"My side?" Lenore echoed. Suddenly everything roiling inside of her went still. No one had ever asked to know her side of the story... The story that had derailed the course of her life.

"Yeah," Victor said. "I'm sure there's something in the story that other people don't know, or have neglected to tell. There's always two sides to a story... Sometimes three sides, or four sides, or more." He gave a small laugh like he was trying to cut through the tension that settled over them.

Finally, Lenore looked at him, peering at him through her curtain of dark hair. He was smiling at her, like t all he wanted was to listen. But part of Lenore, the part that had been hurt before, warned her to be careful. For all she knew, this was just an act to get close to her, get the juicy details, and then he'd go and tell everyone he had the inside scoop.

But something else in Lenore told her that wasn't the case. Victor wasn't like that, she knew it. She didn't know how she knew it, but she did—it felt as certain as the sun setting.

Victor wanted to be her friend.

Though, that could be worse.

There was the chance that when—if—she told Victor the whole truth, he'd change his mind and no longer want to be friends.

And then she'd be alone.

Again.

She wanted to say no, to lie to Victor that there was nothing to tell, that the story was just rumours shared between bored neighbours. But she knew that wouldn't work either. If he didn't get the full story from her, he'd get it from someone else if he hadn't already. And the other sources in Eden would not paint her or her family in a favourable light...

As all the thoughts tangled and twisted in her head, Lenore began to feel dizzy. Her heart was thrumming in her chest, and her palms suddenly felt slick. She tried to swallow, and it felt like her throat was closing up.

"Lenore?" Victor asked like she might've forgotten he was there.

She forced a deep breath down her throat, and slowly her thoughts stopped their twisting and came together. She knew what she had to do.

"Okay," she agreed, looking at him properly. "But not now." And then she went back to her work.

After class, the other students left the library in a hurry, eager to start their break and be reunited with their friends. Lenore lingered at the table she had shared with Victor, slowly stacking up the books she'd been using for research. Victor picked up on the hint and stayed behind, too, even waving Fiona off as she beckoned him to follow.

"So, is this good?" Victor asked after almost everyone had left. "Is this an okay place to talk?" He glanced around the mostly empty library.

Lenore did the same. The library seemed to be pretty quiet during breaks. The librarian was sitting behind the reference desk, sorting out the books Lenore's classmates had returned and not paying much attention. There was one other student, still at the computer—a mousey blonde girl with big glasses tapping away at a word document—but she wouldn't be able to hear them from all the way over here.

"Yes, this should be fine," she said, sitting back down in her chair.

Victor sat down, too. "Are you..." Victor struggled with his words. "Are you still okay to do this? If you don't want to share, you don't have to."

Lenore shook her head. "It's okay. If you're going to hear this from anyone, it might as well be from me." She gave him a weak smile, but it didn't touch her eyes.

Victor nodded, sombre. He leaned back in his chair and waited for her to begin.

"What was the observation you made?" Lenore began, looking up at the ceiling. She was going to do this, sure, but she didn't think could do it and look Victor in the eye at the same time. "That the people in this town don't like me very much?"

"Yeah," Victor said. "And I asked why."

"Why, indeed." Lenore gave a hollow laugh. It was so strange to be saying all this out loud after she'd been pushing it down for so long. "It's because my Aunt Alice murdered people."

Victor nodded along. He had heard that part, then. But he didn't say anything, waiting for her to keep going.

Lenore took a deep breath and continued. "I guess you know the story. Five years ago—almost six, now, I think—two teenage boys went missing."

"The Harris twins," Victor added. "The ones from the memorial."

"Yes, those are the ones," Lenore agreed. "They were at a party in the woods—the same woods behind my house."

"Yeah, my house, too." Victor said. "They start at the back edge of our yard. Fiona took me to a party out there last weekend."

"Really?" Lenore's eyes widened. "People still go out there to party?"

Victor went a little red. "Yeah. I guess there's a reason it was such a popular spot for a party. Just outside your back door while still being private... But sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt."

"It's okay." Lenore tried not to think too much about how people still went to drink on the spot where people might've died. It made her kind of sick. "Anyway, my aunt was there, too."

"Wasn't it a high school party?"

"I'm not sure if it was exclusively high school. And my aunt is only ten years older than me—" She stopped herself. Why was she getting into this? And it sounded like she was trying to defend her aunt for being there. "It doesn't matter. She was there, and so were they."

"Anyway, the twins went missing sometime during or after the party. No one noticed until the next day, when their beds were found empty. They never made it home."

Victor nodded. This was all well-tread territory for him.

Lenore continued on. "Of course, a search was started. They scoured those woods." Lenore remembered this part clearly. Back then, from the window of her childhood bedroom, she had watched teams of investigators armed with bloodhounds descend on the forest. "But they found nothing but bloody clothes. At first they thought it might be an animal, but they quickly decided it was foul play."

"How did they decide that?"

"I don't know. I know it was determined to be a death from the amount of blood found—I heard my mom's friends talking about it—but I was too young at the time to know much more." Around that time, there had been many hushed conversations in the kitchen after Lenore had been sent to bed. Lenore had snuck out to sit on the stairs and listen, but she had only gotten snatches here and there, not every detail. "But after they decided it was, in fact, murder, the fingers started pointing—right at my aunt. She had been seen talking to one of them, and walking off together. She was heavily questioned and the police named her as a suspect."

