Lunch is worse. The cafeteria buzzes with conversations about weekend plans and relationship drama and college prep courses—the urgent concerns of people who believe the world operates according to fair rules. I sit alone at a corner table, picking at a sandwich while listening to fragments of their discussions.
"Did you see what happened onThe Bachelorlast night?"
"I can't believe Mrs. James assigned another essay due Monday."
"My parents are totally freaking out about SAT scores."
Their problems feel fictional, like complaints from characters in a television show about privileged teenagers who've never encountered real darkness. How do you care about reality TV when you've watched someone perform surgery on a living person? How do you stress about college applications when you've participated in arranging a corpse with clinical precision?
How do you pretend that any of this matters when you've seen what justice actually looks like?
"Delilah?" Jessica slides into the seat across from me, her expression carefully arranged into concern. "I just wanted to say I'm really sorry about your dad. If you need anything…."
She trails off, waiting for me to either accept her sympathy or break down crying so she can comfort me. It's the same script everyone uses—offer vague support, wait for an emotional response that makes them feel helpful and important.
"Thank you," I say, giving her the smile I've perfected over the past month. Grateful but fragile, touched by her kindness but still too wounded to fully engage. "That means a lot."
Jessica relaxes, her duty performed. "I can't even imagine what you're going through. Losing a parent like that…and in such a violent way…."
She shudders delicately, enjoying the drama of discussing real tragedy while remaining safely removed from its implications. This is entertainment to her, a break from the monotony of teenage concerns.
"The police think they'll catch whoever did it," I say, because that's what she wants to hear. "Detective Rivas says they have leads."
It's a lie, of course. The investigation has gone nowhere because there's nothing to investigate. Kent left no evidence, no witnesses, no trail that could lead back to him. But Jessica doesn't need to know that the crime will never be solved because it was perfect in its execution.
"That's good," she says, though she sounds almost disappointed that the mystery might be resolved. "I hope they find them soon."
I nod in agreement while thinking about the letter waiting in my backpack, Kent's latest response to questions I've been asking about methodology and philosophy. Three pages of careful handwriting that contain more truth about justice and necessity than everything I've heard in this building combined.
The conversation with Jessica limps along for a few more minutes before she excuses herself to join her real friends at another table. I watch her go, noting how quickly she sheds the artificial concern now that her social obligation has been fulfilled.
This is what normal looks like. People who care about grades and gossip and television shows, who treat violence as something that happens to other people in other places. People who've never had to choose between survival and honesty, who've never learned that sometimes love looks like murder if you understand the context.
People who would never thank a killer for setting them free.
The afternoon drags through Chemistry and English Literature, both classes requiring me to engage with conceptsand assignments that feel increasingly abstract. When the final bell rings, I'm exhausted from the effort of maintaining my performance, of pretending to care about molecular structures and literary themes when all I want is to get home and read Kent's letter.
Outside, groups of students cluster around cars and buses, making plans for weekend activities that sound impossibly foreign to my current existence. Parties and movies and shopping trips—the casual social interactions that define normal teenage life. A life I never really had, and certainly can't access now.
I walk to Janine's car where she's waiting with a smile that's both genuine and carefully modulated to avoid seeming too cheerful. She's learned to read my moods, to gauge how much normal interaction I can handle on any given day.
"How was school?" she asks as I slide into the passenger seat.
"Fine," I say, which has become my standard response to everything. Because how do you explain that you spent six hours surrounded by people who might as well be different species? How do you tell someone who's trying so hard to help you heal that the only thing that makes sense anymore is correspondence with a serial killer?
Janine doesn't push for details, just nods and starts the drive home. Through the window, I watch the familiar neighborhoods pass by—houses where normal families live normal lives, where parents don't terrorize their children and teenagers worry about typical problems and no one has to carry the weight of deadly secrets.
It looks peaceful. Safe. Like a world I might have belonged to once, before I learned what monsters look like and what it costs to stop them.
That world feels as fictional as the problems my classmates discuss in cafeteria conversations. Real life is darker, more complex, built on foundations of violence and necessity that most people never have to acknowledge.
Real life is the letters waiting in my backpack, written by someone who understands that justice sometimes requires blood and that gratitude can exist alongside grief.
Everything else is just performance.
***
Back in my room at Janine's house, I finally allow the mask to slip. The door closes behind me with a soft click, and I sink onto the bed with exhaustion that goes deeper than physical tiredness. Six hours of performing normalcy, of pretending to care about assignments and social dynamics, and the carefully orchestrated drama of teenage life.
