He cleared his throat. Suddenly, everything was still.

“I would see the guy, and my wife would find pieces of the dog. Finally, one night when he appeared again, I shouted at him, ‘What do you want?’ He laughed and said, ‘I want you squid.’ Then he crumbled away.”

I scrunched my face and leaned my head to the side, “Squid?” I asked.

He smiled and shook his head, “Yeah. Carla’s parents didn’t have a T.V, so after school she would come to my house, and we would watch T.V. One of the shows we watched was SpongeBob SquarePants. I was tall and skinny, so Carla called me Squid, like Squidward.”

He paused, then started tearing up his napkin.

“That’s how I knew it was her. She was the only person who ever called me Squid.”

I let the silence linger between us for a moment, then asked, “What did you do?”

“Well,” he said. “I confronted her, and it didn’t go quite right. It was all very strange, actually. I don’t know if I can talk about it right now.”

“Ok,” I said. “You don’t have to, but did you two still talk? I mean, recently? Would you have any idea why something similar to what happened to you is happening to me now?”

He gave me a questioning look, “You guys were friends. She talked to you every day and hung out with you, wouldn’t you know that?”

“No,” I said. “I barely knew Carla. The last time we spoke was the last day she worked where we worked.”

Now he looked utterly astonished. He picked up his phone and scrolled through to something, then turned the phone to me. It was a picture of my sons and me at the park taken from a little distance. He swiped his finger to show another picture. There was my profile as I was walking into Target. He swiped again. There was a picture of my sons and I sitting at a table in the food court of the mall, eating pizza.

“Where did you get those?” I asked.

He pushed the back arrow; it was Carla’s Facebook page.