look up at her and she meets my eye, staring as if across all ten years.
A bang at the door.
“Please help me!” I scream, before I can think. “She has a gun!”
Later I’ll realize that my instincts were ahead of me, that I’d noticed she hadn’t clicked off the safety yet. But I don’t know it yet, so she just looks at the door in alarm, and I tuck one foot under me and stand and heave into her with all my might, the lamp dragging across the floor behind me, and the banging continues and I scream, “Kick it in!” and we both fall into a jumble, Tessa and me, and I can’t use my arms to catch myself, and so her body breaks my fall.
* * *
The following hours and days I can barely remember, my brain hazing out like it’d just exhausted itself. 2009 all over again: sterile interrogation rooms, dazed calls and texts from other people in my life.
It’s explained to me over and over again until it sticks: When I followed the link from Damien’s email to the web-based audio app, I’d inadvertently uploaded the file into his account, where he’d found it that same morning. He called both Tessa and me, and then 911; he was on his way, but the cops beat him to my door. Jenna Teresa Hoppert was arrested on the spot and charged with all sorts of things, most notably Edie’s murder. I remember her stepping all over the fallen photos as two police officers led her out my front door.
* * *
I get three days off work, which feels simultaneously absurd and reasonable; I imagine my higher-ups deliberating over this, frowning and arguing over what feels right. The news vultures barely pick up the story, and I’m surprised, given that Edie was so young and beautiful and Tessa’s and my jobs are both at least in the top quartile of interesting. There’s a bombing in Dublin and no one cares about us washed-up hipsters, histrionic and grown. I’m relieved, I notice, taking stock of my emotions: grateful no one expects me to pant out the story like someone on a reality show. I feel a weird satisfaction in keeping it private, tucking it into the past where someday maybe it’ll grow soft and smoky and eventually dissipate.
Damien keeps me company whenever I ask him to, and we take turns comforting each other when a wave of horror comes crashing through. For the first time, I see him cry, and after a few times he stops trying to conceal his tears from me. The lead detective checks on me regularly, like a sweet old neighbor, and he’s reminded me a few times that I’ll need to testify at the trial. It won’t be for a few years, he says, which makes me feel sleepy and old, that this ordeal will stretch all stringy until I’m in my late thirties. Like I’m so adult now that three years is nothing. Do juveniles awaiting sentencing get the speedy public trials we’ve all been promised? Do they hurry things along for teenagers, for whom each month is a brave eternity?
Tessa never contacts me, but I know she’s growing bigger, rounder, through some incredible yet banal alchemy, and though I can’t explain why, I catch myself counting down the months until her due date. I don’t speak to Will, either, but I feel a balloon of sadness every time I think of him; I know what he saw in sweet, funny Tessa, and he didn’t deserve any of this. Damien talks to him sometimes, over email, I think, but I stop him the first time he tries to tell me how Tessa’s doing, where she’s being held, the legal calisthenics Will is performing on behalf of her and their unborn child. I have a feeling it’ll be a girl, and I can’t help thinking I’ll meet her someday, know her as my shape-shifting friend’s final iteration, giraffe-eyed and innocent and so sure of her goodness.
Word spreads quickly to Alex, Sarah, and Kevin, and one by one they reach out to say something kind, something supportive and nonjudgmental, never mind that I’ve been best friends with Edie’s killer for years now. Kevin suggests a reunion sometime in the fall, and he somehow makes it sound jubilant and not at all macabre, and for some reason I agree and am surprised to find myself looking forward to it.