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Sooyoung turns to the two of them, voice shaking. "Not. One. Word. To anyone. We're the only ones who know."
"B-but-" Jinsol looks terrified. Why wouldn't she? Vivi feels her own heart in her throat.
"No buts. This? To your grave." Sooyoung stares at the body—no, Haseul—with wide eyes and it's as if she's not even looking at her friend anymore. Sooyoung looks like a cornered animal. Vivi can't even bring herself to look at Haseul's face, marred by blue veins, eyes open in horror at her own demise. Vivi wonders if she felt alone in the trunk of her own car. She thinks she would have if it was her in there.
Jinsol paces the room, restless. Her eyes catch on their birthday card from the year before, their four smiling faces on the front. Vivi watches her reach for it, and before she can tell her to stop, Jinsol opens the card. In the otherwise dead silent room, Haseul’s tinny laugh plays. “Oh, y’all! You three always put together killer surprises!”
Jinsol makes a choked sound, dropping the card and stumbling back. Vivi tears her eyes away from the card to see Sooyoung covering her mouth. Vivi watches her take a deep shaky breath and blink back her emotions. She’s always wondered how Sooyoung can do that—just turn her feelings off. “Okay.” She appraises Haseul’s body again, and Vivi’s skin crawls at the analytical way she does so. “Here’s our story. She liked it rough in the bedroom. Things got out of hand with a hookup. He choked her to death.” She looks at the two of them, gaze cold, and Vivi can only stare back in horror.
“She didn’t do hookups,” Vivi spits out. She didn’t like men, she keeps to herself.
“And?” Sooyoung’s voice now has a smoothness to it that puts an itch under Vivi’s skin. “No one knew that about her. She’s dead. It’s not like she’ll care.”
“I’m gonna puke.” Jinsol’s voice is small. “I-I have to-” She turns and stumbles for the door, opening it and crashing into-
“Oh, hey! Yves! Fancy seeing you here! I’m just here to deliver some notes—” Kim Jiwoo smiles and waves at Sooyoung over Jinsoul’s shoulder, a faint blush on her cheeks. Then her nerdy, smiling face transforms into a look of horror when she sees what—or who—Sooyoung is standing over. “I-oh-I’m going to go—”
“Oh,” Sooyoung slides past Jinsol and grabs Jiwoo by one shoulder. “You can’t go anywhere.”
Vivi remembers the way Haseul’s eyes would flicker down to her lips in quiet moments. Ones without Jinsol or Sooyoung there. She feels a sudden, striking regret. She should have leaned in sooner. She should have—well, it's too late now. She closes the paper on Haseul's obituary.
Vivi tries hard not to think about why dorky little Kim Jiwoo is sitting with them at their table, and especially not about the way she’s sandwiched between her and Sooyoung, Haseul’s old spot. She’s a nice girl, really. Vivi had a class with her once, and although she had hummed show tunes under her breath for most of the class, she had lent Vivi a pen several times when Vivi hadn’t bothered to grab her things from her locker after lunch.
“Charity,” Sooyoung had called it. “In exchange for your silence. You’re a fixer-upper. We can mold you into a pretty thing.”
Vivi knew better. Sooyoung’s ‘keep your friends close’ motto was a defining trait.
Haseul was playful. Always pushing Vivi down onto the couch just to laugh into her neck before kissing her. Vivi felt like she was flying when it was the two of them, when Haseul intertwined their fingers and tugged Vivi to her in quiet moments just to feel her closer.
And even when they sprung apart before Sooyoung or Jinsol could catch them, Haseul would shoot her a wink that made it all feel like more of a game than just self-preservation.
Sooyoung runs her fingers absently through Jiwoo’s bangs. The action reminds Vivi a little of petting a dog. “You need a new name. Jiwoo won’t do at all. See, I’m Yves, and there’s Jinsoul and Vivi.”
Jiwoo furrows her brows. “But isn’t Jinsoul your birth name?”
“No, I added a ‘U,’” Jinsol supplies helpfully.
“Oh.” Jiwoo still looks confused and it’s not like Vivi can blame her. Sooyoung was the only one who went by a different name with her friends. Jinsol had added the ‘u’ to differentiate herself from the other Jinsol at their school, and Vivi had always gone by Vivi.
But Sooyoung always got what she wanted, and right now, “Chuu. I think you’re Chuu now. It’s cute and trendy.”
“Okay.” Chuu looks at Jinsol and Vivi for approval, and what is Vivi supposed to do but smile and nod?
They didn’t ever really date, per se, but Vivi remembers the night Haseul had swung by her house after texting that she couldn’t make it to the movie with the group. She’d asked Vivi, with that gorgeous smile of hers, whether she wanted to ditch too.
They’d gone to the park and played before Haseul curled up with Vivi at the bottom of the slide. “I love these moments with you. I finally feel like me,” she had whispered, and Vivi hadn’t known how to respond other than by pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
“You can’t keep doing this. You need to come clean. I can’t stand to be around you when all you’ve done lately is lie about our friend.” Vivi hisses the words at Sooyoung in the empty school hallway. The words don’t travel, but Vivi still feels vulnerable. But this needs to be said.
“Then don’t,” Sooyoung says plainly.
“Don’t what.”
“Don’t be around me. I’m not going to tell anyone what happened. Why would I? ‘Oh, I killed your Haseul. I killed the golden girl of the school. A fucking angel. The kindest person alive.’ Is that what you want?” Sooyoung sneers at her. “I’m not going to ruin my life over a stupid mistake. Deed’s been done, and now it’s taken care of.”
“Killing your friend,” Vivi counters, shoving Sooyoung back into the lockers behind her, “Is not a stupid mistake. It’s murder.”