Lenore remembered all that, too. The tension in the house had ratcheted up then, and there were lots of arguments behind closed doors. "The whole family maintained her innocence, but the police were laser focussed on her, and that was enough to convince the town of her guilt."

"Did you believe she was guilty?" Victor asked.

"At the time, no. Because she was pretty close in age to me, she was kind of like a cool big sister. I couldn't believe she'd ever do anything to hurt someone. The town was a little hostile, sure, but if she could stand with her head high and deny the charges, then I believed her—I believed in her."

And that was why it hurt so much when...

"We got a lawyer to defend her," Lenore continued, shaking off her thoughts. "And, for a bit, it seemed that it'd be okay. That she'd be cleared. The police apparently didn't have much, so it was going to all work out.

"But then she just... disappeared."

That day was the most vivid in her memory of that time. She had awoken one morning to her mother, searching the house, calling for her aunt, again and again, getting more and more frantic. Her grandmother was helping to look too, but her reaction was much calmer—resigned. Lenore remembered thinking that it was like her grandmother knew that Alice was already gone, and so it was pointless to look.

"After that, things got so much worse. People saw her skipping town as an admission of guilt. And so, without a trial, she was branded the culprit—a murderer. And since she wasn't there to take the brunt of the town's righteous hatred... it fell on the rest of us."

Lenore squeezed her eyes shut. This had been the worst time for her. There was a painful lump in her throat as if she might start to cry, but her eyes were uncomfortably dry.

"But you're not a murderer," Victor said as her lull carried on for a bit too long. "So, why do they hate you?"

"Same reason people hate the families of serial killers or mass shooters," Lenore explained, opening her eyes again. When she had first struggled with understanding why suddenly everyone in this town hated her after her aunt had disappeared, she had done her research. "They may not have done the horrible thing, but they're still blamed for it. They're blamed for whatever went wrong with their relative. They should've known, should've seen the signs, and warned somebody. And then there's the fear that the same wrongness has been passed along, like it's a dormant gene or something—lingering in the other family members and waiting to rear its head."

Victor was frowning, shaking his head. "How does that make any sense?"

"It doesn't have to make sense," Lenore said with a sigh. "People are just looking to satisfy a feeling, a need for 'justice' in whatever form they can get. And so they did. The town basically ostracised us. People cut my mom and dad off, I started getting bullied at school, and so we decided to leave." And just before they did, her grandmother had her stroke. The doctors couldn't definitively point to one specific trigger, but Lenore had always thought that it was because the stress had been too much.

"And that's it," Lenore said, leaning back. "That's what happened. The town hates me because they think my aunt killed people."

She looked at Victor, wanting to gauge how he'd taken the news.

He just looked thoughtful. "You said you didn't think she was guilty then," he said. "But what about now?"

So, he had noticed. Lenore was hoping to avoid that question. She knew she wasn't supposed to love her aunt anymore, but she did. The Alice she had known in the before had been her best friend, so fun and full of life. But she also hated her—the Alice that came after. The one who left and abandoned her family.

"I don't know. It changes daily," Lenore said at last. "If she was innocent, why would she run? If she wasn't, why did she do it?" She sighed. "I've never been able to make sense of it. But I guess I don't have to. I just have to live with it, and the fact that everyone hates me for it."

"Not everyone," Victor said, smiling at her. "I don't hate you. You had nothing to do with it, family or not. You were just a kid."

The heaviness that had settled inside Lenore's chest seemed to lift.

Victor got it—he understood, truly, really, actually understood.

She opened her mouth to respond, but she wasn't sure what to say...

Then the bell rang.

"Damn," Victor said. "That's the warning bell—break's almost over. We should get going."

"R-Right," Lenore said, cursing the bell. "I've got—" she checked her timetable, "—chemistry next."

"Dang. I've got PE. I guess we don't have the exact same schedule."

"I guess not," Lenore said. While she was sad to be without Victor's company, she was glad she wouldn't be attending PE, her least favourite class.

She gathered the books on the table into her arms to dump them on the return cart on the way out. She turned to head that way—

But before she could move, Victor pulled her into a hug.

Even with the awkward armful of books between them, the hug was nice. Victor was warm and soft, and his lightweight hoodie pressed against her cheek smelled good, a woodsy and fresh scent mixed with something else, something that drew her in...

Victor pulled back, and Lenore fought a frown. She could've happily stayed there for a little longer.

"Thanks, Lenore," Victor said, holding her shoulders. "For sharing that with me. I know it couldn't have been easy."

She opened her mouth again, and yet again, nothing came out. Her face felt very warm.

Victor didn't need a response. He smiled at her, squeezed her shoulder, and went on his way. Lenore turned to watch him go...

But her heart stuttered as she spotted Fiona waiting for him by the library entrance. She had come back for him, and she had her gym bag slung over her shoulder. They shared the class. And for the first time ever, Lenore found herself wishing she had PE, too.