I did try to tell Sarah’s parents the truth after the shooting.

It was late July, about two weeks before the school reopened, and the McHales had invited me for dinner at their house.

I hadn’t wanted to go, honestly. Not because I didn’t like the McHales—they’d been a second family to me since I was seven and first slept over at their house. Chad, Sarah’s dad, had played board games with us for hours while Ruth, her mom, baked cookies and made us laugh with silly jokes. Then they’d invited me to church with them the next morning. I’d said no. I hadn’t packed church clothes in my overnight bag, and I was embarrassed. They dropped me off at my house on their way to Virgil County Baptist, but Ruth told me that their house was mine now, too. It was the first of dozens—maybe even hundreds—of sleepovers. I was in their home nearly as much as my own. Sometimes it felt like I saw Ruth and Chad more than I saw my mother, who was working two jobs at the time. And almost every week, that offer to attend church with them was made. They never tried to pressure me or make me feel guilty when I said no (and I always said no), but the door stayed open.

I loved the McHales. I still do. Though I doubt they feel the same now.

But that night—the night they invited me for dinner—would have been my first time seeing them since Sarah’s funeral. My first time in their house since the shooting. And the idea of walking through their front door without Sarah waiting on the other side, of sitting on their couch without her flopping down next to me while she apologized for accidentally spoiling an episode of our favorite TV show that I hadn’t gotten to yet, of walking past her bedroom and knowing no one had slept there for months …

I didn’t want to go.

But I also didn’t want to hurt their feelings, and in the end, my need to be polite overruled all my other instincts.

“We’re so glad you were able to come see us, Leanne,” Ruth said, spooning mashed potatoes on a plate before passing it to me. “We wanted to see how you were doing before you head back to school. To catch up. I’m not sure we’ve ever gone this long without seeing you. The house doesn’t feel quite the same without you and …” She trailed off. Her eyes, the same wide, round shape as Sarah’s, dropped to the table, as if she were suddenly interested in the pale yellow tablecloth.

“It’s been a quiet summer,” Chad agreed.

“The, um … the mashed potatoes are delicious,” I said, chewing on my bottom lip. I hadn’t actually tried them yet. I’d been sliding them around on my plate with the tip of my fork, willing myself to develop some sort of appetite.

Ruth probably saw right through me, but still she said, “Thank you, sweetie.”

I’m not sure any of us lifted a bite to our lips as the silent minutes crept passed. Forks scraped against plates, and Chad sawed away at his pork chop for so long that, by the time anyone actually spoke, it had been cut into pieces no bigger than my thumbnail.

“I hear Ashley Chambers is out of the hospital,” Ruth said. “Have you seen her, Leanne?”

“Um, no. I mean, not recently. I saw her in the hospital a few weeks ago but not since she came home.”

“She’s a sweet girl,” Chad said. “I heard she got engaged to that Osborne boy. Oh, what’s his name? Help me out, Ruth. Jennifer and Don’s son. The one with the freckles.”

“Logan,” Ruth said.

“That’s it. Logan Osborne. Good kid. Do you know him, Leanne?”

I shook my head. “No. I think he graduated before I got to VCHS. I didn’t even really know Ashley until … recently.”

“She’s a good girl, that Ashley,” Ruth said. “So is her sister, Tara. She’s a little younger than you and Sarah, I think. Their family has gone to our church for years. Those girls were always so sweet to Sarah. I’m so glad they’ll both be there this Sunday when we announce the billboard.”

“Billboard?”

Ruth glanced at Chad. “Well, it was supposed to be kept quiet until Sunday but … You know that highway you take out of town if you’re headed toward Evansville?”

I nodded, dread already bubbling in my stomach.

“Several churches around Indiana worked together to raise money so we could put up a billboard for Sarah,” Ruth said. “Right on the highway. It’ll have her picture and her favorite Bible verse. To remind everyone who sees it what she stood for.”

“What we should all stand for,” Chad said.

“Isn’t that wonderful, Leanne? Sarah did always want to be famous … Leanne, sweetie, are you okay?”

I was standing, without even realizing what I was doing. “I need the bathroom.” And before she or Chad could say another word, I was running through the living room and down the hall, speeding through the house I knew as well as my own, until I reached the bathroom and shut the door behind me.

I leaned back against the door, pressing my hands to my eyes and breathing in and out slowly. I felt like my heart was going to burst out of my chest. Like my body had suddenly turned on me and was actively trying to destroy me from the inside.

Panic attack, I told myself. You’re okay. It’s just a panic attack. Not even a bad one. Just breathe.

When it had passed, I moved to the sink, running cold water over my hands, then splashing it onto my face. When I looked up into the mirror, there was a split second where I swear I was looking into the past.

Sarah was standing behind me in a dark green dress—the one she’d worn to our eighth-grade end-of-year dance. Her long red hair fell around her shoulders in loose, beachy waves. She’d learned how to style it that way from a YouTube tutorial. And now she was wielding a curling iron like a weapon as she tried to turn my limp, dark brown hair into something stylish. That was back when my hair fell nearly to my waist. I’d chopped it all off a few days after the shooting because I couldn’t get it clean enough. No matter how many times I washed it, I was sure I smelled the blood.

I could almost hear Sarah’s voice, a giggle laced through her words as she asked, “Do you think Richie will be there tonight? Do you think he told anyone we made out?”

Then the scene vanished—if something that was never there can really vanish—and I was staring at my pale reflection, all alone.

I had to tell the McHales the truth. I’d been putting it off for weeks, but now, after hearing about the billboard, I knew I couldn’t procrastinate anymore. I couldn’t let them continue to believe this lie. This stupid rumor that seemed to have come out of nowhere.

