The Ghost Network (5 page)

Nix unwrapped herself and stood up. She was tall, and thinner than she had been in high school; her athletic body had given way to a more sinewy look. She had thick, slightly wavy brown hair, which she wore past her shoulders, with long bangs swept over her forehead and pinned back. Her nose came to a sharp point.

Nix initially refused to let Taer interview her, denying Taer access the same way she would eventually, temporarily, deny me. Taer convinced Nix to change her mind with self-effacing honesty. Taer told Nix the interview was her first real chance to impress her editors. She explained she was working at a bar and hated her life. She explained her frustrations with her carpet. Nix laughed at her a little bit, but it worked. She agreed to give Taer a few quotes, if SDFC would let her. Nix called Applebaum, who agreed to let Nix give the interview, and coached Nix on what she could and couldn’t say.

Taer turned on her iPhone’s voice recorder and Nix talked for
three minutes about visiting the MCA and Molly insisting on leaving without her bodyguards. Their conversation was as follows:
^l

“Does she usually go to museums or do other tourist things while on tour?” Taer asked.

“No, she doesn’t usually do this kind of cultural tourism; not in the U.S., at least. When she goes out of the country, there is more of that kind of thing,” Nix said.

“I guess what I’m asking is, was it unusual behavior for her to go to the museum?”

“Yes. Sort of. I don’t want to say ‘yes’ because she is always doing unusual things. Was this unusual behavior? Yes. Was unusual behavior a matter of course? Yes. I’m not just talking about the crazy outfits and the weird videos. She doesn’t act like a usual person. Even though she never acts
normal
, you get used to her, and you can predict how she’s going to act or respond to something. This wasn’t predictable behavior. Molly is just as crazy as everyone thinks she is, but at the same time, she is the most level-headed, clear-thinking, sharp person I’ve ever met. No one is like her. And she is nice to everyone. Can I tell you something off the record? And you won’t print it?”

“Yeah, sure. Like, legally, I’m not going to be allowed to print something you say is ‘off the record.’ My editor will listen to this recording. The fact-checker, I mean, they’ll listen to it.”

“Okay. Well, off the record: I’m pretty sure [Molly] had some deep dark secrets she was keeping. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was this huge part of Molly and her life that no one knew about, that she somehow kept hidden, and she just decided to go do that instead. Or it consumed her, without her being able to stop it.”

Nix told Applebaum she had given Taer this strange, almost rambling, conspiracy theory–esque quote, and Applebaum asked her to
put it on the record, for reasons Nix still doesn’t understand.
^m
Taer and her editors included the quote in the
Tribune
article. It was the starting gun for a thousand more conspiracy theories, opinion pieces, blog posts, and status updates. It became one of the most enduring sentiments of the early days of Molly Metropolis’s disappearance.

It also makes Nix seem unbalanced and spastic; she’s not. Nix has a steady temperament. She’s more inclined to recede than to babble. Molly’s disappearance brought out an extreme in her.

As Taer turned off the voice recorder and awkwardly started to leave, Nix burst into tears. She cried into the corner of her blanket, apologizing and trying to stop. When she couldn’t, she hid her face and asked Taer to leave. Instead, Taer grabbed Nix’s upper arm and squeezed it. Nix hated when people said “don’t cry” to try to comfort a crier, and she expected that out of Taer. According to Nix, Taer subverted expectations and said, “You keep on fucking crying for as long as you need to. I’m just going to hold onto your arm like this.”

They sat together for a long time. Nix cried, and Taer held her arm. Taer wrote that she was attracted to people who expressed their deep emotions honestly and even more attracted if the person wasn’t usually effusive; it made Taer feel special. She latched on to Nix that afternoon.

Nix captured Taer’s attention, but Molly Metropolis captured her imagination. Taer wanted to know everything about Molly’s possible secret life. Her pursuit of Molly Metropolis began that night, perhaps even in those quiet moments while Nix wept and she held her arm. Taer’s Molly Metropolis idolatry was already the
embodiment of pop star fixation, but with the added hook of a mystery, it developed into a full-blown obsession. Over the next few weeks, she investigated Molly’s secret activities and the deeper mystery of her disappearance. As Taer sunk into her obsession, she too became progressively more secretive, until she also disappeared on a rainy weekend in Chicago.

*
“Molly Defies the Sophomore Slump,” last modified December 23, 2009; www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/arts/music/molly-defies-sophomore-slump.html?ref=music.

†
“Outrun electro” is a genre of electronic music, sometimes called synthwave, based on 1980s synthesizers played in pulsating, repeating arpeggios. Outrun had a popular following before Molly adopted the style for many of her tracks, but she was the first to introduce the sound to Top 40 pop.

‡
In his review of the album,
Los Angeles Times
music journalist Sam Lambert called Molly’s sound “dance pop for strange and unusual kids who see ghosts,” referencing Winona Ryder’s famous line in the 1988 movie
Beetlejuice
: “I myself am strange and unusual.” Before writing his review, Lambert must’ve seen Molly’s first music video, in which Molly’s look consciously echoed Ryder’s in
Beetlejuice
.

§
From my interview with Nadia Piereson, one of Molly’s backup dancers.

