[color=gray][h3][sup][sup]Caroline had to stop herself from staring daggers at the librarian. He was just trying to help her, she told herself. He was just getting things together for the guest card. Doing that required typing things and clicking around. He wasn’t reporting; he was priming the printer. The sounds he made didn’t really mean anything. It [i]was[/i] weird for someone from out of town to go to the library in Vegas. Her arm hurt. [i]Stop gripping so hard.[/i] She released her grasp on her other arm and started flicking her wrist. Had to get the blood flowing so the mark goes away, or the librarian might catch on that there was something wrong.

But there was no mark. She kept flicking her wrist while staring at where it should have been. Did she even still have blood there? The hum of a nearby printer snapped her attention away. Her head jerked around as she searched for the sound. It was behind the desk. The librarian had turned around to fetch the card. He [i]was[/i] just getting the card. Had the police not been alerted yet? Were libraries that slow on the news? The librarian turned around. She stared him in the eye, forgetting to blink as her mind continued buzzing. He sighed and gave her the card. She seized it, half-expecting him to yank it back.

“Is there anything else I can help you with?” The librarian’s delivery was flat. He raised his eyebrows expectantly when Caroline failed to respond. He cleared his throat when she began inspecting the card. Her head jerked back up to look at him. He repeated himself. She shook her head. She gave him a thumbs-up, and bounded towards the computers before he could respond.

She looked up to the ceiling, searching for any sign of cameras. She reviewed it twice over before darting for what she felt to be the most private seat in the room. She slapped the library card next to the keyboard and got to work. She typed in her ID incorrectly twice, let out an infuriated wheeze, then succeeded on her third try. She tapped her toe-finger impatiently on the side of the keyboard as it loaded. She clicked and typed at the feverish pace of a movie hacker. Her phone buzzed. She got her authenticator code, entered it, stared as the screen slowly brought her that precious water of knowledge and connection.

She drank in the bright glow of her Facebook home page for a moment. Then her attention shot to the messages. She had 67 of them, unread. She slid the mouse across the desk and clicked. Messenger beckoned. Her heart should have skipped a beat as the urge to find out was teased by the painful speed of the library’s old hardware. She caught glimpses of several messages as she rushed to find what she’d first missed when Sam had her delete her social media apps. There were mundane things at first, nothing out of the ordinary. Some nonsense her grandmother had found funny. A “wish you were here” selfie on the Gulf Coast from a member of one of her backup friend groups. Caroline clicked onwards. A “How’s Vegas?” from an aunt. A scheduling query from a subordinate at one of her social clubs. Then she hit her first bump.

David Li had reached out. [i]‘If this is a joke it isn't funny. If it's a cry for help, you already know how many people are here for you if you need it. I don't care anymore how poorly things ended between us. I promise I won't be angry - even if you're doing this for attention - but on the condition that you have to say something when you see this message. Anything. Please.’[/i] Caroline rattled with disgust as she reread the message. [i]She[/i] broke things off with [i]him[/i]. And he, in all his insufferable insecurity, somehow had thought [i]he[/i] was the cause of it? Caroline scowled at the screen, then let out a small growl. 

She scooted back from the computer as she felt the urge to type clawing at her. She wanted so badly to be honest with him. To tell him she’d snapped at him and told him they were done because she had wanted it for months. To tell him that it was always supposed to be a little seasonal romance, not something serious. He’d long outlived his welcome—what he’d had in the first place, anyway. Even if she had liked him once, he was never in the running. There was too much difference. Exoticism was for fun, nothing more. He had to have understood that. She was so happy when she met his parents and they shot looks between one another. She didn’t know what they were saying afterwards, but she understood the tone. They didn’t know it, but they and their son’s “girlfriend” were on the same page. She had weaseled out of introducing him to her parents and even her siblings for months. And David? David took her excuses and avoidance and everything else to be about [i]him[/i]! When he started yelling at his parents over the phone, it was finally the perfect opportunity. 

