Besties
Chapter One
I kill the engine two houses down and let the car coast the rest of the way. Harper’s porch light is off, just like we said. She told me to give her seven minutes after her mom takes the Ambien, which is either at ten sharp or ten-fifteen if she’s in one of her moods. It’s ten-twelve. Good enough.
Harper slips out the side door like she’s done this a hundred times. She into the passenger seat with a whisper of polyester and cherry lip balm. She’s got her hoodie up and pajama pants on, Ugg boots.
“You’re late,” she says, without looking at me.
“You’re welcome,” I say.
She snorts and pulls the hood tighter around her face. “You bring it?”
I pop the tin out of the glovebox and hand it over. She opens it, checks the wrap, nods.
“Did you roll this?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “Your mom did.”
She laughs, short and low. “Oh. You brought jokes. She used to be cool.”
“No she didn’t.”
She shrugs like I’m not wrong. Lights the blunt and takes the first hit. The lighter flicks once, clean. Flame against her face for half a second, then gone. She hands it to me and adjusts her seat like she lives here.
We don’t say much until we’re out past the high school. The town’s just a smear of lights behind us now, and all the road signs look half-asleep. Harper takes the blunt again and flicks ash out the window.
“She texted me again,” she says.
I don’t ask who. I already know.
“She asked if I wanted to hang out just us instead. Like, ‘No offense to Lena, but we never get alone time anymore.’”
I watch the road.
“She gets on my nerves so much,” Harper says. “She talks too much shit.”
“She does.” I say. “And she’s always in everyone’s business. Did you hear about her and those three guys from the volleyball team?—Rick—that Chance guy and Donato Romero.
“Wait. What? No way!”
I shrug. “Apparently she’s not a complete lez after all.”
She passes the blunt. I hold the smoke in until my lungs sting.
“She said I looked like a sad movie girl,” Harper says, almost smiling. “Said she had a dream we kissed in a cornfield and I turned into a crow.”
“She’s never had a normal dream in her life.”
Harper stretches her legs up on the dash and pulls the sleeves of her hoodie over her hands. “She’s obsessed.”
“She’s in love with you.”
“She’s bored,” Harper says. “That’s not the same thing.”
We turn off onto Crestline. Mira’s house is third on the left, the one with the cracked driveway and the rosebush that never dies. The porch light’s on. The front window’s dark.
“She’s not outside yet.”
“She will be.”
We wait.
Two minutes later, the side gate from the back yard creaks open and she slips out. Same move as Harper, but slower. She’s wearing jeans and a cropped jacket, hair down. Trying too hard—as usual. She jogs the last few steps to the car and climbs in the back like she thinks we missed her.
“Hey, sluts,” she says.
Harper doesn’t turn around. “Took your time.”
“I had to sneak out behind the neighbor’s shed. My dad was still watching his war show.”
“Does he ever stop?”
“Only to fall asleep with a beer in his hand.”
She laughs at her own line. No one joins her.
“I brought Red Vines,” she says. “I figured we’d hit the ridge.”
Harper lights the blunt again.
Mira leans forward between the seats. “You look tired.”
“I am tired,” Harper says.
“Want me to braid your hair?”
Harper ignores her and blows smoke out the side window, before passing Mira the blunt.
She bogarts it for 4 blocks.
“Puff, puff, pass, bitch, I say, reaching toward the back seat.
Mira passes me the blunt and settles back. The car goes quiet except for the hum of tires and something low on the radio—just bass, no lyrics.
“I missed this,” Mira says after a while. “Us. When’s the last time we did this. It feels like it’s been forever.
Harper says nothing. I nod my head in agreement and I press the gas harder. The trees are getting thicker. The air smells like rain, but it hasn’t rained in days.
Mira shifts in the back. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere quiet,” I say.
She hums. That same tuneless little hum she always does when she’s nervous.
Harper looks straight ahead. Her face doesn’t move.
“Did you really hook up with Donato Romero?” I ask toward the back seat.
“What? Ew. No! What made you ask that? Gross!”
“Wait, so you didn’t hook up with Chance and Rick and Donato?”
