Chapter Seventeen
"We're going to the beach," I said to Mia. "Get your jacket."
Mia hesitated. She wore pink sweatpants and an oversized Taylor Swift sweatshirt, her hair pulled into a damp knot at the nape of her neck.
"Now?" she asked.
"Now."
Her eyes flicked past me, to the kitchen, the living room, anywhere but at my face, as if searching for an escape hatch. There wasn't one. Not this time.
Apollo whined eagerly. He paced in tight, anxious circles by the door while I pulled on my sneakers. When I opened the hall closet to grab his leash, he trotted over, his whole tail end wagging in anticipation.
"At least let me change."
"You're fine," I said. "Shoes, Mia. That's it."
She raised her chin at my tone, but she knew better than to argue. She disappeared into the mudroom and came back, slipping her bare feet into her white knockoff Vans.
I locked the patio door behind us and pocketed the keys. We walked along the road to the community beach access north of Rowan's house.
Mrs. Atkins was in her usual rocking chair, her cardigan wrapped around her shoulders. She stared at us, nodding when we passed. I nodded back.
We strode past the leaning oak at the corner of Wyld Wood Lane and Windward Point to the community gazebo and the wooden staircase leading down to the beach. All 179 steps.
Apollo scrambled down the stairs, his leash taut. The air smelled like wet earth, pine needles, and fresh water. The steep bluff was choked with bushes, weeds, and a few scrubby trees.
We descended the last stairs. The beach spread out before us, a hundred feet deep, stretching as far as the lighthouse to the south and further than we could see to the north. Ahead of us, Lake Michigan dazzled a rich cobalt blue. Blue water under a blue sky. The horizon line was hazy.
We discarded our shoes by the stairs, our feet sinking into the sand. The waves rolled in, low and steady. The wind off the water was cold, needling through my jacket as I unhooked Apollo's leash and let him run.
He exploded into a joyous sprint along the wet strip by the waterline, his legs flinging arcs of sand everywhere.
The beach was almost empty. A man in a dark parka walked a golden retriever near the bluff. Farther down, a couple stood shoulder to shoulder, looking out at the water. No one was close enough to hear anything unless we started shouting.
I didn't know how to start the conversation gently, so I just came out with it. "Vivienne showed us Leah's diary."
Mia's mouth pressed flat. "Oh."
Every bitter detail from the diary looped in my head. "She read from it. Your name is in there. A lot."
The color drained from Mia's face. She knew what was coming.
The waves hissed and sighed. A gull wheeled overhead. We trudged along the firmer sand where the waves had just receded while Apollo darted in and out of the waves, water beading his flanks, sand clinging to his fur.
"Leah wrote about being bullied. Why didn't you tell me what was happening?"
Mia kicked at a stray piece of driftwood and didn’t answer. We kept walking. I waited, giving her space.
Along the coastline, broken staircases and massive oak trees tipped like toothpicks littered the bluff, as the lake gradually ate the bottom of the bluff out from under itself and groundwater loosened great gaping chunks from the topside.
Some properties boasted seawalls to keep the erosion at bay, but mother nature was relentless.
Finally, I stopped walking. "Look at me."
She kept her gaze pinned somewhere near my shoulder. I stepped in front of her, forcing her to either crash into me or stop. She stopped.
"Look at me," I repeated.
Slowly, she did. Her eyes were glassy.
"Explain it to me. Because right now, what I see in that diary is my daughter participating in bullying her best friend. I need you to explain that to me."
She dragged the back of her sleeve over her face, leaving a damp streak. "It wasn't—it didn't feel like that. Leah would make jokes, too. It was… how we talked. It was stupid, but it wasn’t that bad. Not at first." She swallowed.
"But you saw it was hurting her."
Her shoulders curled inward, like she wanted to fold herself inside out. "After Christmas, it got worse. Alexis and Peyton, especially. They'd push it farther. Leah stopped laughing."
"You still laughed."
"I was scared." She said it fast. "Okay? I was scared they'd turn on me if I didn't. You don't get it, Mom. They… they pick. One person. And then it's just… constant. Every outfit, every answer in class, every post. If I didn't go along, they'd choose me next."
