News traveled quickly at BWH. Like the Cape Town wind—fast and hard, and it didn’t leave a thing unturned. After my two-week suspension was over, I came back to school quite the celebrity. As I walked in heads turned and everyone stared. Suddenly, I was the most popular person at school, and everyone wanted to talk to me. Since the discovery of who Cape Town’s Banksy was, my face had been splashed all over the news. I’d been interviewed on TV, for the papers, and on a radio station, and everyone wanted to know who I was and why I’d done what I’d done. I was a trending hashtag on Twitter, I was on everyone’s Facebook feeds, and the international media had picked up on the story when Natasha’s body had been found thanks to a lead generated by my picture. It was not the ending I’d hoped for, that anyone had hoped for, but it was an ending.

I’d gone to the funeral, expecting it to be nothing but devastating, and it was, but it was also so much more than that. Natasha’s parents had come up to me and thanked me for giving them the closure they’d longed for. Rose’s parents were also there—I recognized them from the news—and they, too, had come over to talk to me. So many different people had come to the funeral that the street outside the church was full. But each and every one of them had something in common; we were all united in this tragedy, putting our differences aside to acknowledge that at the core of it, we’re all human. We love, we lose, we laugh, and we grieve. And not just for Natasha and Rose; we grieved together for every woman and girl who had been harmed and taken. Natasha’s face had made that happen. She’d shone a light on every single missing child in the entire country, and as a result, two girls had been found alive and reunited with their families. Her death had not been in vain—her beautiful smiling face had saved two other lives, and I suppose, I’d played a small part in that. I might not have fully understood what I was doing at the time, but painting her face on that wall had been the single most important thing I’d ever done, and perhaps ever would do.