I open my mouth but nothing comes out. The room suddenly feels too small, like it’s closing in on me. The light is too bright, the air too cold. My heart rattles against my rib cage, urging me to run, and all I can think about is making it out of this alive.

This won’t last forever.

It helps, and I take a deep breath before I speak: “My name is Katherine Remy Tsai. Everyone calls me Remy.”

“Good. See? Nothing to worry about,” she says, her smile purposefully friendly. “How old are you, Remy?”

“Seventeen.”

“When’s your birthday?”

“November nineteenth.”

“Can you tell me what happened last night?”

Behind Detective Ward and the camera is just a wall. No one-way mirror like on TV shows, just concrete cinder blocks painted in a thick, glossy white. It reminds me of the walls at school, but I am acutely aware that I’m no longer in a classroom.

When I remain frozen, unable to answer, Vera steps in.

“Can we start with simpler questions?” she asks.

Detective Ward doesn’t argue. “Did you know that your friend had a gun? Or where she might’ve gotten it?” she asks.

I was there when she found it in the attic filled with all of her grandparents’ things. Don’t lie, but don’t give the police anything they can use against you. “I think it was her grandfather’s,” I say, and it’s the truth.

“Really,” she says, putting her pen down. “Do you know where the gun is now or where it could be?” Detective Ward leans forward, elbows on the table, fingers coming together to form a peak.

“You don’t know where the gun is right now?” I ask, shocked. After Jack had been shot, the last thing I would’ve paid attention to was the gun and what Elise did with it. Before Detective Ward told me it was missing, I just assumed the police had it.

“No, we don’t,” she says, eyes so piercing that I flinch. It feels like I’m trapped in some kind of game but I don’t understand the rules.

“I don’t know,” I say, still in shock. For a moment I’m scared of what this means, that it’s still out there, the revolver that belonged to Elise’s grandfather, but then I think maybe they just haven’t found it yet, that it was lost in the chaos of last night and probably under a couch or TV stand.

“What can you tell me about last night? Anything at all.” Ward frowns, growing impatient. “Think about Jack,” she says like I’ve forgotten about him, like I need to be reminded of the wound in my chest.

I do think about him, I want to scream. I’m always thinking about him. I wish he were here, I wish I could see him again. I loved him. I love him still.

Think about Jack.

“I loved him,” I choke out, and it’s all I can say as tears stream down my face.

But I feel fear closing in. It spreads to every inch of my body until there’s no room for the love that I have for Jack. It hijacks my brain until I can’t breathe, until I can’t think about anything other than survival.