I always joked that my kitchen was the studio, but tonight it feels more like a war room.
The wall beside the stove no longer shows peeling paint; every inch is covered in index cards, printed screenshots, and scraps of notebook paper. Red string zigzags between them, held up by cheap painter’s tape and a couple of repurposed pushpins I stole from the PTA bulletin board. The air smells like burned coffee, old detergent from the laundromat downstairs, and the salty damp creeping in through the cracked kitchen window.
“You know serial killers use walls like this in TV shows,” Sadie says behind me. “Not that I’m judging. Just observing.”
“Great,” I say. “If anyone comes in, we’ll just say we’re doing a performance piece on structural injustice.”
Luz stands near the window, arms folded, shoulder pressed to the frame. Her plain black T-shirt makes her badge tan line on her wrist more obvious now that Internal Affairs took her actual badge. She studies the cards with a detective’s stillness.
“Walk me through it again,” she says. “Top to bottom.”
I step back until the table presses into my hips and sweep my hand across the board.
“Okay. This column is what we can prove without the tape,” I say. “We’ve got the survivor’s interview—audio plus her written statement. We’ve got Theo’s recordings documenting months of threats, CPS, the PI in the car, the break-in. We’ve got the carved glass rose on the dock, your photos, your notes.” I tap each card in turn, paper fluttering under my fingers.
“Don’t forget the panel clip,” Sadie says. She reaches over my head—she’s taller than me in those worn sneakers—and straightens the printed screenshot of Elliot mid-sentence, eyebrows tense, mouth forming the word dock. Underneath, in my messy Sharpie, I’ve written: “That dock has ruined enough lives.”
“Right,” I say. “His slip, on record, in front of a thousand viewers and half the Crescent Bay yacht club watching on their phones between courses.”
From outside, faint bass hums from the waterfront, a distant party testing sound systems for the next regatta gala or charity ball. The town never stops rehearsing its own soundtrack.
“This column,” I continue, “is what we strongly infer but can’t stand up in court yet.” Cards labeled Oracle, yearbook microcassette, Harrow Island timeline gaps, Calder’s lunch threats. I’ve drawn small glass roses in the corners of some, a nervous habit that turned into a motif.
Luz’s gaze tracks the string connecting Harrow Island to Old Gym to Dock. “And the point of the live episode,” she says slowly, “is to translate column two into column one, or at least make it politically impossible for them to pretend column two doesn’t exist.”
“The point,” I say, “is to make Elliot react where cameras and witnesses can watch him do it.”
The words taste of iron and caffeine. I hear my own breath in my ears.
Sadie bounces lightly on her heels, the lanyard of her borrowed “volunteer staff” badge from the town hall still hanging around her neck. “So we’re talking full multi-cam stream,” she says. “One stationary on the stage, one roving. Maybe a static one on the crowd. I already emailed two advocacy groups; the coastal assault coalition wrote back within ten minutes. They said, and I quote, ‘About time Crescent Bay stopped treating Prom Throwback like a brand and admitted prom night ruined lives.’”
“So they’re in?” I ask.
“They’re in,” she says. Pride edges her voice. “And they’re bringing a lawyer and a media liaison. Also, that indie paper out of New Haven? The investigative one that did the piece on the prep-school swim coach? They want a tip sheet and a spot up front.”
Luz’s jaw tightens, but not in disapproval. “That gives you some insulation,” she says. “Harder for local PD to shut it down without looking like they’re protecting him again. Not impossible, but harder.”
I let my eyes travel back over the wall: the prom flyer with its frosted-glass roses and “A Night on the Bay” font, the Google Street View printout of the old gym doors, the blurry iPhone shot of the cliffs and treacherous rock shelf below where Theo once went looking for Juliet’s last step.
“You can still back out,” Luz says quietly. “Turn this into an edited mini-series, slow-drip the evidence through lawyers and the state’s attorney, fight it on official channels.”
“Internal Affairs suspended you for following official channels,” I remind her. “Calder covered his last mess with donor plaques and a carefully worded press release. Elliot owns half the ad slots in every local news broadcast. I don’t think the system is our speed lane here.”
My chest feels too tight. I rub the heel of my hand against my sternum, then drop it before anyone comments.
“We can build guardrails,” I add. “People in the room who can call out if the crowd starts sharpening pitchforks. Clear instructions about not naming uncharged parties beyond what’s already public. No live doxxing. No pile-ons. We’re not reenacting the Q&A disaster.”
Sadie winces at that, shoulders curling in. She taps an index card that says Discord Fallout and connected it to Q&A Episode with a shorter, sagging strand of string.
“I’ll moderate questions,” she says. “Real-time. We can filter through a form or text line. I won’t let another Oracle slip through the mic.”
Her determination sits right alongside her guilt. I see it in the way she grips the dry-erase marker too tightly, ink smearing on her fingertips.
“Which brings us to the trap part,” Luz says. She steps closer to the wall and taps the card labeled Elliot Presence? “What makes you so sure he shows up?”
