Until Alison

1.

Nobody deserves anything. I can promise you that. Maybe you think you earned what you've got, but I can guarantee you someone else has worked just as hard for the same thing and they don't have it. They probably think they deserve better. And then there are those who've been served a real shit sandwich, wondering to themselves What the fuck have I done to deserve this? They don't deserve that either. Nobody gets get what they deserve, because nobody deserves anything. Nothing happens for a reason. Good shit, bad shit, it all just happens. Justification is nothing more than counting sheep, a way to get to sleep at night.

Alison didn't deserve to die.

I don't deserve to be sitting here typing this sentence. And yet.

The night Alison was murdered, I could have stopped it. But retrospect is as useless as justification. That night, there wasn't a tab in my brain that suddenly opened up to inform me that in one hour someone will drive Alison to a remote pond and hit her head on a rock. Would you like to stop what you're doing right now and save her? For the record, I would have. If I had known someone was going to kill her, I would have saved her. I mention that because, at some points while you're reading this, it'll probably seem like the opposite is true.

AQ: Is this how she's actually killed? This is never explained. Seems like it would be "hit her on the head with a rock"?

On the night in question, in the fall of 2016, I saw her leaving a campus party. It was a Saturday night and there were dozens of people around, so why do I feel like I was the only one who watched her leave? But it was always this way. She was always in the corner of my eye, like one of those fucking floaters, trapped in my vision. I couldn't help it, whenever she was around, it was like I didn't know who I was anymore. I'd only ever known myself in relation to Alison.

The party was hosted by my boyfriend, Cam. Alison wasn't supposed to be there. As far as I knew, the two of them had never met. Most of the girls at Cam's parties were either the girlfriends of his friends or freshman girls who didn't know any better; they hadn't yet been invited to more exclusive parties or learned to be wary of Cam's antics. Alison didn't fit into either of these categories, plus she lived in the chem-free dorm, but there she was, nonetheless, drinking a hard seltzer and talking with some guy with heavily shellacked helmet hair that I didn't recognize. But I never knew who anyone was. The two of them were leaning into each other because "American Girl" was blaring, even though I'd told Cam a thousand times that Tom Petty wasn't party music. Perched alone on a windowsill, I wasn't talking to anyone, so I watched Alison and the guy flirt. What was she doing in my world? Why had she infiltrated it? I spitefully pondered these very questions while swigging Bacardí Limón from the bottle.

Once again, I'd allowed myself to get far too drunk. Not pacing myself was becoming a pattern. Back then, I was one of those people who drank to feel more sociable, but I'd gotten into a routine of drinking past sociability and straight back into introversion. Cam wasn't paying attention to me; he was holding court behind his makeshift bar, pouring marshmallow Smirnoff directly into the mouths of freshman girls. I didn't really know anyone else besides Alison, though we didn't make a habit of talking to each other. I suppose I could have known more people if I'd made any effort at all, but it was senior year and I'd long since told myself it was too late. There were three girls, my colleagues on the newspaper staff, whom I considered friends. I think they considered me a friend, too, but it's no secret they all had closer friends than me. Lindsay and Brie had said they might come to the party, but they'd let me down. I knew they had been secretly hooking up since last semester. And Jen wouldn't be caught dead at one of Cam's parties. She was probably already in her pajamas, reading Audre Lorde.

Alison, at one point, was also my friend. Ages six to twelve. I think she would have considered me her best friend back then, but at Cam's party, she pretended not to see me, even though we could not have been more than ten feet apart. Instead, she laughed performatively, a little drunk, to the musings of this random guy, who'd spilled beer down the bottom of his blue shirt. I barely noticed him, only scoffed when his eyes stayed glued to her tits, large milky mounds, still a little tan from her summer in Rome, peering over the soft cotton of her flowery dress. When she started talking about life after college, I squinted, hoping that impairing my vision would improve my hearing. Harvard, I heard. And Fulbright. She'd have her pick. Her life was charmed like that. The short, flowery dress swayed as her head bobbed in explanation. I watched it caress the tops of her thighs, remembering how she used to dress when we were girls: wide denim shorts and oversized Disney-themed T-shirts to hide her big boobs from the ridicule of all the boys in our class. Just then, the guy leaned in and whispered something in her ear. She laughed again, both timid and flirtatious.

