JAMIE: Clem introduced herself, started talking a mile a minute, like she was desperate to connect, but Laurel told me to leave, sounded almost hysterical. I’d been trying to get in touch with you for over a year, and suddenly you were right in front of me. I had to plead my case. I couldn’t just let you go.
SHAY: You begged to talk alone. There’s no way I could’ve done that.
JAMIE: Your eyes were hollow. You were the ghost.
SHAY: Don came back while you were there, Jamie. Literally, the worst thing that could’ve happened, happened. Can you imagine if I’d acted interested, and he’d noticed you? What do you think would’ve happened?
JAMIE: I wish he’d noticed me. All I knew was this man rounds the corner, and suddenly you’re practically crying, running away from me like I’m a stranger harassing you. We’ve been friends since we were five.
SHAY: You weren’t my friend that day. You were a man who wasn’t Don—a threat.
JAMIE: I should’ve followed you, but I was just so stunned. It haunts me, what I should’ve done.
SHAY: Well, you got through to someone.
JAMIE: What?
SHAY: That night, when the three of us were in bed and the lights went out, Clem whispered, “That was the boy you told us about. Your friend from growing up.”
It felt like admitting something shameful, but I said, “Yes. Jamie.”
Clem thought it was strange I was afraid of you. She said, “He used to be your best friend. You told us how nice he was.”
But Laurel whispered, “They’re all nice until they get you alone. Don says every one of them’s hungry. Just waiting for their opportunity.”
Normally, Laurel alluding to her rape would’ve been enough to silence Clem. But she must’ve been determined, because she said, “I miss soccer. My coach keeps trying to talk to me, convince me to come back…” She whispered, “If I left, would you come?”
Laurel and I were silent in shock.
Clem said, “I’m going to tell my coach what Don’s doing to us. She’ll believe me. She’ll tell the dean or go to the cops. She’ll help us.”
Laurel said, “The cops?” She’d hated them since freshman year.
Clem said, “Whatever it takes. But I won’t go without you. I swear. I won’t leave you behind.”
She was actually serious. She had a plan.
I got scared. Maybe Don wasn’t perfect, but what if everything he told us was true, and life away from him was terrifying and unfulfilling? What if we could never come back to him, or from the things we’d done, and we were trapped in purgatory?
I was a coward. So when Laurel said, “If you say one more word about this, I’ll tell Don,” I fell in line. There was this moment of possibility, then the conditioning snapped back in place.
I said, “No one wants to leave, Clem, so drop it.”
I would give anything for those not to have been our last words.
But the next day Clem went to class and never came back. By nighttime, Laurel and I were reading in the living room, waiting for some sign of her. Finally, Don walked in and said, “Girls. A terrible thing has happened, and the police are looking for you. I’m afraid I can’t shield you. I’m taking you down to the station.”
The cops were the ones who told us what happened, that Clem had hung herself in the shower. They took us to identify her body, and that’s when I saw the words I’m sorry in blood, written on her arm. I understood then that the message was for us. She’d promised she wouldn’t leave without us, but in the end she had.
My guilt did something nothing else had been able to do: it woke me up. Gave me perspective. When Don and Rachel were out of earshot, I begged the officer to take us back to our dorm.