1 My boyfriend vanished into thin air in the middle of our graduation trip to Sedona. I had only stepped out for ten minutes to grab our DoorDash order from the lobby. When I unlocked the door to our suite, the room was chillingly still. Bennett was gone. At first, I thought he’d just run down to the vending machine. But as the desert sun dipped below the horizon and the hours ticked toward midnight, panic began to claw at my throat. His phone went straight to voicemail. The silence in the room felt heavy, unnatural. I sprinted down to the front desk, my voice trembling. “My boyfriend—Bennett Hayes. He’s missing. He was in Room 412.” The receptionist looked at me, her expression shifting from professional patience to genuine confusion. “Ma’am, I checked you in myself. You booked a single king suite. There was no one else with you.” My heart did a slow, sickening roll. I fumbled for my phone and called my two best friends, Harper and Riley, who were staying in the room down the hall. “Sloane, what are you talking about?” Harper’s voice sounded sleepy and concerned. “You don’t have a boyfriend. You’ve been single since middle school. Did you have a nightmare?” Desperate, I called the police. But when the officers arrived and did a sweep, they didn’t find a single trace of him. No extra toothbrush. No male clothes. Nothing. The lead detective leveled a hard stare at me. “Filing a false police report is a serious crime, Miss Miller. You’re the state valedictorian. You have a full ride to Stanford starting in the fall. Do you really want to throw your entire future away on a prank?” I stood there, paralyzed. It made no sense. Bennett’s luggage had been right next to the dresser. His boarding pass had been on the nightstand. How could it all be gone? Broken and gaslit by the world, I wandered up to the hotel’s rooftop observation deck—the place where we had watched the stars just the night before. The place where he’d promised me forever. Overwhelmed by a grief I couldn’t explain and a reality I no longer recognized, I let myself fall. The wind roared in my ears. Impact. Darkness. Then, a gasp. I bolted upright, lungs burning as if I’d forgotten how to breathe. I was back in the hotel room. The clock on the wall read 7:15 PM—the exact moment Bennett disappeared. I didn’t wait. I didn’t search. I grabbed my phone and dialed 911. “I want to report a murder,” I said, my voice steady despite the violent shaking of my hands. “My boyfriend has been killed. His body is hidden somewhere in this hotel.” My eyes locked onto the nightstand. There it was. A bottle of Fiji water, its cap missing, abandoned in a hurry. In the final, agonizing second before I died in my previous life, I had seen a flash of something. A reflection in the glass of the maintenance elevator. I knew where he was now. And this time, I wasn’t going to let the monsters get away with it. 2 The police arrived with surprising speed, sealing off the resort. The lobby was a sea of confused tourists in bathrobes and hiking gear, all grumbling about the sudden lockdown. Harper and Riley found me near the elevators, their eyes wide with disbelief. “Sloane, are you insane?” Harper hissed, grabbing my arm. “The cops are saying you reported a homicide. We’ve been together this whole trip. It’s just been the three of us! Where did you even get the idea you had a boyfriend?” The receptionist from before—the one who would eventually deny Bennett’s existence—sighed and looked at the officers. “Look at the CCTV, officers. She checked in alone. She didn’t present any other ID. I think she’s having some kind of mental break.” I felt the heat of anger rising in my chest, a sharp contrast to the cold dread of the previous timeline. “If I came here alone,” I challenged, my voice ringing through the lobby, “why didn’t I stay in the triple room with them? Why would I pay five hundred dollars a night for a private king suite if I was just going to sleep alone?” They exchanged looks. Riley shook her head, her face full of pity. “Sloane, you told us you’re a light sleeper and wanted to splurge for the ‘Valedictorian treatment.’ We even joked about how we were jealous of your fancy tub. How could you forget that? It was only three hours ago.” On the monitor behind the desk, the footage played. It showed me at the counter, laughing and gesturing toward Harper and Riley. But the space beside me—the space where Bennett had stood, his hand resting protectively on the small of my back—was empty. Detective Russo, a weathered man with graying temples, stepped toward me. His radio crackled with reports from his team. After a few hushed words, he turned to me, his face a mask of frustration. “We’ve called your parents. We’ve checked your social media. Everyone says the same thing: Sloane Miller doesn’t have a boyfriend. Do you have any idea the kind of resources you’re wasting right now?” 3 The weight of their collective doubt was a physical thing, pushing the air out of my lungs. In my last life, I had tried to show them Bennett’s things, but they had mocked me, claiming I’d stolen them from another guest’s luggage. They had threatened to institutionalize me. This time, I didn’t waste time pleading. I dragged Bennett’s black Samsonite suitcase out from behind the bellhop’s cart where I’d hidden it during the chaos. I threw it onto the marble floor and shoved his crumpled boarding pass into Russo’s hand. “If I’m traveling alone, why do I have a suitcase full of men’s clothes? Why am I carrying his ID?” Russo glanced at the boarding pass: Bennett Hayes. Seat 14C. He frowned, his skepticism wavering for the first time. But Harper leaned in, looking at the paper. “Sloane, you probably found that on the plane. You’re obsessed with these ‘missing person’ podcasts. Did you just pick a random name and decide he was yours? This is getting scary.” “She’s ‘maladaptive daydreaming’ again,” Riley whispered loud enough for the detective to hear. The helplessness threatened to swallow me whole. I thought of Bennett—of the way his blood had looked against the white tiles in my vision. I forced myself to stay upright. “He wasn’t on our original booking,” I said, my voice cracking. “He decided to come at the last minute because he didn’t want us traveling to a remote resort alone. He bought a standby ticket, which is why we weren’t sitting together. You all thanked him for coming! You said you felt safer with a guy around. Why are you lying now?” Russo’s patience snapped. “A boarding pass doesn’t prove a relationship. Look, kid, you’ve clearly had a long semester. I’m going to let this go because of your academic record, but if you don’t stop this right now, I’m taking you in for filing a false report.” “Check the suitcase,” I whispered, opening it. “Look at the ID inside.” Russo knelt down. Inside were Bennett’s hoodies, his sneakers, and his wallet. His driver’s license stared back at us—the face of the boy I loved. Russo pulled out his phone and called the airline. When he hung up, his face was pale. “The airline confirms Bennett Hayes was on the flight. And he hasn’t checked out of his luggage.” He looked at the phone number I had pulled up on my screen, labeled with a pig emoji and a heart. He dialed the number he got from the airline. The phone in my hand began to vibrate. 4 “If he exists,” Harper cut in, her voice shrill with a strange kind of desperation, “it’s because she’s a stalker! Sloane has always been obsessed with guys she can’t have. She probably saw this Bennett guy at the airport, stole his bag, and built a whole fantasy in her head!” To prove her point, she pulled out her phone and showed Russo a video from a month ago—me pointing at a cute guy in a coffee shop and giggling. “See? She does this all the time.” “That was before Bennett!” I screamed. “I told you guys last week he asked me out. I told you I was done looking at anyone else! Look at my phone! Look at the photos of us!” Russo took my phone. He swiped through the gallery, his face hardening with every second. He turned the screen toward me. It was just me. Dozens of selfies. Photos of the desert. Photos of my friends. Bennett was gone from every single one of them. I stared at the screen, my heart stopping. How? We had taken a photo at the trailhead just this morning. It was gone. Everything was gone. The lobby erupted. The guests who had been forced to stay were shouting insults at me. “She’s a psycho!” “Valedictorian? More like a mental patient!” “Lock her up!” The pressure was suffocating. In my last life, this was where I broke. This was where I became the ‘State Pride turned Local Pariah.’ I looked at Russo’s handcuffs. I thought about the Ivy League future waiting for me. I could stop now. I could say it was a breakdown, go home, and go to Stanford. I could have a “perfect” life. But then I remembered Bennett on the rooftop a week ago. He’d been so nervous, his face turning beet-red as he fumbled with a small velvet pouch. Inside was a simple sterling silver band he’d hammered himself in shop class. “I know it’s not much,” he’d whispered, “but I’m going to work three jobs this summer. I’m going to make sure you never have to worry about anything.” He had come here to protect me. And he had died for it. I stepped forward and held out my wrists. “Arrest me,” I said, my voice cold and clear. “Throw away my future. I don’t care. But do not leave this hotel until you find his body. He is in the maintenance shaft behind the kitchen. If you don’t find him, you’re letting a murderer walk free.” Russo hesitated. The crowd was filming me on their iPhones, the flashes like strobes in a nightmare.
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