The police found Luke’s body at the bottom of a gorge on a bright, dry afternoon, far away from the rock palm, a detail I couldn’t understand then and still can’t. A suicide, they said. Nothing to suggest otherwise. If not a suicide, perhaps an accident. The steep cliff, the shifting rocks. When you see hoofprints in the forest, the authorities said. What would horses be doing in our forest, we wanted to know. Accidents happen all the time, the authorities said. We know you had nothing to do with this.

They searched the area, of course. His was the only body there.

Even so, they weren’t suspicious. Girls almost never murder, the authorities said. Psychologists, police officers, social workers, Freud. Everyone’s parents. They’re the wrong age, the wrong gender. Bullying is common. Bitchery. But premeditated brutality is usually the purview of boys.

No, girls are not supposed to kill. Maybe that’s why when they do, they so often take their victims out into the woods, into the green world, where reality blurs, where they can unpeel from themselves. Where they cannot be found, because there is no them left to find.

What had Serena said, the first time we met? There’s nothing sad about destruction. Or oblivion. In my secret heart, I think she had always meant for him to die in the end. But what about her?

At the news of Luke’s death, the girls at the Center erupted in grief. They all lined up to tell one another about the times Luke had smiled at them, helped them, offered them flowers, brushed against them in one way or another. They all lined up to tell one another just how well they had known him. They all claimed injury, wore it proudly, with their hair down. Serena was not part of it. It was assumed now that she had simply run away at last, that it was unconnected to Luke’s accident, a coincidence. Serena had never smiled at them, nor helped them, nor offered them anything except fuel for their ravenous searching tongues. Their tears were only for Luke.