straight,” she said. “You’re saying that now that you know you went into the room, you think you actually…what, found her body and didn’t tell anyone?”
“Or saw something I shouldn’t have. Like who was in there with her.” The thought blinked on like a lightbulb: This would explain so much. Lindsay Bach’s Pathetic Decade. I’d fact-checked a story once about the health consequences of harboring secrets, how the chronic gush of stress hormones eats away at the brain. What if you don’t even know about the skeletons in the closet?
“Or you walked into an empty room. Or your friends were in there refreshing their drinks or smoking pot or something and the time stamp is an hour off. I mean, right?”
“Maybe. But, Tessa, what if I saw, like, the smoking gun and was too drunk to realize it? Up until this morning I was convinced that I’d just gone to the show with my friends and then gone straight home. Or what if I said something awful to her right as she was feeling depressed and had a gun at her disposal? I was raring to tell her off, you know.”
“I thought you were convinced it wasn’t a suicide now.”
“I don’t knooow. Ugh, I just wish I could remember this moment. I had no idea I blacked out, and that’s really scary.” A headache throbbed against my nose and forehead. Beneath it, behind my eyes and temples, was a shadowy thought, one I desperately didn’t want to dredge up.
“Okay, okay.” She refolded her legs under her. “This is…you’re not thinking straight. Let’s talk this out. What do you remember from that night?”
I’d gone over it so many times in the weeks and months after, and then again this week, my brain finding and then easing into those deep, ancient grooves. “I went over to their apartment around maybe nine thirty, normal time,” I said, “and Edie wasn’t there. I was on edge because I’d pumped myself up to have this friend breakup talk with her. I kinda casually asked where she was and somebody just said she was around and would maybe meet us later.” I could see exactly where each of us was sitting and even knew what I was wearing: a way-too-short denim romper and white Keds. “The rest of us were pregaming in the apartment. I think Alex was playing bartender. And I was drinking extremely fast because I was nervous about seeing Edie. I was already feeling pretty tipsy by the time we went up to the roof. And then Kevin left for his gig.”
I finished my tea, now cold. “We were up there for a while, and then we came back inside and walked over to the party. I mean, I don’t really remember walking there, like actually being in the staircase, but why would I?”
“Then what?”
I sighed. “The band was like synth-pop—god, what’d we call it? Synth-wave? Chillwave! We were dancing like idiots and bouncing off each other and stuff. And then I had that moment of clarity when you realize you’re too drunk, so I left and a random girl smoking outside helped me hail a taxi. I couldn’t stop thanking her.” I swallowed. “That’s what I remember clearly. But Sarah swears I never came to the show. I figured she was just remembering it wrong.”
“It sounds like you remember it pretty well.”
“I thought so, too. But the video…”
The thought again, beating at the inside of my skull. I resisted as it threatened to take shape, to crystallize. My eyes welled with tears, and Tessa pushed me on: “What happened the next day?”
“Well, I woke up at home on my bed, fully dressed. I had the worst hangover of my life, which made the entire next day especially fucking surreal.”
“God. I’m so sorry, Linds.”
“It was bad. My phone was dead, so by the time I saw all the texts, the cops and everyone had already left. I was so sick, I remember throwing up in a sewer grate on my walk to the subway and then buying Gatorade at a bodega and rinsing out my mouth. So gross. When I got there, Sarah was sitting on these steps just outside the front door, and her face—oh my god. I sat down next to her—I was, like, fighting the urge to vomit, and my head hurt so bad I could barely look at her straight—and she just looked at me and she goes, ‘I found her.’ God, it broke my heart.”