Which would be fine, really, if she were paying for this. If I hadn’t had to beg her to suck up her discomfort at being around me enough to benefit from my hard work, cost-free. If she wasn’t one of so many people—hundreds more online—to judge me, to look down on me or run from me or laugh at me, to wrestle me to the ground and put me behind bars, simply because I had a normal, human reaction to the garbage who raped my fifteen-year-old daughter and left her to freeze in the woods and then got off because . . . why? Because his parents hired a team of celebrity lawyers.
Am I that hard to understand? Or is it just that they don’t want to understand me, people like Glynne Barrett, who curate their wardrobes and fuss over websites and run from anything raw and unplanned, as though my type of pain were catching?
I hate him too, one of the numbers said to me on Kaya last night. Another said, He killed your daughter. He doesn’t deserve to live. I said similar things to other numbers, all of us running toward one another’s pain, our rage combining until it felt strong enough to take shape, to kill.
“Camille?” Glynne says. “Are you with me?” There’s an odd look in her eyes—a mixture of amusement and concern.
“Yes. Why?”
“You seem like you drifted a little. Am I giving you too many notes?”
I nearly tell her about Kaya—not because I think she’d understand, but because I’d like her to know that there are many others out there who do. But I can’t. I know that. The woman in charge of the chat, the administrator of the site, I assume, goes by the screen name 0001. She contributes very little, but last night she did admonish one member （1219, which happens to be my birthday） who said she wanted to tell her husband about us. To be a member of this group is to take an oath of secrecy, 0001 warned. If you tell a soul, Kaya will dissolve. It will lose its magic. Telling one non-member ruins everything for us all.
It will lose its magic. As though we are witches, casting spells on our enemies.
Glynne says, “Camille?”
“No, sorry. I’m fine with your notes.” I say it because I feel like I need to keep up appearances. But what I really want to do is cackle.
“Okay. Well, listen. Thank you.”
“No problem.”
“And I . . .”
“Yeah?”
She clears her throat. “Full disclosure.” She tucks a shiny lock of hair behind her ear, revealing a glittering earring—some sort of Creamsicle-colored stone that brings out her lipstick. “I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I’ve known Dean Waverly for years.”
In my mind, I grab hold of the earring and rip.
“He commissioned me to paint a piece for the Brayburn Faculty Club. This was . . . Well, it was probably a year or so before what happened to your daughter.”
“Oh.”
“When we first spoke about the website, I honestly didn’t know that Emily Gardener was . . .”
“It’s a common last name.”
“Yes, well . . . I just wanted to tell you.” She puts a hand on my shoulder. I want to shake it away. “He really did feel awful about what happened. Rick has never approved of fraternity culture.”
I swallow hard, a million words running through my head. “Good for him.” It’s the nicest set of words I’m able to string together.
She gives me a warm smile, as though we’ve made some kind of real connection. We haven’t. I know Waverly is “against fraternity culture.” After Emily’s death, Harris Blanchard’s fraternity lost its charter, and the school put such strict rules into effect regarding underage drinking at frat parties that rush became a nonevent, and enrollment in the Greek system slowed to a trickle. I know all that. I don’t care. I don’t blame fraternity culture for Emily’s death. I don’t blame parties or alcohol or the detrimental influence of social media and online porn on Today’s Youth. I blame her murderer. Period.