The intimacy of this scene was so grotesque I dropped my gaze down to the dark gray carpet tiles, but then the tiles started spinning, so I closed my eyes. When I opened them, the room started to tip and tilt like a fun house. I closed them again and rested my head on the windowsill, instructing myself to breathe. A few deep breaths and I'd probably, just about, be able to get myself back to Cam's room and into his bed. I inhaled, counted to four, then exhaled and counted to eight, just like the school therapist taught me to do.

My eyes opened when the song ended and I heard the front door unlatch. Alison and her guy were leaving. Suddenly I was up from the windowsill and feigning sobriety. Several people stopped what they were doing to witness my sudden movement. As straight as I could, I walked past Cam's bar, where now the freshman girls were pouring the Smirnoff into Cam's mouth, to the front door. I didn't think Cam had seen me until I heard him shout out, "Babe, where are you going?"

I ignored him. I flung open the door of his suite and let it slam behind me. Down the end of the hallway, Alison and the guy spun around.

"Woo-hoo, Alison!" I shouted, waiting for her to engage. She turned away from me, just shook her head.

When the guy put his arm around her waist, they continued walking away.

"Be nice to her!" I shouted even louder, addressing him, but determined it was she who should acknowledge me. "Don't be like Brad Hutchins!"

She didn't turn around, but I swear I could detect a chill emanating from her body. That's when Alison's stranger glanced over his shoulder and grinned at me. Did he wink, too? Or was I just making that up? He pulled her down the hall and they disappeared around the corner.

When they were out of sight, I let my back hit the corridor wall and I slumped down to the floor. I closed my eyes and let all the colorful dots spin. The suite door opened again, and Cam came out. "Nardelli, you're fuckin' hammered." He laughed. "Get in here."

2.

I found out Alison was dead when Brie came running into my dorm room on Monday afternoon. I'd just returned from Physics for Poets-the study of the physical world for the metaphysically minded-the last of my two required science credits needed to graduate. But who was I kidding? I didn't understand poetry either, so I was barely passing. I hadn't even set my books down, when Brie came barging in. "Did you know Alison Petrucci's roommate reported her missing?"

I wasn't sure I heard her right. It was one of those moments where my brain couldn't compute the question. But my body understood immediately. I froze, dropped my notebook and my copy of Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius on the floor. "No."

"They're pretty sure they just found her body at some nearby pond."

I sat down on the edge of my bed. A million Alisons paraded in front of my eyes, from first grade all the way to Saturday night. "What pond?" was all I could manage.

Brie shrugged. She was from New York City and, like most students, had seen little of Maine beyond campus. "Pleasant? Do you know it?"

Yes. I'd only been there once, on the final day of eighth grade. I remembered the sun was shining that day. Us kids all smelled of tropical sunscreen. Alison was lying on her towel far away from all the rest of us, wearing a black one-piece and a large straw hat that shaded her face. She was reading her dog-eared copy of The Hunger Games.

I winced, then nodded to Brie, hoping to block the lingering memories from that horrible day. I thought I was over it, then last year at Cotillion it all came flooding back. That was the night when Brie and Lindsay found me passed out drunk in a bathroom stall. They'd shaken me until I woke up, then I'd proceeded to vomit all over both of them. According to Brie, I put my head in her lap and kept saying, "I wish it never happened." When she asked me what happened, I kept saying, "Everything." And it was washing over me again, all because Brie said "Pleasant." Why not the ocean or a lake or any other pond, Alison? What was she doing there?

