Subject displays high-functioning performance tendencies masking emotional instability. Possible flight risk. Unresolved grief patterns noted.
Her mother’s medical records. All the years spent in and out of hospitals.
Hospice bills.
Father’s obituary.
The next page?—
Screenshots of her high school transcripts. Red marks. Failures.
A disciplinary report about a noise complaint from college. Her financial aid almost getting revoked. An eviction notice because her boyfriend ghosted and she couldn’t make rent.
Photos.
Notes about Rorie’s writing samples, complete with editorial comments picked apart line-by-line.
Her elementary school evaluations.
Bright but easily distracted. Perfectionist tendencies. Struggles to ask for help.
It’s every mistake she’s ever made. Every crack she’s ever tried to plaster over. Every vulnerable, hidden piece shenevergave permission to share.
Projected.
Exposed.
Ripped open.
A wounded gasp brushes my eardrums. My eyes snap to the sound.
Rorie.
She’s standing now, one hand over her mouth, her face drained of color. Tears welling, wobbling, falling. Her body sways like she’s been hit by a bullet.
The room—this fucking room—stays silent, stunned into horror.
My heart stops.
No. No, no, no, no.
This was never supposed to see the light of day. I surge toward the tech table, rip the cord out of the laptop like it might fix it.
The screen goes black. But the damage is done.
Everyone saw.
I turn and Rorie is already walking. No—running.
Pushing past chairs, past startled execs, past Maya and Jeremy shouting after her.
Gone.
Jackson stumbles forward, trying to sputter something about a mistake. I don’t hear him. I can only hear the static in my skull—the roar of my own pulse breaking apart as I realize:
I did this.
Me.