He had apologized for weeks about that dinner. She’d laughed it off. Did everything to make distance. And yet he still felt guilty. He was probably out there right now leaking guilt all over her murder, like she’d gone and gotten herself killed over [i]him[/i]. Caroline looked up at the ceiling. Great! What little of a legacy she had, tainted by the gross misunderstanding that she’d gotten that flustered over some parents. Some parents and a boy who’d have gotten the door to Comus slammed in her face. She wanted to scream, puke, and cry all at once. She didn’t have time for this.

Now, did Facebook have any [i]useful[/i] information?

After the social club thing was a panicked message from Pearl Scarcello. [i]‘Look im sorry ok? im sorry what i said to sandra about you really i am. but dont you thinkn this is overeacting a bit?!?! now their getting the cops involved, their putting your face on the news!1 CAROLINE THIS ISNT FUNNY ANYMORE!!!’[/i] Caroline groaned and planted her face in her hands. She wanted to sob. Two people! Two people had already decided that she had gone and got herself killed over [i]them[/i]! As she contemplated the horrifying thought that any number of people could be blaming themselves and all but taking credit over something they had nothing to do with, Caroline’s dread was interrupted by confusion. What had Pearl even said? She racked her brain for the answer. [i]Fuck[/i]. Pearl thought that an accusation of [i]racism[/i] was something she’d kill herself over? What, just because the Comus Ball had an unspoken whites-only policy, that she and her folks did too? It was so easily resolved—it had taken maybe a day to shut down that notion. And here she was, in her pitiful social justice-obsessed [i]arrogance[/i] assuming that just because she was a guilt-addled little piece of white-savior porcelain shit, mentally ill enough to off herself over the mere insinuation of her being racist, that Caroline was somehow anywhere [i]near[/i] that pathetic? And the thought that she was getting her back for that “slight” was even worse. She wasn’t even worth it. Just because Madison occasionally brought her along on outings like a little queer accessory didn’t make any of them friends. 

Caroline stared at the message for a time, trapped in a spiral of bile as she contemplated the increasingly dire-seeming state of her image postmortem. Yet nothing could have prepared her for what was soon to follow.

Her eyes widened. As she read the message from her older brother, she began to shake. [i]‘If you're doing this because of something we did—or something we didn't do—then enough. We get the message. Do you hear me, Caroline? You can stop punishing us now; you win. Whatever it is that you want, it's yours. Just please, please come home. I promise we can talk about whatever is bothering you peacefully. No yelling.’[/i]

She stared at the screen. Her lip quivered. How could her own brother—Did he really think so little of her? She wanted to puke. Her hands drifted towards the keyboard. She jerked back, nearly falling out of the chair. She looked at the ceiling, blinking as fast as she could. She couldn’t cry. She had to keep it in. She’d lose so much blood if she broke now. She ripped off her mask and tried to breathe to stabilize herself.

Why, Paul? Why? Why did he think this? Who had given him this idea? He—he had to have been mistaken! He’d never think so low of her, right? There had to be a reason. There had to be. Why was everyone talking like she was alive? She’d woken up in a morgue. Didn’t they know? Didn’t anyone mourn?

Caroline gripped the armrests. She tensed her neck, trying to prevent any whimpers from breaking her into tears.

She sat in place, mouthing silently to herself.

[i]“He’s just worried. He must not know.”[/i]

She needed a distraction. She quickly clicked out of Paul’s DMs. The remainder of the notifications came from two chats. First was Jerry Lucas. Caroline’s state was interrupted not by the message itself, but well before it. Who was this guy?

Jerry Lucas, Jerry Lucas, Jerry Lucas... It just wasn’t ringing a bell. It should have. How many Jerrys in her age bracket even were there?

She clicked on the profile before opening the message. As she scrolled through his profile, she searched for details that might ring a bell. [i]Huh.[/i] He had been a grade below her in high school. She scratched her chin as she tried to match the name and face to any memories from those days. 

