Page 5 of The Fall of Iris Henley
U/ROCKYTRUTHER2001
IRIS HENLEY IS A MURDERER
Throwaway account for obvious reasons.
Iris has been going along with the official story but do not trust her. She knew Rocky was cheating. She wanted to catch him red-handed. When she got there she took the gun out of his truck. Maybe all she wanted was to scare him—but she lost it when she found out it was Lynette. She shot them both and made it look like a murder-suicide.
I didn’t speak up because I thought the cops would run tests and figure it out but they haven’t and now I’m scared that she is going to get away with it.
Do not trust her.
She is a liar.
She is a murderer.
She will do it again if she gets a chance.
CHAPTER 5
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7, 11:36PM
HILL COUNTRY ROADS
“I’m telling you, it’s just some stupid troll,” Hayden says. She’s in the driver’s seat, and we’re barreling down the dark hilly roads back to town. Sophie cranes her head around from the passenger seat and nods firmly.
I’m lying across the back seat, looking at Hayden’s phone, reading the post again and again. There are already forty-three comments. Forty-four. Forty-five. Everyone in the school is online right now, commenting on this post.
toad_licker_6969:I KNEW IT lol
shinygirl_varda:Y’all just love stirring up shit, this is pathetic
eviestan:Don’t hate me for saying this but I have wondered this for a long time, Rocky never seemed like the kind of person who would do something like this
At least some of them are treating it like a joke. I recognize a few usernames, girls from the squad, friends coming to mydefense. But “eviestan,” who I think might be a girl I know from choir—Madison something?—isn’t alone. There are other people who are just as eager to believe.
yoyomama:It’s always the boyfriend/husband, right? This time it’s just in reverse
f350rulz:huge if true
My breath goes short and shallow. I remember the moment I found out about the murder: My teeth actually started chattering while I held the phone to my ear, Mom’s voice somehow very far away. I thought that was a thing that only happened in cartoons. But it turns out it’s true: You can be so scared, your body tries to shake to pieces.
Now, in the back seat, I can feel that same rumble, a loosening in my fingers and ankles and toes. Not so much weak as jerky and strange. My hand trembles so badly I have to cradle Hayden’s phone. When my breath comes, it’s uneven and croaking.
“Why would someone say something like this?” I whisper.
Hayden just snorts. “Same reason they put up weird Hitler memes or post a bunch of anime porn or whatever. Some asshole got drunk tonight and thought they’d be edgy. No one’s going to believe this crap.”
“Sure looks like some people believe it,” I say.
Sophie leans back and snatches the phone out of my hand. I don’t fight her. I just stare at my hand for a moment before I remember to put it down.
“They’re being idiots,” she says. “Everyone knows we had a cheer sleepover that night.”
I click on Rockytruther’s username, but that doesn’t give me any insights; the account was made tonight and has a totalof one post. A throwaway, like they said. Names and faces race through my mind—one of the well-known edgelords, maybe? Braden Nederbrock, who posts weird racist stuff all the time and then says he’s being “ironic”? Or Rodrigo Martinez, who loves to troll people into stupid arguments? But this doesn’t read like anything they would’ve posted. There’s not anything playful about it, and it’s not political or contrary.
It’s just a mean, ugly lie. And I’m hard-pressed to imagine who would spread it.
When we pull up outside my house, Hayden turns to look at me. “Are you okay to get in by yourself? My curfew…”
