I quickly rewrap the mug. “I’ll put this in my room.”
She snatches the mug and sticks it on the desk, facing the camera, with, “There,” and a defiant look my way. Rory counters with a narrowed-eyes glare, but Trinity doesn’t notice, just plunks herself into the chair with, “So, did you find any evidence of tampering?”
Sothese comments came from our account. From ourcomputer. And they’re being posted after Trinity goes upstairs to bed and I am alone, sleeping it off on the couch.
I’m the logical culprit. Trinity isn’t buying my protests and excuses. She’s convinced I’m responsible, and I need to fix that.
I keep thinking of what Rory said about Trinity seeming suspiciously freaked out. His comment about her having murdered someone was a joke. And yet…
The more paranoid Trinity becomes, the more I wonder whether there is something in her past to warrant it. Not that she’s actually killed anyone. But whenever I slip and say we’re being accused of murder, she’s always quick to clarify that the comments never say that. Only that one of us isresponsiblefor a death.
I’d joked aboutI Know What You Did Last Summer, in which a group of teens accidentally hit and kill a pedestrian. What if there’s something like that in Trinity’s past?
It doesn’t even need to be that dramatic. I’d been at summer camp with a girl who drowned, and I still feel guilty for not noticing her go under the water…even if a dozen other kids and three counselors didn’t notice, either. Survivor guilt, my mom calls it.
Someone could know that Trinity feels guilty over an accidental death and be trolling her. Tormenting her. If there’s something in Trinity’s past—connected to those comments or not—it’d help me understand her paranoia.
I conduct my search in the library. If the public computers weren’t crammed with undergrads, I’d have used those to better hide my search history. Isthatparanoid? Maybe, but I need onlyto imagine Trinity discovering what I’ve searched, and my back tenses, triggering an ache that suggests I’ve been more stressed lately than I like to admit.
I think of what Rory said, about quitting the show. I’d be fine with that. I might even be relieved. My parents are both corporate researchers, and while we’re hardly rich, I don’t need the show income—I’ve been stashing it in a savings account. Also, I’m really tired of the drinking. The occasional pub night with friends used to be fun. Now I nurse a Coke…or blow off the invitations altogether.
The problem is Trinity. I can’t be the bitch who takes away a critical source of income. And maybe I won’t need to be, because I find the answer to my question a lot faster than I imagined.
In high school, Trinity was blamed for the suicide of a bullied classmate.
My gut clenches reading that. I won’t pretend that I don’t know what it’s like to be bullied. I mostly flew too far under the radar to attract attention, but there was one girl in high school who decided I was a vastly under-appreciated and overlooked target. Even today, I’ll tense seeing her first name online.
Trinity isn’t named in the actual articles about her classmate’s suicide. They only refer to bullying by “an unnamed sixteen-year-old classmate who has not been charged at this time.” It’s social media that fingers Trinity as the perpetrator, and even there, while no one disputes she’s the one accused, they hotly debate her guilt.
The short version is this: when Trinity was sixteen, a classmate—Vanessa Lyons—committed suicide. In her note, she alleged ongoing and systematic harassment by Trinity, who had been her best friend in middle school. Vanessa claimed Trinity had dumped her as a friend after becoming a cheerleader and joining the popular clique. When Vanessa tried to maintain acivil relationship, Trinity turned on her, bullying and berating her until depression claimed Vanessa’s life.
It’s a common story that carries the mournful ring of truth. Girls are BFFs, but then one grows into a gorgeous cheerleader and the other…does not. Popular girl ditches uncool friend, who flounders, trying to make sense of it, and when she reaches out, popular girl drives her away with insults that lacerate the friend’s already paper-thin self-confidence, driving her to a place where suicide seems the only option. In death, she can finally accuse her true killer.
Reading that article, I cannot help but picture the orb behind Trinity. Cannot help but see those messages again.
In death, she can finally accuse her true killer.
I shiver even as I berate myself for it. Vanessa Lyons’s ghost has not returned to wreak beyond-the-grave vengeance. Someone else has, though. Someone who blames Trinity.
The problem is that few peopledidseem to blame Trinity. On social media, her friends defended her, insisting Trinity had never said anything unkind about Vanessa in their hearing. Of course they would say that, being her friends. But only a couple of other classmates claimed to have witnessed the bullying, and no one put much stock in their credibility. Most of those blaming Trinity never saw or heard anything—they simply condemned her with variations on “Of course she did it. Girls like her are total bitches.”
Reading this and knowing Trinity, I’m not persuaded she’s guilty. I do know why she’s freaking out, though.
She’s convinced Vanessa Lyons has come back to haunt her.
Itry to cancel the next episode ofDrunk Girl Physics. Trinity won’t hear of it. The show must go on, apparently. I do convince her to let us switch seats. That way, if the orb appears over me, I’ll know it’s just a random asshole hacker, nothing to do with the death of Vanessa Lyons.
I set my alarm for seven the next morning to beat Trinity to the comment section. When I wake, I find a text from Rory. He asks me to call him as soon as I wake. The fact he’s asking for a call rather than a text means it’s urgent.
He picks up on the first ring.
“First, I need to apologize,” he says. “I overstepped my bounds and did something that, in retrospect, is going to seem really skeevy. It was for a good reason, though.”
“Okay…”
“I set up a spy camera on the desk in your office.”
“Uh…”
