Antonia peeked at Aiden, whose attention appeared elsewhere.

“Anyway, everyone started screaming like they’d never seen a nosebleed. I mean, Christ, you’d have thought there was a real emergency. The teacher ran over with a huge wad of paper towels and damn near smothered my face as she walked me to the nurse’s office. I had to go home that day, which ruined my perfect attendance because full days counted. When I returned to school, I found out I got a new nickname in my absence.”

“What?” Aiden asked.

Antonia grinned. “Bloody Mary. Not the most creative, but Vanessa was popular enough to get it off the ground. She even attached the lore to me, claiming that if anyone said Bloody Mary three times in a bathroom mirror, I would show up and bleed on them. Again, it’s pretty derivative, but she ruined the rest of school year for me. The only thing that saved me was summer vacation and entering sixth grade where we’d all split up anyway. By the time we all got to the middle school, we had bigger problems to contend with; how to get to classes on time, sorting out our lockers, changing clothes for gym. No one had time to bring up my nickname and I hardly saw Vanessa.”

“And the point?”

“We’re getting there. I hated Vanessa for the eight months of hell she put me through. But I didn’t stop there. Together, we got through seven more years of school and graduated while I quietly hated her. The girl didn’t even acknowledge me, she didn’t apologize to me. I held a grudge against her for a full decade. Do you know when that ended?”

“When?”

“I was working at Wild Hare for three years, copy-editing shit I didn’t care about, and I felt sorry for myself. I got drunk on a cheap bottle of wine, which I’m known to do, and started searching for Vanessa Michaels on social media. She was married with a career in advertising, which made sense. She was basically living her best life in L.A. with some guy who looked like a male model. All of her photos looked professional, her vacations looked expensive, her house had one of those circle driveways...and then it clicked. After all that time, I’d held on to nonsense. Bloody Mary wasn’t my battle to fight anymore, but I kept fighting. Vanessa Michaels did the damage and moved on without another thought. I had to understand that I was the furthest thing from her mind while she was in her Pilates class. I wouldn’t get an apology and if I met her on the street, she wouldn’t even recognize me.”

“You drank the poison hoping she’d get sick.”

Antonia nodded. That was probably the best way to phrase it. “Yes, and she didn’t get sick.”

“So you cut the rope?”

As they neared Tully Cross, she felt comfortable enough to go the posted speed limit. She thought about Aiden’s question as they passed the town’s only church. “I don’t think I did,” Antonia murmured.