The Collective(51)

“Hi, Cammy. It’s Matt.”

I lift my finger from the button.

“I was hoping to catch you at home. I’m sure you’ve heard the news about Blanchard.”

“Heard it?” I whisper. “I made it.”

“I don’t want to say I told you so about karma, but . . . actually, maybe I do.” Matt makes a noise—half-laugh, half-cough. “It’s going to be weird, don’t you think? Not waking up every morning knowing he’s still alive? What are we going to do with ourselves, without all that hate?” A dog barks in the background, the sound of it echoing against the walls of Matt’s house—a house I’ve never seen, never even imagined. A dog I never knew he had. “Anyway, I’m free now, and you are too. And I hope you know that. I hope the reason why you’re not around to pick up the phone is that you are running down that mountain with the wind in your hair, feeling everything it is to be alive when he’s not. I mean . . . if it isn’t too cold out.”

I place my hand on the machine, my eyes hot from the threat of tears.

“You don’t have to call back,” Matt says. “Just . . . take care of yourself, Cammy.”

I delete the message.

I wish I hadn’t done that. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t think I’d ever be able to listen to it again anyway.

I lift my laptop bag from the chair and lug it upstairs to my bedroom, set it on my desk, open up the Tor server, navigate my way back to Kaya, and start a new private chat with 0001.


0417: I’m troubled by a few things.



The line disappears, and she answers immediately. It makes me wonder what her life is like, what she is like—always in front of her computer, all-knowing. Always ready.


0001: What are you troubled by?

0417: The knife. The girl going to the police.

0001: Why do those things trouble you? They’re exactly what you wanted.



I start to type, No, I didn’t want those things. I only wanted him gone. But before I can finish, 0001 has re-sent me the screenshot from weeks ago.


0417: I don’t just want him killed off. I want his soul destroyed, his memory ripped to shreds, just like he and his family and their lawyers did to my daughter. After he’s dead, I want the whole world to see him for what he truly was. I want his parents to have to live for the rest of their lives knowing what a mistake it was to bring him into the world.



“What he truly was,” I whisper.


0001: Ask of the collective, and you shall receive.



I stare at the screen, that smiley-face emoji, then watch it all fade to white.

She’s right. She’s absolutely right. So why am I not celebrating? I can’t put it into words because they are words I don’t want to think about.


0417: You’re right. I am very grateful.

0001 is typing . . .



I watch the screen, the ellipses disappearing, then appearing again until a reply finally appears.


0001: You’re not being honest.



“Because I don’t know how.”


0001 is typing . . .

0001: I’m going to tell you what you’re REALLY thinking.



“Fine.”


0417: Fine.

0001 is typing . . .

0001: You feel guilty. Not because of what happened to Harris Blanchard but because you’re now doubting yourself for wanting it to happen. You’re questioning everything you’ve said, everything you’ve thought all these years. What if the sex was consensual? What if he really did lose her to some shaggy stranger and she lied to you in her dying breath in order to spare your feelings? What if they were just two stupid kids and now they’ve both lost their lives and their legacies because of their parents’ misconceptions about them? Am I correct?



I feel like I’ve been kicked in the gut. And when the words fade, it’s as though they’ve seeped into my skin and become part of me. “No.” I say it to the screen.


0417: Yes.

0001: That’s weak.

0417: I know.

0001: And you’re feeling sorry for his parents, which is even weaker. Do you think that family worried about whether or not they were telling the truth when they gave that interview to Rolling Stone?



I say it first. Then I remember she can’t hear me, that we’re not in the same room.


0417: No. They lied about her to save themselves.

0001: And they’ve continued lying to themselves, all these years. They’ve told themselves pretty lies about their “perfect” son and they’ve been thoroughly, shamelessly happy. Your instincts were correct. We gave him—we gave THEM—exactly what they deserved: the truth.



My eyes are welling up. Sometimes in therapy with Joan I would get this feeling—as though I were underwater, but so close to the surface, just about to break through and breathe. . . .


0417: I drowned a man in his own car.

0001: WE did.

0417: I drugged a boy and froze him to death and planted a knife on his body.

0001: WE did. Not you. We did those things and so much more. What does that make us?



The words blur. Tears spill down my cheeks.