THEN

Kevin McArthur’s investigation never went to trial. There was insufficient evidence to pursue the case further or define the extent of his involvement. Too many factors made Flora’s suicide solely her own doing. There was her history of so-called depression, the text messages sent from her phone showing a crescendo of paranoia, her browser search about how to tell if you’ve been raped—a rape nobody had any information about, if it even happened. Kevin disappeared as the media frenzy finally died down. The girls from Butts C sent nasty emails to his lawyer and letters to news stations in an attempt to keep the case alive, but none of their pleas made a difference.

It was over, and I could breathe again. Except the air was different where I lived now. Wesleyan had become hostile, not just the people but the campus itself, an animal wanting to buck me off its back. Sometimes on my walk back to the Butts from the CFA, music would leak from the chapel, bells not chiming church music but contorting into songs Flora used to listen to in our room. I later learned that students were allowed to play the chapel’s bells, but I never knew who decided on those songs. Or if they only existed in my head.

I had avoided going to hell, but the rest of freshman year was my own personal purgatory. I had what I had always wanted—attention. But it was the wrong kind. At best, girls were cordial, smiling politely when I sat next to them in lectures or perched on the end of a table in MoCon. At worst, they were downright brutal.

I saw Sully around campus and even in classes occasionally—Wesleyan made it hard to hide, and sometimes it felt like the campus was trying to shove us together, chess pieces on a board. I didn’t get close or let myself know if she was watching. The only thing worse than being under Sully’s constant gaze was being cast out of it. She was perpetually flanked by girls like her but lesser. Baby Sullies, my replacements. There was no shortage of people to worship at her golden altar. The same rumors that became my yoke were shiny jewelry around her neck.

I still couldn’t let go, so I replayed on my laptop the same clip of Flora’s mom leaving court after the hearing, shielding her face from the cameras with a trenchcoated arm, Flora’s sister, Poppy, trailing behind her, half a foot taller than she had been last year. Not a little girl anymore. Poppy’s face had already hardened into a scowl. Pissed off at the world. Poppy had a reason to be pissed off. Her sister had been taken away from her.

And the boy who took her was free. In the eyes of the law, Flora was disturbed, a mentally ill young woman who couldn’t handle the pressures of being away at school, and after an argument with her boyfriend, she made the tragic choice to take her own life. That was what it was—a choice.

I ignored an email from Poppy that came two weeks before the end of freshman year. A plea to talk about her sister and Kevin. I couldn’t bring myself to answer it and lie, so I deleted it instead but never forgot what it said. Did something happen to Flora before that night? Did Kevin do something? Please, I need to know, and you knew her better than anyone at school. She said she trusted you.

I didn’t sleep for days, and I bombed my final exams. She trusted you.

That was the last mistake she ever made.