We unpacked ourselves to let Ruby through, then coiled back around into our circle, sitting legs crossed with our hands in our laps. Aidy turned on her flashlight and pointed it toward the discarded dirt. We copied. All our beams looked like rays, the hole in the ground our sun.

Ruby stayed standing. The wooden box was beneath her feet. She considered it, then picked it up to hold, her fingers tracing Marley’s name. “When she left us, we were supposed to forever ask, How did this happen?” she said; a question I’d repeated more times than I could count. “How did she get her hands on such an ugly thing? How did she not know it was loaded? Who turned off the safety? Why would she play with it? We had to think in consequence and in regret, but we didn’t think of any answers. Looking at her life before that moment was a no-no. But you guys, we’ve always been the kids who dug around where we shouldn’t. And not one of us touched it after she died.” She stopped moving her fingers. “Except for Olivia.”

It was like all the lights in the ground turned to face me. I shifted to find a position that would make me more comfortable, not that such a thing existed. Ruby had created a moment designed for squirming.

“Asking questions without looking for answers is an easy way to live. I know I liked it. I bet all of you did too. Olivia did the heavy lifting for us. She was keeping tabs on everything so the rest of us didn’t have to: speaking at the memorials, helping the committee set up scholarships. Younger than all of us and doing all the work. For five years, I watched her. I could see how it wore her down, but for some reason, I didn’t think I should help. It felt like an invasion of privacy or something. This was her thing now. Best to stay out of her way.”

The lights brightened.

“Why did I think that was what I was supposed to do? Why was I doing what I thought I was supposed to, anyway? When have we ever done that? We ignored Olivia. Let people who didn’t know her try to help her. When we were younger, we treated figuring things out like it was our job. It should have been us that did this with her.”

Now everyone had to share in the squirm of the exposure.