I don’t reply, because I don’t think I’m meant to just yet. Like I figured, when I stay silent, she goes on.

“Rose is the reason we went to that party at all. We were all at her lodge for the holiday break, and someone she knew was throwing a party in the town nearby. Oscar wasn’t the type to drink, or do drugs, or anything. That was Rose and Eleanor. But I found out later Rose basically told him to take these pills some guy had, and no one told me. I … we found him in a bedroom. By then, there was nothing I could do.”

A muscle in her jaw works furiously, and she fixes her eyes on the wall while she steadies herself. I can’t help it; my eyes well up. I’m a crier. I cry at foster-animal advertisements, and happy viral videos, and news articles about suffering people I’ve never even met. But this is even worse because I know Molly, and I like Molly, and knowing she went through something like this breaks my heart. I wipe my eyes with a fist and hope she doesn’t notice. The last thing I want is for her to feel like she has to shut up just because I can’t control my emotions.

“Anyway,” she says. “That’s not the point. I mean, I don’t blame Rose for what happened. It’s not like she was trying to hurt him. But after that, all her focus was on rehabilitating her image. All she wants to talk about is how she can stop people from thinking less of her for what happened. Meanwhile, she saw her friend die, and it’s like … nothing. What kind of person cares more about how they look than the fact that their friend died in front of them?”

I still don’t say anything, waiting for Molly to go on, but then her expression turns pleading, and I realize silence wasn’t what she was after anymore. “It’s not normal, right?” she presses.

“I can’t imagine how hard it must be for you,” I say. Molly looks relieved, and it makes me wonder if she’s been second-guessing her anger at Rose.

“Right,” she says. “So, yeah. That’s the story. And if this is who Rose really is when shit hits the fan, then it’s probably not such a big loss, anyway.”

She says it casually, but her jaw’s way too tense for me to believe that. I try to imagine what it would’ve been like to go through something like that with Rachel, and I just can’t. I’d want to believe that no matter how awful things got, I could rely on her to give a shit about what had happened, at an absolute minimum.

Is that how Molly used to feel about Rose, though?