But I can’t deal withimportantthings right now.
21
PANDORA
I don’t slam my dorm room door shut, because I’m not an immature brat who takes her feelings out on inanimate objects.
And also because I really don’t need Becky across the hall to come and knock on my door and ask if everything’s okay. It’s two in the fucking morning, Becky, just go to sleep.
The flowers on the table are bleeding again, the pool of blood around the vase growing larger with every day. Soon I’ll only have the skeleton of a flower remaining.
People collect dead flowers, right, and hang them up around the room?
Why the fuck would anyone want dead flowers?
I go into Samantha’s bedroom and lay down on her bed. I kick off my shoes, then reach for her tablet.
Reminder: Tablet is in quiet mode. Consider going to bed.
I tap the message away. Samantha apparently needed reminders about when to sleep. Or maybe that was her asshole parents, insisting she not have a social life past 6 p.m.?
I go to her email again. The inbox is less cluttered now that I unsubscribed her from all the Christian newsletters. No more inspirational speeches to help her get through the day.
She’s probably dead, anyway.
No.
I can’t believe that. There’s no body. If there’s no body, there’s no crime.
Like Zayden.
Nobody has found his body. They can’t, because it’s nothing but ash now. That means Zayden is still alive.
There’s a single new email from Samantha’s older brother.
“You’re breaking Mom’s heart. Call her, please. We’re getting worried.”
Huh. I didn’t know she had a brother.
I do a search for all emails from her brother. He’s really nice, but Samantha never replied to a single one.
That’s weird, right? Why would she not respond?
But she barely responded to the emails from her parents.
Were her parents like Rachel’s, then? Did Samantha hate going home too? I scroll through more and more emails, but all I learn is that Samantha’s family is religious as fuck and her dad is a dick. I already knew that part.
I go back to the newest emails. There’s another one, this time from one of Samantha’s church friends.
“Hey, it’s been a while. This is your roommate, right? Make sure she bathes before she touches anything!”
Yeah, it’s been a while. It’s been over a month.
A full month, and this bitch doesn’t care that Samantha hasn’t reached out? All she did was send a video of me getting bombarded by piss balloons!
Nobody even cares about Samantha.
I’m the only one who does.
