Ricki groaned and swiped the notification away. It was all a part of the job. If she ever wanted to make it big, she had to learn to manage difficult clients.

Lord knows Los Angeles teemed with them.  Ricki’s mother had been a photographer for a local magazine. Ricki had always loved tagging along to her mother’s shoots. She would stand at her side with her very own silver Nikon Coolpix and try her very best to capture pictures with the little point-and-shoot. Her mother would have them developed at a corner store and stick them up around Ricki’s room with colorful thumbtacks.

“You’ve got quite the gift, mija,” she would say and brush Ricki’s curly dark hair off her forehead. “Must run in the family.”

After Ricki’s mother died of breast cancer, the photos were all Ricki had left of her.   

The glass door behind Ricki opened. Thick heat and the aroma of sweat, and lavender flushed into the lobby and a stream of sinewy middle-age women in expensive looking half tops followed. Their eyes were droopy with the remnants of Shavasana and their skin glistened with sweat.

Ricki smiled politely at the sweaty yogis. A few nodded back. Others rolled their eyes at her. A couple of the regular members ignored her all together. They proceeded to the dressing rooms on the other side of her desk. Their bare feet slapped against the dark oakwood floor.

Ricki’s job as a greeter at OM was a temporary way to make ends meet until her photography business got its footing. OM was one of LA’s elite yoga studios, and Ricki had been lucky enough to know the manager at the Pasadena location. She was happy to take the extra cash for an easy job. The free yoga classes seemed like a nice perk too. Unfortunately for Ricki, she quickly learned that this studio stood for everything she hated about LA.

She hated the pretentiousness of the “handcrafted” bamboo furniture that her boss had actually just ordered off some cheap online store. She hated the grotesque commercialization of the form and the lack of respect to the history or sanctity of its roots. But most of all, she hated the clients’ inauthentic quest for inner peace that served as a façade for their desire to network with the other PTA moms and work on the tightness of their asses to impress their unimpressive husbands.

But the pay was good, and it gave her plenty of time to work on her editing between classes.

A dark-haired woman with pale skin and vibrantly blue eyes approached Ricki. She set her yoga mat down next to her and leaned her elbows on the black counter that encircled Ricki’s desk.

“Hello, Mrs. Fitz,” Ricki said. Her voice often took a gentler, deeper tone when talking to the yoga studio clientele. “Did you enjoy your class today?”

Mrs. Fitz was one of the newer, more difficult clients whom Ricki despised more than most others. She was the principal of a hoity toity preschool that had a wait list longer than the most pretentious of night clubs. Apparently, Mrs. Fitz’s superiority complex extended beyond her reign over entitled toddlers and into every other aspect of her life

“As a matter of fact,” Mrs. Fitz said though tight lips.

She looked Ricki up and down. Her gaze swept over Ricki’s dark buzzcut and lingered on her double-hooped left nostril for a moment too long. She shook her head in disgust.

“I did not. I found the temperature to be quite unbearable.”

Ricki’s phone buzzed on the desk next to her. She glanced down and saw her father’s caller ID appear on the screen. She turned her attention back to Mrs. Fitz and the ringing eventually stopped.

“I specifically asked that the heat not go above ninety-seven degrees,” Mrs. Fitz continued and straightened a stack of yellow fliers next to her, “and that girl had the audacity to turn it all the way up to ninety-nine.”

Ricki squeezed her left hand into a tight fist. Her nose twitched and she choked back the sarcastic reply that was posed eagerly at the tip of her tongue.

“Ma’am, I assure you…”

Ricki’s phone vibrated again against the wooden desktop. Her father’s face smiled up from the screen. Mrs. Fitz glared at Ricki with eyes like daggers of ice. Ricki waved apologetically. She clicked the button on the side of her phone and the buzzing stopped.

“As I was saying,” Mrs. Fitz said and pulled her slick ponytail even tighter, “I have a very serious health condition that prohibits me from remaining in high heat for an extended period of time.”

Ricki resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

Why in God’s name would somebody with a health condition like that willingly participate in a hot yoga class?

The sense of entitlement that ran rampant in LA never failed to astound Ricki.

“Do you understand what I am saying?” Mrs. Fitz said. “This is an issue of the health and wellbeing of your paying customers, who it seems you people don’t care about in the slightest. I have had it up to here with the way things are…”

For a third time, Ricki’s phone rang with her father’s name and picture across the screen. He hadn’t called her this much except to tell her that it looked like her mother wouldn’t make it through the night.

