I call Ethan for the thousandth time and it goes straight to voicemail again. I try once more, and this time an automated voice tells me this number is no longer in service.

My heart sinks, and panic sets in.

Where is he?

This morning, I went to the place where he rents a room, and they told me that he doesn’t live there anymore.

It doesn’t make sense. Ethan wouldn’t just leave.

I wonder if he’s in trouble. Maybe he couldn’t afford his rent—but he’d tell me if that was true, wouldn’t he? He knows that my family’s door is always open to him. After his mom died, he was always staying at our place. None of us liked to think of him alone in a stranger’s home.

I’ve been everywhere I can think of to find him: Rumsey Park, Molly’s Café, where we go when it’s too cold out to wander around Payson—even his mom’s grave. I can’t find him.

For the last two hours, I haven’t been able to stop crying. I’m terrified that something has happened to him. This isn’t like Ethan.

I go to the police station. They ask me questions about Ethan. The woman police officer’s face is condescending when she tells me that a missing person doesn’t end his lease and pack his bags. “Sorry, sweetie,” she says. “It sounds like he’s moved on.”

* * *

I add the finishing touches to the sculpture—a bust of a woman, her hands trailing across her face. I’m not sure whether she looks seductive or lost, but I’ve sculpted something in her expression that came from my own.

Wiping my hands on my T-shirt, I switch off the light to my living room. The bust is on a turntable set-up on some dust sheets, right in the middle of my space. I can’t afford an art studio, so this is where I work. There is modeling plaster everywhere. My eyes wander to the thin crack snaking up the inside wall, and I wonder whether the plaster could fill it.

It’s nine at night, and it’s time I finish working. The people downstairs complain when I work the turntable too late; my foot on the pedal sounds like I’m dancing with lead shoes, apparently.

I head into my tiny kitchen, switch on the light, and smile when Biscuit comes running toward me, purring. She knows it’s time for dinner.

I set some food down for her and look inside my tiny under-counter refrigerator. Empty, apart from a splash of milk and a handful of chili peppers that Chloe grew on her balcony. She swears they cleanse the chi or something like that.

“Looks like I need to get some groceries, Biscuit. You’re a lucky girl, you know that? I never forget to get food for you.”

I open my top cupboard and pull out a box of cookies. I change into my favorite pajama shorts—the ones with the cartoon paint splotches—and an oversized knit sweater.

Cross-legged on my bed, I’m about to turn on the TV when my phone beeps. “Oh, look, Biscuit—it’s Destiny calling.”

I look down at the screen and laugh when I read the message.

—I was waiting to see if you’d send the first message. Hello, soulmate.

“The guts on this guy!”

I almost call Chloe to laugh with her at the scammer’s opening message. Instead, I grin and begin to eagerly type back. Chloe will die laughing when I show her these.

—Forgive me, but I’m having trouble believing that you’re Vincent Oswald.

—Why?

I shake my head in disbelief, my thumb skimming the keys.

—What would a billionaire be doing on a dating app like Destiny?

—Research.

Laughing, I consider that this scammer has put some serious thought into his backstory. Vincent Oswald getting the dirt on Ethan Steele by checking out his dating app. That’s pure gold.

I throw my cell to the end of my mattress and switch on the TV. It’s playing an infomercial for some gadget that cuts the perfect carrot. I’m bored out of my skull.

Bored enough that when my cell buzzes again, I grin and decide to engage.

—Still don’t believe me?

—If you’re Vincent Oswald, prove it.

A minute passes without a response, and I think I’ve got him on the rocks. I roll my eyes. Then my cell vibrates once more.

“This is going to be good, Biscuit. What do you think the proof is? Some stock photo image of a pile of money? Some Wikipedia facts about where Oswald was born?”

I open the message, and there’s an image attached. Clicking it full-screen, I’m not sure how to react. Instinctively, I laugh—this has got to be Photoshopped—and then I lean forward and examine the picture more closely. “What the heck?”

It’s a photograph of Vincent Oswald, the Vincent Oswald, holding up a piece of paper with my name handwritten on it: Hello, Lily Miller.

Too easy to fake. The Vincent in the picture is wearing the same tailored suit that he wears in almost every photo shoot. The backdrop is a generic, stark white. This photo could have come from anywhere, and almost anybody could Photoshop in a piece of paper.

I challenge him.

—Vincent Oswald wears a suit even when he’s at home? Wow, what a bore! Pajamas or I call fake.

Mere moments later, a picture arrives. There he is, raven-haired and stormy-eyed, wearing nothing but a pair of long pajama pants and no shirt. I bite down on my lip; I’ve never seen photos of Vincent Oswald like that before.

Then again, how hard is it to copy and paste Vincent Oswald’s head onto some model’s body? I mean, that has to be a model, with abs like that.

My phone pings with a follow-up message.

—And you didn’t even buy me a drink.

I laugh from shock. This scammer is seriously committed to the hoax. Challenging him is fun. I wonder if his Photoshop pictures can keep up with my demands. If he takes a second too long, I’ll know for sure it is all lies.

—I want a picture with a banana on your head.

I’m filled with gleeful anticipation as I wait for the fake Vincent’s response. I’m having fun now, thinking of the most ridiculous pose I can, imagining the scammer desperately searching for a picture of a banana.

The response is almost instantaneous. I open the picture, and for the first time, I feel a flicker of doubt that this is a hoax. There is Vincent Oswald, shirtless, with a banana on his head.

—Cross-eyed.

This is turning into a bizarre game of Simon Says, but he delivers. In my inbox is an image of Vincent Oswald in his pajama pants, with a banana on his head and eyes crossed. I would have thought that the scammer was using the same image and just adding to it, but Vincent’s pose was slightly different in each picture; the lighting changed, the banana turned ninety degrees on his head.

My hand slowly covers my open mouth, and I shake my head. “It can’t be.”

—I’m hoping about now that you’re not from the New York Insider. Not my best angle.

Either this was the fastest-fingered scammer in the history of internet hoaxes, or the real Vincent Oswald has a sense of humor.

—I filled in the same security profile as you did. Have I satisfied your doubts?

My hands are shaking now as I reply.

—I don’t know what to think.

—I guess there’s only one way I can prove myself once and for all, isn’t there? Let me take you to dinner.