When he walked away, Kellie said, “So you want to know how I’m doing. Fine. I’m good. Aside from this weirdo who keeps harassing me.”
“Someone’s harassing you?”
She gave me a pointed look.
“Oh.” I swallowed. “Sorry. I just really wanted to talk to you.”
“About?”
I chewed on my lip and fiddled with the straw in my iced coffee. “Did you hear about Sarah’s parents?”
“What about them?”
“They’re writing a book.”
She shrugged. “Good for them. What’s that got to do with me?”
I blinked at her, baffled. “I mean … it’s going to be about Sarah. About the shooting and what happened in the bathroom that day. You know, the necklace? I’d imagine it’s going to mention you.”
“Seems likely, yeah.”
“Doesn’t that bother you? That people are going to be talking about that again? That they’ll think … that that story …” I was struggling to find the right words. Kellie was staring at me from behind her glasses, looking at me like I was the most annoying, foolish person on the planet. Maybe I was. Finally I blurted out, “Don’t you want people to know the truth?”
She stood up. “I need coffee.”
I watched her walk to the counter, listened as she ordered a large black coffee. Honestly, I was relieved to hear the same amount of disdain and exasperation in her voice when she talked to the barista as when she spoke to me.
When she came back and sat down, cup in hand, she ignored my last question. Instead, she said, “I go by Renee now.”
“Uh, okay.”
“It’s my middle name,” she said. “I also legally changed my last name. Hyphenated both of my parents’ names. Gaynor-Marks. Mom went back to Marks when she and Dad got divorced. Anyway. Almost everyone knows me as Renee Marks now.”
“I, um … I like it. It’s a nice name.”
Yes, I know. I sounded painfully ridiculous. But I had no idea what else to say to this. What is the protocol when someone tells you they’ve changed their name? Was I supposed to call her Renee now? Was that what she was trying to tell me? Still, if I hadn’t been so anxious, I probably could have come up with a better response than “It’s a nice name.”
Kellie—Renee?—didn’t even seem to hear me, though. She just kept talking, like I hadn’t said a word.
“My friends know I’m from Virgil County,” she said. “The close ones, anyway. Everyone else just thinks I’m from Illinois since that’s where we moved for my senior year. But even the people who know, they don’t know I was there. I tell everyone I moved before the shooting happened. They don’t ask me questions about it. Why would they? I doubt most of them even remember who the hell Kellie Gaynor was. And if they did, well, they don’t know her. The only person from Virgil County they know is Renee.”
“You mean you haven’t toldanyof your friends the truth?”
She took a sip of her coffee. “Whatisthe truth, Lee?”
“I … I don’t know,” I admitted. “I just know the necklace wasn’t Sarah’s. I know that she didn’t say anything tohimand that whatever Ashley overheard—”
“Ashley? Is that bitch how that stupid rumor got started?”
I cringed a little. “She’s not as bad as you think. She’s actually a really good person.”
Kellie rolled her eyes. “Yeah. I don’t really care what kind of person she is. But you’re right. It wasn’t Sarah’s necklace. And I am the one who talked to the asshole. That’s at least part of the truth. But no. I haven’t told any of my friends. I haven’t told anyone—or talked to anyone—about it in three years.”
“But don’t you want people to know? What really happened?”
“I used to,” she said. “I told everyone I could when I was sixteen, when I thought it actually mattered.”
“It still matters, though.”