Nothing.

So what did he send? [i]‘Ms. Capdevielle, rotting in a ditch.
Pompous, spoiled, nasty bitch.
Rape gone wrong? Vengeance well planned?
Just wish I could shake his hand.’[/i] She wrinkled her nose as she read it. She shook her head. Awful. Just awful. He wasn’t even good at it. She looked back at his picture.

[i]Oh![/i] It was all starting to click. His girlfriend was...what was her name? It was an M name. Maria? Melanie? Caroline tapped her finger idly on the keyboard. Melissa! Yes, that was his, well, formerly his girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend.

Caroline smiled halfheartedly. That’s why he was so happy about her being dead! Oh, that was great. He’d nearly gotten expelled for that little party trick. A little something in Melissa’s food and Julia Nuñez’ sweet sixteen got a show to liven it up! All she had to do to get away with it was say she saw Jerry messing with Melissa’s drink.

Fun times.

So what was left?

The main group chat. It was so sparse without Madison and Haley. But there was still activity. Caroline hesitated to check for a moment. Given everything else she’d seen, she almost didn’t want to know. What would Mallory and Reagan have to say? Did they feel the same as her brother? Even worse? Were they blaming themselves?

Caroline couldn’t help herself. She had to know. Disappointment. If only she could have seen her friends’ DMs and known what their conclusions were. Madison and Hailey both had memorials and events for their funerals. She only had a memorial. Her friends’ pages had a diverse array of responses. Plenty of the people had kind things to say and memories and love to share. There were lukewarm condolences from acquaintances. And, to Caroline’s disgust, there were pockets of hatred. The ensuing dogpile was formidable, thankfully, but it was still just awful to see. Didn’t they know it was rude to speak ill of the dead?

Her own page was so much worse. Her entire social network was eating itself alive. Where Madison and Haley’s pages were posted by their families, her page was Mallory’s doing. Caroline’s parents and siblings were conspicuously silent as even her cousins joined in the free-for-all of comments. Pulled along by morbid curiosity, Caroline trawled through a massive line of replies where Reagan duked it out with several of Caroline’s cousins over whether it was in good taste to even have the page up, since they didn’t have an autopsy. It ended with them all threatening to report one another. Similar stories played out elsewhere, with an array of friends and acquaintances all throwing opinions around. The arguments grew nastier by the hour. Condolences and expressions of concern devolved into name-calling and finger-pointing. Kelsey Garnier threw fuel on the fire by commenting [i]‘I don’t know which would be worse: If y’all are all just pretending to love her bc she’s dead, or if y’all really do care this much about someone who was so damn vile in life.’[/i]

If nothing else, all of her friends could mostly unite behind the common cause of outrage. That was something. But the comment gnawed at Caroline all the same. Paul’s message came back to the forefront. She couldn’t shake it. Even though he unequivocally cared, [i]he[/i]—her own brother—still thought so lowly of her as to think her disappearance was some slight or stunt. She could easily cast aside acquaintances. Jerry’s sorry attempt at gloating poetry was ultimately more entertaining than hurtful. But [i]family[/i], but [i]blood[/i]—Did Mother and Father, did Mattie and Charlie think this way too? Did they only love her in spite of her?

Were they happier without her?

She couldn’t stop it. She returned to Paul’s message, scraping for any meaning between the lines. Meaning that she couldn’t seem to find. Were they better off without her? Had she never even been good enough? Was every hug a little white lie? Were they all just appeasing her, happy she wasn’t doing coke in the bathroom or otherwise making a mess of everything? Was she, after all this, just some unstable middle child who was just a bomb to keep defused?

What was so wrong with her? What had she ever done that had hurt the family? She’d hurt [i]others[/i], yes, but Paul? Her parents? 

