My parents had invited Ashley and me to Florida for Christmas, but since I was in the midst of planning our Swiss-mas Christmas itinerary of a lifetime, I told my parents we could visit at the beginning of December instead. Ashley promised Iâd have another thirty thousand dollar check coming from her company soon, in exchange for a handful of tweets, and I figured Iâd spend at least half of that well-earned check on restaurants, shopping, trains, and planes. It was my first real vacation since Covid, and I wanted to do it right. I will never take luxurious vacations for granted ever again.
A few days before our Florida trip, Ashley said a sobriety app start-up called BuzzKill had hired her for remote work. I thought it was weird because Ashley didnât drink, but she sure as hell got high as fuck. I wasnât sure why she needed another job since she claimed to be saving humanity with her Physics work, along with her other job as an executive at the head-hunting place, which paid more than a quarter of a million dollars a year, while BuzzKill offered stock options and a weekly salary of twenty-five hundred dollars. I didnât think double-dipping at a startup for twenty-five hundred dollars a week would be worth putting her main job on the back burner, but I loved the idea of a side-hustle if she could swing it.
On her first day at BuzzKill, I overheard Ashley on a Zoom call with her new team as I waited for coffee to brew in the kitchen. They were introducing themselves, talking about their previous work experience and education, before sharing a personal story. What a nightmare.
The first few people were mind-numbingly boring, and I wanted to get a running start and jump through my living room window to escape. When it was Ashleyâs turn to introduce herself, she said, âIâm Dr. Ashley. I have a degree in Mathematics from the University of Denver and I got my PhD in Physics from MIT. Iâve worked in tech startups for the past fifteen years, and I have two children, a toddler and a six-month-old. I read them Go the Fuck to Sleep every night before bed and itâs their favorite book.âÂ
What the hell was she saying?Â
I had never seen her read a book, and she definitely never read to her kids at bedtime, she barely even FaceTimed them. In fact, her kids were several time zones over, in a different city, in another state, thousands of miles away from my apartment in Silver Lake.Â
Sorry, I just heard my bank account pay Ashley sixty dollarsâI meant our apartment.
By the time her kidâs bedtime rolled around, Ashley was too high to read and probably thought the letters and words were just little ants marching around on a sheet of paper.
 âHereâs a photo from my daughterâs third birthday,â Ashley said, holding her phone up to the computer, âWe took her to an apple orchard and she picked apples for the first time. She called them twee babbles.â
âAwww,â said the entire Zoom in unison.
Who was this we she was referring to?Â
Ashley had told me she had spent her daughterâs birthday alone, just the two of them. I remembered that Ashley had reactivated her Instagram to post a birthday photo with her daughter at the orchard, but I figured that she had asked a stranger to take the picture. Her Instagram was disabled again, and I needed that photo to see if I could find out who accompanied them. The only âsocial mediaâ I knew Ashley had was Venmo, if that even counts. I opened Venmo, and sure enough, her profile photo was from the Orchard. I took a play from Ceceliaâs handbook and zoomed in on the reflection in Ashleyâs sunglasses. I could see the shape of a woman. Could be a stranger. I zoomed in within a nanosecond of the photoâs life. Sure enough, a thin woman with long brown hair who was holding a baby had taken the picture.
 It was Cecelia in the reflection.
Ashley had told me they werenât allowed to speak to each other unless it was through lawyers. And they werenât even allowed to be in the same room together. Was this a rare event where they put their drama aside and co-parented for the sake of the birthday girl?Â
That made sense. But why hide that from me?Â
I learned more about Ashley on the Zoom call than I ever wouldâve by asking her a question. I thought back to when we first started talking, and she told me she was an open book.Â
I laughed.
âThank you, Ashley, welcome to the team,â said a manâs voice, âand next up, Melissa.â
âHello everyone, my name is Dr. Melissa Thomas. Iâm a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist specializing in addiction. I did my undergrad at Berkeley and got my doctorate in Clinical Psychology at UCLA. Go Bruins! When Iâm not working, Iâm usually playing roller derby with my teammates or catching waves at Zuma. And my dog Roscoe is a legendary surfer, heâs a twelve-year-old terrier mix and he just got a long board named after him. Say hi, Roscoe.â
âAwwâŚâ the Zoom group chimed. âOh my god, heâs so cute!â
Interesting. There was a real Doctor in the house, and by the sound of it, she gay.