“I am deeply sorry, ma’am,” Ricki said and picked up her vibrating phone. “I have to take this call. Perhaps Astrid can be of better assistance to you.”

Ricki locked eyes with the slender blonde who had just emerged from the classroom. Ricki motioned for her to come to the front desk.

“This!” Mrs. Fitz said and threw her arms up in exasperation. “This is a premier example of the kind of disrespect this environment promotes in the culture of its employees.”

Astrid crinkled her eyebrows in concern.

Are you okay? she mouthed, then took Ricki’s place behind the desk.

Ricki nodded and squeezed past Astrid.

“How can I be of service to you, Mrs. Fitz?” Astrid said and set down the basket of discarded sweat-soaked towels.

Ricki smiled and nodded at Astrid, then walked toward the back room marked “Employees Only.”

Her phone had stopped buzzing by the time she shut the door. She opened the contacts app and scrolled until she found her father’s name.

The phone rang once before her father’s voice came through the speaker.

“Ricki?” His voice was thick and prickly, like he had something stuck in his throat. “Sweetie?”

Ricki’s grip tightened around the phone.

Something was very wrong.

“What’s going on, Dad?” Ricki said. “Does this have to do with Theo? Did he come to the house? Are you all right?”

It had been about a year since Ricki’s estranged brother, Theo, had last broken into the house in search of money to pay off the debts to his dealer. Luckily, Ricki’s father, Brett, wasn’t home, but Ricki lived in constant fear that the next time he would be. Theo cared little, if at all about anything except what was going to go into his pipe and how he was going to pay it off. Ricki was certain he wouldn’t hesitate to knock her dad around a bit in order to get his hands on a little extra cash.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said. “This isn’t about your brother.”

He paused and the sudden silence rung like sirens in Ricki’s ears.

“It’s about Jemma,” he finished.

A cold realization washed over Ricki instantaneously. She had been worried about her best friend Jemma since she ran away with her jackass boyfriend, Benjie, at the beginning of their last semester at UCLA.

“Jemma?” Ricki’s voice barely escaped through the anger that was coiled in the back of her throat.

“She’s been reported missing,” Brett said. “Dennis called me this morning to break the news. He wanted to call you first, but he didn’t have your new number.”

Ricki’s knees wobbled. She fumbled into a metal folding chair in the corner of the room and lowered herself into it.

“Apparently, the authorities are thinking it was just a hiking trip gone wrong,” Brett continued. His voice still crackled with nerves. “Another accident at Weeping Widow’s Lake, they said.”

Ricki had grown up hearing stories about the supposedly haunted Weeping Widow’s Lake from her Uncle Mark. Whenever she came to Colorado to visit for the summer, he would gather her cousins and her together before bedtime. He loved to scare them with tales of an evil demonic woman who lured unexpecting hikers to their deaths.

She never believed a word of them.

Jemma, on the other hand, who had spent her entire childhood living a little over an hour away from the mountains where the lure originated, took them as gospel truth. She was obsessed with it.

“According to her parents, Jemma went up there with her boyfriend and they haven’t come back down yet.” Brett said. “Happens all the time up in those mountains.” 

Goddamn it. Jemma should have known better than to go up there with Benjie. It would be so easy to place the blame for anything that happened to her to on the “dangerous” nature of the fabled lake.

“Ricki, are you all right?” he said.

Ricki shook her head.

This was no accident. This was no legendary evil witch. This was that good-for-nothing-son-of-a-bitch, Benjie.

“I don’t…” Ricki stuttered.

She gasped for air. Her tongue moved around helplessly in her mouth and her lips tingled with numbness.

This was all her fault.

If only she had talked Jemma into finishing out their last semester, she might not have run away with that abusive asshole. She might not be fighting for her life now

“Look, I know Jemma means the world to you,” her father continued. Each word was tentative and gentle. “The authorities have got search teams out looking for her. Experts. They know what they’re doing. They’re going to find her. I know they will.”

“That’s not good enough,” Ricki burst out. Her voice trembled and threatened on the brink of harshness.

“Ricki, sweetie, take a breath,” her father said.

Ricki squeezed the phone tighter to her ear. Her head pounded from holding back tears. Benjie had something to do with this, and she wasn’t about to let him get away with hurting Jemma.

Not again.

“That’s not good enough,” Ricki repeated. “This wasn’t an accident, Dad. I’m going out there.”

“Ricki, I really don’t think…”

“Nothing you say will change my mind,” Ricki said. “I’m leaving for Colorado as soon as possible. I’m going to find her. I’m going to find Jemma.”