It’s not the first time someone has reached out with a theory about Izzy. Every time a new true crime podcast gets ahold of the story—a beauty queen gone missing in the heart of Texas—my inbox floods with strangers sending blurry photos of “Izzy” in California and links to stories about serial killers who were active in Texas at the time. I learned long ago to delete and block.
And now the twenty-fifth anniversary is coming up, which means the interview requests are back—emails, voicemails, random DMs from producers hoping for a quote. But Mom never talked to them. None of us did. After Izzy vanished, the whole town closed ranks. You don’t feed the vultures. You don’t turn grief into someone else’s entertainment.
But this is different. Whoever sent me this invitation isn’t some internet sleuth in another state. They are here in Anhalt right now.
Light pours in behind me, and I feel like I’m entering centerstage. Heads lift and whispers ripple around the room, like a rumor spreading in real time. For a moment, I wonder if they think I’m her. Like maybe Izzy has just strolled back into town to grab a drink and tell everyone the crazy story of where she’s been.
I lift my sunglasses onto my head and scan the room. People I grew up with avert their eyes, and, for each and every one, I can’t help but think:Was it you?
I make my way to the two-seater high-top table in the dead middle of the room, where Kennedy Claire perches like the featured sculpture in a museum: chin lifted so she has to look down the slope of her face to see the menu, zebra-print dress hugging every curve. In the wild, that pattern is meant to camouflage. Here, it’s meant to stand out.
When I reach her, she rises, air-kisses my cheek, whispering, “If you look back at them, honey, they always wilt away.”
And she’s right. I glance around, and the gawkers snap their attention elsewhere, like nosy neighbors snapping their blinds shut.
“See? It’s a superpower.” She takes her seat again and slides a glass of rosé toward me. “How’s Joel? It’s a shame he couldn’t be here.”
I should tell her the truth. This is where Kennedy Claire would really shine as a best friend, do exactly what I’m always wanting Sheryl to do—trash-talk Joel. She would remind me that he sucks soda through his teeth, leaves his fingernail clippings on the end table. She’d tell me I’m a goddess and will be better off without him. By the end of the night, we’d be planning out my Eat, Pray, Love tour around the world.
But the truth is, I’m ashamed to admit that Joel left me. Because that’s exactly what he did. There was no affair. No dramatic argument. He simply woke up one day, after fifteen years together, and decided he didn’t want to be married anymore. Didn’t wantmeanymore.
Sheryl says I have afear of abandonment, stemming from the loss of my sister. As if I needed to pay someone for that brilliant insight. But, I guess, someone has to fund Sheryl’s cardigan addiction.
“Joel’s fine. Just slammed at work,” I say, taking my first sip of wine so she can’t read my face, can’t sniff out the lie.
Luckily, Kennedy Claire has her own agenda. “Please tell me you’re coming to orientation tomorrow.” She flashes me her best smile and nudges me under the table with the pointy toe of her high heel. “It won’t be the same without you.”
I know what she’s really after, though. She has called me no less than a dozen times about the pageant, and every time I’ve told her the same thing, that Mom would love nothing more than to crown this year’s Miss Lone Star Princess, but it all depends on her health. Whether she’s discharged in time. How the chemo hits her. You’d think this would be obvious to any reasonable person. But that’s Kennedy Claire for you: self-centered almost to the point of narcissism.
We’ve been friends for nearly three decades, though. At this point, I don’t expect her to be anyone other than who she’s always been. Isn’t that what real friendship is? Knowing a person fully and loving them anyway.
Besides, a part of me will always be that thirteen-year-old girl, grateful and a little in awe that the dazzling, formidable Kennedy Claire chose—of all people—me.
The start of eighth grade had been hard for me. When Ben and Izzy started dating, I felt suddenly invisible in their world. The world that used to belong to the three of us. They spent time without me, sat close, whispered things I couldn’t hear, told inside jokes I didn’t understand. I missed them, even when I was with them.
Then, at Oktoberfest that year, I found myself alone with my arms full of paper plates sagging with bratwursts and funnel cakes. I’d been sent off to spend our tickets while Izzy and Ben held our spot by the dance hall, but by the time I got back, they were gone, their laughter already disappearing into the polka music inside. I was embarrassed—standing there with all that food and nowhere to put it and no one to share it with—and embarrassment is the worst possible emotion you can feel when you are thirteen.
Then Kennedy Claire called my name. She was in line for the Ferris wheel with the girls everyone wanted to be friends with, her voice bright and carrying.Ingrid, you’re with me.She plucked a funnel cake right out of my hands and slid me into place beside her as if it had been decided all along. Nobody complained about me cutting, not when Kennedy Claire was in charge. And, just like that, I wasn’t invisible anymore. Wasn’t alone anymore.
“I got an invitation,” I say, tipping my glass again, pulse ticking at the thought of that message.
“Oh, good. I left one for y’all at the hospital.” She’s talking about one she must have tucked into that bouquet on Mom’s bedside table.
“When did those go out?” I ask, hoping the question sounds casual, not like I’m fishing for information.
But she is unbothered. “We put them in the registration packets, so the girls can hand them out to all their friends and family. I’m determined to make this our biggest pageant yet.”
So all the contestants. And their mothers. And anyone else they might have invited. It doesn’t narrow the pool much.
“Say you’ll be there. I need you.” She pouts her bottom lip.
I force a smile. “I’ll bring my camera. Take all those candid photos you wanted.”
Back in high school, I was always snapping pictures with that old film camera—of Kennedy Claire and me, Izzy and Ben, the rest of our friends. I even started developing the photos myself in the makeshift darkroom Dad helped me put together in the storage closet of the garage, falling in love with the way the image would appear slowly, as if by magic.
I haven’t picked up a camera in years, but it’ll give me the perfect excuse to chat with all those pageant mothers and daughters.
Kennedy Claire squeals with delight, because there is nothing she likes better than getting her own way. “Look at us,” she says, shimmying her shoulders. “Reliving the glory days.”