Silence from the back seat.
“Oh Em GEE! Harper says! You really did it? I thought you were into chicks.”
“It wasn’t Donato. It was his cousin Rudy.”
“So, what… you’re straight now?” I ask. “Bi?”
I look in the rearview mirror and see Mira’s face wrinkle in disgust.
“No. But I had to make sure. Right?”
Chapter Two
The gravel starts under the tires, loud and loose. Mira stops humming. She leans forward between the seats, peering out like something’s wrong with the road, not with us.
“You sure this trail’s open?” she asks.
Harper doesn’t answer. She lights another cigarette with the pink lighter and flicks ash out the window.
“It’s fine,” I say.
Mira nods too fast, like she’s trying to agree with the air. “Okay. Just… feels different tonight.”
Harper exhales smoke straight up. “Yeah. It does.”
The woods tighten around us, tall and black. I flick the headlights off. The car knows where it’s going. So do we.
By the time we hit the clearing, Mira’s chewing on a Red Vine and pretending not to watch us.
“Did you bring the speaker?” she asks.
“No,” I say.
“We could’ve made a playlist.”
“No one’s dancing,” Harper says.
I kill the engine. Everything goes still. No wind. No bugs. Just the sound of Mira unzipping her jacket.
Harper gets out first. I open the trunk. She doesn’t need to be told. We packed light: flashlight, plastic sheet, gloves, two ice picks in an old lunchbox with duct tape around the handle. They’ve been in my desk drawer all week, getting sharper every night. Kitchen tools, originally. Now they have purpose. Mira needs to learn to keep her mouth shut.
Harper takes hers without looking at me. It fits in her hand like she’s held it before.
Mira’s still standing by the back door, half out of the car, watching us. Her arms are crossed. The candy is gone.
“Okay, this is weird,” she says, laughing like we’ll laugh with her. “Why are you guys acting like… I don’t know. Like this is a covert military op.”
“We’re just walking,” I say.
Harper clicks on the flashlight and starts down the trail.
“I thought we were just going over to the park. I didn’t wear the right shoes for this,” Mira mutters, but follows anyway.
Neither Harper nor I say anything.
Mira tries to make more small talk, but pipes down and is silent. Like she knows something is amiss—that we’re bringing her out her for a reckoning.
She addresses the thing we’re not talking about. “Is this about Devon? Because if it is, I swear to god, I didn’t say anything. He lies all the time. You know that.”
We don’t answer.
The path is soft and narrow. Wet leaves suck at our feet. The beam from the flashlight bounces, catches tree bark, a flash of Mira’s white sneakers, Harper’s hood.
“I should’ve stayed home,” Mira mumbles.
No one disagrees.
When we reach the spot—where the trees clear just enough, where the ground dips slightly, where we checked last week to make sure no one would stumble across it—Harper stops walking. I stop beside her. Mira keeps going two more steps before she realizes we’re not moving behind her anymore.
She turns around, hugging herself from the chill.
“What?”
Harper lifts the flashlight. The beam lands on Mira’s face. She looks pale and very young.
“Okay, seriously. What the fuck is this?”
I snort and I speak. “You remember that thing you said about Harper?” I ask. “That if she were a dog, she’d be one of those rescue pit bulls that pretends to be sweet until it snaps?”
Mira blinks. “I never said that.”
“You said it to Rina. And to Devon.”
Her arms drop a little. “It was a joke.”
“No it wasn’t,” Harper says.
Mira laughs again, but it sounds wrong now. “You guys are messing with me…”
“You told people I was obsessed,” I say. “That I’d do anything to keep you and Harper from being alone. That I was trying to make her hate you.”
Mira looks between us, faster now. “Okay, what the actual fuck. What are you talking about?”
Harper steps forward.
Mira backs up. “Harper. Seriously.”
Harper raises the flashlight and hands it to me.
Then pulls her ice pick from her hoodie pocket.
Mira freezes.
Her mouth opens.
“Lena,” she says, like I’m the one she thinks will stop this.
But I have put on my gloves and I’m already pulling my ice pick, too.
