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jesus fuck call me NOW

So I do. I fumble open their contact info and hit call.

While I wait for them to pick up, I pace the living room in my bare feet. Closing curtains, checking between the blinds, pulling out strands of hair from my aching temple.

Mom is making sure those cameras see me. She’s making sure the world knows it was me.

She would do this, wouldn’t she. If the documentary fizzles out in the face of a random tragedy, she risks losing the money, the fame, the attention. But if I, the child of Graham Nathaniel Slaughter, killed a member of the crew? There’s a story. There’s a real fucking story. And she’ll get everything she’s ever wanted: a movie, a moment in the spotlight, a life without me.

On the third ring, Felicity answers.

“What is happening?” they screech.

“I didn’t do it.” My voice is raspy and awful. I’m about to cry. Again. “Or I—I didn’t mean to. We were at his apartment, and he tried to fuck me and he wouldn’t stop when I told him to, and—it wasn’t supposed to kill him. I swear. I wasn’t trying to. I just wanted him to stop.”

Felicity lets out a shaky breath on the other side of the line. “Holy shit.”

“And now I think my mom is faking evidence? She cut her hair and stole my clothes. She’s pretending to be me. She’s making it look like—like I did it on purpose.”

Like it wasn’t self-defense. Like I’m a monster.

We’re both quiet for a moment. I sniffle, then scrub my face.

“She locked you in the basement?” Felicity says, weirdly quiet. Almost soft.

I nod, then remember they can’t see me. “Yeah.”

I wonder if they’re picturing the penthouse, and the bedroom, and all those locks. If they’re remembering the way I tested their door or panicked when the latch on the bathroom stall slid shut.

“If you don’t believe me,” I say, “hang up right now.”

Felicity does not hang up.

They say, “If you’re lying to me, I swear to god …”

“If I’m lying, you can do whatever you want to me.” I don’t realize how much I mean it until I say it. “I won’t stop you. I’ll deserve it.”

“Okay,” Felicity says. “Okay. What are you going to do?” Then: “Shit. Your mom’s not streaming anymore.”

I tap the iPad to wake it up. According to the app, her phone is moving. Southeast. Away from the hospital, toward Capitol Hill, toward home.

Or—

What did she say?

Somewhere safe. She needs to go somewhere safe.

It’s nice to feel safe every once in a while, she said yesterday, hungover and slumped over a plate of toast. Is that a crime.

Alyssa’s house—Warren Hanover is there. The man she fell in love with after the trial, the retired chief of police, her safe place.

And watching Mom’s path on the phone tracker app, it will take her right to Navy Yard.

Okay, so, Alyssa blocked me. I dig up her number from my contacts and jam it into the tablet, to video call or message or something, but turns out she blocked Mom, too. I call Warren Hanover from the tablet, and he doesn’t pick up.

“Where are you?” I say into the phone. Please don’t be at home, please don’t, the Keating house is farther away than the hospital—

“The bookstore,” Felicity says. “I didn’t want to go home.”