KIMBERLY NOLAN:
Liu Wai was suddenly sitting next to me in my room, eyes down, doing this stage whisper like she was taking my confession or something. “Listen, I know how hard it can be to live in someone else’s shadow, but you’ve scared your sister. I thought I’d give you the chance to explain.” I just got up and walked out, went in to Zoe and asked what was wrong.
She showed me her laptop.
She’d left it open in her room while she’d been out, halfway through some personal statement, then come back to find this psychotic breakdown in its place. I was reading it, rereading it, when the intercom started buzzing and we both jumped. We went to it and asked who was there but got no answer. I double locked the door. After that, we always did.
LIU WAI:
Reading the essay, I’d just naturally assumed it had to have been written by Kim? She seemed the obvious person to me, because she so clearly felt that way about Zoe. Like, there weren’t that many suspects. Our flat was only me, Kim, Zoe and Alex. Obviously, I hadn’t written it. I’d been with Zoe for most of that day—we’d met after my last class and gone shopping for Halloween costumes in town—then when we got back I’d perched on her desk, still talking, and noticed how hot her laptop was, as if it had been on all day. She opened it to look and kind of went pale. So clearly she hadn’t written it either. I mean, she’d hardly stalk herself. That left Alex, who’d been out with one of her boyfriends for most of the day, or Kim. And by the way, it’s no coincidence that this happened on the thirty-first, a Monday that year. Mondays were the only days when the flat was dependably empty. Everyone had classes. I thought, who else but one of us would know that? My suspicions were only raised more when I started calling the police and Kim ripped my phone out of my hand.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
I was stressing the point that maybe we should talk to Zoe first, maybe we should see what she wanted to do. Maybe, since Liu had made her into a laughingstock the last time something like this happened, she should get some say in how we handled it.
LIU WAI:
Kim totally flipped. Like, I enjoy Drake’s music as much as the next person, but I think outside of art, there’s not really a call for that kind of language? I’m convinced that Kim bullied Zoe out of calling the police that day, and I can’t help but wonder why. And, I mean, I hate to say it, but I’m convinced that if I had called the police, Zoe would still be here now.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
She might be right.
FINTAN MURPHY:
I met Zoe the next day for coffee. I think she was just glad to get out of the madhouse to be honest with you—that tower was no place to live. She’d often come to me when things got too much between Kim and Liu or between her and Andrew. Anyway, she was in bits and pieces about the whole thing. I kept saying she should call the police, she should speak to the authorities. If you can’t leave your flat empty for a few hours, what can you do? She just downplayed it all. Now I know that’s at least partially because of the nonsense she’d gone through the last time, when the police had only made matters worse. But another part of me wonders if she was afraid of who might have done it…
I’m certain that at the time, Zoe had her eye on the people who were coming and going from that flat. When I saw the note itself, I couldn’t quite imagine Andrew Flowers articulating this chilling body-swap scenario. Whoever wrote it was a deeply disturbed individual. My dealings with Andrew have all been with a simple man who’s trying hard to appear complex. If he’d been getting his rocks off in her room, he’d have just spunked into the desk plant or something.
There was someone in that flat who had a rather more complex relationship with Zoe, though, someone who was studying English at the time and might have picked her up on her writing style. I know for a fact that Kimberly was the first one back in the flat that day, Zoe told me. It felt like neither one of us could just come out and say what we were both thinking, but when Zoe said she “couldn’t” call the police, I felt like she was telling me who she thought the most likely culprit was. I felt like she was telling me she had to protect Kimberly.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
I’ve really tried to be honest about my hang-ups around Zoe. That’s not because I’m proud of them, because I’m really not. It’s a part of me I’d physically cut out of my body if I could. I’ve been honest because I know what’s coming. I know what people think. I know I need to try and make them understand that I didn’t want to be her. I didn’t want to be inside her head or her body or her heart or whatever. I need people to understand that, whatever they see or hear to the contrary, that was someone else’s fantasy. It wasn’t mine.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
Yes, I had a key. And yes, I got some severely cockeyed looks from the girls at the time. I knew some of them thought I’d written the thing on Zoe’s computer. I was over there enough, had easy access, all that. So what’s the idea? I was so mad with, what? Lust? That I wanted to, what? Take the girl I was consensually sleeping with by force? Rape seems like a strange fantasy for a boyfriend to have. You know, not to be crass, but there’s no need to crack open a safe when you already know the combination. Zoe can’t have given it much credence anyway, because our relationship didn’t change a jot, even though I’m sure some people around her would have quite liked it to. She found the note on Halloween, and we spent that night together. We even went out dressed up. I was the psycho killer from Scream and she was a bloodied Drew Barrymore, my first victim, so she clearly wasn’t quaking in her boots about proximity to me.
And to anyone out there who still has their doubts, I’d point them to the text of the thing itself, which I feel quite clearly exonerates me. You’re Zoe Nolan, after all—well, I’m afraid that didn’t mean so much to me. I didn’t think Zoe was gifted or talented, not in any way whatsoever. That’s not to say I consider myself some kind of hot shit by comparison. I just think, by and large, people aren’t that special. You’re lucky if you meet even one special person in your life. No, you should be looking for people who idolized her and thought she was the second coming of Christ. That’s the substance of that essay. I’d look for a person who used to sit with her ear to the wall between their bedrooms, just so she could hear Zoe’s every cough and fart.
LIU WAI:
I think what Andrew might be struggling with here is that I loved Zoe? Maybe you could drop a definition of the word into your book somewhere for him?