Chapter 22
Naomi barely remembers getting back to Joel’s apartment.
She’s supposed to have an article ready for tomorrow, but she spent what should have been her writing time obsessing over her sister’s death.
She still can’t believe what she found in the autopsies, possible proof that Faye was murdered by the same person as Jade.
And that person was most likely Harlow Hayes.
She expected to feel relieved being back in the city, away from home.
But her feelings are only amplified now.
A shiver runs up her spine as she thinks of the Toyota tailing her earlier.
And the feeling of someone watching her on the train.
What if someone followed her back to the apartment too?
She double-checks the lock and heads over to her investigation board on Joel’s wall.
Before this weekend, she felt like she was nearing the precipice of the mountain, so close to the truth. But now the wind has been knocked out of her and she realizes she’s at the base of an even bigger, hellishly daunting climb.
A mix of trepidation, anger, and confusion stirs inside her as she shakily writes her sister’s name on a Post-it note and sticks it on the wall, along with a photo and a few questions.
Where did her money come from in late 2021?
Was she sleeping with C?
How did she know J?
Any evidence of her and H crossing paths?
Overlooked head injury?
She runs string from Faye to Harlow, Colton, and Jade.
Then, on a sheet of A4, she scrawls Casey Scott’s name in large letters, and notes below anything interesting from their conversation.
Like how Colton gave his PR team headaches and how the Harlow she knew all those years ago wouldn’t have murdered anyone.
Naomi also flags Casey’s comment about Harlow being jealous and Jade being Colton’s type.
Her eyes flit to Sam Brixton’s photo as she places Casey Scott on the wall near Colton. She traces a line from Sam to Jade, and then writes on a piece of painter’s tape alongside it.
Last seen at SB party before 2021 VMAs—Harlow there too? Saw something that upset her?
Naomi backs away and scans the huge web of photos, papers, and connecting strings, trying to see if she’s missing any other connections.
Her eyes flit between Faye, Jade, and Bill Lever, who all died between September 2021 and March 2022.
She then narrows her eyes at their potential killer, Harlow, who coincidentally went through a major reinvention throughout the next year, not only in her image and music but in her personal life, cutting out family and friends.
Wanting to analyze these changes more closely, Naomi grabs the roll of red string from her desk and cuts a seven-foot piece, taping it in the blank section to the left-hand side of the wall. She writes three new headers.
Before Jade’s death
September 2021–March 2022
After Faye’s death
She takes her time reordering the wall, moving all her research that references the time before Jade’s death in 2021 to the “Before” side, everything to do with the 2021 VMAs, Jade, Bill Lever, Casey Scott, and Faye to the middle section, and anything that happened after March 2022 to the “After” side.
As she assumed, the first two sections are filled with the most information—tons of lyrics, video references, and Harlow interview clips all relating to hits from her first three albums and her one flop, “Endless Summers.” There are also relevant quotes from Naomi’s interviews with Trevor and Bobby, plus tabloids referring to the singer’s relationship with Colton.
The most interesting details on the sparse “After” side are lyric snippets from Harlow’s two recent albums, interview clips, Trevor’s claim that Harlow gave him the cold shoulder, and the Avant article from Harlow’s Aunt Jocelyn.
Surprisingly, there’s little from her new music team and nothing else from her family.
Naomi plucks a note she left for herself from the wall, a reminder to analyze potential Easter eggs in Harlow’s music, and crumples it in her hand.
She eyes the package sitting on the kitchen island and opens it, unwrapping Harlow’s latest two albums, Apotheosis and Legacy, which she ordered earlier in the week.
They’re both gorgeous, glossy vinyl versions, accompanied by stunning lyric posters.
Upon her first few reads of the accompanying lyrics, she recognizes a pattern of references to revenge. She writes down some of the most notable lyrics and posts them on the right side of the wall.
Underestimated me from the start / And now you have to watch it all fall apart / I’ll slash a lasting legacy across your heart / Watch me rise / While I watch you crash.
There’s no such thing as happy endings in a world so violent and cruel / You rolled the dice / I finished the game / But who’s the fool?
She also adds lyrics from “No Way Back” and “Midnight,” which the TikToker theorized was about Bill Lever, as well as a line from “Cruel Delights.”
Hey Billy, help me understand / How did you live with yourself, when it all got out of hand?
I know who you are / I know what you did / Don’t act surprised / You know I’m right / You deserve what you got for what you did at midnight
Is it wrong. Or is it right. To get high off these cruel delights.
Another pattern Naomi recognizes is the constant reference to death, but while Apotheosis seems to reference death in a vengeful way, Harlow’s latest album is much sadder, almost remorseful. Like the lyrics from “Garden of Bones.”
A garden of bones, watered with tears. Blood-soaked soil, saturated with fear. No one knows I laid her here. Alongside a part of me buried for years.
Naomi’s stomach twists at the words. She initially ignored the hundreds of internet sleuths who theorized this was some sort of lyrical confession, sure it was just a metaphor.
But now she thinks otherwise. Her throat burns, wondering if the lyrics are about her sister.
Picturing Harlow laying her on a filthy sofa and then lighting a match.
Naomi scans the Apotheosis and Legacy lyric posters again, looking for more mentions of death and blood specifically, but nothing else stands out.
She goes to her Twitter bookmarks to find the posts that conveniently compiled Harlow’s darkest lyrics to check she hasn’t missed anything and adds a few more to her wall.
She does a quick search for #HarlowHayes and Easter eggs and finds a thread noting mostly trivial stuff, like hints that led to eventual song names and music video release dates, or small references to past albums. All the Easter eggs seem to be in her two latest albums, though.
Strange. Naomi writes a new Post-it—“Easter eggs start with Apotheosis”—and adds it to the “After” section.
As Naomi stares from the left to the right side of the board, there is a glaring fact she can’t ignore. That at the end of 2021, after Jade died, Harlow changed forever.
She reasons that this type of change in behavior can’t be a coincidence.
People don’t just wake up one day and change everything about themselves.
Style, sure. Artists change their style all the time.
But personality? Lyrics? How they interact with fans?
Not to mention cutting out family and friends.
Such a big reinvention must be the result of some type of trauma. Something major. Like killing someone for the first time. And maybe Harlow’s “apotheosis” was transforming from an innocent woman into a lethal one—into a serial killer. Many serial killers see themselves as gods…
Naomi’s mind swirls with questions. Were Harlow’s lyrics truly about murder?
Did Harlow, like so many other killers before her, leave clues in the hope she’ll get caught?
Did she have someone change Jade’s autopsy to hide the bruises on her neck?
Did she have help covering it up? Is she responsible for her sister’s head injury?
Is she really so evil that she pumped these women full of drugs and then, in Faye’s case, let her burn?
It’s possible.
Naomi spends the night tossing and turning, thinking of all the ways she could get justice for Faye. In the past, justice wasn’t an option because there wasn’t anyone to blame. But now everything has changed.
*
The second Naomi notices the bright light beaming through the window, she knows something is wrong. The sun doesn’t rise until close to seven, and her alarm was supposed to wake her at six so she could draft and post the article she promised Joel.
Heart pumping, she reaches for her phone.
9:47 a.m. Shit.
If Joel is in California, he might not ask about it for another couple hours, she reasons with herself.
But when she glances at her screen again, she sees he’s already texted her. It’s not about her article, though. It’s a link to a different one.
“No,” she whispers, scanning the news release. “No, no, no! Fuck!”