12:17

By Friday morning, I’d decided @LenaLived was an asshole. This was preferable to the alternatives.

I made coffee, opened the blog, and found the comment exactly where I’d left it.

That’s not what happened.

It had twelve likes. Of course it did. My readers had already started replying underneath it.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN

Okay wait is this part of the story??

Mara you better not be doing some interactive marketing thing because I will lose my mind

That one made me laugh. Interactive marketing. Honestly, I almost wished I’d thought of it.

I clicked the reply box under @LenaLived’s comment and typed, Which part? Then deleted it. No. Whoever this was wanted me to respond, and I wasn’t going to make it that easy.

Instead I clicked the profile again, even though I’d already done that approximately seventeen times the night before. No picture. No bio. One subscription. Mine. Account created Thursday. Nothing had changed.

“Congratulations,” I said. “You’re still boring.”

My cat looked up from the sofa.

“You agree.”

She yawned.

“Thank you.”

I closed the laptop. Thirty seconds later, I opened it again.

There were plenty of people who could’ve known about Lena. That’s what I kept reminding myself. Twenty years had passed, but her disappearance wasn’t exactly some impossible mystery buried in the basement of a courthouse somewhere. Search her name and there she was.

Nineteen forever.

LOCAL COLLEGE STUDENT MISSING AFTER WEEKEND TRIP

SEARCH CONTINUES FOR LENA HART

FAMILY OFFERS REWARD

A few years ago, somebody had even made one of those local true crime podcasts about her. I hadn’t listened to it. Claire had. She texted me afterward, Don’t. It’s garbage, and I’d taken her word for it.

So @LenaLived could’ve been anybody. Someone obsessed with missing person cases. Someone from school. Someone from Lena’s hometown. Someone who’d read enough old articles to figure out where I’d gotten the basic idea for Blackwater. Maybe that’s not what happened was supposed to be funny. Maybe it was a criticism. I liked the funny option better.

I’d worried about this before I started writing the story, of course I had, there’s a difference between borrowing something from your own life and turning somebody else’s tragedy into entertainment, and I wasn’t interested in becoming that asshole. But Blackwater wasn’t supposed to be Lena’s story. I’d borrowed the basic shape. Five friends went away, four came home. That was it. Different people, different place, different secrets, different everything.

At least that had been the plan.

I took another drink of coffee and told myself I was done thinking about @LenaLived. Then I checked the comment one more time. Because apparently lying to myself was also going well.

---

By Saturday afternoon, the comment had twenty-eight likes. I still hadn’t replied. I had, however, checked it enough times that I probably should’ve just responded and saved myself the dignity.

Chapter Two of The Last Night at Blackwater was due Thursday, and I had exactly one useful idea. Everybody needed to lie. I just hadn’t figured out why yet.

I opened the document and stared at the blinking cursor beneath the last line of Chapter One. Then I typed:

The police asked us when we last saw Emily.

Ben said midnight.

Claire said she couldn’t remember.

Daniel said he went to bed before eleven.

I told them 11:42.

I stopped. 11:42. I liked it. It was specific enough to sound important without being so neat that it felt fake, nobody lies and says eleven-thirty, eleven-thirty sounds like you’re estimating. Eleven-forty-two sounds like you checked a damn clock. So I kept going…

That was the time glowing on the microwave when Emily opened the back door. I remember because I looked at it. 11:42. She stood there with one hand on the knob, like she was waiting for me to say something. Then she looked at me. “Are you coming?” I should have said yes. Instead, I watched her walk toward the dock alone.

I sat back and read it again. Something about it felt right. Not familiar exactly. Just right. Which was probably fine.

Probably.

I looked at the number again. 11:42. And for whatever reason, that made me think about Lena’s last night. The real one.

There were pieces. Music playing. Somebody opening another bottle of vodka when we absolutely did not need another bottle of vodka. Nathan and Owen arguing over some card game like their lives depended on it. Claire was pissed about something. Lena was pissed because Claire was pissed. I was somewhere in the middle, which wasn’t exactly unusual, Claire and Lena could turn deciding where to eat into a hostage negotiation if you gave them enough time.

I remembered going outside at some point. Maybe. That one was harder. I could almost feel cooler air on my skin, wood underneath my feet, music coming from inside the house, quieter because a door had been shut behind me. But I didn’t know if I actually remembered that. That was the problem. After twenty years, some of the memories didn’t feel like mine anymore. The police had their version. Claire had hers. Nathan had his. Owen had his. There were newspaper articles and questions and things people repeated so many times that eventually your brain started filing them under personal experience.

I looked at 11:42 again. Nothing. No weird feeling, no flash of recognition, no memory jumping out from behind a curtain yelling surprise.

Good. I’d made it up. That was what fiction was supposed to be.

---

Claire texted Sunday morning.

So are you going to tell me who did it?

I smiled. Nope.

A few seconds later: Rude.

I actually don’t know yet.

Her response came almost immediately. That’s concerning.

Trust the process.

Do you have a process?

I stared at that one. Fair question.

Absolutely not.

She sent a laughing emoji. For a minute it felt normal. Not nineteen year old normal, but closer than we’d been in a while.

Then I thought about the comment.

Did you see the weird one?

The typing dots appeared. Stopped. Then started again.

Which one?

LenaLived.

This time she took longer. Yeah.

That was it. I waited. Nothing else came.

Creepy, right?

People are weird. Block them.

I frowned. That’s dramatic.

Someone made an account called LenaLived just to comment on your story.

We don’t know they made it just for that.

They follow one person, Mara. You.

Okay. Fair.

You think it’s someone we know?

The typing dots appeared again. Could be anyone.

