Katie

You were thirteen when your older sister disappeared. "Without a trace," newscasters intoned solemnly, first as they reported on the missing co-ed and, later, as it became clear she had not and likely would not be found, alive or otherwise.

This is crap, of course: no one vanishes without a trace. Few or faint traces, sure, and fainter perhaps as the years pass and interest in the missing person dwindles, as it dawns on folks that there isn't much exciting about the lives of those who remain when a person is lost.

Whether you bought that headline then or not, at twenty-six, you know better than to believe that people just up and vanish. Even if no one else bothers to see the traces of the missing left behind, you do. And you share them with other people -- through your research in the school of communications at Briarcliff College, where you study the cultural fascination with the murdered and missing, the language surrounding their news coverage depending on victim identity, how and whether their trauma is interesting enough for its own podcast.

And, of course, through your own true crime podcast: <em>Lost and Found</em>, where you take your study of crime culture to the general public twice a week.

But you know what they say about the past: it never stays buried for too long. When a student goes missing under eerily similar circumstances to your sister, you take it as an opportunity to do what you couldn't do thirteen years ago. You're not a kid without a voice anymore: you're an adult with a platform. This time, you might be able to really help...and, if your sense of the scant clues left behind can be trusted, maybe even uncover the mystery of your sister's disappearance after so many years of not knowing.