I sat at my, I mean our, kitchen table and pulled out my Macbook so I could start my work day, but all I could think about was catching Ashley in her lies. I was still in the âgathering evidenceâ stage of my internal investigation.
When Ashley got off the phone she slammed her computer down, âCan you believe the nerve of that Melissa person? Iâm sure sheâs freaking out that sheâs not the only Doctor on the team.â
âWhy would she flip out over that?â I couldnât understand her strange reaction. Shouldnât she be happy to have smart peers?
âSheâs obviously scared of the competition.â
âShe sounded fine to me,â I said. âPlus, youâre a Physicist, and sheâs a Therapist. Two wildly different fields. So how is that even a competition.â It pained me to call Ashley a Physicist. By now, I was ninety-eight point one percent sure she wasnât.
âSheâs trying to get Kassieâs attention, thatâs all this is.â
âWho is Kassie?â
âSheâs the head of our team. Sheâs like twenty-four years old with long blonde hair, she lives in Orange County and has some lame drummer boyfriend, but I donât think theyâre that serious.â
Thanks to years of therapy, I was able to professionally determine that this was some next-level projection, and it was strange.Â
Ashley had lied about reading to her children every night. She was threatened and jealous of another Doctor on her team. And, Ashley had only been hired by this company five seconds ago, yet she already knew intimate and personal details of a young girl she worked with. It didnât make sense.Â
I flagged it as something to keep an eye on.
âWho went with you to the orchard?â I asked.
âHuh?â she responded.
âYou said we when you mentioned apple picking.â
âOh yeah, my friend Lyndsey went with me.â
âYou told me you went alone,â I said.
âWell she showed up at the last five minutes because she saw someone get hit by a train. So itâs basically like she wasnât there at all.â
Hit by a train?!
âWhy did you tell them you read to your kids every night?â I asked.
âYou donât know what I do when Iâm home.âÂ
Boy, was that the truth.Â
âAnd,â she added, âWhenever I talk about the children it humanizes me.â
âHumanizes you? What does that even mean?â
âI just need everyone to know that Iâm a normal person too. Iâm not just some genius who does math all the time, you know?â
Oh, I know.
The night before we left for Florida, my neighbors Hope and Bob hosted a dog party to celebrate the last night of Hannukkah for all the Jewish dogs in our neighborhood. Ashley went with me even though her arch-nemesis Kirsten would be there. It made me nervous having them around each other, and I knew how loud and unhinged Ashley could get. I pictured her yelling at Kirsten, her screams echoing through the hills of Silver Lake, triggering an avalanche that would slide Bob and Hopeâs home all the way down to the bottom of the hill.
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Luckily they ignored each other. Kirsten acted like Ashley didnât exist, to the point where she could have been engulfed in flames and Kirsten wouldnât notice. And even if she did, she wouldnât put her out. Ashley buddied up to Bob, who was a Doctor and one of the most sought-after spinal surgeons in the world, fixing peopleâs backs one vertebrae at a time.
âItâs people like me and Bob who understand the humor in analytics, itâs a Doctor thing,â Ashley said, acting like they were on the same level. My face burned in embarrassment, I couldnât believe she was still pretending to be a Physicist.
I wandered to the other side of the perfectly manicured lawn. Hope seized the opportunity to get me alone, âLauren, where does Ashley work again?â
 âShe does Data Science at some company that hires people,â I said. Hope and I stared at each other in silence for a few seconds. âHonestly, I donât really even know how to describe it.â
âDoes she work in an office?â Hope pressed.
âHer office is based in Cleveland, but she pretty much works remotely.â
All of a sudden, I became afraid that Ashley would scare Bob and Hope off, and they had the nicest grass in Silver Lake. Perci needed them, and I panicked: I couldnât let Ashley fuck this up for him.
I rushed over, leashed Perci, and yanked Ashley down the hill with me.
âGood to see everyone gotta run Happy Hannukkah, Mazel Tov, we have a five am flight to see my family, okay, byeeeeeee....â
My voice trailed off as we rushed towards my, no, our, apartment.
The flight to Florida was easy. I did a yearâs worth of Monday NYTimes crosswords and Ashley self-medicated with enough edibles to believe she was flying the plane herself.
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We watched the sun come up at our layover in the Atlanta airport. And once we landed in Jacksonville we rented a car. We hadnât even left the parking garage by the time we saw our first road rage incident. We saw four more on the thirty-minute drive to my parents' house.Â
Welcome to Florida.
