TWO DAYS AFTER

This is so cliché.

Am I dead?

I'm still here, right?

My eyes flew open to the sight of a sterilised, white-walled room. The scent of medicine hung heavy in the air. It was cold, almost to the point of freezing. Wires encircled my arms, but I couldn't see much more than that. My glasses weren't on my face. There was someone sitting on a chair in the corner. It looked like my mother, but I couldn't be sure.

My hand reached out blindly, the movement slamming something against the steel pole next to my bed. The woman in the chair jolted up. I saw ash-blonde hair and worn wrinkles, confirming my suspicions. "Canterbury!" She rushed over to hug me. "You're alive! Oh, my poor baby, I'm so sorry!"

"I...what?" I knew I was in a hospital room, but I didn't know anything else other than that. My mother dug around in her purse, yanking out a pair of circle-framed, silver glasses. They weren't mine. I looked at her in quizzical confusion.

"Your...your old ones were lost when you were attacked. I bought you a temporary pair," she explained. I nodded my thanks, taking them from her and slipping them on. Almost immediately, the world came back into focus. I ran an inquisitive hand over my head. My hair had been cropped close to my scalp, a bandage wrapped around the back of it. I realised the absence of my bowtie with some mild shock. "I was worried you would never wake up!"

"I---what?" I repeated, confusion overriding my brain. Suddenly, it all came back to me in a flood: the library, my head injury, the kidnapping, the drive, the lake, the hand with the serpent tattoo, Avery Lang's corpse...

Ette.

Ette!

I bolted straight up in a panic, causing the machine next to me to start beeping insistently. A doctor rushed in, chastising me for sitting up so quickly as he rearranged my wires and tubes. "Where's Ette?" I demanded to know. My heart pounded in my chest. Surely my mysterious saviour had pulled him from the waters alive as well?

The grim look on my mother's face confirmed my greatest fear. "No," I whispered. The sense of loss hit me like a truck, crashing over me in a tidal wave of internal agony unlike anything I'd ever felt before. "NO!"

"Calm down," the doctor told me. "You're going to hurt yourself."

"He can't be dead, right?" I gasped, ignoring the doctor---which was unnatural for me, because I always listened to figures of authority.

My mother wouldn't meet my eyes. "They found both him and...what's her name? That popular girl, the pretty Asian one. The police found both of them in the lake." She swallowed. "Dead."

I looked down at myself. I could barely breathe. "How did I get here?"

Worry fluttering in her darting gaze, my mother said, "Someone---we don't know who---dropped you off in front of the hospital. You were unconcious. A little while after, there was an anonymous phone call made to the police station telling them to check the lake. They did. They're speculating that Ette and the girl went to the lake for a rendezvous, but they weren't sure how you fit into the picture."

My throat felt parched. "Please don't tell me they think I'm the murderer now."

My mother looked away, stare distant. "They'll take you in for questioning, but no. They don't think you did it. The lake's only a few kilometres from the school. They think you were just at the wrong place at the wrong time."

Hot tears were beginning to spill their way down my cheeks. The doctor finished his work on my wires and moved to the side, clipboard at the ready. "It's not like that," I cried. "They weren't there for a rendezvous. I...someone kidnapped me from outside the library. Ette came to find me. I don't know why Avery was there!" Deep in my bones, I knew that if Ette hadn't followed my kidnapper in his attempt to save me, he would still be alive.

If Ette had been as bad a friend to me as I was to him, he would still be here today.

"Your head injury was quite severe. You should rest," my mother suggested, her voice pacifying.

"This can't be real," I insisted doggedly, refusing to give up. Soon, someone would jump out from under the bed and tell me that it was just a joke, that Ette was still alive and the whole thing was an elaborate prank concocted by the Liars as revenge for all I had done. Perhaps they were even filming me right now.

My mother's eyes were sad when she finally focused her gaze back on me. "You missed his funeral," was all she said.

☆☆☆

I soon found out that I, in fact, had missed my best friend's funeral.