"Better her than you, right?"
Mia recoiled. "That's not—I didn't think—"
"But that's what happened." I kept my voice even. "You watched. You participated."
Her tears spilled faster now. She swiped at them, angry with herself. "I know, okay? I hate myself for it. I think about it all the time. Every time you say her name, I feel like I'm going to throw up."
"Then why didn't you say something earlier?" I asked. "When I asked you what happened that night. When we sat at that table, and you told me she was fine."
"Because you'd look at me like this," she said in a strangled voice.
That landed hard. I took a breath, forced myself to stay calm, to listen.
A few dozen feet in front of us, Apollo lunged at a length of driftwood bobbing in the shallows, barking when the wave tugged it away. I whistled him back, needing the distraction. He loped over, sand plastered to his legs, water dripping from his chest.
Mia tugged her phone out of her hoodie pocket and held it close to her face. She put it away swiftly, but not before I caught a telltale glimpse. "What is that you keep looking at?"
"Nothing."
"Mia."
Her gaze darted toward the water, the sky, the curve of the pier in the distance. Anywhere but my face.
"I need you to show me that app or website or chat or whatever it is you keep looking at."
"Mom, can we not do this right now?"
"No," I said. "We are absolutely going to do this right now. Whatever you're not telling me could be the difference between you ending up in prison or finding the real killer. You don't get to keep that to yourself because it's uncomfortable."
She bit down on her lower lip. Her shoulders sagged.
"Tell me. Now."
"There's this account," she said finally. "On Instagram."
"What account?"
She hesitated, then retrieved the phone again. "LakeshoreTea. It's like an anonymous gossip thing. People send stuff in, and whoever runs it posts it. Screenshots. Photos. Polls. DMs between people. Edited photos. AI videos. Rumors about teachers. About students. It gets mean."
I held out my hand. "Show me."
Reluctantly, she set the phone in my palm.
The screen glowed. The account's profile picture was a cartoon teacup, bright pink, with a tiny cartoon school drawn inside the teacup instead of tea. Handle: LakeshoreTea.
I scrolled as rows of posts flicked past my thumb.
Text, images, and videos, many focused on Mia: Mia's yearbook photo, but with glowing red eyes and corpse-like skin.
AI-generated videos of her laughing at Leah's funeral, which hadn't even happened yet.
Faked screenshots of texts reportedly from Mia confessing to the murder.
Another AI-generated image of Mia pushing Leah off a cliff with Mia's hands photoshopped, covered in blood.
Then the comments:
She wanted to be the main character SO bad she literally unalived her bff.
Ultimate pick me behavior is killing your best friend for attention.
Bet she thought the guys would feel sorry for her.
No literally she's a psychopath.
Her eyes are dead inside if you look close.
FR she needs to be in jail like 4ever.
I cursed under my breath. Outrage burned beneath my skin. I wanted to throw the phone into the lake, to confront these girls who would so callously destroy my child with their poisonous words. An ugly part of me wanted to make them hurt as much as they'd hurt Mia. "Oh, honey. I’m so sorry."
"They’re trying to make me look guilty." Her voice dropped. "That's what they do. Everyone believes it, too. They know it's fake, but it looks real, so they start to actually believe it."
I took a deep breath, trying to process what I was seeing, the awful things Mia had endured in silence. It was hard to believe kids could be so hateful so young. But then, maybe it wasn't. The entire world was bristling with hatred. "When did this start?"
"Since Leah died. I guess I got what I deserved."
"No one deserves to be treated like this. Ever. Not for any reason."
She gave a resigned shrug.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
She looked away. "I didn't want to bother you. You were so happy about this move. I didn't want to ruin it."
Guilt stabbed between my ribs. I fought back tears. "I want you to be happy. You're my priority, always."
She still didn't look at me. "Okay."
I pulled her into a hug. "I'm so sorry they're doing this to you."
She let me hold her for a moment, her body tense, then pulled away. "They were worse to Leah. Before she died, most of the posts were about her. Other girls, too, though. Last year, I heard it was all about Taylor."
