Oli shuts the laptop, unplugs the power cord. She takes the beige notebook and puts the rest of her things back in the box and jams it in the cupboard underneath Isabelle’s old clothes and next to her beautiful shoes, then rushes down the hallway back to bed.

FEBRUARY 2006

FEBRUARY 2006

Being hated by so many people is strange. It feels like pressure, an invisible weight bearing down on her. Most days Alex wakes up suffocating under it.

But as hurtful as it is, as gut-wrenchingly awful, she doesn’t want to block it out. She deserves it.

She pesters Ruby for updates, devours every article. It’s like reading about strangers or characters in a book. Their lives appear to be somehow both more and less than what they were. Mysterious. Like three young women who didn’t know how good they had it. Who didn’t know how bad things were about to get.

Being hated is better than being dead.

Being hated is better than being gone.

At least, Alex assumes it is. It’s not like she can compare notes with the others.

Not only is she hated, she’s famous. Infamous. Her face is everywhere.

She traces the photos in the newspapers Ruby brings her until her fingers are dark with ink.

From her spot in the communal hall at mealtimes, Alex watches her face flash up on the nightly news. The media alternates between using the photo of the three of them at Ren and Matt’s New Year’s Eve party and the one of Alex at her high school graduation. In the group shot, Evelyn pouts prettily, her head tipped to the side. Alex is laughing. Nicole, the tallest, stands in the middle, staring down the barrel of the lens as if the photographer has just challenged her to something. In the early days, a few news articles mistook them for sisters, and it’s not hard to see why.

In both pictures Alex’s light brown hair is flowing and glossy, her smile friendly and open. She looks so happy, so full of promise.

Those photos don’t belong to her anymore. They have become the property of the media, sublet by the nation. Never in a million years did she imagine that her face would be beamed into people’s homes, her little life published in papers all around the country.

Who took the photo at the party? She tries to remember, but comes up with nothing. Her brain does that a lot lately; thoughts start to form, then fade away.

She says please and thank you to the staff, but her voice sounds distant. The only person she really speaks to is Ruby, and even that is vague, only one layer deep. Alex can’t risk going any further.