Then, several months later, the fourth anniversary came. I’d been at Walmart the night before, buying food that I could stockpile in my dorm room so I wouldn’t have to go out in public the next day. I always skip classes on the anniversary. I tell everyone I have a cold. It’s spring. The weather is changing. Sinuses are the worst. Etc., etc. So far, no one has noticed that my colds coincide with the Ides of March.
Anyway, I was buying groceries for my upcoming anxiety hibernation, and I saw that damn book.
It was there by the cash register, where all of the bestsellers go. Sarah McHale’s face staring out at me. The face I’d seen only seconds before the monster killed her. And, of course, there was the cross.
Notmycross. Not the one they found in the bathroom—the one Sarah McHale had never even seen but somehow ended up being buried with. It was another cross. But that didn’t matter, I guess. It got the point across, it sold the story, who cared if it was accurate?
I stared at that book for a long time. Long enough that the woman in line in front of me noticed.
“Have you read it?” she asked.
I looked at her, and for a minute a bolt of fear shot through me. Did she know who I was? Was she going to lash out at me? Spit on me? Scream at me in the middle of this Walmart checkout line? I could feel my body starting to fold in on itself, but I forced it to be steady.
You’re fine, I thought.She doesn’t know. No one knows. You are Renee now.
The woman was still looking at me, and I had to remind myself of the question she’d just asked. After too long a pause, I managed to shake my head.
“It’s great,” she told me. “The most moving book I ever read. I’ve already read it twice, even though it just came out last week.”
“Just in time for the anniversary,” I said.
The woman must not have heard the note of bitterness in my voice, because she just nodded vigorously. “It’s so hard to believe it was four years ago. It was such a tragedy. I wonder how those other kids are doing. The ones who survived, I mean.”
“Next customer,” the cashier said, and the woman moved forward and began placing her items on the conveyor belt.
“Are you going to buy it?” the woman asked, looking back at me. “You should. It’ll change your life. That girl was such an inspiration. It really reaffirmed my faith.”
“Not today,” I said.
But then, when the woman was gone and the cashier was asking for my items … I don’t know why I did it. Self-destructive behavior. Morbid curiosity. Because part of me wanted to hate-read it. Take your pick. But I reached out, grabbed the copy at the front, and tossed it onto the conveyor belt.
“Glad you changed your mind,” the cashier said as he scanned the book. “You won’t regret it.”
I already knew he was wrong.
When I got home, I barricaded myself in my room and changed into sweatpants.
The next day, I tried to do anything I could to keep my mind off the shooting. I tried listening to the happiest, most annoyingly upbeat music on my iPod. I tried watching some romantic comedy one of my friends had recommended to me. I even tried studying for my organic chemistry midterm. But nothing worked. My thoughts kept circling and circling, always coming back to that day four years ago. That bathroom. Those girls. That gunshot.
And then there was freaking Ashley Chambers.
When I logged into my email, I had a message from her. I don’t know how she got my contact info. From Lee or Eden, I guessed. But she’d decided to reach out to me. On that day of all days. I was so furious, just at the sight of her name in my inbox, that I almost deleted it without reading.
Curiosity beat out indignation, and I opened the email.
It was short. Just a few lines. She said she’d been thinking about me since last year, when Lee started telling people the truth about Sarah. She said she was sorry, and that she wanted to reach out sooner but was nervous. She hoped I was doing okay, and she understood if I didn’t want to write her back.
Well, that was good, because she wasn’t going to get a response from me. I deleted the message and closed my laptop. Maybe it made Ashley feel better to apologize, but it made no difference to me. And I really wished she’d chosen another day to send that email.
I climbed back into bed and pulled the comforter over my head.
Maybe this sounds weird, but my shoulder hurt. A phantom ache left behind from a bullet wound four years old. It was faint, but there. A reminder that no matter how much that physical scar faded, the hurt might never end. I could go by Renee. I could craft a new history for myself. But this was something I could not escape. Not really.
Eventually I gave into the temptation and picked up the book. It was still in the shopping bag next to my door. It was the last thing I wanted or needed to read right then. But the pull was too strong, and I was weaker than I’d let anyone know.
So, yeah, I read it. I read every damn page. And it made me feel just as awful as you’d expect.
I was only brought up in the book a few times. A passing reference to “rumors” that Sarah’s story wasn’t true. No mention of my name. No mention of the abuse my family and I endured. I was barely more than a footnote.