Besides, Sarah wouldn’t have wanted this. Yes, she wanted to be famous, but she wanted to be a model, not a martyr. Especially not a false one. And as much as I love Ruth and Chad, they didn’t really know her. Not as well as they thought they did. They had no idea that she was secretly dating Richie McMullen because she wasn’t technically allowed to have a boyfriend. They’d never believe that she let him get to second under the bleachers at a football game at the beginning of freshman year. Or that she smuggled makeup to school and put it on in the bathroom before class. Or that she once kneed a boy in the crotch and told him to go to hell after he called me an awkward freak.

The Sarah I knew wouldn’t want the class photo she hated plastered on church signs all over Indiana, let alone a billboard. She wouldn’t want to be remembered this way.

And she wouldn’t want someone else—like Kellie—to suffer because of it.

Which meant I was the one who had to tell them the truth. Because I was the only one who could.

I splashed a little more water on my face, took another deep breath, and opened the door. I walked down the hallway with as much determination as I could muster. I wasn’t going to overthink it. I wasn’t going to babble. I was just going to tell them what really happened in the bathroom that day.

But before I could make it to the end of the hallway, I noticed that Sarah’s bedroom door was open and Ruth was standing inside. Just … standing. In the middle of the room. Her eyes fixed on one of the posters taped to the walls Sarah had insisted they paint purple when she was eleven.

I was so startled that I almost tripped over my own feet as I came to a stop outside the room. Ruth must have heard me, because she turned toward the door and gave me a small, tired smile.

“Leanne,” she said. “I was coming to check on you and I got … distracted.” She sighed and turned to glance around the room again. “I haven’t been able to touch any of her things. Not even to clean it up.” She gestured to the dirty clothes strewn all over the floor. “Sarah never liked to pick up after herself. It drove me nuts, but I just haven’t been able to … I probably sound silly, don’t I?”

“No,” I said, stepping slowly into the room. “You don’t.”

I don’t believe in ghosts or hauntings or anything like that. But being in her room, with all of her things just where she’d left them, like she’d been there just that morning … it was eerie. Almost otherworldly. The room still smelled like her. Or, mostly like her. Like lavender shampoo and vanilla candles mixed with dust and time. It was unsettling, but the idea of touching it, of changing a single thing from how she’d left it, was so much worse.

This room was sacred. Hallowed ground. It was the room where, when we were eight, Sarah first declared that I was her best friend and made me pinkie swear we’d never be without each other. It was on that hideous lime-green rug where I’d let myself cry for the first time about my dad and wondered what was wrong with me that he didn’t want to know me. Eleven-year-old Sarah had hugged me and told me it was his loss and who needed him when I had her? And I was sitting on that bed, just a few weeks before the shooting, when I told Sarah I thought I might be asexual. She hadn’t known what that meant. I hadn’t really understood it well at the time, either. But she squeezed my hand, a quiet gesture of support, and told me she’d do some googling later. That was Sarah. I knew she’d stick by me, even when she didn’t understand.

Being in that room made me realize how much I was still grappling with the idea of a future without her.

“She left some stuff at my house the weekend before,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. I was shivering, though it was late July and the air conditioner was turned down low. “Just a T-shirt and a hair clip. I’d put them on my desk so I could bring them to her, but I kept forgetting and … they’re still there. I haven’t touched them. It feels like if I do that means I really can’t actually give them to her again and I just … I’m sorry. You probably want me to give you those things. I should’ve—”

“No, sweetie, no.” Ruth swiped the back of her hand across her eyes. There were tears slipping down her face, and her mascara had started to run. I’d never seen her less than perfectly put together until that moment. “You keep those. Sarah was as much your family as ours. You meant the world to her, you know.”

I know what you’re thinking: That was when I should’ve told her. If I meant so much to Sarah, I owed it to her to tell the truth about how she died. It’s what she would’ve wanted. Believe me, I was going to. The words were on the tip of my tongue.

But then Ruth had turned away from me. She walked to the window, staring out at the small, fenced-in backyard where Sarah and I used to have water gun fights as kids, where we’d dragged out old sleeping bags and slept beneath the stars in the summer. Ruth was seeing a whole different set of memories as she wiped her eyes again.

“I just have to keep reminding myself that God has a plan,” she said. “And this … this was His plan for her. As much as Chad and I miss her, we know she was His servant. She was here to remind us all of what a good Christian should be. Her story will inspire so many people. I have … I have to remember that.”

The way her voice cracked, the way her hand shook as it rested on the windowsill, it destroyed any resolve I thought I had.

“Oh, dear,” Ruth said. She sniffled and then cleared her throat before turning back to face me. “I’m so sorry, Leanne. I didn’t mean to turn into such a mess. I was coming to check on you, after all. Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah.” I coughed, then let out a slow breath as I lowered my arms to my sides. “I’m fine. Let’s just go finish dinner.”

She nodded. “Good idea. Chad will eat all the mashed potatoes if we don’t stop him.”

We both knew that wasn’t true, but we let ourselves believe it anyway.

Sometimes it’s okay to believe things that aren’t true. Sometimes it’s necessary. At least, that’s what I told myself. Unlike the McHales, I wasn’t religious. I didn’t believe in an afterlife. Once you were dead, you were gone. You stopped existing. Sarah wouldn’t have wanted to be remembered for a lie, but she was gone. She didn’t know that this was happening. She didn’t care. And her parents, they needed that lie.

That lie was holding them together.

They needed to believe that their daughter died for something. That in her last moments she was strong and brave, and not a scared little girl clutching her best friend’s hand in a bathroom stall. I couldn’t take that from them.

I knew the harm this lie was doing. I knew about Kellie Gaynor. But the McHales were like my family, and I’d barely spoken two words to her in my life. So, I chose to let them believe.

I chose to stay silent.