Slipping inside, I wandered over to her desk, still cluttered with notes she had written, homework she had never finished. Above the desk pictures were tucked into a black and hot pink French memo board. Christmases. Birthday parties. Nature hikes. A shot of me in a Mary Poppins costume, hugging her during an after-party for the closing night of the show, a community playhouse version of the enduringly popular Broadway musical. Lord knows I didn’t have Ashley Brown’s pipes, but I gave it my best shot. It was that night Vera confessed she wanted to study theatre like me, and it was that night I felt a connection to her unlike ever before.

I missed her smile tremendously. I missed the way she imitated Alexis Rose’s “Ew” from Schitt’s Creek any time someone did something cringey—another Vera-ism, as the family called it, when she resorted to teen-speak, which was often. I missed her random texts asking for advice. I missed her laugh. We had gotten so close the past couple years as she turned to me for advice on womanhood, romance, friendship…and somehow that intimacy was the trigger that pushed her away. I had shared too much. She had discovered too much. I could never forgive myself, and soon, neither would Felicity once she found out what I had done.

I meandered to Vera’s bookshelf, running my fingertip across the countless spines of thrillers, classics, and romance novels. She devoured pages and plots and characters like they were candy. A thin, gold-embossed book sparkled as dying sunbeams crossed the room. I pulled it out, noting it was this past year’s yearbook, which the police had leafed through as we all pointed out Vera’s friends. Sitting at Vera’s desk, I flipped it open, scrolling through the pages until I found her tenth grade class. I touched her face. Across the top was a note in the spidery handwriting that I recognized as Blythe’s, and I smiled as I read it:

To the best friend I could ever ask for, even though we had our battles. Get ur butt home, biotch. We all miss u. The whole school. And u better not have gone on a multi-state adventure without me like Tom Sawyer—or was that Huck Finn? U would know the answer, book nerd. Luv u like a sister. Pls come home soon. – BS

They had been such good friends, especially when Vera needed one back when she started high school. Sheltered, innocent little Vera had been terrified to leap from the nurturing bosom of middle school into the jagged terrain of high school bullies, peer pressure, and raging hormones. Besties, Vera had referred to her and Blythe. Until the fallout. A single fight that would launch a missile at their friendship.