What She Found in the Woods

I pull myself together before I get home. I run the grandparent gauntlet and text about nothing important with Rob for a few minutes before I’m allowed the privacy I need to unravel.

Somewhere out in the woods, there is a perfect boy named Bo. Someday I’m going to be good enough to deserve him.

But first, this.

28 JULY

Bo sees me across the river, and, first, I watch the same rush that’s filling me filling him. Then he sees me better, and his expression changes. He meets me halfway to help me through the river.

‘What happened? Are you sick?’ he asks as he sweeps his eyes over my face and body.

I rub at the clammy paste of oily come-down sweat that’s forming on my face and look away. My pores are oozing toxins. I’ve never felt this disgusting in my life, but at least I’m not hallucinating. My ghosts chased me all the way out here, but now that I’m with Bo they’ve vanished.

‘No. Well, yes,’ I admit sheepishly.

‘My dad can help,’ Bo begins, but I cut him off.

‘Your dad’s already given me something, and they’re helping. I think,’ I say. I watch his face go from confused to wary.

‘When?’ he asks me. ‘Am I missing something here?’

I nod and gesture for Bo to sit. ‘Let’s spread out my blanket first. I have a lot to tell you.’

He sits with wide, rabbit eyes – so round and open, and only just now realizing that the well-spoken stranger across from him is, and always has been, a fox.

‘Your dad gave me pills to help wean me off the weapons-grade prescription meds I was taking right up until yesterday morning.’ I take a deep breath. Bo waits. I continue. ‘Until three weeks ago, I was in a psychiatric hospital for a total nervous collapse that left me catatonic. I was hospitalized for nine months.’

I watch the fear in him melt into concern. But he’s too quick to feel compassion. I wave off his reaching hands and tell him why I went catatonic.

Bo freezes. I sigh and smile because it feels so good to tell him. To finally say what a monster I am. Once I start, I can’t stop. I tell him everything about the Cultural Outreach Club.

The more saddened he looks, the more honest I become about my own inner monologue. I tell him not just what I did, but what I was thinking while I did it – which was usually along the lines of how I could make it benefit me, even as it stole from others. I open him up and twist him inside out. I am now to him what I have been to myself for a long time.

A murderer.

I tell him about Rachel, and what happened.

Jinka pulled away from me suddenly.

One moment I was her hero, the cleverest girl in the world, her best friend. The next day, I felt her detach, like the Space Shuttle jettisoning a used rocket booster. She floated, and I fell.

She must have checked the website early that morning before school. She must have seen what Rachel posted.

That morning, I felt Jinka distancing herself. Then she turned me in. She went to the principal and wept out a self-absolving confession, which they filmed and later showed me. Trying to get me to confess, I suppose.

I went to the principal’s office with no idea what waited for me. As soon as I walked in, it was like invisible hands wrapped around my face. Everything was muffled.

Teachers, parents, counsellors, even a uniformed police officer was there to inform me that a body had been found. Fraud was the least of my worries. They all wanted someone to blame for the death of a thirteen-year-old girl.

When the officer started asking me questions about Rachel, I honestly had no idea who he was talking about. He had to read my online conversation with Rachel aloud, and even still it didn’t ring a bell.

The officer had to explain to me that Rachel had written a five-page plea for my club to come to her bat mitzvah.

The plea began with the words, ‘I’m thinking of having a bat mitzvah, but I don’t have any friends, so I don’t think anyone will come. Do you think I should have one?’

After that, the message trailed off into ellipses. I would have had to click on those three little dots to read further, and – honestly? – I couldn’t be bothered. I had close to fifty messages in my inbox that day. I wrote back a quick ‘Go ahead’ and went on to the next message.

Had I read the rest of the message – which I didn’t, which no one wanted to believe because they so desperately wanted to turn this story into another headline about the consequences of online bullying – I would have learned that Rachel went on to promise to kill herself if we didn’t come.