She logged out and shut down the computer. She gazed into the black screen, blinking rapidly. Why? What had she even done to him? She couldn’t follow any explanation she grasped for. Her thoughts melted into a nonsensical daze of shock and grief. She whimpered. Her efforts weren’t enough. She was trapped, crying, alone, and detestable. She was increasingly ugly on the outside, and apparently, it was an open question whether she had any inner beauty to compensate for it. She wasn’t enough.

There was no solving it. There was no recourse. She was stuck here, like this, and worse still, she was privy to how [i]everyone[/i] saw fit to speak about her when they thought she wasn’t there. She could see her identity being steered into the mud, and yet couldn’t take control and assert it. She wanted to so badly. It was right there. The keyboard was begging her to claw back the narrative, to take the mess and spin it into something tolerable, to fix things. It was as hurtful as it was maddening. She could feel tepid droplets streaming down her face. She needed to leave. She needed to walk away, to not touch the computer again. She just couldn’t bring herself to.

She logged in again. She trawled through her Facebook twice over. She reread Paul’s message. She couldn’t tear herself from the screen. It should have all been a nightmare. She needed to wake up. She clamped a hand over her mouth to smother the sound. She curled back into her seat as Paul’s words sunk in. She wanted desperately to tell him he was wrong. To call him, then her mother, then her father. To apologize a thousand times for something she hadn’t really done, to tell them to bury her in dignity with her friends with a closed casket, and yet what could she say? How could they believe without seeing? And to show them what she had become? 

“God.”

She choked out an exclamation as she returned to the same painful conclusion she’d grappled with when she first felt a man’s blood pass her lips, when she felt the primal fear of the sun and the flames it bore, and when she first twisted out of shape. They were better off without her. If not before then now, surely now. She should have done the right thing in the first place and given them a pretty body. She should have played her part correctly, been a good corpse, and gone to Purgatory away from Earth. She should have stayed away from Las Vegas and gotten drunk on the Gulf Coast by the sunset instead, and all this never would have happened.

Should’ve, would’ve, could’ve.

She wanted to punch herself. As she looked down at her hand, she felt a self-directed rage flare. She’d covered herself in blood. She’d made a mess. She was the mess. She turned off the computer, then snarled as she saw the blood smeared on the power button.

A murderer, a deformity, a monster, a depreciated monster of a mess. That’s all she was, logging into the Facebook of someone so much better. She licked her finger and rubbed the blood from the power button. She stumbled up and lurched for the bathroom.

She made eye contact with a janitor. The two gazed at one another for a moment as the door slammed behind Caroline. Her fingers tensed. Her eyes darted between her bloodied reflection and the unexpected company in the ladies’ room. She felt vile. She felt monstrous. And she was looking at her as if she knew she was a monster. A part of her wanted to ask the janitor what about her looked the worst. Was it the blood? Or was it her posture, her shaky stance, the tension in her every muscle? Was it her clothes?

A different part of her knew none of it mattered. She’d been seen for the disaster she was. She needed to fix herself. The woman standing before her was the answer to both problems. She’d feel better. So much better. And she needed to eat before she was inevitably caught anyway. Killing this witness would forestall changes, hunger, and destroy someone who’d seen her monstrous self. 

She sprung forward. The two hit the floor. The janitor’s shoes squeaked. This was a terrible place to be doing this. Caroline squeezed the janitor’s throat with one hand as she fished out her phone and then her stylus from her purse. She set the phone on the floor and opened it while sitting on the janitor’s chest. She typed feverishly. 

[i]‘Feeding not going well. Can’t talk. Get my stuff & run’[/i]

She should have given more details. He needed to know how fucked they were. But the life was slowly leaving her feast’s eyes. She needed it now. She clicked send and plunged her fangs into the janitor’s neck. As she began to drink, the janitor stopped struggling. She released her grip and embraced the moment.

She could never have explained this feeling to her brother.[/sup][/sup][/h3][/color]