Page 132 of Not Quite Dead Yet

But the password box was blank, waiting.

Jet’s heart sank. She clicked into it, to see if it would prompt some password manager to fill it in for her.

Nothing happened.

Except her heart sank farther, dropping into her gut.

‘Fuck.’ She slumped against the couch.

Billy un-slumped her, hand on her back. ‘Not a totalfuckyet,’ he said. ‘We have her email address, her Gmail, and maybe if she’s still logged in to that we can –’

‘– reset her Facebook password,’ Jet hissed, stealing his thunder. He would have given it to her anyway, she knew; he was Billy after all. She gave some back. ‘Yes, Billy, I love you.’

Billy tensed, tensed even more as Jet brushed against him, leaning forward, fingers on the trackpad. She clicked to open a new tab, guided the cursor to the URL.G m a.Pressed enter when it auto-filled. Held her breath. Billy had stopped breathing too, a little while ago.

The web page opened, pale blue, lines and lines of emails in Nina’s inbox.

‘We’re in!’ Jet laughed, turning to share it with Billy. ‘You can add shit-hot hacker to your résumé.’

He reached over, hugged her awkwardly. Awkward because of the floor-sitting and the one arm.

‘Let’s do this.’

Jet flicked back to the Facebook log-in page, clicked on theForgot Password?button. Let Billy type in Nina’s email address:it was faster that way. ClickedYesto send a reset-password link to that account.

Skipped over to the Gmail page. The email wasn’t here. Refreshed it. Still not here. Refreshed again.

There it was.

Jet stabbed her finger against the trackpad, opening the email, following the link.

‘What password you gonna use?’ Billy asked as Jet started to type.

‘Emily Mason,’ she said, reentering the new password to confirm. ‘Think Nina would have approved.’

Password successfully updated,the page told her. It didn’t have to tell her twice. Jet flicked back to the log-in page, typed her sister’s name into the empty password box. Remembered to breathe and guided the arrow over to theLog Inbutton. Pressed it.

The page disappeared, replaced half a second later with a Facebook homepage, blue and white, and all the other colors too, scrolling photos and status updates. A tiny picture of Nina on a sunset beach at the top, arms open like she didn’t have a care in the world. But Jet knew she’d had many.

‘Can’t believe this worked.’ Billy leaned closer. ‘There, click into Messenger.’

Jet did.

‘Probably going to have to scroll really far down,’ he said.

‘Yeah, Emily hasn’t replied in seventeen years. She’ll be right at the bottom.’

Jet sat back, let Billy do the scrolling for her; it was easier with two hands, and they had years to get through.

The page stuttered, reloading each time they reached the bottom, a little spooling circle that started to test Jet’s patience.

‘OK, last messaged a Mike Fraser in August 2012,’ Billy read from the screen. ‘We’re getting there. Four more years.’

Down, down, down.

The conversations reloading.

The page slowing down, like it got harder the farther back they went, dragging those old messages back into the present.