“I didn’t say anything,” Mira whispers.
Harper lunges first—quick and low—and Mira screams, jerks sideways, catches Harper’s arm with her nails. The pick scrapes her shoulder instead of hitting deep. She runs.
I chase.
She makes it five steps before I hit her from behind, tackle her into the dirt. She kicks, hard. Her foot catches my thigh. She tries to claw at my face. I hit her, just once, and she goes dazed.
Harper grabs her legs.
I straddle her chest.
“Please,” Mira sobs. “Please don’t—”
Harper stabs first. Straight into the side of the neck. Mira’s body jerks like a wire pulled tight. Her mouth opens. No sound comes out.
I go in right after. I don’t miss.
I stab her again. And again. Harper does too. We keep stabbing until our arms are too heavy to lift anymore. I don’t how long she’s been dead by time we stop, but dead is dead and it’s done.
When it’s over, the forest is still again. Harper’s breathing hard. My arms are shaking. My knees are soaked.
I wipe the blade on the sleeve of Mira’s jacket.
Harper spits in the dirt.
“She didn’t even fight that hard,” she says.
I sit back.
“She thought she was the main character,” I say.
Harper laughs, just once.
“She never was,” I say.
Chapter Three
Harper doesn’t speak on the way back to the car. She walks ahead, ice pick tucked under her arm like a baton. The flashlight beam jumps with every step. I watch her shoulders, the sharp hunch in them, like she’s still waiting for Mira to get back up.
She won’t.
The air smells like rust and wet leaves. Mira’s blood got into the cuffs of my hoodie. It’s still warm. I keep my hands in the pocket.
We don’t have a real plan for the body. We just knew we didn’t want to leave her whole.
Back at the clearing, we roll out the plastic sheet. I hold the corners while Harper drags her by the ankles. Mira’s head lolls, mouth open, like she’s trying to say something but forgot the words.
Harper kneels beside her and starts with the shirt, cutting fabric away with the pocketknife I brought from my dad’s toolbox. She doesn’t flinch at the sound of it tearing. She doesn’t flinch at anything.
I dig.
The soil’s loamy, damp. Easy to turn. We picked the spot after two practice runs last week. Nobody walks this trail. No hunters. No rangers. No dogs.
Halfway through, I have to stop to catch my breath. My chest feels tight, not from guilt. I don’t really do guilt. What’s the point? But my chest is tight nonetheless. Maybe from the cool night air. Maybe from the smoke. Or maybe just the quiet.
Harper isn’t quiet anymore though. She’s humming. That same song Mira always did—the tuneless one, soft and sweet like a lullaby left out in the rain.
“I hated when she did that,” she says, not looking up.
I nod.
We lower Mira into the hole together. I grab her under the arms, Harper takes her feet. She’s lighter now. Something about her weight feels wrong, like it doesn’t belong to her anymore. Like we carried it out of her.
The plastic goes over her face last. We don’t say anything about that. I drive the heal of my boot down into her face 3 times for added measure.
“Ugly bitch,” I say. “That’s what you get.”
When we start covering the body with dirt, Harper breaks a nail and it falls into the grave. She stares at her hand like it betrayed her.
“I’m not crying,” she says.
“I know.”
She wipes her eyes anyway.
We pack the dirt back fast, stepping on it to make it settle. When it’s done, we scatter pine needles and leaves across the mound, careful to make it look messy.
We hike down to the river to clean the shovels. I drop my bloody ice pick in the river when Harper isn’t watching and retrieve the other one—the one I stabbed that raccoon with earlier tonight. I distract her when I wrap them in washcloths and put the picks Harper’s backpack—in the auxiliary pocket, I’m sure she won’t check. If Harper grows a conscience, the cops will find two bloody ice picks, but only one with Harper’s finger prints—only one caked in Mira’s blood.
The walk back to the car is longer. The air feels thicker, heavier, like it’s trying to remember what we just did.
Harper lights another cigarette.
I turn the headlights back on once we hit the main road. The dash clock says 12:42.
“Think anyone heard?”
“No.”