"Some of my crew teammates went there this morning to row," she said, stuffing her hands in the front pouch of her Denman hoodie, where the string of a navy blue Denman lanyard hung out. Brie was the kind of person who wore all her loyalties right out in the open. Her corkscrew blond curls were tied in a tight bun and tucked into her Yankees cap. Like the words that came out of her mouth, her clothes said what they needed to say and nothing more. "The cops were there. I guess a dog walker found her body?" When I flinched again, at the word body, she intuited that I needed her to stop. "You alright?"

"I'm fine."

"Rach, your eyes are bloodshot. What's up?"

I was hungover. Badly hungover. Two days in a row. I'd barely made it to my one p.m. class. The night before, I'd hung out at Cam's and drunk what was left from Saturday's party. I'd spent all day wondering what Alison was doing at Cam's party. Had I imagined her? Had I shouted something at her? I'd only intended to have one hard seltzer and to ask Cam what she was doing there, but he was in a mood so I didn't. I drank by myself on his sofa.

"Nothing," I said to Brie. "Stayed up late finishing a paper. Do Lindsay and Jen know?"

"Not yet. I'm on my way to the newsroom."

Me, Lindsay, Brie, and Jen comprised the senior editorial team of our campus newspaper, The Denman Weekly Review. Freshman year, we started as lowly reporters, but by junior year we all held assistant editorships. Now, senior year, it was ours. For most reporters, the newspaper was just a club, an extracurricular activity, but juniors and seniors with positions on the editorial board were eligible for academic credits, and for English majors with a concentration in journalism, like me and Lindsay, these credits were necessary to graduate. This made it difficult for us to publish stories that criticized the administration. "Let's not bite that hand that feeds us" was Lindsay's constant refrain. She was our editor in chief, voted to that position by a committee of her peers the previous spring, ahead of me, the only other applicant. I'd been crushed, but secretly, I understood why I didn't get the job: I lacked big-picture vision and was far too easily overwhelmed and discouraged. Lindsay, on the other hand, was patient and methodical, not easily defeated like me. Plus, under pressure, she had these epic giggling fits that endeared her to everyone. Like me, Lindsay had also been the editor of her junior high and high school newspapers. But growing up in an affluent Boston suburb, she had a lot more competition for these achievements. Where I grew up, in Waterbury, Maine, there was no such passion for anything that didn't involve a ball. When we arrived at Denman freshman year, these differences were immediately evident. She was the daughter of a brain surgeon and psychiatric-nurse-turned-full-time-mom. I was the daughter of a special-ed teacher and a seamstress. Her parents were friends with the editor in chief of The Boston Globe. Lindsay had had internships at The Vineyard Gazette, where her family summered. I had once, in seventh grade, taken a tour of the newsroom at The Waterbury Sentinel with my advisor, Mr. Beal, and ten other students who only came because they'd been promised Applebee's after.

AQ: "the"?

By senior year at Denman College, I'd landed as the news editor, the supposedly fearless scoop-getter, though I was far from fearless. Given how long I'd been at it, I should have been more intrepid, but if anything, I'd become more fearful over time. With each passing year, I'd found myself growing more skeptical of my journalistic impact. Did anyone read my stories? Did anyone care at all about what happened on campus? Did I? I could barely summon the courage or the necessary hunger to chase down any story. If something wanted to remain unseen, I was happy to let it. I'd found myself passing the buck, giving tough article assignments to younger, more eager reporters. The big problem being, of course, that this was my major, my supposed passion: English with a concentration in journalism. And given that it was my senior year, I couldn't change my mind unless I wanted to delay graduation by another year or two. But I didn't have the money for nor the interest in doing that. Being a reporter had become my fate.

As managing editor of the paper, Brie was queen of the details. She set deadlines, chased down reporters, and frequently asked the paper's other editors: Did you leave your beer-soaked brain in the bottom of a Solo cup over the weekend, because what the fuck is this? Her no-nonsense approach to journalism was perfectly complemented by her no-nonsense approach to fashion. Her athletic build and jockish persona meant that people often forgot she was affiliated with the paper. For this reason, she was our biggest asset. People who would never confide in me or Lindsay would confide in Brie. That she knew Alison was dead before I did hadn't surprised me in the least.