My parentsâ driveway is lined with five-hundred-year-old Oak Trees. I drove slowly, aware of Spanish moss sweeping the top of the car. I pointed out a group of college kids huddled near the citrus orchard. âThose are Archaeology students from the University of Florida,â I told Ashley, âtheyâre digging up arrowheads and pottery from an ancient burial site. My parentsâ land belonged to the Timucuan people until a bunch of white assholes showed up in the 1500s and took it from them. White people are the worst.â
âCool,â Ashley said, feigning interest in the dig site with the science kids.
âAnd yes, the property is haunted, obviously.â
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We parked and I heard a rush of feet barreling through the yard. I looked up and all of my familyâs dogs ran out to greet us. My Dadâs black lab Pirate jumped up and kissed my face, whimpering because he was so happy to see me. He bit the sleeve of my jacket and pulled me towards the house, as if to say, âLook what I found! Lauren is here!â My Momâs lab Sugar wagged her tail, she is the sweetest when she isnât eating her own shit. Nugget was my littlest sisterâs golden retriever. He picked up my carry-on bag and brought it up to the porch for me. What a gentleman.
My sister Ilaura and her husband Drew walked out of the guest house.Â
âWhatâs up ya big slut?â my sister said as she went in for a hug.Â
âNot much, whatâs up with you, ya dumb ho?â I said back.
Unlike Ashley and her sisters, I actually get along great with mine.
We sat on the porch and planned our day. My Mom was at CrossFit, and my Dad was out driving around.
âLetâs find shark teeth,â I said.
âOoh, yeah!â
One of my favorite things to do in Florida was search the beach for shark teeth. My sisters and I have collected thousands over the years. It takes a special eye to spot them among the sediment and shell beds.
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The four of us loaded into Drewâs truck and headed to the jetties.
âSo Ashley, after you guys left Alaska I read The Elegant Universe, and I liked how the author broke down string theory and hidden dimensions,â Drew said. âThanks for the recommendation, it really put the Universe in perspective.â
âHuh?â she replied, âI donât know what youâre talking about.â
âThe book about superstring theory? And quantum mechanics? Didnât you recommend that book to me?â
âI donât think so.â
Her mopey attitude shut down the conversation.Â
And, I hadnât yet told Drew and Ilaura that I didnât think Ashley was a real Physicist.
We parked near a sand dune and took off our shoes. Ilaura and I walked together down the beach while Drew and Ashley paired off behind us.
âI need you to be my eyes and ears while weâre here,â I told Ilaura.
âOoh, what are we spying on?â
âAshley.â
Ilauraâs face perked up.
We looked back and gave Ashley and Drew a little wave before turning around.
âI donât think she is who she says she is,â I said, âSo tell Drew to keep asking her Physics questions. And try to get her to talk more about MIT.â
âOkay,â Ilaura said. âI knew there was a reason you willingly came to Florida.â
âExactly.â
âTOOTH!â Ilaura and I said at the same time.Â
We both bent down to grab a barely visible sharkâs tooth that was partially covered in sand. Ilaura was faster, so the tooth belonged to her. We waited for Ashley and Drew to catch up. Ashley and I paired off while Ilaura and Drew fell back.Â
Ilaura was filling him in.Â
I hoped that the three of us would be able to piece together the truth about Ashley.
Ashley and I rounded the dunes. In the sand ahead of us was a beached shark. I didnât know if it was alive or dead, but I knew it would be considered cheating if I took any of its teeth directly from its mouth. And if it was still alive I could see it chomping my hand off, and I needed my hand for my phone. We kept walking.
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I looked back to check on Ilaura and Drew. Ilaura was in the middle of stripping to her swimsuit. I watched her walk over to the beached shark, crouch down, and deadlift it into her arms. It flopped around until she was waist-deep in water. She launched it like a rocket right back into the ocean, where it belonged. Its dorsal fin quickly disappeared and I had no doubt that Ilaura would be my perfect partner in crime.
Just spent several hours catching up on this tale and Iâm officially hooked! đŚ
Went to Key West several years ago for a wedding. Driving the Overseas Hwy was one of the most insane experiences of my life. Florida drivers are the actual worst. I love all the pictures that you put in each installment but your parents house, the dock, the shark, and the starfish were *chefs kiss*. Didnât even care about Ashley by the end đ.