She flicks ash out the window. “I mean, she screamed.”
“The trees ate it.”
Harper leans her head back. “She really thought we were gonna hang out. Smoke and talk about boys.”
“She thought we loved her. Fucking moron!”
Harper scoffs. “She loved herself enough for all three of us.”
We drive in silence for a long time.
When I drop her off, she doesn’t say goodnight. Just gets out and walks up the driveway, slow and soft, like any other night.
I watch the door close behind her. I lose my bloody clothes in an apartment dumpster on the way home. I change into the extra clothes I stashed under the front seat.
When I get home, my parents are asleep. The hallway light’s on. I go straight to the bathroom, strip off my clothes. I get in the shower and let the water run until it turns cold. I don’t feel guilty. Fuck her. I feel icky. I had blood all over me. Hard to feel clean after that.
When I close my eyes, I don’t see her face.
I see Harper’s. Will she keep it together?
Chapter Four
At school, Mira’s name comes up before first period ends.
“Anyone seen her?” some girl asks by the lockers, twirling a pen like it means anything.
“Nope,” someone says. “Didn’t she say she was sick?”
“She posted at like two in the morning. Some song lyrics and a weird emoji. Total cry-for-help vibes.”
I pass them without slowing down.
People say things all the time they don’t mean. Mira did. Every day. “I’m dying.” “I’m disappearing.” “I don’t matter.” And now, finally, she’s right, and no one knows it.
Harper’s already in history when I get there. She’s in her seat, head down, earbuds in. Hoodie up. She doesn’t look at me.
Mr. Halperin talks about the Civil War, but all I hear is buzzing. My mind keeps snagging on the color of Mira’s blood in the flashlight beam. It was darker than I expected. Almost purple.
After class, Harper waits by the water fountain. She doesn’t drink. Just stands there until I catch up.
“You good?” I ask.
She nods.
That’s it.
She peels off toward Chem, and I go to Bio. Everyone looks normal. Like nothing happened. Like we didn’t rip the center out of a living person and bury it in the dirt.
At lunch, Mira’s seat is empty.
People notice. Not in a real way. Not like they care. Just in that way people do, like checking a box.
“Maybe she’s ditching,” someone says.
“She would’ve told me,” says someone else, like that means something.
I chew slowly and don’t look up.
In the bathroom, two girls stand in front of the mirror reapplying lip gloss, talking about Homecoming.
“She was gonna ask Devon,” one says.
“No, she wasn’t. She was gonna ask Harper.”
“Shut up. Seriously?”
“She told me. Said it’d be iconic.”
I leave before they finish. My reflection in the metal dispenser looks warped. Wrong. Better.
After school, I go to Harper’s.
We don’t text about it. That’s not what we do. I just show up ten minutes after the final bell. She’s already outside, leaning on the fence behind her garage.
“She’ll be reported missing by tomorrow,” she says.
I nod. “If her parents don’t call them tonight. You know what to say if her parents call you. Right?”
Harper picks at her thumbnail and nods.
“You think they’ll find her?”
“No.”
“Even with dogs?”
“The rain’s coming.”
She lights a cigarette, then hands it to me. I smoke it without tasting it.
“We should break her phone,” she says.
“Already off,” I say. “Battery’s out. I dropped it in a dumpster on the way home last night. It will be in the landfill by tonight if it’s not already.”
Harper glances at me. “You didn’t say that last night.”
“You didn’t ask.”
She pulls her sleeves over her hands and sinks to the dirt.
“We should’ve waited,” she says. “Maybe she would’ve stopped.”
“No, she wouldn’t have.”
Harper’s voice drops. “You liked her too.”
“Back in junior high. Yeah. But come on. You know she had turned into a totally stuck up bitch.”
Harper nods— “with a big mouth.”
“Well, she’s not running her mouth now.”
We sit there until the sun slips behind the roofline and the cold comes in.
Before I leave, Harper says, “I had a dream.”
“Yeah?”
“She came back. But it wasn’t her. She had no eyes.”
I watch the tip of my shoe press a half-moon into the dirt.
“She’s not coming back,” I say.
