I expected everyone to treat me differently after my sister’s arrest, to shove me around, sneer, and mutter under their breath as I walked past them in the hallways, torturing me in lieu of my sister, but they didn’t. They mostly just stared and whispered to each other whenever they saw me. A few asked if I knew why she’d done it or if she could get the death penalty, oblivious to the fact that New York State abolished it years ago. Somehow this felt worse than if they’d been bullying me for what Emily did, because maybe that would’ve been something I deserved. I would have been prepared for it. Instead they just stared, their eyes full of pity and morbid curiosity.

But they wouldn’t just stare if they knew what I knew.

After I walked inside and started heading down the hall, I noticed a girl standing in front of Emily’s old locker, her fingers twisting the dial of a hot-pink lock. Her skin was the color of deepened amber and her hair was ebony in a fishtail braid. She was dressed in a pale pink sweater with a rose-gold choker necklace, and had peach nail polish on her fingers. Her sneakers were pink too.

I stared at her for a moment, feeling thrown by all the pink she wore as she opened the locker, the hinges creaking in such a familiar way I felt an ache in my chest at the sound.

After Emily had been arrested, the police had cleaned out her locker for evidence, as if during Math and Biology classes she had been scribbling her homicidal plans for Griffin Tomlin or something. For a few months, it was left empty and vacant. Someone—I didn’t know who—scribbled in black marker YOU SHOULD BE DEAD on it a few months ago. It was gone now, scrubbed clean, but it still felt like the words were there, festering unseen.

The girl grabbed a pink notebook from inside her—Emily’s—locker and a pen before closing the door, turning to head down the hallway.

At home, Emily was preserved, almost like petals pressed between book pages. Last month, when I’d grabbed the one mug Emily used to use for her tea, my mother’s eyes brimmed with tears. She lied in a wobbling voice that it was okay for me to use it, but I put it back anyway.

It felt so surreal that here, out in the world, people were actually beginning to move on from Emily Porterfield.

After last period, as I walked out into the parking lot, I noticed a dark figure lingering around the hood of my sister’s Mini Cooper. He was tall, with broad shoulders, and wearing a familiar black puffer vest.

Kolby Rutledge.