My interest in the conversation piques, hoping an airing of grievances means Luke or Morgan might burst out with a confession. Instead, the conversation returns to raucous retellings of junior-prom high jinks and the postparty rager at Natalie’s beach house. More memories and in-jokes I’ll never have, because I wasn’t here. I don’t belong here. I can’t keep up, and I don’t want to pretend to try. My eye is drawn to a white-embossed Viking on a shiny purple cover on the coffee table. A yearbook. I stretch over the glass table to reach it, fingertips grazing the leatherette cover and dragging it toward me. 2021–2022 reads the spine. Their junior year.

The early pages are littered with candids and group shots: from pep rallies, the caf, club meetings, on the quad. Natalie’s megawatt smile and silky blowout pops on nearly every page. With her nearly always: Morgan, Luke, Bronte, Amber…and Ben. A view into a strange past. An alternate universe before Ben’s mom died and his grandfather sued the city. They’re a clique. I already knew it, but it’s different to see in front of me.

They expand their ranks for homecoming. Everyone dazzling, in gowns and tuxes, beaming as they emerge from a stretch limo. Morgan’s escort from this year, Caleb, and Bronte’s brother, Gabriel, in the mix. Some girl with stunning red hair in a bombshell crimson dress on Ben’s arm defies every rule about red on red. In another candid, Natalie’s eyes shoot lasers in her direction—I assume for showing her up on the dress front. As for Ben, he looks fucking hot in his tux. Jealousy coils in my gut at this unnamed girl. I want to be her, to project myself onto the pages, so I can belong to the group, to this place, and to Ben before death cast its pall over everything.

Another spread catches my attention; the drama club performed Into the Woods last spring. I know the musical well—it was our fall show sophomore year at Pasadena Central. Too nervous to audition, I jumped into costume duty. It’s obvious here who’s who: Morgan as Cinderella. Luke, her prince. Gabriel surprises me as the baker. Ben, too, as the other prince. And the witch: Natalie. That must have burned Morgan up inside. Sure, she got to play the headline princess, but Natalie got the showstopper. I think her gown at the end is designer, too. Doesn’t look like a high school costume prop.

Interesting how two of the murder suspects have a background in drama.