Chapter 23: The Flower Bed

We walked to the school gates because Keeley asked for somewhere nobody would come.

Behind us the field was emptying, and the last of the cars were pulling out of the lot.

Drew stood at the far end of the fence with his back to us.

I had told him to stay in sight and out of earshot, and he had not argued.

The flower bed was on our left, in the evening light, the same long box of gray stones.

Keeley stopped three feet from it.

"I haven't been here since that night," she said.

"I know."

"I thought it would feel like something."

"Does it?"

"No. It's just rocks."

She was holding her phone in both hands, and she looked at it for a while before she looked at me.

"Here," she said.

She held it out.

I did not take it.

"What is it?"

"Everything. The original file of the video I sent the university, and the edit."

"The voice recording I laid in, with the date on it."

"And the screenshot, the real one, before I changed it."

"Why are you giving me that?"

"Because the deputy asked for it, and I said no, and I want to stop saying no to people."

I took the phone.

It was warm from her hands.

"You should give this to the deputy yourself," I said.

"I'm going to. I wanted you to see I would."

She wiped her face with her sleeve, quickly.

"Do you want to know what it cost?"

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