But that night, when I close my eyes, I hear humming.
Chapter Five
They call Mira’s absence in the next morning, just like we said they would.
By second period, there’s an announcement over the intercom—voice flat, like someone reading a parking citation.
“If anyone has seen or heard from Mira Duvall since Tuesday evening, please contact the main office. Her family is concerned for her safety.”
The room goes still, like a game where everyone freezes mid-blink.
Two girls gasp. One of them covers her mouth like she’s in a movie. Mr. Halperin frowns and adjusts his tie. I catch him glancing up the skirts of the girls in the front row. Mine too. Such a perv. I do the “Basic Instinct, Sharon Stone” leg cross thing for him anyway. I need a good grade in this class. I see him seem me do it.
Nobody in the class moves for a few seconds, and then the day goes on. That’s the part people never talk about: how fast it all slides back into place.
I doodle spirals in the corner of my notebook. Tight ones, close together. They look like sinkholes.
At lunch, there’s a poster on the wall by the cafeteria doors. Mira’s face, printed too dark, her eyes more hollow than they were in real life. Underneath:
Missing.
Last seen wearing a light denim jacket and black sneakers.
The picture is from freshman year. She hated that photo. Said it made her nose look crooked.
“Didn’t she run away once before?” someone says behind me.
“I heard she was gonna transfer.”
“No, she had a stalker. That girl from band.”
“I bet she’s just hiding. Attention thing.”
I throw my trash away and leave before I start laughing.
After school, Harper’s not at the fence.
She’s not at home.
I drive by twice.
No answer.
I wait until it’s almost dark, then park on the hill above the preserve. I walk down to the ridge alone, crunching over twigs and frost. There’s no wind. No birds. Just the trees, tall and blank and watching.
The grave looks untouched.
I don’t get close.
I just stand at the edge and stare at the spot where the dirt dips, where the leaves are too clean, too neat. My fingers twitch. I half expect her voice to come crawling out, soft and snotty and smug.
I whisper her name once.
Just to see what happens.
Nothing does.
But when I turn to leave, I swear I hear something small behind me.
A breath, maybe.
Or humming.
Chapter Six
Harper won’t return my texts. Bitch!
Not that she was ever chatty, but this is different. I send one, then another, then stop pretending I’m not counting.
She was the one who said we had to do it. She was the one who said, “We need to do something about Mira.” Now she’s pretending like I’m the one who suggested killing the bitch, dragging her into the woods and that I am the one who handed Harper the ice pick. I mean, I totally am, but that’s beside the point.
At school, she’s quieter than usual. Hoodie up. Hair unwashed. Her eyes don’t land anywhere for long. She skips lunch and disappears during free period. I check the girls’ bathroom near the band room—empty. I check the alcove by the vending machines—nothing.
She’s avoiding me.
That’s fine.
People can only avoid you if you follow.
The cops show up Thursday. Not in uniform. Just two men in jackets that don’t quite fit and expressions that look borrowed from a funeral.
They call me in during third.
“Just routine,” the principal says, smiling like he’s practiced.
I sit across from them in the counseling office while one asks questions and the other takes notes.
“When was the last time you saw Mira?”
“Tuesday night. She texted, but I was home.”
“What time?”
“Not sure. Late.”
“Did she seem upset about anything lately?”
“No more than usual.”
“You were close?”
I shrug. “We used to be.”
One of them looks up from his notepad. “Used to be?”
“We kind of drifted.”
“How so?”
“She had… a lot going on.”
They both nod like that means something.
When they let me go, I smile all the way back to class. Not big. Just enough.
That night, I park outside Harper’s house.
I don’t get out. I just sit there, watching the windows. Second from the left is her room. The light’s on. I can see the edge of a blanket and the top of her bookshelf.
I wait thirty minutes. Then forty.
She doesn’t come to the window.
She doesn’t text.
I think about calling her.
Then I drive to the ridge.
The path is slick from last night’s rain. My boots sink in with every step. I don’t bother with the flashlight. I know the way.
The grave is still there, under its patchy quilt of wet leaves.
