Page 70 of I Hope This Finds You Well

“I have to go.” My voice sounds an octave higher, not my own.

“No, wait.” He says it like an order—or an accusation. “I’ve wondered about you. A lot of people have.” He tilts his head. “You look the same.”

My skin tightens and cools beneath his touch. I nudge my shoulder again. “I really need to—”

“Hey,” he says, finally releasing me so he can put both his palms up in a placating gesture. “I just wanted to—I don’t know what to say. It’s been a long time. But it looks like you’re doing okay for yourself.”

I pause, rocking on my heels. Am I doing okay? Maybe I am, if even he thinks so.

Maybe seeing him again doesn’t have to be what I’ve built it up to be in my head. It’s been so many years. I can handle it.

“Yeah,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “Yeah, I’m doing good.”

But something dark shifts across his face as I say this, curling his bottom lip. And I realize my mistake instantly. He doesn’t want me to be okay. Of course he doesn’t.

He laughs once, sharply. “Man, what are the odds?” He takes a step back, looking me over from head to toe. “I mean, if I’d known it was you, I would’ve warned Caity.” He makes a cross with his fingers, laughing again as he holds it up at me.

And it’s like time travel. I’m seventeen again, and I’m drunk, andwe’re at the party at Stanley Park. And Kyle is tormenting Ellie, holding up his fingers in a cross and shouting, “Get away, loser.”

And Ellie is pulling on my wrist and saying we should go, but I shrug her off because he’s not saying it to me. And because for once, before Kyle came, it felt like I belonged. Because I thought we were actually enjoying drinking random liquor from Solo cups. So I take another drink as Ellie takes off into the forest. Before I notice she left.

I glance down at my wrist, turning it over to look at the faint blue veins showing through the thin skin. I can still feel the indentations of Ellie’s fingerprints there.

And I bolt. I think I hear Kyle say something behind me but don’t know what. All I can focus on is the sound of my feet pounding on the pavement. I don’t know where I’m going. Every step I take rattles through my chest, my heart constricting and expanding painfully against my ribs.

Eventually I stumble on a crack in the sidewalk and only just manage to keep myself from falling. I lower myself to sit on the curb. I take a ragged breath and pull out my phone and search for theMountain Valley Herald,followed by Ellie’s name. My heart won’t stop pounding as my finger taps enter.

The article comes up, the very first hit. The one that’s been burned in my brain, even though I haven’t looked at it in fifteen years.

Has it changed?

I scan over the words. It talks about the senior party, but it doesn’t mention how I practically forced Ellie to come. How I told her we were invited. How her face dropped when she found out I lied.

I inhale.

Ellie’s underaged drinking is noted. But it doesn’t mention how we drank so much that it was unbelievable we were still standing. It makes zero note of the people who encouraged us, manipulated us, bullied us... for years.

It doesn’t mention that when a song started playing, Ellie started to sing along, but her voice was slurred and everyone started laughing at her.

And now that song stops me in my tracks.

The article says that she wandered off into the woods. It doesn’t say that it took me ten minutes before I realized and went searching for her.

It doesn’t say how raw my throat went as I screamed her name, looking for her, begging her to come back.

It doesn’t describe the sound of the snap. The sound I couldn’t quite place.

How Ellie slipped and hit her head on a rock and that was that.

The article says that a friend reported the incident.

It doesn’t talk about how impossible it was for me to leave her body, even to get help.

But I did. I left her.

When we returned to her, she was so cold. Her fingers weren’t even a person’s anymore. I can still feel them. And now touching people feels impossible sometimes.

The article says it was determined that she died instantly. But how can that be? How can everything that we are disappear so quickly?