15. June #3
“Think about it,” Cinna continues. “She’s in your inner circle. She knows about Carter. She’s blunt enough to say horrible things and smart enough to cover her tracks. And remember what she said a few weeks ago? About being jealous that you got into the exhibition?”
I do remember. It was the day I was late to Mixed Media and the three of us were sitting on a bench. Aubrey literally told me she was jealous I got into the exhibition and she didn’t.
At the time I appreciated her honesty because that’s Aubrey. She says what she’s thinking and doesn’t let it fester.
But what if it did fester?
“Aubrey wouldn’t do this,” I say, but my voice lacks conviction. “If she had a problem, she’d tell me.”
“People do crazy things when they’re hurt enough,” Cinna says.
I think about Aubrey. She’s empathetic in her own abrasive way. She cried at a documentary about elephants once and then threatened to fight anyone who mentioned it.
She’s kind. Supportive. She is a little jealous, a little prickly, and she has every right to be disappointed about not getting into the exhibition.
But harassing me and my family? Calling me a whore?
I can’t make the picture fit. But I can’t make anyone else’s picture fit either, and that’s the problem.
The list of people who know enough about my life to write those texts is short.
Every name on it belongs to someone I trust, and the idea that one of them has been doing this makes me feel like the ground beneath me is going to swallow me at any moment.
“I need to go,” I tell Cinna.
She blinks. “Go where? I’m already late to Drawing so I’ll ditch and go with you.”
“Go to class. I need some time alone.”
Her expression softens immediately, the anger giving way to concern. She pulls me into a hug, and I let myself lean into her for a second because Cinna’s hugs feel like being forgiven for things I haven’t done yet.
“Let me know if you need anything,” she says into my shoulder. “I’m here. You know that, right?”
“I know. Thank you.”
She squeezes once more and then releases me. I watch her walk back toward the courtyard, her cream cardigan disappearing in a crowd of students.
I’m alone.
I walk with no destination, just moving because my body needs to process life and can’t do it sitting still.
My coffee is still in my hand, but the taste of it turns my stomach now so I drop it in the next trash can I pass.
The campus paths are quieter at this hour.
The cobblestones under my feet are uneven, and I watch them as I walk, counting the cracks between them.
One. Two. Three.
I think about every person who has access to the details of my life. Vienna. Aubrey. Carter. Dorien. Cinna. Aeron. My mother. A handful of casual friends who know some important, general knowledge.
Four. Five.
Every name I consider makes my heart break. I circle back to Aubrey, because Cinna’s logic was solid and because Aubrey did mention her jealousy. And, more than anyone else, she’s the kind of person who could rationalize cruelty.
But then I think about the way Aubrey showed up at my door with Thai food after I got a horrible grade last semester, and the way she sat on my bed and said, “If you need to scream, scream. I’ll sit here and make sure nobody calls the cops.
” She stayed for four hours, and she never once looked at her phone.
That’s not the behavior of someone who’s trying to destroy you.
Six. Seven.
But, like Cinna said, people do crazy things when they’re hurt enough. Maybe Aubrey is really hurt and doesn’t know what to do with the pain, so she’s trying to hurt everyone around her.
I don’t know. I just feel so lost.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and my whole body flinches in dread. I stop walking. I’m on the path near the old maples behind Founder’s Hall, and the clock tower above me chimes the half-hour, a single low note that fades into silence.
I almost don’t look. But ignoring it doesn’t make the texts go away. Better to just face it.
I pull out my phone.
It’s not a text.
It’s a calendar notification for an event two weeks from now. There’s a small gray rectangle at the top of the screen with a single word in the event title: Gravesite.
My knees weaken, and I lean against the nearest maple and press my back into the bark because without it I’m not sure I’d stay upright.
The roughness of the trunk bites through my jacket and into my shoulder blades, and I focus on that sensation because the alternative is focusing on the date, which is an anniversary—the day I go to the cemetery and lay flowers on a grave I try desperately not to think about.
Because of a choice when I was eight years old.
Tears flow out because I need a good cry right now. The maples above me are beginning to turn, green giving way to the hints of cadmium orange at the tips, and through the blur of my tears the colors bleed together until the canopy looks like a painting left out in the rain.
I slide down the trunk until I’m sitting on the ground with my knees drawn up and my phone in my lap. Somewhere across campus, someone is laughing, and the sound reaches me, arriving from a world I’m not currently part of.
Two weeks.
Gravesite.