Someone from school?

Maybe.

One of the podcast people?

Probably.

I read that twice. Probably.

You sound very confident.

Her answer came fast. I sound like someone who has better things to do on a Sunday than investigate your blog comments.

There she was. I laughed. You’re no fun.

Block them.

I’m not blocking someone for leaving four words.

Then stop obsessing over it.

I’m not obsessing.

You brought it up.

Rude. Also accurate.

I put my phone down. Then picked it right back up. There was something else I’d been thinking about since writing Chapter Two.

How much do you actually remember from that Saturday night?

No typing dots. A full minute passed. Then another. Finally: Why?

I stared at the word. Not not much. Not about as much as you do. Just why.

Blackwater has me thinking about it, I guess.

Another pause. Don’t do that to yourself.

My stomach tightened a little. Do what?

Try to remember everything. We already went through that.

We had. God, had we. Police interviews. Follow-up interviews. More questions when somebody thought they had a lead. Sitting in rooms for hours trying to put a night back together that seemed to fall apart more every time somebody asked about it.

Still.

You remember more than I do.

The typing dots appeared, then disappeared. Eventually: Maybe.

That was all she gave me.

Helpful.

She hearted the message. Apparently that conversation was over.

I told myself to leave it alone. And surprisingly, I mostly did.

---

Thursday showed up way too fast.

At 5:52 p.m., Chapter Two was loaded and ready. Title: 11:42.

I sat there staring at the publish button. There was something uniquely terrifying about releasing fiction you hadn’t finished yet. Readers assumed you knew what you were doing. They trusted that a weird detail in Chapter Two would somehow matter in Chapter Eleven, that the random sentence they highlighted was secretly important, that you weren’t just throwing shit at the page and hoping Future You could clean it up later.

Meanwhile, Future Me already had enough problems.

I hit publish at six. Then I put my phone facedown because I was absolutely not going to spend another Thursday night refreshing comments like a lunatic.

I made pasta. Opened wine. Fed the cat. Washed exactly one dish.

Then checked.

Twenty-three comments. Not bad.

BEN HAS BLOOD ON HIS SHIRT???

Heart.

Calling it now: Daniel saw something and is lying about going to bed.

Interesting. Heart.

Why did Claire shower at 2 a.m., MARA????

I winced. “Sorry, Claire.” Heart.

I kept scrolling. No @LenaLived. I wasn’t sure whether I felt relieved or disappointed. The fact that disappointed was even an option annoyed me.

I put the phone down again. Ten minutes later, it buzzed.

There it was. @LenaLived commented on Chapter Two of The Last Night at Blackwater.

My stomach tightened. I opened it.

It wasn’t 11:42.

I stared at the comment. Then, because apparently all that self-control I’d been bragging about lasted exactly one chapter, I replied. What wasn’t?

Nothing. I waited a minute. Then another. Somebody else found the thread before @LenaLived answered.

OH HERE WE GO

Another comment appeared right beneath it. Mara is this person secretly you because this is genius 😂

Normally I would’ve laughed. Instead, I refreshed.

Finally, a reply appeared. It was 12:17.

I stared at the numbers. 12:17. Nothing happened. No memory, no flash, no weird sensation. Just four numbers on my screen.

I typed: Good thing it’s fiction.

The response came a minute later. Is it?

“Okay.” I sat back. That was different.

The first comment could’ve meant anything. Maybe they’d recognized Lena’s story in Blackwater. Maybe they thought I’d changed something I shouldn’t have. Maybe they were just screwing with me because people on the internet apparently have hobbies I will never understand. But 12:17? I’d invented 11:42. I knew I had. I’d been sitting at my laptop Saturday afternoon and picked it because it sounded better than eleven-thirty. So what exactly were they correcting?

I opened another tab and searched Lena’s name with “last seen.” Old articles filled the screen. I clicked the first one.

There she was. Long brown hair. Big smile. Nineteen forever. I knew the picture immediately; Claire had taken it the summer before Lena disappeared. I remembered being there. Lena had complained the sun was in her eyes and Claire kept telling her to stop squinting. That memory was easy. Funny how some were.

I scrolled. Hart was last seen by friends during the late evening hours of June 14. No time. I opened another article. Nothing. Then another. Still nothing.

Finally I searched: “Lena Hart” “12:17”

No results. Different wording. Nothing. Again, nothing.

I sat back and stared at the screen. There was an obvious explanation, @LenaLived had invented 12:17 just as easily as I’d invented 11:42. Pick a different time, make it oddly specific, watch the thriller writer go insane trying to figure out what it means. Honestly, it was working. I almost respected it.

Almost.

I went back to the account. Still no photo. Still no bio. One subscription. Mine. I clicked around until I found what little subscriber information the site showed me. Account created the same day Chapter One went live. Free subscriber. Email address hidden behind asterisks. Nothing useful.

I was about to close the page when I noticed the end of the email. Most of it was hidden, but right before the @ symbol were four numbers…

614.

I stared at them. Then looked again, like maybe they’d rearrange themselves into something less creepy if I gave them a second. They didn’t.

June 14.

“Well, that’s fucking great.”

I sat there trying very hard to come up with another explanation. Birthdate. Random numbers. Favorite lottery combination. Maybe they were a huge fan of June and the number fourteen.

Sure.

Except the account was called @LenaLived. It had appeared the same day Chapter One went live. It had told me I’d gotten something wrong. Now it was correcting a time I’d made up. And the email ended in 0614.

June 14. The last night I ever saw Lena Hart.

I went back to the comment.

It was 12:17.

For the first time, I wasn’t wondering who was screwing with me.

I wanted to know what the hell they knew.