It had been held the day after his body was found. There'd been a small crowd. Avery Lang's had been a much larger affair, with nearly the whole school present. It seemed so surreal, so unbelievable. When I went back to school the next week after getting the all-clear from my doctor, my hair unimaginably short and my pride bruised, people were still crying in the hallways. The few Liars I recognised were falling apart, leaning on each other, some sobbing their eyes out. It was a shock to see such iron-carved elites reduced to pathetic messes after their leader's burial.

A few shot dirty looks at me, but none seemed to blame me for her death. I felt like the glares of hatred were for the drug bust. Apparently, fools took a long time to forgive. No one attempted to punch my teeth out, though. They were too busy mourning Avery Lang.

Sometimes, I would turn to my left, expecting to see all five-feet-eleven-inches of Ette Longsdale there---he'd always insisted that he had good genes and would have been tall even without testosterone---but I was always met by either blank space or a moron trying to shove past me. I blinked away the tears that threatened to dust my lashes and soldiered on.

I'd never appreciated him, not really, but he'd still given his life for mine.

When the intercom crackled to life during History, I anticipated its demand of my presence in the principal's office---which would normally tick me off, but not this time, since I hadn't copied any of my notes and had spent the past thirty minutes staring at a blank sheet of paper and trying not to cry. I would have probably spent it scrolling through Ette's Instagram feed if I had a phone, but I didn't. I was a terrible friend, and I knew it.

Sure enough, not less than five minutes later, I was walking through the doorway of the main office with my shoulders slumped and head down. The woman at the front desk---I'd never bothered to learn her name---startled once she saw me, since I'd never gotten in trouble before. Then she relaxed, probably remembering the announcement. "Principal Bell is waiting for you," she informed, pointing a stubby-nailed finger to the door of the principal's office.

You didn't need to tell me that. She literally called me here. I didn't acknowledge her reply, knocking on the door out of courtesy and going in. Principal Bell sat at her desk, prim and proper with her bun of mahogany hair. Two men sat opposite her. One was short and blonde, the other lean as Ette had been. They were dressed in matching blue uniforms.

"Sit down, Canterbury," Principal Bell said, her voice warm. She loved me---then again, every teacher in the school did. I got good grades, I reported the delinquents, I was polite to all of them. "You're not in trouble." I know that. "These are Officer Hickory and Rhodes. They want to ask you just a few questions."

The most popular girl in school and my best friend were dead. I was pretty sure the questions would be more than just a few.

"Hello, Canterbury," the short officer greeted. His badge said RHODES in big, blocky letters. "We're sorry about your friend. Juliette Longsdale, wasn't it?"

I took a shallow breath. I hated when they did this, tried to pretend that Ette had never transitioned, tried to pretend that he was a she, tried to pretend that he wasn't a boy, because he was, and he'd been an awesome one. It was extremely unprofessional of them to think otherwise. "His name is Ette."

Officer Rhodes looked disgruntled. His partner looked as if he was trying to stifle a smirk. "Alright, he was your best friend, right?"

I held back a rude response. Even though I could easily shoot down this monkey-brained excuse of a policeman with a few well-chosen words, I didn't want Principal Bell to think any less of me. "Yes. He was indeed," I said instead.

Officer Rhodes signalled to his partner, who pulled out a notepad and started scribbling frantically. What is there to write? I've answered only one question, the answer to which they probably know already. Morons. "How did you end up at the lake that night?"

I exhaled tiredly. I'd already told the whole story to the officer who'd come to question me at the hospital. "I was outside the library. Someone whacked me over the head. I blacked out. When I woke up, I was in a car boot speeding around in circles. The moment my kidnapper parked and opened the boot, I ran."

"You told Officer Yale that your friend was about to pick you up at the library, but then saw you being kidnapped and drove after you," Officer Hickory interjected, speaking for the first time. He watched my face closely, as if looking for signs of deceit.

"Yes," I replied without hesitation.

"How do you know that he drove after you?" They were persistent.

"He showed up at the lake. He was looking for me. I heard a car honking behind us the whole ride. It's easy to connect the dots." I was running out of patience, and Principal Bell wasn't saying anything to help me out.

