Jes: “She was instructed to alienate and insult everyone she’d met through us. Slowly but surely, people would stop wanting to see her, and then they would forget about her. It happens every day. After a few years, we would spread the rumor that she’d gotten married and moved to the suburbs, and Maria would dye her hair a different color and start her own life.”

Tyler: “We were pretty surprised when Eliot&Sprain announced that Carey Logan would be exhibiting a new performance piece, standing in the gallery, holding strangers, like a fucking graduate student.”

Marlin: “I called her right away. I said you can’t do this. You can’t be Carey Logan. Give it five years and you can be yourself. Just—just go to a beach or something. Read books. Go to therapy. Untangle all of this and get back to your life. We’d talked about that several times. And then she said, and I’ll never forget this, she said, ‘Who is ever going to care about Maria Clarke? Who is ever going to want a washed-up fake like me?’ I mean, that broke my heart. We had—we took her life away, in some respects.”

Jes: “We couldn’t stop her from performing. The boundaries identifying who owned Carey Logan had shifted over the years. She’d done so much work to pump up Carey’s career. I thought it was okay that she tried to make it her own.”

Jack: “I didn’t like any of it. But I respected her need to try.”

Tyler: “Sometimes it was interesting. OTHER PEOPLE’S RULES was pretty strange.”

Jes: “I think it was the reviews for OTHER PEOPLE’S RULES that pushed her over the edge. She wanted to make a mark.”

Marlin: “The problem with killing yourself and calling it an artwork is that you’re asking the people who loved you the most in the world to validate it.”

Tyler: “We had a hard time doing that.”

Jack: “I felt very, very guilty. I felt like we had killed her. That we were responsible for her death.”

Tyler: “We probably were.”

Jes: “I don’t feel responsible. It was her choice. As the only member of Pine City who was also a performer, I unequivocally respected her right to define her performance. It’s not that I don’t miss her. But I won’t undermine her decisions.”

Marlin: “We didn’t tell her family.” She taps her fingers against the window. “I think about that every day when I wake up.”

Jes: “Maria’s parents were upstate alcoholics who used to beat the living shit out of her. She hadn’t spoken to them since she was seventeen. I don’t feel any obligation to them whatsoever.”

Tyler: “I saw the cameras on the beach and I knew.” He reddens, then chokes. “I tried CPR but she was already gone.”