“—prevention begins with each and every one of us, but we can’t do it alone. To that end, Gorman University is establishing its first-ever suicide prevention task force.”
Murmurs thread through the crowd. The past few years have seen a spate of suicides—not all my doing—and the school’s leadership has always done their best to sweep them under the rug before word got to Gorman’s wealthy alumni network. It’s the same nothing to see here approach they take with student sexual assault reports. Their obsession with protecting the university’s reputation has allowed plenty of misdeeds (my own included) to go unpunished, while the administration keeps waving their hands, pretending everything is fine.
Until now, apparently.
“I’m pleased to announce that the task force will be headed up by Dr. Samina Pierce.” Kinnear motions to her. “Dr. Pierce, would you like to say a few words?”
Kinnear doesn’t step out of the way quite fast enough, and Samina’s sleeve brushes against his as she takes her place behind the microphone. I could swear I saw her shudder when they touched, but she recovers her professional poise quickly.
“Thank you, Dr. Kinnear,” she says. She still speaks with a trace of her native British accent. “And thanks to all of you for taking the time to join us on a Saturday.”
The agenda she outlines for the task force all seems pretty standard: increased staff at the counseling center, new suicide prevention training protocols for the existing on-campus crisis center hotline, workshops for faculty and staff to help them identify and reach out to students who might be struggling with depression or other mental health disorders.
“Finally,” she says, “we’ll be performing a comprehensive investigation of all deaths by suicide that have occurred on the Gorman campus over the past decade.”
My chest seizes. A comprehensive investigation…
Only a fraction of my kills would be included in the campus suicide statistics. Others I’ve done well outside the school grounds, or made to look like accidental rather than self-inflicted deaths. Overdoses, car accidents, even an electrocution for one special target.
“I’ve already begun assembling a cross-departmental team to perform hands-on analysis and conduct interviews with selected faculty and students,” Pierce continues. “We’ll also be building a database to map commonalities in the deaths and identify personal or environmental risk factors we may be able to mitigate.”
I always go to great lengths to avoid creating patterns or leaving forensic red flags, but my most useful accomplice is the negligence of law enforcement.
Samina Pierce, however, seems anything but negligent.
She steps back from the microphone, clearly meaning to end the meeting. But Kinnear seizes the opportunity to take over again. “If anyone has any questions or concerns, I’d be happy to stick around and chat—unless you have somewhere to be, Mina?”
She purses her lips but nods, acquiescing. Most of the audience heads for the exit, but a few people, including Drew and Sandra, approach the stage.
Jasper brushes his copy of the suicide prevention flyer onto the floor, then dons his coat. “You want to get some coffee?” he asks. “Discuss next week’s lesson plans?”
Next week’s lesson plans have been locked in for months now. He’s not even attempting to be subtle.
“Another time,” I say, and then I head toward the stage steps.
Samina Pierce is even more beautiful close-up, her dark hair and olive skin lustrous despite the harsh lighting. A small crowd has gathered now, but Sandra and Kinnear are doing most of the talking, something about poetry writing as a therapeutic modality for suicidal students. As soon as I step onto the stage, Samina’s eyes go straight to me.
Drew steps back to include me in the circle. “Dr. Pierce, do you know—”
“Dr. Scarlett Clark,” she says, extending her hand for me to shake. Her grip is firmer than I expect, but her skin is rose-petal soft. “Yes, of course.”
She’s clearly someone on whom I should keep a very close watch. But a task force isn’t the police. They’re not looking for a culprit, only for data patterns, and data can be manipulated.
Just like people.
8 CARLY
I stay at the library until dark. That way, by the time I go back to our room, Allison should be long gone, off doing whatever normal college students do on Saturday night.
Instead, I arrive to find her sitting cross-legged on my bed.
“Hey,” she says. Her own bed is stripped bare. Maybe she’s doing laundry?
I stop, letting my backpack straps slide down my arms. “Hey.”
She’s dressed more casually than I’ve ever seen her, in leggings and a Gorman sweatshirt with the neck cut so it hangs off her shoulders, but she’s wearing her usual dramatic makeup: red lipstick, perfect feline flicks of eyeliner. She leans back on her hands, letting her feet dangle off the edge of my bed. “What are you up to tonight?”
I open my mouth to respond, but she puts her palm up before I get a word out.
“Reading is not an acceptable answer.” She springs up, offering me her hand like she’s a gentleman helping a lady out of a carriage. “Come on, I want to show you something.”
A nasty voice whispers in the back of my mind: It’s a trick She’s mocking you. But Allison doesn’t seem like a mean person. She doesn’t seem nice either, she seems… confident, I guess. Maybe I’d be that way too, if I looked like her.
I take her hand, and she smiles wider, threading our fingers together as she leads me out of our room and toward the window at the far end of the hall. She tugs at the pane until it raises, with a screech so loud it sets my teeth on edge.
“Come on,” she says again. Then she climbs over the sill, trying to tug me along with her, out onto the zigzagging fire escape bolted to the side of the building.
I freeze, pulling back on her arm. “Are we even allowed to—”
“You sound like Wes,” Allison says with a wink. “It’s fine, I come up here all the time.” She climbs a few steps, the black metal creaking ominously under her weight, then stops and looks down at me again. “Just don’t tell Samantha.”
Our RA mostly ignores us in favor of her on-again, off-again boyfriend, but I do not want to get on her bad side. But I don’t want Allison to think I’m some scared little girl either, so I take a deep breath and climb out the window after her.
By the time we get to the roof, my knuckles are pale and throbbing from gripping the railing so hard, but after the rickety fire escape, the flat expanse feels like safety. It’s bright and surprisingly warm up here, everything cast in a soft white glow from the strings of lights looped around the crumbling brick chimney—the same kind Allison has by her bed.
“Since you never want to go out,” Allison says, “I figured I’d bring the party to you.”
Her laptop sits a few feet away at the base of the chimney, all the blankets and pillows from her bed strewn in front of it. There are bowls with snacks set out too—popcorn, mini Oreos, small cubes of cheddar cheese—and a four-pack of Orangina.
She planned all of this. For me.
But why? Surely she has more than enough friends already, and way better things to do on a Saturday night.