“Nobody came to my graduation. Days later, Mom texted me: ‘I need 2,100 for your sister’s sweet 16.’ I sent 1 dollar with a ‘Congratulations.’ Then I changed the locks. Then the police showed up.”

He gestured down toward the parking lot. A maroon minivan was awkwardly parked, its side door open. Inside, I could make out clear bags… and a figure moving.

The younger officer turned to me.

“Miss Reed… your mother said you left this morning in a state of distress, saying you were going to ‘disappear.’ She also said you left a worrying note.”

“That’s not true,” I replied, feeling a strange tingling at the back of my neck. “I didn’t leave a note.”

The officers exchanged another glance. Something in their expressions changed. They no longer seemed to be looking for a suspect, but rather protecting her from something I still didn’t understand.

“Camila?” the young man said in a different tone. “Your mother also mentioned that she was worried you were… losing your memory.”

They handed me a piece of paper. A crumpled sheet, supposedly found at my mother’s house.

I read it.

The handwriting was incredibly similar to mine.

“I can’t take it anymore. I’m leaving. I don’t want to be here when you get back. I’m sorry.”

I froze.

“I didn’t write this. I haven’t been to your house in weeks. That’s… a forgery.”

The tall officer held my gaze for a long moment, as if studying every blink, every tiny tremor in my hands.

“Miss Reed,” he said finally. “I need you to come with us for a moment. There are some discrepancies in the report. It’s best to clear them up at the station.”

And then, there was another knock at the door.

But this time, it wasn’t the familiar tap of knuckles.

It was a dull, desperate knock.

The three of us turned at the same time.

“Who is it?” I began.

The young man cautiously opened the door.

Avery was there. My sister. Pale. Trembling. Her eyes red from crying.

“Camila…” she sobbed. “You have to come. Mom… Mom’s saying the strangest things. She says you never moved here. That this”—she gestured around the entire apartment with a trembling hand—“is hers. That you… that you don’t exist.”

The world tilted in my face.

“What?” I whispered.

“He says you’re a fabrication,” Avery continued, frantically. “That he only had one daughter. That I’m the only one. That you’re… a phase. A copy. Something that ‘went away years ago.’”

The police officers were speechless.

So was I.

Avery desperately reached for my hand… but her gaze twisted as soon as I touched it, as if a chill ran through her.

“Camila…” she whispered. “Why… why are you so cold?”

The officers took a step back.

I took two steps forward without feeling my legs. My body was moving, yes, but the ground no longer responded the same way beneath my feet. As if it weren’t entirely mine.

“Avery,” I said.

“I muttered,” barely audible, “of course I exist. I’m here.”

The apartment light flickered.

Just once.

But it was enough to make the police officers reach for their belts.

And then, the tall officer murmured something that pierced me deeper than any absence, any abandonment.

“Miss Reed… our body cameras aren’t picking up your face.”

Or my face.

Or my silhouette.

Or anything.

Just… empty space.

Behind me, slowly, the diploma, still wrapped in plastic, fell to the floor of its own weight.

And it sounded like a thud in an apartment where, suddenly, I understood that perhaps the only thing I’d never had… was a real place to call myself.