Page 39

38

STRANGER THAN FICTION

A True Crime Podcast with Harley Granger

“The Disappearance of Chloe Miranda”

Rough recording for editing

Harley Granger: So this wouldn’t be a true investigation unless we talked about some of the people who believe that Chloe Miranda has not been harmed by Maverick or anyone at Extreme. And that, in fact, she has disappeared by choice. So today, I’m here with Lizzie Burke who is a life-long friend of Chloe’s, someone who has known Chloe and been close to her family since grade school. Welcome, Lizzie.

Lizzie: Thank you for having me.

Harley: So when did you first get to know Chloe?

Lizzie: We were in second grade, I think. Yeah, like really little, you know? And Chloe was such a tiny thing, so quiet. Some of the boys were teasing her, not giving her a turn on the swing set. And I stood up for her because, yeah, I was big for my age and the boys were a little afraid of me. From that day forward, we were friends. It was Lizzie and Chloe, Chloe and Lizzie—always. Grade school, middle school. We were always together, knew each other so well. When we weren’t together, we were FaceTiming, gaming, or texting. You always think that kind of friendship is forever, don’t you?

Harley : I’m not sure I ever had a friend like that.

Lizzie: Maybe you’re better off.

Harley: How’s that?

Lizzie: Because then you don’t know what it feels like to lose her.

Harley : Did you?

Lizzie: Yeah. It’s funny. In my memory of her, there are two versions of Chloe. There’s the girl she was before—when we were kids.

Harley: And then?

Lizzie: There was the girl she became after her mother died. [Lizzie starts to cry here.] Sorry. Can I have a minute?

Harley: Of course. Take your time. Let me stop recording until you’re ready.

[Recording pauses.]

Harley: Ready to start again? Tell me about Chloe after her mother died.

Lizzie : She just kind of went dark, you know? Like all the light and laughter, all the goofy sweetness. It was gone. She started hanging out with a rougher crowd. There were rumors—drinking, drugs, bad boys. She ghosted me, essentially, before it was a thing.

Harley: Did you ever confront her?

Lizzie: Yeah, I went to her house one day. Her mom had been gone about a year then. Sometimes we still gamed together on Red World , so we were still connected that way. I just missed her so much. She had a boyfriend by then. This guy who everyone called Stash, a real loser who was supposedly a drug dealer.

Harley: What happened?

Lizzie: She came to the door, and she didn’t even look like herself. She was all sunken around the eyes and so thin. She’d dyed her hair, and she had a hickey on her neck. She didn’t even invite me in. I told her I missed her, asked if we could talk. But she just shook her head. And I’ll never forget what she said.

Harley: Tell me.

Lizzie: She said that the Chloe I remembered was gone. That I was a part of her life that didn’t exist anymore. She saw the world for what it was—random, unfair, dark. And everything we thought we knew was a lie. And that looking at me reminded her how silly, how young she’d been and that we weren’t friends anymore. She asked me to leave and not come back.

[Soft sobbing.]

Harley: I’m sorry.

Lizzie: She broke my heart. I’ve lost other friends, broken up with boys, or been broken up with, and nothing else ever hurt that bad.

Harley: So what happened after that?

Lizzie: A couple months later, she overdosed, went to rehab for a while. She came back to school junior year. There were all kinds of rumors about her then. I’m not sure what was true.

Harley: Such as?

Lizzie: That she stabbed someone in rehab. That she was sleeping with this young, hot algebra teacher that everyone was crushing on, Mr. Pine. He got fired. I tried to reach out to her a couple more times, but she just ignored me.

Harley: Was any of that true? I tried to find her record in rehab, but it was confidential, locked because she was a minor. No one at the school would talk to me about her alleged relationship with Pine or why he got fired. And he wouldn’t comment, either.

Lizzie: I don’t know, honestly. But then it seemed like she got her act together. She went off to college. From her socials, it seemed like she was doing better. Then there was her whole influencer thing—mental health and body positivity, the Tough Be-atch wins. Then the whole Maverick Dillan thing. She was obsessed with him, always posting about him and commenting on his page. You could just tell by the way he didn’t post about her, didn’t answer her comments that it was one-sided. Then she disappeared.

Harley: What did you think about that?

Lizzie: Right away, I thought something was up. I saw all those pictures—from the ATM footage, the gas station. It was her. I know it was.

Harley: How do you know that?

Lizzie: She always did this thing, since we were little kids. She would put her left pinkie finger in her mouth and chew on the cuticle. Once she chewed it so bad that it got an infection. In both of the pictures, I could see that’s what she was doing.

Harley: Lots of people chew on their cuticles. It’s a pretty common anxiety tic.

Lizzie: When you know someone most of their life, you know things about them—like I knew the shape of her head, even the color of her hoodie, that sky-blue. That was always her favorite color.

Harley: But her own family doesn’t think it was her.

Lizzie: Let me ask you something. Who knows you better? Your family—or your friends?

Harley: I take your point. So what are you saying?

Lizzie: I’m saying that the girl Chloe was before her mom died would never hurt anyone. She was good, sweet, goofy, open-hearted. But the girl she was after? I could see her doing something like this. The teacher, the one she was sleeping with, who got fired, he claimed that she was blackmailing him. That she turned him in only because he refused to keep paying her.

Harley: But…do we believe a pedophile? I mean, he was having a relationship with a sixteen-year-old girl. He’s lucky he didn’t go to jail.

Lizzie: He was twenty-three, and she was very mature. And honestly, any one of us would have slept with Mr. Pine.

Harley: Still.

Lizzie: You know that saying? Hurt people hurt people? I think she became someone who liked to cause pain. Because she was in so much pain. I don’t think she cares who she hurts as long as she gets what she wants.

Harley: Okay. Say that’s true. What does she gain by staging her own disappearance?

Lizzie: What does anyone gain by hurting people? Who knows what she wants or what the agenda is? All eyes on Chloe, right, for like a year? Her whole family rallied around finding her. Endless speculation about what happened to her. Major damage to Maverick Dillan and Extreme. A podcast. Her Photogram and WeWatch channels, even though she hasn’t posted a thing, have doubled in followers.

Harley: I’m still not following. So, you think Chloe used the Extreme Challenge to stage her disappearance—to get attention? To gain more followers?

Lizzie: Or something. She used it for something. And we won’t know what it is until she’s ready to show us.