PEDERSON: Were you insulted? By the way she looked at you?
KRISTOFF: Hell no. Still got to kiss her, didn’t I? And she had to pass me in the hall every day after. That same disgusted look on her face, like she was reliving every second. Like I was the worst moment in her life. That’s victory to me.
CHANG: Until she ends up in a glass coffin.
KRISTOFF: Anyone could have done it, honestly. You know how Snow White had to clean up after her damn dirty dwarfs? Maddy was trying to clean up all of mankind.
CHANG: “Incel.” Why is that your nickname?
KRISTOFF: ’Cause I look like a Reddit troll.
PEDERSON: Had nothing do with the essay you wrote last year for Crowder’s class?
KRISTOFF: Excuse me, we were learning about “polemics.” The assignment was to write a manifesto. Valerie Solanas wrote the SCUM Manifesto in 1967, about ridding the world of men. I argued the same about women. Solanas’s manifesto is considered a classic. Mine got me suspended. Double standard, wouldn’t you say?
PEDERSON: You have a tattoo on your back.
KRISTOFF: Would you like me to disrobe and show you?
CHANG: What’s it of?
KRISTOFF: You know what it is, otherwise you wouldn’t be tag-teaming to ask me.
PEDERSON: It’s Dopey. One of Snow White’s dwarfs.
KRISTOFF: A lazy, pointless oaf, and yet the only dwarf people remember. A role model if I’ve ever seen one. Hmm . . . History with Madelyn. Writes about getting rid of women. Has a Snow White tattoo. Fits the profile, doesn’t it? Only one problem: When was Maddy killed?
CHANG: April 15.
KRISTOFF: Exactly. And I was in Hamelin at State Swim Champs, running Prince Chaminade for the girls’ team. So I ain’t your killer, am I? But that’s where you’re going wrong. Worrying about profiles and motives instead of looking at the real story. Five dead princesses. No prince to save them. Fairy tales end with a moral, don’t they? Well, these dead girls are trying to teach us one. You just got to figure out what it is. Then you’ll find who’s responsible.
PEDERSON: And you have no idea who would have something against Madelyn?
KRISTOFF: You’re as good at listening as you are as sleuthin’. (pause) Look, hell if I know. Probably all the dudes she wouldn’t fuck. But I got closer than any of ’em, didn’t I? Glass box. What a way to go. Kinda fitting if you think about it.
PEDERSON: Fitting . . . ?
KRISTOFF: Flopping around inside, looking out scared at whoever put her there. Probably the same look she had when she knew she had to kiss me.
CALLUM
“Wednesday, May 6, 3:58 p.m. Jogging around Cheshire Park, trying to settle my brain down, but it’s just making it worse, so figured I’d talk it out. Fucking voice notes turned Dear Diary. I don’t care. Got no one else to talk to. No Rebecca. No boys. Chang’s being pissy. Mom still thinks I’m at the academy; if I tell her what I’m up to, she won’t sleep at night. Or she’ll stop letting me send her money and ask Dad for help instead. I’d rather put my head in an oven. Boys are probably at lacrosse practice right now. Damn. I miss it. When I was at practice, I’d forget about everything else. Eye on the ball. Run, run, run. Now when I run, all I think about is dead girls and how those girls used to be alive, in my classes, at my games, at the parties I went to, and now they’re dead . . . and I’m the one they’re counting on to find the killer. A killer who’s so close, I can taste it, and yet nothing adds up. Not the alibis, not the motives. No matter how hard I look, the answer just vanishes right before my eyes, like I’m the blind spot, like I’m the one who’s— (Phone dings.) Shit. Chang’s texting. (Footsteps stop.) Says Flynn’s ready to talk. Lawyer called; Flynn has a statement to give. Says to get to the precinct as fast as I can. Two weeks Flynn hides from us, and now suddenly a ‘statement’ . . . That rat bastard. That small-balled coward. Coming to confess or trade info for immunity. I knew it was him. He cracked . . . He finally cracked . . . (Footsteps pick up.)”
FLYNN
CHANG: Wednesday, May 6, 5:06 p.m. at the Middletown precinct. Lieutenant Chang and Detective Pederson, both present with Flynn Fitzherbert—
PEDERSON: Why’d you kill them? Because Charlotte told Eric you hooked up with her? Because all the Princesses knew you slept with your best friend’s girl?
FLYNN: As my lawyer told you, I have a statement to read.
(Silence)
CHANG: Go ahead.
FLYNN: Five of my classmates are dead. Five. And now some people are saying I did it.
Slashed all these girls. Alright. So here’s my confession.
I know who the Princess Killer is. Or at least, I think I know who it is. Been sending tips over to the precinct, trying to get them to investigate.
But no one cares what I think.
Instead, two undercover policemen come into my school and invade our safe space, trying to bait and trap students like me. On what grounds? First, the Middletown Police claim that Chaminade High had a culture of “toxic masculinity” that made me and my friends the prime suspects for the murders. Guys who are just trying to manage homework and sports practices and somehow carve out enough time to scarf down dinner, let alone start murdering our friends. But common sense doesn’t matter. Not when they’ve made up their minds. From the start, the Princess Killer had to be a Chaminade “Prince.” Case closed. They turned down the FBI’s help. They never brought in state investigators. Instead, they send in two of their own: an aging lieutenant who’d been trapped behind a desk for decades and a twenty-one-year-old greenie who hadn’t even made it out of police academy. This is who our own law enforcement entrusted with finding a sociopathic killer on the loose. Even more, neither of these cops has the slightest experience with homicide, serial killer cases, undercover operations, or field detective work, and I’d bet they haven’t even compiled a proper profile for the suspect yet, given that they’re still interrogating me and my friends day after day, instead of hunting the real murderer, who’s out there laughing at them, planning his next kill. To axe five girls and get away with it requires deliberation and planning and resources and time that no single boy my age could ever pull off alone. The idea that Chaminade is the root of all evil—that one of us is responsible—is so laughable that it makes you ask: Who could possibly come to such a stupid conclusion?
Good question. Let’s meet the two “cops” who were tasked with finding the killer. First, there’s Joseph Chang, who not only led this farce, but did it while masquerading as a chemistry teacher—a subject for which he had no background and confessed to a friend during his questioning that Chang’s own son was the one grading our tests and helping tutor his father on the side. So not only do we have an incompetent cop investigating us, but an incompetent teacher teaching us at school. Two for one. We all lose, including the next girl who turns up dead. Then there’s Callum Pederson, a poor man’s Timothée Chalamet and poetry-writing sad boy, who seems to be on this case less because he has any actual value and more because he wanted a second chance at not being a high-school loser. Former Brookside Nobody now thinks he’s gonna be a Chaminade Prince. The instant Callum arrives, he’s mysteriously added to the lacrosse team, and buddies up to me and my friends like the worst version of a male wench, acting like we’re bros just because he says so. We all saw through him for the lame suck-up he was, but we put up with him as best we could. We may be “toxic males,” but at least we’re polite. We invited him to our houses, to our parties. He met our parents, ate our food, played video games in our rooms. But deep down, we knew he was an impostor. A sheep in wolf’s clothing. We didn’t know he was a cop, of course. But we knew he wasn’t one of us. He wasn’t a Prince, even if he spent his whole life wanting to be. It’s why I don’t tell him who I really think is killing the girls. Or that I’ve started to investigate things on my own. To clear me and my friends’ names. I’ve started asking all the questions the detectives aren’t.