Page 21

The first thing I do is send Felicity my catalog. It’s a sprawling spreadsheet crammed with drop-down categories, color-coded rows, sorting tables, the works. Felicity makes a low sound of appreciation as they scroll through row after row of links to podcast episodes, Wikipedia pages, TV show scripts, newspaper articles, forum threads, and self-published books. I have Dad’s Wikipedia page, at least, memorized. Graham Nathaniel Slaughter (born June X, 19XX), also known as the Charlottesville Strangler, the Beast of 495, or, for most of his active years, the DC Ripper, is an American kidnapper, torturer, rapist, and serial killer. It’s unnerving to have it so boiled down, like everything he did could possibly be contained in one sentence.

At the bottom of the catalog, we get into the miscellanea of it all. Missing persons bulletins for victims. Reports of located bodies that would eventually be recognized as failed disposals. Online tabloid articles from the height of the DC Ripper hysteria: POLICE SAY DC WOMEN TARGETED BY SADISTIC KILLER. I’ve mentally added Felicity’s podcast episode and the Hexagon Productions documentary, but haven’t figured out which tags to use yet.

While Felicity clicks through whatever links catch their attention, I lean back against the uncomfortable wooden chair, staring at the glass-and-metal library ceiling. One of the gardening club’s pumpkins has a vine creeping over the skylight. Usually, the library is stiflingly warm due to being built like a greenhouse, but it’s tolerable for once. Clouds are coming in.

“So,” Felicity says at some point, gesturing at the screen of catalog items. “Which one of these is, like, the worst?”

I roll my head to face them. “What do you mean, ‘worst.’ It all sucks.”

Especially the William Campbell video. If we’re defining worst by sheer damage done, that one’s pretty up there. Last year, it got reposted on Dad’s subreddit, and Mom’s comments were flooded for days.

But apparently that’s not what Felicity means. “The one that’s …” They think. “The one that gets you the most incorrect.”

I take a tiny lock of hair from the nape of my neck and tug on it the slightest bit.

Nobody’s ever asked me that before.

“That one.” I point to one of the two TV listings: a police procedural that scours the headlines for plot ideas. They never bothered to ask permission, either—just churned out the episode before Dad had even been behind bars a year. Tagged “fiction,” “video,” and “fuck you.”

I ask, “Have you seen this?”

Felicity nods, because of course they have.

“Then you know how they wrote me.”

“For my notes,” Felicity muses, “you tell me.”

From my tugging, two strands of hair snap from their follicles.

“I can’t get over that they let the actress stay blond,” I say. “Make her a redhead and fucking own what you’re doing, right?”

I try to leave it there, I want to leave it there, but I can’t. We both know that’s not what I’m really upset about.

“They had her setting fires,” I mutter, twisting the broken strands of hair between my fingers until they cut into the skin. “Hurting animals. Pulling wings off flies, that kind of shit. And there’s that one scene of the mom waking up and finding her about to—”

Deep breath.

I say, “All that, and in real life, I was borderline mute and practically catatonic the entire trial. I wasn’t torturing cats or whatever. I was in the hospital because I wouldn’t eat.”

The episode, the video of William Campbell, Mom’s social media pages, every video, every podcast, they all have one thing in common: I’m never actually a person. I’m a story to be unraveled or projected onto. A modern-day circus freak. Living clickbait.

Felicity says, “Oh.”

Then, fiddling with one of their bandages as if they’re not quite sure about the words, they say, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” I hate when people apologize to me—and also, if Felicity were actually sorry, they wouldn’t be putting me through this. “Can we get to the point?”

There’s a moment where we both sit there, recalibrating, not looking at each other.

“Right,” Felicity eventually says. “Okay. Um. Does the documentary crew know you’re doing this?”

“Absolutely not.”

“And how much do you remember?”

“About Jane Doe? Not her name, clearly,” I say. “And her face, barely. She was white. And blond, I’m pretty sure.”

“You don’t remember her face?”