The questions scratch at my throat again.
I turn to Detective Cataldo. “Where should I talk to your officers?”
Fitzgerald frowns. “We will arrange for your people to interview all of the girls crew team, starting with Miss Winters and Miss Watson, at Austen Hall in one hour,” Fitzgerald addresses Detective Cataldo. “That’s the administration building. And you’ll not speak to a single student a moment before that. There is breakfast at Austen, which you are welcome to avail yourself of.”
Rightly cowed, Detective Cataldo dismisses herself with a solemn press of her lips and a nod. She goes back into the rowing center, presumably to dust for prints or whatever it is detectives do. Fitzgerald tells Tyler to pull himself together and return to his dorm. Avery gets a similar instruction. I get an assessing look.
“A grief counselor should be here by nine,” she says. “Don’t speak to any police officers without my express permission.” Then she heads upstairs to corral the other girls.
Tyler, Avery, and I are left staring at the negative space where, moments ago, Emma’s body rolled through. Tyler has stopped crying, but now he’s clutching at his jacket above his heart, as if to rip it from his chest.
“Tyler, are you okay? Can I help?” I ask, though I stay firmly put, awkward as usual. Because I think it’s what I’m supposed to say, rather than it being a natural instinct. I’m relieved when he shakes me off, ducking his head into his coat collar and heading for the exit.
“I just need some time.”
Avery and I have a view out the glass double doors to the curve in the path where Emma’s body is being loaded into the vehicle. Day is breaking, the sky throwing drowsy pinks, blues, and purples over the rooftops of the nearest school buildings. It’s going to be a beautiful day. A joke made at our expense.
Tears prick at my eyes, finally. I am not a sociopathic monster. With friends like Avery, I worry sometimes.
Beside me, Avery stares ahead at the ambulance. The back doors are closed now. The paramedic hops into the passenger side. Funny that they sent an ambulance and not the medical examiner. We told them on the phone she was dead. Maybe it’s standard protocol? Wishful thinking? Or maybe Claflin wouldn’t let them send a mortuary vehicle past the school gates. What a bad look.
“Maybe Harvard will reconsider now.” Avery’s voice is soft. Wistful.
My stomach roils. She’s thinking about her spot at Harvard? Emma’s spot.
Poison slips past my lips, into my bloodstream. It thrums through me, spreading.
The ambulance drives away. Avery stands, brushes off some invisible dust from her pants, and leaves.
A thought, the tiniest supposition, pushes to the front of my brain.
What if Avery killed Emma?
If Dealing with Your Friend’s Death were a class, I would have an A. Need to maintain that GPA, right? I’ve been smiling just enough but not too much every time someone asks me how I’m doing. I’ve got my platitudes down.
It’s so awful, but I’m fine, thank you for asking.
I’m doing okay; taking it one step at a time, you know?
I haven’t cried again, even on the phone to my mom, telling her what happened. She cried, though. I remained calm, a rock, and reassured her. I was fine. She didn’t need to come get me. I’d be home in less than a week, anyway.
Really, I’m numb. Wednesday, the day we found her, was spent attending mandatory counseling sessions and going over the basics with a red-faced officer named Murphy. How did you know the deceased? How did you find her?
I tried asking my questions but got shut down. We just need the facts, Miss Winters.
I know there are stages of grief, but I can’t peg which one I’m in. I’m not in denial. Emma is dead. It repeats in my head, again and again, all day. I see her, blank eyes staring at the ceiling after the police turned over her body. People die with their eyes open all the time; the ruddy-faced cop told me when I asked. I can feel the cold clamminess of her skin, which I touched, fruitlessly trying to find a pulse. It was macabre, but I drank it all in that morning, every detail of her death. It’s all so surreal.
I’m not angry, I don’t think. Tyler is. He’s been screaming at people to do more. That if they’d done their jobs, Emma would be alive. Bargaining. What’s the point? Nothing we say or do will bring her back. Depression. No. I feel fine.
But I haven’t accepted it, either. I can’t. Not with that lingering question: Did Avery kill her?
It’s too awful to think your friend might be a killer. But it’s also too awful to think your friend is dead. Someone did it. I was there when one cop said to another in a hushed tone that I could still hear, “No way it was accidental, even if she was drunk. Definitely homicide.”
That was before they rushed me out of the room, like I was some delicate flower. But I’m not an idiot. Obviously, someone killed Emma. She didn’t drown herself. Not the day she got into Harvard.
The day Avery got rejected from Harvard.
By late afternoon Wednesday, they announced the assembly. On Thursday morning all Claflin students were to report to the Colman auditorium for an update, an expression of grief, a makeshift memorial. They had to do something with us. Exams are postponed. Jordan Kingston, the other office work-study, texted me that parents have been calling nonstop. I’m dreading my next shift.
But I’m handling this death thing really well, remember, so I put on my best black dress, comb my hair into a ponytail, and meet the Ivies in the lobby of Bay so we can walk over together. The remaining Ivies, I mean. We feel off-balance without Emma, even though four is a much neater number. There’s no one to be in the middle of our formation (Avery was always in the point before). We’re merely two pairs of friends walking in a line. I’m on the far left, Sierra thankfully between me and Avery. I think if I’m too close to her, I’ll blurt out an accusation.
Yes, I am handling Emma’s death very well.
* * *
—
You know it’s a time for healing when the school lawyer opens the assembly with a ten-minute warning against posting anything defamatory to social media or speaking to the press. I check the time on my phone. It’s a quarter past nine, so just over a day since I found her. I wonder how they told Emma’s parents, how they’re doing. It’s funny, the thoughts that come and go, and when.
A tired Headmistress Fitzgerald follows the lawyer and introduces the Claflin board, sitting in the front row. I can feel Avery tense two seats over. Her mom is here. Fitzgerald reads stiffly from a prepared statement before handing it over to Detective Cataldo.