I scrolled back. Mia was right. The posts about Leah were sadistic in a different way. AI-generated images showed her yearbook photo with her head placed on a pig's body, captioned "When the pig filter is an upgrade."
The comments were worse:
She ate the whole buffet, and it shows.
Genuinely a jump scare when she walks into class.
POV: you have to sit next to Leah in class. Followed by a vomiting emoji.
Another showed her Korean features distorted, eyes exaggerated into slits, skin yellowed, along with a photo of her eating food, captioned: "watch the whale feed.
" Body-morphing edits made her appear grotesquely overweight.
There were sexually explicit images with her face superimposed on naked bodies in crude, degrading positions.
The comments underneath were relentless:
Her face card is PERMANENTLY declined
Genuinely a health hazard.
Do us all a favor and just kill yourself.
Every hateful post was designed to strip away her humanity, to make her something less than human. Something acceptable to mock, degrade, and destroy.
My hand went cold around the phone. Tears stung my eyes. My heart ached beneath the anger that sizzled red-hot just beneath the surface. "Oh, Mia. I had no idea."
She kicked at a piece of driftwood. "Yeah, well."
"I wish you had told me sooner."
"It wouldn't have changed anything."
"Of course it would," I insisted. "We could have talked to the school, the police."
"Mom, no," she cut me off. "They'd find a way to twist it, make me look even more pathetic. Same with Leah. It was pointless."
"You're not pathetic," I said firmly. "Leah was being harassed. Now you are. And it's not pointless to report it. This is cyberbullying."
She gave a hollow laugh. "Yeah, just like Leah's bullying stopped after she reported Alexis cutting her hair. Just like that, huh? It got worse, Mom. Not better."
I watched her, my heart heavy. Much as I hated to admit it, she wasn't wrong about that.
But if the school hadn't put a stop to it, I would've pulled her out.
I would have moved across the country if that's what it took to keep her safe, to protect her.
I knew Viv and Daniel would've done the same for Leah.
"You mentioned the name Taylor. Do you mean Taylor Everett? The girl who used to live in this neighborhood?"
"It happened the year before we moved here.
I heard the rumors, though. This account started targeting her, posting AI-pictures and videos of her, but fat, or with warts all over her face, or her naked in a vat of blood, her on her knees…
you know." Mia picked at a loose thread on her sleeve.
"I guess there was some investigation last year after she, ah…
she almost drowned in a pool accident and was brain-damaged or something. "
I felt sick. "Who the hell runs this account?"
She shrugged. "No one knows. It's anonymous."
I tucked the phone into my jacket pocket.
"Hey, that's mine."
"You'll get it back. Right now, I need it more than you do."
Panic edged her words. "For what? To stalk my friends?"
I had Mia's phone. I had names. And I was going to find out which one of those girls had Leah's blood on their hands. "To figure out the truth."
We stood there in the thinning light, wind pulling at our clothes. Apollo trotted back and shook himself, spraying water all over us, then he leaned his flank against my leg, his sides heaving from his run. The waves kept rolling in.
"Mom," Mia said. "I know it sounds bad. I know I look bad. I didn't go down to the beach. I told you about the diary so Leah's mom could find it, even though I knew it probably had bad stuff about me in there, too. That counts for something, right? I didn't… I didn't want her to die."
I believed her, and I didn't, simultaneously. The worst part was that both could be true: she had never laid a hand on Leah and yet had helped push Leah somewhere she couldn't climb back from.
I stepped close enough to smell the faint coconut shampoo scent clinging to her damp hair. "My job is to protect you. Even from your friends. Even from yourself."
She let out a shaky breath. "You're mad at me."
"I'm furious with you. For what you did. For what you didn't do. For what you still might be hiding."
"But you still—"
"I still love you. That doesn't change. It also doesn't mean there aren't consequences."
She nodded once, as if she'd braced for that. She stared out at the lake. "What if it's someone I know. What if it's… one of us?"
"Then we'll face it," I said.
She didn't pull away when I reached for her hand. Her fingers were cold and damp. I tightened my grip on the leash, on her hand, and kept walking. The wind pushed at our backs, up toward the streetlights and houses and the tidy lies waiting there.