The most prominent actor in my life, though, was death. A former side character who had stolen all the leads. Since death had become the new lens I filtered everything through, how could I ever trust myself? I was obsessive. Death became my new neutral. And more terrifying than not being able to think straight is knowing you’re not able to think straight; I could feel my mind slipping. I’d have much preferred some sort of ignorant melancholy, where I wasn’t acutely aware of why I was thinking and feeling everything I did. God, I was aware. I was going insane.

I was terrified.

I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to die. Whenever I thought about it, the inevitability of the thing, this dull, aching dread would swoop over me, settle into my pores, and the only thing I could do was let it pass. Nothing prevented it. Nothing ended it.

But Dad had done it. To so vehemently fear the thing he was forced to confront made me feel borderline pathetic. I wished more than anything that I could summon the courage to look into death’s face, to say I wasn’t afraid, because fearing it gave it power over me, over Dad, and I knew that, but it didn’t even matter because I was a coward.

I was afraid, afraid, afraid.

One night I crept back into Dad’s office and took out all the folders from the cabinet.

I just wanted to face them. To feel them, to drag a finger along the outside and coax out the knowledge through touch.

I spread them all out on the floor like playing cards, like some magic trick where I’d scoop one up, flick it open: is this your murderer?

I raged without any idea of where to aim it, nursed blame without any idea of how to allocate it. I get it, Dad. It was confidentiality. For my sake. For their sake. I understood. But if he had just told me, maybe there would’ve been some hint, some clue, something to tell me that one particular person was at the end of their rope.

My eyes flicked to June’s file.

Even her. There was something unsettling about Dad having seen someone who went to my school, about the fact that she’d been here, spilled her guts, and I never would have even known. Not only was Dad overseeing the collective world of Pleasant Hills, but my world too. He should have told me. I should have known. I should have known June had been here.

This was his fault, said my brain, for underestimating me; did he think I couldn’t handle it? Hiding all this darkness underneath his nonchalance, his secrecy, when maybe telling me could have saved his life. If he had told me, this might not have even happened at all.

No one even looked into it. No one even cared.