“Oh, don’t be dramatic.” Vivi almost misses the way Sooyooung’s eyes drop to her lips for a moment. She doesn’t feel anything but disgust.
“You’re a monster,” She spits, slamming Sooyoung into the lockers once more before storming off. It’s only after she’s left the building that she wonders what Sooyoung had meant by ‘Her Haseul.’
Vivi remembers watching Haseul draw on her eyeliner. She was always so good at it, practiced in a way that Vivi wasn’t, but Vivi can still hear her voice in her ear when Haseul would lean close enough to brush her lips against the shell of Vivi’s ear. “As long as you don’t hesitate. Eyeliner can smell fear, you know?”
Haseul put on makeup to emphasize the parts of herself she loved the most. As Vivi wipes away her third attempt at a wing, she wonders if she loves any of herself anymore.
Chuu really is Chuu now, in her plaid skirt and shiny lip gloss. She looks almost like a mini Sooyoung—no, Yves. Sooyoung feels reserved for someone Vivi thought she knew—now. At first, Chuu was an ill-fitting costume. Vivi isn’t sure anyone else saw through it, but Jiwoo would still hum little songs and swing around corners like she was in a musical when she knew Yves wasn’t around. Vivi watches Jiwoo start to fade though.
She doesn’t think much of it when Jiwoo starts humming No Doubt under her breath instead of the theater songs she’s used to hearing. But whatever. Anyone’s taste in music changes. Then she sees the inside of Jiwoo’s locker transform from plastered in baby photos of her performing into chic animal print magazine cutouts and photos of celebrities. By the time Jiwoo’s swept her bangs away, pinned back by clear pink pins, and has started laughing at the nerdy students as they struggle to find a spot in the cafeteria, she’s unrecognizable.
On Vivi’s birthday, Haseul had taken her out to see a sunset on the hood of her car. When the sun had turned the sky orange, Haseul had pulled out a pendant necklace—a tiny bird on a delicate chain. “So you’ll always have something of me with you!” She’d said, and Vivi had thought it was exactly the sort of cheesy cute that Haseul specialized in.
That night, Vivi had felt it rest between her collarbones, searing into her skin as Haseul had kissed her into her own mattress so sweetly Vivi had felt molten.
The detective on the case sets up at the school and, of course, Yves, Jinsoul, and Vivi are the first to get questioned. Vivi feels queasy as she approaches the conference room that the detective has set herself up in. A freshman on her way to the bathroom eyes her curiously before recognizing her, probably as the girl who got kicked from the “it girl” clique. She presses her lips into a weak half-smile and she flushes, turning to look at her shoes and hurrying on her way.
Inside the conference room, she can hear voices. She didn’t think she’d be the first, of course, but she’s surprised the detective planned the interviews so closely after one another. Then she recognizes the voice.
Yves has a way she speaks when she lies. Her eyes dance with personality and her voice is so much more animated. Haseul used to call her a born actress. Vivi didn’t know enough to disagree, but now she thinks Yves might be more dangerous than that.
She listens idly to Yves talk to the detective until she picks up on what Yves is saying. “Officer, I didn’t want to talk about Haseul like this since she is—was—one of my closest friends, but she used to tell me things that I don’t know if the other girls knew. Especially Vivi. She was always so protective of Haseul. Putting her on a pedestal. That must be why Haseul only told me this.”
Vivi's stomach tightens. She can’t be—
“Haseul would frequent bars. Especially ones with older men. She liked it rough. You know what I’m saying, right? I don’t think I can bring myself to be any more detailed than that. It’s seriously so sick if that’s what happened. Especially because she had told me the day before that she was,” Yves whispers, “horny and needed a man—”
Vivi pushes herself away from the wall, feeling dizzy and sick. She feels her lunch crawl its way up her throat as she stumbles down the hall to the nearest trash can. She throws her head over it as she dry heaves, vision blurred. She realizes once she straightens up, throat raw, that she’s crying.
She wipes her tears away to see Yves turning the corner on her way back to class, and thinking about having to face anyone today has her feeling newly ill, so she walks the other way down the hall and out through the front door.
Vivi wouldn’t consider herself a daydreamer, but she had, before everything happened, an idea of what the future could look like for her and Haseul. She had imagined they’d go to the same college, or at least colleges near one another. They’d live on campus the first year, but stay over at each other’s rooms so much they’d have pissed off their roommates. Sophomore year, they’d move in together. It would be a small studio somewhere nearby to their school or schools. Haseul would blow the budget on fancy food and Vivi would nag her to mind the spending, but at the end of every night, they’d be curled into one another in their bed. Maybe they’d get married straight out of college. Maybe they’d wait a few years so Vivi could give Haseul the fairy tale wedding she deserved. They’d have at least one kid who’d be precocious, to Vivi’s chagrin and Haseul’s amusement.
They could—no. They couldn’t.
Vivi wouldn’t consider herself a dreamer.
Vivi returns to school the next day. She knows she looks sick. She feels the cold prickle of dread on her skin for the entire first period before the bell rings and she leaves with the rest of the students. It’s only when a jock accidentally knocks her into the wall that Vivi wakes up. Yes, she’s doing what needs to be done. Haseul would be proud of her, she thinks. She approaches the conference room door, relieved to see that the detective isn’t in yet. She pulls out the letter that she wrote the night before and slips it through the crack under the door, making sure it’s fully under before standing up and, with a deep breath, walking away. On her way back to class, where she knows she won’t be for long, she sees a flyer for the school play pinned to a bulletin board. She takes it and makes a quick detour to slip it into Jiwoo’s locker. Maybe one of them could still have something they loved.