moment. His hair is tangled and unkempt. He looks up at me, and I recognize the wild, empty expression in his eyes from when he’d stare at me in school. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I said that to get you to come visit me. I didn’t want to disappoint you, but I didn’t know how else to get you here.” He’s talking fast, his words tumbling over each other, like he’s out of practice.
“What?” My voice is small. A high-pitched buzzing starts in my ears. I try to stand, but my knees buckle under the weight of my body and I land back on the stool, hard. “What do you mean?”
He’s quiet for a moment, and then: “You’re looking at me like I’m a monster.” He sounds sad. Bile leaps into my mouth. He shakes his head. “I didn’t think you’d be so scared of me. I lie in bed at night, and the memory of your face is the only thing that keeps me going. Our conversation that night at the pool. You, sitting there all alone, crying. It was fate that I was there to help.” He pauses. “You know, I only went to that party to see you.”
“That party.” This room is stifling. I’m struggling to breathe.
“Yeah—the one Adam had? I’d been planning everything for months—I couldn’t stand it anymore, any of it: The way people walked right by me in the halls like I didn’t matter. Oppenheimer always picking on me in music class. My dad—I had to show him that I have balls, that I’m not a fucking crybaby.” He growls that last word. His lips pucker and turn white. “I was going to wait a couple weeks.” He barks a dry laugh. “But after we talked, it all made sense….It was like everything fell into place. It all came together.” He pauses and looks down for a moment, and when he looks back up, there are tears in his eyes. Tears. “Sometimes I can’t believe I did all that stuff. It’s like…Who is that person? Was that really me? I don’t know. All these thoughts get twisted.” He shakes his head. “But then I remind myself of our conversation, and it all gets easier to manage in my brain.”
My eyelids flutter and my heart skips a beat. “We didn’t talk at that party.” My voice is flat. “We didn’t.” The last part comes out as a whisper, a lie that I can’t quite give up.
On the other side of the Plexiglas, David looks confused. “Yes, we did.”
The buzzing in my head grows louder. We did.
He continues, “You remember. That night. We sat out by the pool. You were crying. Miles was inside somewhere, getting drunk or doing something stupid. You said your parents never cared about you—you felt like you were invisible. You said you hated your brother—you wished he would just disappear.”
“I never said that.” I never said that. I didn’t. I didn’t.
A memory flickers at the corner of my brain.
Did I?
“So I made him disappear for you…” His voice is getting louder. “Tell me you remember, May. Tell me you’re kidding. I thought you’d be happy that he’s finally gone. You’re free.”
“No. I didn’t— I’m not—” I choke on the words. My heart is rattling my rib cage and my breaths are choppy and short. I remember Miles’s words: I saw you outside, talking to that psycho. You guys looked like you had a lot to say to each other.
I hadn’t believed him, not really. Or maybe I had, but I’d buried that belief deep in my core and ignored it, and ignored it, and ignored it, until I thought it had gone away.
But it’s right here in front of me, eyes flashing.
“No. No. No…” I’m shaking so hard that my stool rattles against the linoleum floor. “That’s not what I meant. That’s not what I meant at all.” I force myself to stand. “I need to leave.” I look around for a guard, someone, anyone to help me. Help me. Tears blur my vision. I’m frozen in place. My knees buckle, and I’m forced to grasp the edges of the partition to keep my