I kneel beside it and press my palm to the ground.
Cold.
Still.
I close my eyes.
In the dark behind my eyelids, I see Mira’s face. Not how she looked the night we did it. Not bloody, not broken. Just… looking. That look she used to give me in middle school when I copied her eyeliner and didn’t ask first. That look like, “Really?”
I hear something behind me.
Not loud.
A twig.
A footstep.
I don’t turn around right away.
If it’s Harper, she’ll speak.
If it’s not—
Another sound. Closer this time.
When I stand, I don’t run. I just breathe.
And the woods breathe back.
Chapter Seven
Harper’s at school the next day, but she’s not really there.
She sits in the back of English with her hood pulled up and her hair braided too tight. Her leg bounces under the desk. She doesn’t look at me once. I stare until she feels it. She shifts like something bit her.
When class ends, I follow her into the hallway.
“You gonna keep pretending we didn’t do it together?” I ask.
She doesn’t stop walking.
“I said,” I repeat, louder this time, “we did it.”
She whips around. Her eyes are glassy. There’s something in them I don’t like. Something too close to scared.
“Stop talking to me,” she says.
The hallway noise swells around us. Students blur past. Someone laughs too loud near the stairwell. None of it matters.
I take a step closer.
“You wanted her gone. You said she was poison.”
“I didn’t mean dead.”
“Yes, you did.”
She flinches like I slapped her.
I don’t smile. I want to.
“You told me to sharpen them,” I whisper. “You chose your spot. You said she’d never see it coming.”
“She didn’t,” Harper says, barely audible.
We stare at each other. My heart doesn’t race. Hers does—I can see it in her throat.
She turns and walks away.
She doesn’t look back.
That night, I dig up the dead raccoon from the park and drop it over the fence behind Harper’s garage.
My parents knock once, ask if I want pizza. I say no. They leave me alone. They always do.
I close my eyes.
And there she is. In my brain.
Mira.
Not the version from the poster.
Not the blood-slick thing we buried.
The one from two years ago, leaning against her locker with her hair curled and her lip gloss too shiny. The one who said we were soulmates in different fonts. The one who kissed Harper at that party and looked straight at me while she did it.
I see her smile.
Then I hear her voice.
Not real.
But sharp.
She says my name.
Just once.
Not angry.
Not afraid.
Just there.
Like she never left.
I open my eyes.
I’m alone.
But the room feels full.
Chapter Eight
Mr. Halperin starts wearing ties that aren’t wrinkled after the first week.
He starts calling me “Lena” instead of “Ms. Ward.” He leans in when he talks to me, like we’re trading secrets instead of notes on my essay.
He’s not stupid. He knows what I’m doing.
But he doesn’t stop me.
He asks if I’m okay. I nod slowly and keep my eyes a little wet. Just enough to make him look again.
“I just keep thinking,” I say one afternoon, standing by his desk after class, “if I’d told someone earlier… maybe Mira would still be here.”
His face folds in the middle. Worry. Regret. Or just performance.
He clears his throat. “Told someone what?”
“About Harper. About you.”
The words sit there like smoke.
He doesn’t deny it. Not exactly. He does that grown-up thing where they pretend the truth is too heavy to speak out loud. I give him silence and let him fill it.
I invite myself to his house. He takes me there. The whole thing is gross but desperate times and desperate measures and all that. I make sure after doing him to dribble his DNA on my shirt. On my panties. I drop hairs all over his bedroom. His bathroom. My lipstick rings on his drinking glasses. Finger prints on his booze bottles.
“I never did this with a student…” he starts, but trails off.
I place my hand on his still-naked crotch. “I know. But I’m so glad we finally did.”
“I’ve wanted you since the first day of school,” he admits.
Fucking perv. He’s the one who didn’t say no. Still though, I whisper “me, too” and climb back on top of him. The more DNA we leave behind, the stronger my alibi.
That night, I cry in the bathroom until my throat burns. Not from grief. From the effort.
Harper’s arrested three days later.
The cops come during second period. They searched her backpack. They found the ice picks. She doesn’t cry. Doesn’t scream. She looks numb. Or stunned. Or maybe just finally quiet.
