As Mira said her name, she felt the relief of a sigh as she called her into being. Speaking her name meant she was more than a specter, to say it meant she had existed, that like all of them she had been real. “Marceline wanted to show me,” Mira repeated, pointing to Phillip. “Phillip killed Celine.”

A splatter of Phillip’s blood had gotten on the front of her clothes. A drip of it fell down the side of her face and neck and she wiped it off in a panic.

“He did it. That’s why she went missing. He came out to the woods because Marceline let him see her, and he thought she was Celine. He was trying to finish what he started. He’d hoped to blame her murder on you.”

“Why?” Jesse asked, and his question hurt her heart. Why is the question we always ask, she thought, when we know what the answer is. They both knew why. Phillip understood the power his whiteness held and Jesse had been the easy target. Blame Jesse and everyone would believe it. Saying the lie would be enough to make it true. Phillip had done it for no other reason than he knew he could.

Both Jesse and Mira had spent their lives asking why, but it was a waste of a question. Instead of why, they needed to ask themselves what they should do.

“If they find us here they’ll think we both had something to do with this,” Jesse said weakly.

“There’s nowhere left to go. Maybe if we could get to the river—”

“Nothing’s at the river, Mira,” Jesse said in a mix of anger and desperation. “They’re coming, and once they find Phillip they’re going to think we murdered them both. All they’ll need to do is see it and be convinced. It doesn’t matter if it’s a lie. They’ll believe it and it’ll be enough. We can’t get out of this.”

Mira pictured the men joined together. The pounding of their footsteps grew. They licked their lips in anticipation, spittle dripping from their mouths as they jeered. They moved in lockstep, aligned with a sole interest. Their heavy steps thundered. Their hunt had been the end all along, the culmination of what was always meant to be, but Mira held to the belief that there was another possibility. She could see the lights flashing bright between the trees, growing larger as the men closed in on them. These men had a reason for their violence now. Celine was gone. Dead. In the end that’s all that mattered. All it took. A white woman dead and gone. Her body lying host to the insects of the woods. These men would want justice, or revenge, and they wanted to be the ones to inflict it.

The men came closer, close enough for Mira to hear their calls.