"Perhaps him and you appearing at the lake at the same time was a coincidence?"

I shook my head. "It wasn't a coincidence. He was looking for me."

"Did he call out your name?" Officer Hickory questioned. He was on a roll now. There would be no stopping him.

"No, I---"

"Have you stopped for a moment to consider that he might not have been looking for you, but rather for the person he was supposed to meet up with?" Officer Rhodes leaned forward, piggy eyes gleaming like tiny gimlets. "The lake isn't very far from the school. Perhaps he was looking for Avery Lang, not you."

"That's a little too much coincidence there," I insisted. "Why would he be meeting up with Avery Lang after seeing his best friend being kidnapped? He followed my kidnapper. He drove to the lake. He was looking for me. I saw him." I was speaking in staccato sentences now, panic and disgust rising from my chest. I glanced to Principal Bell for assistance. She offered none.

"We're not accusing you of anything," Officer Rhodes reassured, as if afraid I'd worried about that. "We're just trying to find their killer. This supposed kidnapper, as you say, is it the same person who killed them? Could you identify them?"

I was sick and tired of the police department's mind games. Those mind games were mine to play. "If I could identify them, I'd have done so straight away," I all but shouted. They're accusing me of lying! "But yes, I'm pretty sure it's the same person! I'm not lying, I swear! I have the head injury to prove it!"

"You're upset, and we understand---" Officer Rhodes began.

I looked straight at Principal Bell. "May I please be excused to go back to class?" I asked, trying to keep my tone even. To my relief, she nodded her approval.

Just as I stood up, Officer Hickory called out, "This girl, Avery Lang, did the two of you have any animosity between you?"

I walked out and shut the door without looking back.

☆☆☆

As I slipped between my second-to-last and last classes of the day, drifting about like some sleep-deprived zombie, I noticed a giant crowd gathered in the hallway. Curiousity might have killed the cat, but I'd always been a bit nosey. I recognised Brittany Yee's locker instantly---since hers was next to Avery Lang's, and Avery's was overflowing with letters, flowers and teddy bears in her memory.

I was tempted to chastise them on loitering in the corridor when there were classes to go to, but I wasn't in the mood to lecture people---the idiots would do fine without words of wisdom from their resident genius for a day or so. So I joined the crowd, standing on the tips of my toes to try and get a view over their fat heads.

When, after much uncultured jostling, I managed to get a spot close to the front, I noticed there was a photo crudely taped onto Brittany's locker. It wasn't vandalism, no. Vandalism was the penis that had been graffitied onto my locker---long washed off, but the stains still remained. This was a simple Polaroid, but something even more damning.

On a glossy four by four was a moment in the life of the deceased Avery Lang, one that would haunt me forever. She looked as alive as she had been more than a week ago. In the picture, she cupped her best friend's face and pulled her close, their lips molded together in a passionate kiss. And now, everyone was gawking at it.

Their secret was out.

When Brittany Yee finally appeared with her boyfriend at her side, cocking an eyebrow in bewilderment at the audience in front of her locker, the chatter died down. The crowd parted in a tidal wave to allow her and her boyfriend---Josh, I remembered---access to the photo. Everyone fell hush, just for a moment. Then someone, a loud-voiced bratmouth, called out above the crowd, "You were shagging Avery?"

Brittany's mouth fell agape as she gazed upon the Polaroid.

Josh continued staring at the picture, chest rising and heaving. His face was turning red with rage. Then he pulled his fist back, grabbed Brittany by the shoulders, and punched his girlfriend in the face.

In one fluid movement, the crowd was upon her, jeering and pulling at her hair, wolves tearing apart what had once been their Beta. I stood struck with horror, affixed to the spot and unable to move. Just for a moment, Brittany's tortured face caught my eye. Her expression twisted into one of hate, before she was swallowed by the crowd once more. She thought I had been the one to tack up the picture.

I realised, with a start, that I'd forgotten to wear my bowtie to school.