Epilogue

ONE YEAR LATER

HOW MANY WOMEN DID IT take to be believed? Tessa had thought there would be power in numbers, but if you were a teen girl, that wasn’t necessarily the case. The combined testimonies of her, Lilly, and Mel added up to what law enforcers could disturbingly easily write off as hysteria, a twisted friendship pact of some kind. A “witch hunt.”

Which made no sense—were they supposed to be the witches or the ones hunting?

Mel had been terrified to say anything in the first place. Not only had Mr. Green been threatening her to stay quiet, but she knew her own role in it looked bad. She’d had the gun with her that night because she was afraid, just of being out alone in the dark. Plain and simple. Because of Mr. Green, she’d felt afraid all the time, really.

It had all first begun when Mr. Green, subbing in for a student English tutor, had begun tutoring Mel once a week. It had at first been the sum of a couple of unwelcome touches, a smile that suggested more, that had left her bewildered and unnerved, but without any concrete wrongdoing to point to.

It had escalated quickly, though, making her feel more and more uncertain. He’d talked about their special connection, and why it had to remain a secret. In her longing for a boyfriend, and status, she’d kind of thought it was flattering, even though it scared her too. It was only when it went past a certain point—asking her to do things physically she didn’t want to, not knowing how to say no, how to get away, going too far—that she knew for sure it wasn’t okay, that she wasn’t safe. That she wanted it to end. And he wouldn’t let it. Told her what everyone would say about her, they’d call her dirty, or they’d think she was a liar. What would her own mother say?

He’d been right, she realized. When she tried to talk to her mom, Mrs. Knox had slapped her, told her to shut up and stop inventing daydreams. Her mom thought she was saving herself for marriage, or at least her midtwenties. What was even the point? The path of least resistance had been to latch on to someone else, someone who made her feel safe. Dusty.

It had worked. Mr. Green seemed to have moved on. She thought—she prayed, literally—that it was all over, that the whole thing had been a wild misunderstanding, even though she knew deep down that she might never feel completely whole or safe again. She’d lost her virginity over winter break—to Dusty, by choice. Still, she’d only done it to try to write over the past. She’d cried about it for weeks, in private. She’d imagined it would be so different. But still, she wanted only to move on.

Except at night, when the memory of it all would often surface, and she grew paranoid that someone could hurt her, could violate her again, at any moment. That her body was no longer her own. That no walls would ever make her safe. That was why she’d gotten used to going down into her dad’s den and gazing at the guns, imagining what it would feel like to hold one—to point one at Drew Green.

She just never imagined that the opportunity would come. She had only been expecting to see Patrick out there at the edge of the cul-de-sac, where they’d agreed to meet so she could buy those anti-anxieties she could no longer sleep without. The gun was gratuitous, but it made her feel better, and she figured she’d be home in five minutes and simply put it back where she’d gotten it.

Of course, that wasn’t at all how it ended up happening. Not when she cut back through the woods.

The week after that night—the night Kit died—Mr. Green’s attentions had turned back toward her, but unlike before, there was an open fierceness now. He made it explicitly clear that she couldn’t tell anyone about that night without implicating herself. Made it clear, too, that he thought it was all her fault that Kit was dead. She’d believed him.

Needless to say, it hadn’t been easy for Tessa and Lilly to convince her to come forward, even after she told them all of this. “What if no one believes me anyway?” she’d sobbed. “What will my parents do with me? What will he do to me?”

“He can’t do anything—not anymore,” Tessa had said confidently, though she hadn’t been entirely sure, deep down. It wasn’t like any of them had any experience with this. They couldn’t say how it would go. Would there be an epic trial that would take over their lives for the remainder of high school? Would they be dismissed outright? Would Mel be arrested for her part in Kit’s death?

The possibilities seemed overwhelming and endless, but one thing held Tessa to her determination—the truth.

The truth had to matter. For Kit’s sake. Even if it was worse, in a way, that she’d died knowing it.

