But I’ll let Teddy put the pieces together. Decide if it changes anything. My guess is it won’t. After all, Oliver didn’t sabotage the case. Neither did Truman. Jay will be remembered as a victim. Nothing will be said of the blackmail. And Michael isn’t the culprit. Ryan lit the match. Colin pressed the gas. The videos of me and Oliver and the others don’t prove anything other than the fact that we were in the basement. That the boys got a little out of control. So what if they were prompted to take the whips off the wall? So what if Michael’s the man behind the curtain pulling the strings, blowing the dog whistle? All he has to do is deny it. I haven’t seen those cameras before. I’ve never met Colin. Don’t remember Ryan.

Because it’s old news, really. The day after we bring Colin in, a man sets fire to his ex-girlfriend’s apartment, killing the elderly couple who live next door. There’s a manhunt near an elementary school for a guy who attacked a woman with a machete. An eleven-year-old dies from a gunshot wound to the head while playing Russian roulette. And before the students disperse for the winter holidays, five other men at five different universities will have died in fraternity-related incidents—one ruled an alcohol overdose, another an accident, the other investigations still ongoing. Three of the fraternities will be suspended, two pending review, and the universities continue to maintain that hazing was not a factor in any of the deaths.

Epilogue

Friday, December 13

The December sky’s full of low white clouds that turn dark too early. I park on a side street off Baxter and follow a sea of backpacks and cell-phone-lit faces down to the Lumpkin intersection. I watch as the students pulse, step off the curb—and perhaps thinking of Jay, perhaps not, step back on again. It’s that unsettled feeling—the LA jogger attacked by a mountain lion, the tornado that takes out one house and leaves the rest, the randomness of a hit-and-run—it could have been anyone, it could have been us. But it wasn’t anyone, and it wasn’t random. I think of the car accelerating instead of slamming on the brakes, the white chalk outline, and the dark sticky blood pooling on the asphalt as I get close to the other side. But there’s nothing beneath the scatter of boots and sneakers. The ground has been washed clean—by the rain or by the thousands of other cars and feet that have crossed since, each taking a tiny piece of Jay with them.