. I don’t know. All I know is, after I saw Eli talking to them a couple of times, they left me alone.”

“Oh,” Ellie said. “What, um, what were they doing to you? How were they bullying you?” She couldn’t imagine Henry ever being in a position to be picked on.

“You know, usual kid stuff,” Henry said with a shrug. “Shoving in the hallways, a few gang beatings after school, at least until I learned to take the bus instead of walking, even though I lived just five blocks from the school. It’s a good thing Aunt Mary never found out. She was… pretty out of it at that point. I don’t think she even noticed the black eyes or bloody noses.”

“Jesus, Henry—”

“You know,” he said with a forced, strange laugh. “One time? They broke my nose. Full on broke my nose.”

“What did you do?” She searched his seemingly perfect nose for a sign of an imperfection, but there was none.

“Not much you can do in most cases,” he said. “I went to the coach, said it happened during a pick-up game and that we didn’t have insurance. That was a lie, but he said it was a pretty small, clean break and shoved the bones back in alignment.”

“What the hell, Henry?”

“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “But I think that, that incident, that’s what put Eli over the edge. He’s the first one who saw me after they busted my nose. It happened during lunch. They’d cornered me in the locker room after most everyone else had left.”

“What did he say?” She couldn’t picture Eli as some kind of middle school savior. She only knew him as the solid, kind of quiet, determined and studious politician in the making.

“He didn’t say anything. It was a look in his eye that he had. Like he’d made a decision to do something and there was no holding him back. Actually, I didn’t even tell him anything. He just saw me and he knew.”

“Eli never told me anything about that…”

“Well, yeah, you were a kid. Hell, at that time, you were just a baby.” Henry finished his last bite and brushed the crumbs from his hands.

“So what?” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“So that’s when I knew Eli was my best friend. Actually, it’s when I realized I really needed one. I’d—never had a real friend before. First I was the weird kid at school because my parents died. That freaks kids out, you know? Back then, small town and everything, barely anyone even had divorced parents, let alone… well, you know.”

“Yeah,” Ellie agreed, grabbing her glass of water to give her hands something to do.

“No, you don’t,” Henry said. “You don’t know.”

“You’re right,” she agreed. “I don’t.” You can’t do anything right.

“Ellie,” he said, lowering his voice. “What I’m trying to tell you is that I’ve felt I owe Eli ever since that day. It has nothing to do with you. I’m doing my best to try and live up to my side of our friendship. You know? And this…” he trailed off as he gestured at her, at himself, and the space between them.

Ellie chewed on her lip, then asked, “And I suppose that seducing his sister would violate that relationship?” She didn’t think she had it in her, especially not without a little lubrication from the wine. She felt naked and ashamed sitting here, in this sprawling kitchen in the bright of day, using words like “seducing.”

But Henry only nodded slowly.

Ellie let out a big breath. Henry was right, after all. There was so much about him—about Eli, even—that she didn’t know. What else did she expect? They were both nearly teenagers when she'd been born. They'd shared a short, but full life well ahead of her. “Alright,” she told him.

“Alright?”

“Yeah. Fine. Whatever.” With a speed and determination she didn’t know she had, she swept out of the room. However, she wasn’t sulking anymore. What was the point? If Henry was devoted to fulfilling some deranged agreement with her brother that Eli probably wasn’t even aware of, so be it. She was done with all of this. Done.