Because they knew now that Kit had really thought she’d been in love. And Tessa couldn’t blame her for wanting that. Kit had had what everyone else wanted: the reputation of being the good girl, the adored, the perfect one. But all she’d wanted was to fall, to burst the bubble, to live.

And what damning evidence did they really have, anyway? A bunch of love poems—none of them actually addressed to Drew. Fancy underwear, a coincidental tattoo—so what? They could prove Mr. Green had bought the ring from a pawn shop, but that meant nothing when it came to the actual case. The gun would only have Kit’s DNA on it—and Mel had cleaned it meticulously anyway. The threatening notes had been from Mel, in her attempt to protect Tessa from Mr. Green. Mel was afraid, too, of what would happen if Tessa thought Mel had killed Kit on purpose. And then, Tessa’s visions. Her chimerism, which she still claimed had helped her make the final connection of what had happened that night, before Mel admitted it to them. But they knew trying to convince authorities that Tessa had literally dreamed it through Kit’s eyes would be going too far. They’d all be laughed at.

So what did they have?

Nothing.

Nothing but the truth.

And so they told it—as much of it as they could.

And then they waited.

It was enough . . . at least to call in more people for questioning, including Mr. Green and his fiancée. It was enough to rerun fingerprints on the truck, which was still in custody—where they found a match to Green at last, on the glove compartment. Where, incidentally, he must have grabbed Boyd’s hunting hat due to the heaviness of the snow—explaining why he looked like Boyd when Lilly saw him out there in the dark.

It was enough that they realized the keys in the ignition had been a spare set, the original still in Boyd’s bedroom, as he’d claimed all along.

There was nothing to prove that Boyd had been there that night. Boyd was off the hook. Lilly’s original claim had been debunked.

But that meant she wasn’t a credible witness.

The whole thing was a complicated mess.

They feared it would never be resolved.

Mr. Green resigned, as he’d told Tessa he would, and they heard rumors he was moving one town over. That felt too close. It felt like a complete erasure. It seemed like maybe nothing would ever be done to resolve what had happened. That justice wouldn’t be served. Tessa started to feel lost as to what would count as justice anyway. Nothing would undo what he’d done to Mel. Nothing would bring Kit back. Nothing would fix the shattering.

And then.

And then.

And then.

The rumors had gotten out.

Three more girls came forward.

One from their school, and two more from the college where he’d TA’d before he got the job in Devil’s Lake.

Evidence mounted slowly, like snow.

Another winter came and went.

Eventually Mr. Green was found guilty at trial—not of murder, but of pretty much every disgusting thing he had done.

That night, Boyd, Tessa, Lilly, Patrick, Mel, Dusty, Dar, and Toma had all been together—they’d become a kind of pack. Oh, and Greg Heiser, too—of spice-rack Halloween costume fame. For whatever reason, he was there as well. They were at the Malloys’ house, watching a movie, when Tessa and Lilly heard their mom give a little shriek from the kitchen.

They ran in, and she was crying over the phone. Somehow, Tessa had known, before her mom explained anything. It had finally happened.

Which meant her job chasing the truth was finally over.

A part of her melted into sadness at the thought—it was really over, and all that was left of the anger was the long stretch of grief, of missing, that would last forever.

The three of them held each other in a tight group, and eventually, the rest had come into the room to see what was going on, and the hug had turned massive.

From the center of it, Tessa felt surrounded by life.

Even though there were tears, and even though it still hurt—sometimes so much that it was hard to breathe—she realized that somehow, without her looking, she had begun to live again, already. Life had a sneaky way of doing that to you, of marching you forward like a bossy older sister. She’d begun to accept that while death could be random, crude, and completely unfair, life was something else: something wild, uncertain, and full of possibility.

And she knew, as she was warmed by all those arms, all that love, all that belief in the truth—all that knowledge of the light that reaches you even from the depths of darkness and space—that she was ready now, at least for that much.

Ready to dive into this life of hers and find out what was next.