gut twisted as if being wrung.
She reminded herself to breathe slowly, in and out. Sasha looked strikingly beautiful, with her fine blond hair swept into a chignon, fancy gold earrings, and a black dress that looked like Chanel. She wore only light makeup, but she stood out, naturally stunning. Julian was next to her, tall and gym-trim in a well-tailored dark suit with a print tie. His hair was finely cut, and his thin lips pursed unhappily. His face had grown longer, but he looked predictably successful.
Allie approached, suppressing her emotions. She’d long suspected that Julian had loaded the gun, but Sasha was also a possibility. She’d never believed for a second that David would have done such a thing. It had haunted her, and at night she imagined each step leading to Kyle’s death, visualizing someone opening the cylinder, loading the bullet, and firing the gun. She blamed herself for Kyle’s death, and now David was dead, another unimaginable thing she could take credit for.
Allie reached the closer group of mourners. The priest was speaking, but she tuned him out, her thoughts racing. Something about seeing Sasha and Julian in the flesh made her doubt her suspicions. They looked like two normal people. How could they have murdered someone? Was she crazy to suspect them? But hadn’t Julian seemed jealous of Kyle? Hadn’t Sasha been angry that Kyle had tricked her? They had all known where the gun was buried, and the bullets, even David. Could his suicide mean he had killed Kyle? He was incapable of such a thing, wasn’t he? And why would David have wanted to hurt Kyle?
Allie flashed to Sasha and Julian sharing the vodka, passing Kyle the gun, racing away through the woods. She had thought about it so many times, but even she had to admit her memories had been eroded by time and emotion. She remembered them talking, shouting directions as they ran away. She remembered them not being as hysterical as she was, but she could have been wrong. She’d learned since that memory could be warped by trauma. She’d never shaken the gruesome image.
Allie wished she could run to Sasha and Julian, grab them, and shake the truth out of them. It took nerve to come to the funeral if David had killed himself over a murder one of them had committed. She even tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, wondering if they had come for the same reason she had. Maybe they’d felt drawn here by a guilty conscience, too. David’s suicide could have provoked in them the same reaction it had in her. An urge to return to where it all began. To each other, after twenty years. To a reckoning.
Allie caught a glimpse of the casket, which was polished walnut with bronze handles. It was so hard to believe that David was inside. He’d become a freelance writer, and she’d read articles he’d posted online from literary journals like Granta, GQ, and tennis magazines. He would reference David Foster Wallace from time to time, and she’d felt so sad when David Foster Wallace had himself committed suicide. She could imagine how devastated David would’ve been.
She’d never spoken to David after what had happened that summer. He wouldn’t look at her if she saw him in the hallway at school. He had taken all AP classes, like her, but was always in the other section. He’d dated a lot and stopped hanging with Sasha, who’d become prom queen. The Bakerite had published where seniors were going to college, and Sasha went to Wake Forest and David to Amherst, like his idol David Foster Wallace. Julian had gone to NYU.
Allie had gone to Penn, where she buried herself in her classes, getting great grades even though she made only a few friends. She struggled with colitis, and lost more weight. Girls in the dorm assumed she had an eating disorder. The song “Fucked Up Girl” was popular, and Allie identified. She graduated magna cum laude and met a law student, Larry Rucci, an outgoing Italian-American from North Jersey, who was chubby, laughed easily, and asked her out. They made a classic pairing of opposites, got married, and now, five years later, were foundering. Opposites don’t attract, they divorce.
Allie always thought of David as her first love, and that the night ended in such a horrific way burned him into her consciousness. The best night of her young life was also the worst, and kissing David would