ǁ
Cyrus based this description on something Nix said to him in an e-mail, according to his notes, but I have no more clarifying details to offer. It will be important to remember Holly Golightly tried to trick people into thinking they knew her by presenting a false version of herself. —CD

a
Here, Molly’s riffing off of two moments from Debord’s book
Society of the Spectacle:
“Being a star means specializing in the seemingly lived,” and “The consumption celebrity superficially represents different types of personality.” —CD

b
“Eulogy for Molly Metropolis,” last modified January 10, 2012; www.vulture.com/2012/01/eulogy-for-molly-metropolis.html.

c
ValerieVamp22, January 22, 2010 (2:32 a.m.), comment on aPOPcalypse_hereine, “I Can’t Seem to Find Molly”; www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0XL44DcJeeN

d
“Why Did Molly Disappear?: Molly Metropolis’s Final Illuminati Mission Complete,” last modified February 6, 2010; vigilantcitizen.com/musicbusiness/why-did-molly-disappear.

e
Chicago Tribune
, “Review: Molly Metropolis at the United Center,” by Bran Hollis Brooks.

f
Cyrus K. Archer didn’t have a chance to fill in the missing links in this account of the day Molly Metropolis disappeared. Molly gave Nix her phone just before the museum trip earlier that day. Molly often left her phone with Nix when she didn’t feel like dealing with incoming calls or messages, so Molly getting rid of her phone didn’t seem unusual to Nix. According to Molly’s dancers and friends, Molly was an unreliable phone user and often forgot to return calls and texts, which was part of the reason that they weren’t particularly worried when she didn’t return messages on the day she disappeared. According to Nix, she discovered Molly was missing when she went to Molly’s hotel room to “give her the heads up it was time to go to sound check,” but found the hotel room empty, and Molly nowhere to be found. Then Nix began her small-scale search. —CD

g
Nix believes it “must’ve been Kelly [Applebaum],” who tweeted this. Applebaum believes it “must’ve been Gina [Nix].” Any number of the dancers and PR support staff knew or had access to Molly’s Twitter password, and her account had been previously hacked at least once. Despite vehement denials, Nix is the most likely suspect because she was in possession of Molly’s phone at the time. The final suspect is, of course, Molly Metropolis herself. The police used the fact that no one would step forward to claim authorship of the Tweet as possible evidence that Molly had chosen to disappear willingly.

h
When I interviewed Taer’s family members, several of them told me slightly different versions of this story. I choose to include the version told to me by Taer’s paternal grandmother, Louisa Collins Taer.

i
In my conversations with Nix, she added: “Let’s be real—Cait probably wanted to fuck me, and was having emotional problems about it. Maybe I was having emotional problems about wanting to fuck her.” —CD

j
Cyrus taught English and creative writing at Oberlin College while Caitlin Taer matriculated there. She didn’t take any of Cyrus’s classes, but they almost certainly crossed paths. Archer taught in the same departments Taer studied in. —CD

k
To put together Taer’s discovery of Molly Metropolis’s disappearance, Cyrus drew both from Taer’s Tumblr posts and her notebook. —CD

l
As with this conversation, all further dialogue is taken from Caitlin’s various audio recordings, captured by her iPhone’s built-in voice recorder and saved to her computer.

m
Although they spoke to Cyrus, neither Kelly Applebaum nor anyone on the SDFC public relations team returned repeated calls and e-mails for comment on this decision or any other part of the book. My best guess as to Applebaum’s motivations here is that the SDFC team assumed a conspiracy theory controversy would help sell
Cause Célèbrety
and eventually
Cause Apocalyptic. —
CD

Inside her blanket fort on her mom’s couch, Nix snuggled her laptop and watched her quote about Molly’s possible secret life go viral. She liked seeing her name pop up thousands of times. She felt like she was doing something while the rest of the world stagnated around her. However, she hated that she liked trading on Molly’s name. She called Taer and asked her not to use their interview again. Taer agreed, and asked Nix to come visit her.

Nix wanted to see Taer but refused to go into the city where Molly Metropolis’s touring staff waited impatiently for marching orders. Their anxiety made Nix anxious, so she texted with them to keep updated on the gossip and goings-on, but didn’t participate in their stilted social gatherings. At Nix’s insistence, Taer returned to Flossmoor to walk down the snow-caked dirt paths of the park that bordered their junior high school, where Nix used to get high with other field hockey players during the off season. Taer and Nix had a lot to catch up on. They found, as they shared stories about terrible roommates and awkward sexual awakenings, that they had grown more similar since high school. They had both come out during
college, and they bonded over their high school friends’ similarly shocked reactions.

When they got cold, they stopped at the Flossmoor Station Restaurant and Brewery, a refurbished train station with hearty portions of bland Midwestern cuisine and windows that rattled each time a Metra train pulled into the working station next door. The girls took off their mittens and, clutching pints of the excellent house Hefeweizen, moved on to more intimate conversation. Taer told dirty little stories about parties that developed into groups of students making out and having sex during Oberlin’s cold, dark Winter Term. Nix talked about fake I.D.s, Chicago clubs, and mounds of cocaine.

Eventually, Taer turned the conversation to Nix’s relationship with Molly Metropolis and the fallout from her disappearance. Taer recorded the discussion,
*
even though Nix asked for their chat to be off the record. Taer assured Nix that she wouldn’t give the
Tribune
her quotes “but if they ask me to get something specific from you, and I already have it, I can just ask you about it. Plus, there are laws to protect anonymous sources, if you want to become an anonymous source.”

“I think they would guess my identity,” Nix replied, a little angrily. “But fine. And you have to buy my drinks, then.”

Taer was using the
Tribune
as a scapegoat during that conversation. Her editors at the paper never solicited her for more quotes, and she knew she wouldn’t be asked for them. Taer recorded the interview for her own purposes. Regarding this recording, she
wrote, “I’d better keep track,” though she avoided explicitly spelling out her motivations for doing so.