I lean my back against the door and let myself breathe for what feels like the first time all day.
I change into dry clothes and crawl into my own bed, Hoagie thumping down onto the floor beside me with a groan.
I listen to the rain on the roof and the small ordinary sounds of my own house settling around me.
My mind drifts to the manila envelope holding my keys.
About the lie someone meticulously built with my name stamped on it, and the way this whole town decided who I was without me ever being in the room to defend myself.
And then I think about the taste of his mother's cooking.
I think about the weight of his hand on my jaw in the dark, and those three words—not like this. A man I barely know is promising me, through his silence and his kindness, that I’m not alone.
I don't know yet how much he means it.
I fall asleep before I can decide whether to be afraid of how badly I want him to mean it.
CHAPTER SIX
Njal
I don't sleep much, and what I get is thin.
It's the screenshots. They sit behind my eyes all night, those little gray and blue bubbles with her name stamped on top of a number that was never hers.
Somewhere around four in the morning I quit fighting my way past them and just let my brain do the thing it does, which is take a problem apart and lay the pieces out where I can see them.
By the time the light goes gray at the window, I've got most of it laid out.
I take my pills with two eggs I don't taste.
I go run before the heat gets too bad, and the whole three miles it doesn’t feel like I’m in my body at all.
I'm back in my kitchen, looking at those pages.
Because here's what I knew the second her face went still over that photo.
That's not gossip.
Gossip is loud, dumb, and it trips over itself.
Whatever's happening to Sophie isn't that.
She told me about the cold shoulders, the looks, the women who stop her after church with their hands on her arm to tell her they're praying.
That's the noise on top.
This is the thing underneath it.
This is fabricated texts on a spoofed number.
A real photo, cropped, time-stamped and captioned into a lie.
A letter written in the language of someone who knowsexactlywhat a school board has to act on.
Three different tools. Used in the right order. Aimed at the one soft place that takes a person down quietest in a town like this.
Somebody wants to take her down, but why?
