At the heaping cheese platter, I reach for a gooey block of Brie at the same time that the man next to me does. Our hands brush while going for the cheese knife, and I rush to apologize.
“I’m sorry I—” My head snaps up to his face. “Oh, hi, Mr. Tipton.” The Claflin college counselor blinks back at me. I don’t tell him he has crumbs in his beard, though really it’s more of a scruff on his chin, like he can’t quite manage a fuller growth.
“Hey, Olive, what’s up?” His smile is just a bit wobbly, and he indicates I can go for the cheese. I smear a half-inch-thick slice onto a cracker, hand him the knife for his turn.
“Olivia,” I correct him, taking a bite of my cracker.
“Right, of course. How are you holding up?” The Tipton I’m used to is confident, like a frat president on pledge night. He’s that adult who tries a little too hard to be your friend. Now he’s soft and awkward, and his juvenile act tugs at him like an ill-fitting suit.
I fall into my good-mourner script, well practiced by now. “It’s hard, but I’ll get through it. How are you?” The question tumbles out because that is what you do in situations like this. Mutual status checking. But Tipton appears shocked. Has no one asked him that question yet?
“I—” His eyes are cast downward, and he mumbles, “It’s pretty hard. I’ve never known anyone who died.”
“Yeah, me neither. Not really, I mean. One of my uncles died when I was young, but I wasn’t, like, there or anything.”
Tipton hums under his breath. “And you found her.”
My throat goes tight, constricts around my words as the image pushes forward in my mind. The one I’ve had to force myself not to think about so many times in the past twenty-four hours. “She was so stiff. It was like a horror show.”
He winces, takes a step back. Fuck, I did the wrong thing. No one actually means it when they ask. They don’t want to hear the gruesome details. Hastily I paste on a smile to try to put him at ease. “I’ll be okay. They don’t think she suffered.” That’s bullshit, because no one has said it to me at all, and I am pretty sure she did. The visuals start rushing back.
No, stop. I wipe the thoughts from my mind. I refuse to spiral. If I spiral, I’ll start sobbing.
Desperate to put an end to this conversation, I look over to the Ivies, hoping to catch Sierra’s eye to rescue me, but am surprised to find a new face standing at the edge of their circle. Officer Murphy, the cop who took my statement yesterday, stands imposingly over the group.
“She was just a great person, ya know?”
“Huh?” I turn back to Tipton. I forgot he was there.
“Emma. She lit up a room.” His sincerity almost hurts.
“Sure,” I say, turning back to my friends.
But the chairs, the window seat, are empty. Have they ditched me?
Then Sierra appears and tugs gently on my elbow. “Come on. Emergency meeting.”
“What the hell is going on?” But Avery snaps her fingers three times in quick succession, cutting me off, and Sierra and Margot hup to like the lackeys they are. Margot crouches in front of the first stall, looking for a pair of errant feet. Then, just for good measure, she bangs open the door in case someone’s being sneaky.
“Surely that’s not necessary—”
“Out!” Margot commands a girl in the stall, who cries, “What the fuck!” but finishes up quickly nonetheless, scuttling past us with her eyes averted.
“Wash your hands next time, you monster!” Avery shouts after her with a giggle.
I tug Sierra’s sleeve. “Did something happen?”
Sierra yanks her wrist from my hold and shushes me. Her attention is glued to Avery, who hops up onto a sink, kicking her legs back and forth like a kid on a swing. The girls’ bathroom isn’t an ideal meeting place, but it does in a pinch. I try to hide my annoyance and lean back against one of the stalls, knowing there’s no way one of those sinks would take my weight. Margot and Sierra stand on either side of me, creating a semicircle formation so Avery can preach to her disciples.
“We need to get our stories straight,” Avery begins.
“Why?” I ask. The other three share a Look. No one answers my question.
“What time did you and Emma get to the party?” Margot asks, fingers poised over her phone’s screen. Pretty sure she’s started a Google Doc already.
“I think around eight-thirty?” Sierra supplies.
Margot notes the time. I note that they didn’t ask me, despite the fact that I was the one who walked with Emma to the party. At 8:15. But they’ve already moved on.
“The fight was around nine-thirty; we should double-check people’s Stories to be sure,” Avery says. She says it so casually, like it wasn’t a fist fight in which she threatened to kill the victim. I mean, Emma. “You left after that, right, Liv?”
“Uh, yeah,” I say.
“We stayed at the party until around eleven,” Sierra throws in. “I didn’t see Emma at the party after the fight, personally.”
“She went off with Tyler. I watched them,” Margot says, adding it to the timeline.
“And we were in bed by eleven-thirty,” Avery finishes. She points at Margot, who is swiping furiously at her phone, like we’re done.
“She came back to Bay at some point.” Three pairs of eyes whip around to me. I swallow hard. “Her sweater was in the room when I woke up. The red one she wore at the party. She must have come back and left again while I was asleep. It didn’t look like she got into bed. Maybe there was an after-party?”
“If there were an after-party, we’d know about it,” Avery snaps.
I do not point out that maybe Emma decided to spend the rest of her evening with people who hadn’t punched her in the face that night.
“Just don’t go spinning theories with the cops,” Avery continues. “We stick to the facts. Now, about the fight.” She’s looking right at me. “Let’s not tell them exactly what I said.”
“Wh-why?” I stammer. The looks I get back clearly indicate the other Ivies think I’m an idiot. Right, because murder threats might make Avery look bad. I shake out my shoulders, sit up straighter. “We have nothing to hide. None of us killed her, right?”
Avery and Sierra answer immediately:
“How could you even ask?”
“Of course not!”