“Is this the cunt who posted that video?” a guy said, quickly approaching us, having left Connor’s room. His housemate, Jack, apparently. And then his words registered and I realized he was headed toward me with venom in his eyes and a tightly coiled body, fists clenched.
Logan leapt up and stepped in front of me. “Whoa. This isn’t her. This is Megan. She’s part of our group with Connor. She wasn’t even there last night.”
“It was Chloe, wasn’t it? She did something,” I asked from behind Logan, not even knowing what she’d done, but guessing she was a part of it. Logan nodded, but stayed firmly between me and Jack, who didn’t seem quite ready to believe that the object of his fury wasn’t right in front of him.
“Seriously, Jack, Megan had nothing to do with it. She’s not even aware.”
Jack gave me one last look and seemed to get the message from Logan’s strident stance. I was not to be fucked with.
“He’s awake. I told him you were out here and he wants to talk to you,” Jack said. I stood, expecting to go with Logan, but Jack held up a hand. “I didn’t know you were here, so maybe just Logan for now? We can come and get you once he knows you’re here and is cool with seeing you. Although the doctor said to keep visitors to a minimum, at least until his parents get here.”
“The police were going to let Marlo know, so I’m guessing she’ll be here pretty soon too. She’s our instructor, or counselor, or whatever,” Logan said to Jack. “I’ll be back soon,” he said to me, then gave my hand a squeeze and followed Jack into Connor’s room.
I pulled my phone out and called up TikTok while also seeing all the missed texts I’d gotten.
From Chloe, just a half hour ago, when I would have just left the suite:OMG, Emily told me what’s going on. Should I come to the hospital?
Then, a few minutes later, from Emily:Did you see what Chloe posted last night? Might want to look at it before you see your friend. Hope he’s all right.Several heart emojis with that one.
Then, not too long ago, from Chloe:This was not my fault. Connor knew I was filming!
There were some from all the members of the group, some on the group text and some to me directly, but I ignored those for now.
I went to Chloe’s TikTok page and scrolled past the top post—even as my eye caught the gigantic number of likes, comments, and shares—and to a couple of older posts, where the time stamp indicated Chloe’s night had begun.
“Remember that first party we went to all those weeks ago? We’re back at the scene of that crime. Didn’t feel like costumes this year, not with all the heavy shit hanging in the air, so we’re doing an anti-costume party. But comment withyourcostumes. Halloween, bitches!”
Chloe was in Logan’s living room, perched on the arm of the couch. She’d pointed the camera away and done a long pan of the crowded room full of people. One person, dressed as Gumby, either hadn’t gotten the no-costumes memo or didn’t care. The rest were in groups, drinking, laughing, being basic college kids at a party. Chloe had effortlessly turned her phone back around to her spouting her send-off line.
Okay, not the kind of stuff to make you take a bottle of pills. Still weird that Chloe would talk about the “heavy shit hanging in the air” at the party. She meant the Grief Group posse, I imagined, but her phrasing was suss. She was not a part of that group. And for the most part, we all tried to leave our “heavy shit” in the room on Wednesday nights when we left.
Obviously, that was not always possible. And here we were, at the hospital.
Her next post, the second-to-last one (I was not ready to jump ahead to that one yet), was another scan of the house, but this time taken from near the top of the stairs looking down. “Starting to fill up. Guess there’s more of us on campus that feel the need to bond than dress up as slutty nurses. Mental health, bitches!” She’d once again swung the phone around to catch herself for the tag.
The “slutty nurses” thing felt like it’d been lifted from Connor last Wednesday at the food court. And to talk about mental health during a house party?
I played it again, enlarging it to get a better look at who was there. Dex and Philly were near the bottom of the stairs, his arm around her shoulders. I was kind of surprised they hadn’t gone to the other hockey players’ party, but maybe not having to come up with a costume idea appealed to more than just those of us in Grief Inc. No sign of Logan. Abby was chatting with Dustin in the entranceway to the dining room. I was happy that he’d made it to the party. He was laughing at something Abby said, making me smile. Until I remembered I was sitting in a hospital, waiting to see another one of the partygoers.
When I got to the end, where Chloe was looking at the camera for her sign-off, I could see two sets of legs just over her shoulder, like a couple were sitting on the steps a few above her. I didn’t know who they were, but I knew it wasn’t Logan’s legs and feet.
I looked up at the door to Connor’s room. There’d been no sign from inside that I was wanted. Taking a deep breath, I played the last, most recent, post on Chloe’s page.
“I think I’m getting a lot out of it, actually. I’m glad I’m going,” Paige was saying to Connor, who sat beside her on the top step. It had been their bodies in the last post.
“Yeah? I guess so. Me too, sort of,” Connor said. His voice was thick and not slurring, but close. His eyes were glassy as he looked at Chloe and said, “I don’t know. Hey, if nothing else, Logan and Megan found each other, right?”
“And you found me, through Megan, so kind of through your grief study,” Chloe added, a little bit of flirt in her voice. He was looking at her face, but the angle was lower, like she was holding her phone down, away from herself as she filmed.
Yeah, maybe Connor, a very drunk Connor, had known on some level that Chloe was filming, at some point in the evening. But the way she was now unobtrusively holding the phone as she filmed, would not be an in-your-face reminder. That was the point.
Rage at my suitemate mixed with the deep feelings of protectiveness I felt for Connor and Paige. I had inadvertently led my lambs to Chloe’s slaughter. All for clicks and followers.
“There’s that,” Connor said, trying to return Chloe’s look (I was guessing her pouty smile), but his smile fell short. He turned to Paige. “I just thought it’d be easier by now. Being away from Settlers Hill and all. Some distance, you know?”
Paige was nodding. I could hear the background noise of the party below, and there was some movement behind Paige and Connor, at the end of the hallway, but I blocked that out to concentrate on what they were saying.
“I get that. I’m from a small town, too. Everybody knew about my sister dying. It’s nice, in a way, but also suffocating, you know?”