They take her out in handcuffs. She doesn’t look at me.
But I look at her.
All the way down the hall.
The digitalis poisoning is easy.
My grandpa’s pills, crushed into a fine powder. Mr. Halperin’s coffee is always half-drunk and left on his desk while he steps out to make copies. I swirl it in with the little wooden stirrer. It dissolves without a trace.
He dies in his car that night while he’s driving. Slams head on into a minivan. A mother and her four kids die, too.
They say it was a heart attack that caused the crash—a tragedy. I just think it’s funny. Talk about the wrong place at the wrong time!
They don’t say anything about the note I slipped into his desk drawer, typed in all caps, full of apologies for the “things I should’ve reported, the rumors I ignored, the girls I failed.”
The school is quiet for days.
Everyone walks softer.
When the guards find Harper in her cell, it’s a Wednesday morning. She used a sheet. Tied it to the bars and leaned forward until her body gave up.
There’s no note.
There doesn’t need to be.
Despite Harper’s claims of my involvement, there’s no evidence. No blood. No fingerprints. No proof. But I have proof I was with Mr Halperin. And he’s dead, so he can’t refute my claims. And her story doesn’t hold up. The raccoon is found behind her garage. Her broken fingernail is found in Mira’s grave. My cell phone was at my house that night. Nothing Harper claims adds up. She is the only one charged with homicide.
I am—of course—as shocked as everyone else. I mean who knew Harper was such a monster? Wow! And I was friends with that girl. Scary!
The counselor I get assigned wears cardigans and keeps tissues in every corner of her office.
She tells me I’m brave.
I let her say it. She says it so often I nearly believe her myself.
She asks about Halperin, and I pause just long enough.
“I was scared of him,” I say, staring at my hands. “He said if I ever told anyone… He threatened to flunk me if I didn’t keep doing it.”
Her mouth tightens. She doesn’t need the rest.
And Harper?
“She wasn’t always like that,” I say. “I think something snapped. She said things. About Mira. About hurting people. I didn’t know how to stop her.”
The counselor squeezes my hand.
“You were caught in the middle,” she says.
I nod.
And I don’t smile.
Not yet. Not until I walk out of here and never have to look back.
Epilogue
They hold a memorial assembly in the gym with folding chairs and a slideshow that moves too fast. The pictures of Mira are mostly from group shots—her face angled away, mid-laugh, hair caught in motion. The principal says her name like it’s too long. The counselor who holds my hand during the moment of silence keeps checking to see if I’m crying.
I am.
Not because I miss Mira.
But because it plays so well. I was asked to give a eulogy. I cry all the way through it.
Harper gets a candlelight vigil, too, but it’s smaller. Quieter. I don’t go. I hear about it. People don’t know what to say, so they don’t say much. The news reports her as a “troubled teen with unresolved trauma.” No one blames me for not attending. “You’ve been through so much,” they say. “You don’t need to relive it.”
They give me an award at graduation.
The Perseverance Award.
I stand in my white robe and smile, eyes glassy, chin trembling just right. They call me brave again. They say it like it’s a reward for surviving other people’s damage. They don’t know I’m the one who left the cracks.
Mr. Halperin is still dead.
Sometimes, I reread the articles about him. About how he “ignored warning signs” and “may have misused his authority.” People whisper that Harper’s suicide was connected to his behavior, that she was protecting secrets she couldn’t carry anymore.
I don’t correct them.
Let them build the ghost stories the way they want to.
In August, before I head off to college in Massachusetts, I visit the ridge one last time.
Not at night. Broad daylight. Hiking boots. Ponytail. A bottle of water in my hand. I look like any other girl trying to find herself in nature.
The hole the police dug is still there. Empty.
I crouch by the edge and place a single Red Vine on the dirt.
A joke only I’m allowed to make.
There’s no humming.
There hasn’t been for weeks.
Just the wind.
Just the trees.
Just me.
I stand up, wipe the dirt off my hands, and walk back to the trail like someone who never lost a thing. Because I didn’t.
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