It was probably a mistake. A wrong address, a fill-in delivery guy. Or a free copy, a marketing campaign to entice more subscribers. The B could be for Bulletin or Beacon or any number of words. There could be any number of reasons for this paper to be on my front porch.
I slid the rubber band off, unrolled it so I could see the rest of the header. Felt my heart hammering inside my chest as the words slowly revealed themselves. Boston. The Post.
My paper.
I felt a tightening in my shoulders, a twist in my stomach, had to place a hand on my chest to remind myself: Slow down.
Okay, okay, this wouldn’t be so hard to figure out. I’d said I’d worked as a journalist. I’d told my students. I’d done this to myself. There was no reason for them not to know. I’d needed my job history to get this new job. Treat it like it doesn’t matter, and it won’t. Nothing would appear incriminating, looking from the outside in.
Except.
My eyes flicked to the date, and my heart ended up in my stomach. April 23. Someone would’ve had to call the paper or the local library to find an old copy like this. The last story I would ever print. The story the paper and I both wanted so desperately to forget, holding our collective breath, hoping nothing came of it.
I counted the pages by heart, flipped directly to the story, the paper trembling in my hand:
A Season of Suicides: 4 Girls Take Their Lives at Local College—Is Anyone Listening?
There they were. Their pictures in a square grid, images provided by the college registrar’s office. I knew the facts by heart, clockwise from top left:
Kristy Owens, shower floor, razor blade.
Alecia Gomez, Dermot Tower, jumped.
Camilla Jones, Charles River, pockets weighed down with rocks, Virginia Woolf–style.
Bridget LaCosta, bathtub, overdose.
I’d seen Bridget’s cause of death, her blood chemistry report, was perusing her class schedule when I saw his name listed—Professor Aaron Hampton—and everything had clicked. My blood was thrumming, seeing all the pieces lined up.
A bottle of pills, his smiling face, the sound of running water.
There was nothing explicit in print that put forward what I believed: that Bridget LaCosta had been killed. There was nothing in this paper that would give away all that came before or after. There was no rebuttal or follow-up—the story was left to die.
I folded the pages back together, hid the paper in the back of the utensil drawer, wondered who could’ve gotten it and brought it to my doorstep in the middle of the night.
Had it been here earlier in the evening? Before I’d returned home with Kyle? I didn’t think so. So someone had been by my house between nine P.M. and eight A.M. Someone could’ve seen straight inside with the light turned on. Could’ve noticed Kyle’s clothes strewn in the hallway or his shoes kicked off in the living room. Could’ve wandered the perimeter, listening at my window. Could’ve stood on their toes and peered inside my room, between the gap of curtains.
I went outside, circled the house, looked for footprints, for evidence that anyone had been here. I searched for cigarette butts, kicked-up dirt, flattened soil, anything—but there was nothing unusual.
I imagined Davis Cobb crouched in the bushes, the paper stashed under his arm, thinking, I got you now. The faces blurred, and suddenly, it was Paige who had tracked me down and brought this to remind me—
A deep breath in to stop the cycle. Calm down, Leah. Calm down.
I could not let myself get like this. Couldn’t make something where there had been nothing, as had been the claim about my story.
But it was not nothing—I knew him, the vile hidden center.
I was not surprised that he had continued to slide under the radar, as sociopaths often do. Charming, remorseless, not held back by conscience or guilt.
So I had taken a page from his book, and I’d struck. I remembered the moment I’d decided to do it, after Noah had left that night. I’d probably decided even sooner, which was why I’d been pacing the apartment. I had already known what I would do.
The words in print, looking no different than any other: A source speaking on condition of anonymity adds more complexity to the case of Bridget’s overdose. “One of her professors gave her those pills,” she said. “I know because he gave them to me, too.”
That they believed I had manufactured this source, a wisp of my imagination, to get the truth: This wasn’t even the nail in the coffin.
If I got to the truth, all would be forgiven, all would be fair—I was sure of it. And so I turned in the article, and I waited for the investigation. For the school to look into who would have access to that medication—she had only four professors, it wouldn’t be hard—for other girls to come forward, as I was so sure they would; for the police to look a little closer at the case, to wonder why and how the pills had been given to her. To wonder if there was more to Professor Aaron Hampton than met the eye.
A calculated risk. A big move. A bigger crash.
A fallout that I hadn’t expected and couldn’t control. Everything moved so fast, too fast to get a solid grip on—my life spinning out of control alongside it.
I hadn’t spoken to Aaron Hampton in nearly eight years. But like a recurrent nightmare, he had returned. I didn’t even print his name. Logan said my reasons didn’t matter. He said I’d meant to ruin Aaron, that anyone could figure out whom I was talking about if they looked closely. He said this as if it were a bad thing. As if there weren’t a girl with her face immortalized in black-and-white print, asking me to do it. And the echo in my own head, demanding it.
“I didn’t know,” I’d said, standing before Logan’s desk. Lies beget lies, and I was already too far down the slope to stop now.
“That’s bullshit,” he’d said, and his face was beet-red, caged anger personified. “What year did you graduate?”
I didn’t answer.
“Did you know him, Leah?”
I let the silence speak for itself—imagined how much worse it would look if he knew I’d once lived with him as well. “This is a serious conflict,” he said, which would end up being the biggest understatement of the conversation. This, in fact, was the nail in the coffin.
“It’s the truth,” I shot back. I shouldn’t have been defensive. This is where I lost it, I now realize. As if, by my defense, he knew there was something worth defending at all.
He stared into my eyes, and I stared back, and he flexed his fingers on top of the desk. “We’re going to need your source.”
But it seemed that he already knew what I would say. It seemed like Noah had already warned him.
“I can’t do that,” I said.