I reached up and touched the soft fluff at the top of my head, barely long enough to call a pixie cut. The hairdresser had had no choice but to buzz most of it off after I’d attacked it with the kitchen scissors a few weeks earlier. “Yeah. I, um, didn’t like it long anymore.”
“It looks nice. Very edgy,” she said. “Guess what I’m doing right now.”
“Watching TV?”
“Well, yeah,” she said. “But not just any TV. Saturday morning cartoons. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve watched Saturday morning cartoons? Because I don’t even think I remember the last time.”
“Me either,” I said, glancing up at the television screen. It was some show I didn’t recognize. “I don’t think I even know what airs on Saturday mornings anymore.”
“Let’s find out,” she said.
You’d think it would’ve been weirder, seeing her for the first time since the shooting. Especially since we weren’t friends before. I expected things to be awkward or depressing. She was still in the hospital, after all. And maybe there was a little bit of unease at first, on my part, but that faded fast. We watched cartoons for a while, Ashley occasionally asking me about the other survivors: how Denny’s physical therapy was going, if I’d talked to Miles recently. She told me about one of the cute male nurses and how she was finishing out her senior year with a tutor.
I think one reason it felt so difficult to be around people back then—and even now sometimes—is that they only had two responses to the shooting. They either wanted to talk about it constantly, ask questions, hear the details, or they wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened at all. Like maybe if no one mentioned it, I’d forget. Ashley didn’t do either of those things. We didn’t talk much about the shooting, but when it came up, we didn’t try to ignore it, either.
And when it did come up, toward the end of our visit, it gave me my answer about why Ashley had only connected five of the six survivors.
“It’s crazy about Sarah, huh?”
The question seemed to come out of nowhere. I turned away from the television and focused on Ashley, but she wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes were still on the cartoons, but I noticed that she was twisting locks of her dirty-blond hair around her fingers.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s … it’s something.”
“She was so brave,” Ashley said.
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. Brave. It had only been six weeks, and I already hated that word. At the time, I was convinced the only one of us who had really been brave was Miles, and even he changed the subject any time someone mentioned how he’d thrown himself on Ashley.
Sarah hadn’t been brave. Sarah had been terrified.
But before I could even think about how to bring that up to Ashley, she continued. “It’s disgusting what Kellie Gaynor is trying to do.”
I blinked at her, confused. “Kellie?”
Ashley turned her head to face me then. “I figured, of all people, you’d be the most angry. Well, you and Sarah’s parents.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You haven’t heard?” Ashley asked. “Oh. I assumed you … Well, prepare to be furious, I guess. Kellie has been going around telling everyone that necklace—the one the police found in the bathroom—was hers.”
Her words settled slowly, bringing with them a sinking realization. I’d known the necklace wasn’t Sarah’s as soon as I heard the rumors, but I’d never considered who it might have actually belonged to. We lived in a rural, religious community, and that was a highly trafficked girls’ bathroom. That cross necklace could have been lost earlier in the day. It could have belonged to any girl at VCHS.
I’m ashamed to admit this, but I’d never even considered that it might have been Kellie’s, even though she was the only other person in the bathroom with Sarah and me when the shooting happened. She didn’t strike me as the kind of girl who’d wear a cross around her neck, so I’d never put those puzzle pieces together.
But she was saying it was hers.
And I knew it wasn’t Sarah’s.
That was why she was being harassed. That was why Ashley had excluded her from our survivors’ network.
Why we were five instead of six.
“I know,” Ashley said, clearly misinterpreting the look on my face. “It’s ridiculous. I can’t believe anyone would be awful enough to try and take this away from Sarah. But at least no one believes her. I mean, who would believeherof all people … ? Lee?”
I was on my feet, though I didn’t remember standing up. I cleared my throat. Then did it again. But the tightness there didn’t want to go away. I was surprised and confused. I should’ve corrected her then, but it would’ve meant explaining the whole truth about Sarah, and I wasn’t sure how to even begin with that yet.
“It’s been an hour,” I managed to say. “Mom is probably waiting for me. I should go.”
“Oh, okay,” Ashley said. “Perfect timing, actually. My parents should be here soon. They promised to bring me Long John Silver’s for lunch.”