I exhale. “Elliot can’t resist a narrative,” I say. “Especially one with cameras and donors involved. We book the old gym through the school’s ‘community engagement’ office, pitch it as a restorative-justice forum. I issue a public invite on air—‘Elliot Harrow has been offered equal time to respond live.’ He lives for being the reasonable man in the room. He won’t let me take that stage without trying to flank it.”
Luz gives me a sideways look. “And if he sends lawyers instead?”
“Then the lawyers walk onto a floor warped by years of ignoring water damage,” I say. “Under banners paid for by Harrow donations, in a gym where Juliet’s glass roses once glowed in centerpieces while her body cooled on the rocks below. I can work with that.”
The words punch out of me before I can soften them. A hush falls. Even the bass from the waterfront feels muted.
Sadie clears her throat. “We should map exits,” she says. “Like… actual emergency exits. Fire code, bottlenecks, line of sight.”
“Already on it,” Luz says. She pulls a folded photocopy from her back pocket and spreads it on the table. The paper crackles. It’s a floor plan of the old gym, complete with faded handwritten notes about sprinkler updates. “This copy never made it to the digital archive. Interesting, right?”
“Luz,” I say. “You’re suspended. Are you sure…?”
“Suspended, not lobotomized,” she says dryly. “I still know where the file cabinets are.”
She taps the big rectangle labeled GYM. Smaller boxes mark Stage, Bleachers, Side Doors, Loading Dock. The loading dock makes my skin prickle; that back exit will someday be where Elliot thinks he’s off-camera.
“Two main entrances,” she says. “Plus the dock door, plus the corridor that leads toward the old locker rooms. I can position my people here, here, and here.”
“Your people?” I ask.
Luz shifts her weight, the tiniest hesitation. “There are officers who don’t love what’s happened to this case,” she says. “Or to me. They can’t show up in uniform without approval, but they can attend ‘as private citizens.’ Hang back at the edges. Keep an eye on exits. They’re not your security detail; I’m not allowed to say that. But they’ll be nearby if Elliot or any of his friends try something stupid.”
A rush of relief leaves me dizzy. “You’d risk that?” I ask. “For this?”
“They would,” she says. “I’m just making introductions.”
Sadie leans over the plan, hair falling like a curtain. “So off-duty cops, advocates, an investigative paper, pre-vetted listeners,” she says. “That’s a lot of eyes on any misstep.”
“That’s the point,” I say. “Elliot wins in the shadows. On docks at midnight, on secret islands, in country clubs where PTA moms trade gossip over shrimp cocktail while the bass from waterfront parties covers the sound of kids breaking on the rocks. We put him under fluorescent gym lights instead.”
Luz studies me. “You know you’re not just risking a misstep for him,” she says. “You’re risking one for yourself. Live is unforgiving. One wrong sentence, one off-the-cuff accusation, and his lawyers will do tap dance routines on your bank account. He could push hard for defamation, for harassment, for incitement. Depending on how wild the crowd gets, this could end with you in cuffs before he ever is.”
I feel my pulse leap, a hummingbird trapped against my ribs. I picture handcuffs, CPS notes, my ex’s lawyer’s smug smile. I picture Theo scrolling through hashtags with my name under “reckless” and “icon” and “monster.”
“I know,” I say. My voice comes out steadier than my insides. “This is endgame either way. I lose by backing off now, or I lose by going too far. Might as well pick the version where Juliet’s name gets dragged into daylight with witnesses watching.”
Sadie’s eyes shine. “We don’t let them turn it into another entertainment circus this time,” she says. “We set rules. We center survivors. We make sure every question circles back to systems, not just gossip.”
“We try,” I say. “Once this stream is out there, some people will clip it for outrage and never listen for nuance. I can’t control that. I can only control what I put into the mic while it’s in front of me.”
Luz nods once, a small, heavy concession. “Then build yourself a roadmap,” she says. “Give Future You something to cling to when the adrenaline kicks in and the room tilts sideways.”
Her words turn my attention back to the one blank space on the wall: a sheet of printer paper taped up dead center, labeled SCRIPT: LIVE EP FINALE with nothing beneath it.
My stomach flips. I grab a pen.
“Okay,” I say. “Opening: set the scene. The gym, the history, the 1997 prom, those glass rose centerpieces everyone still jokes about at Prom Throwback. Then Juliet’s voice from the tape, what we have left. Then the survivor’s testimony. Then Theo’s recordings. Then Elliot’s dock line. Then we give him the mic.”
“You’re really going to start with Juliet’s voice?” Sadie asks. “Not your own?”
“It was her story before it ever brushed mine,” I say. “He took her body. I’m done letting him take her voice.”
Luz lifts an eyebrow. “And where do you leave room for the unexpected?” she asks. “Oracle. Hailey. Katie. Random Crescent Bay dad who drank too much at a regatta fundraiser and grew a conscience.”
“Here,” I say. I draw wide brackets across a section of the blank page. Inside them, I write: [UNSCRIPTED: LIVE DEVELOPMENTS]. Under that: [IF ELLIOT SHOWS] and [IF HE DOESN’T].
“This isn’t a monologue,” I say. “It’s a spine. I know the beats I have to hit: timeline, power, cover-up, harm. Everything else is connective tissue I’ll stitch in on the fly.”
Sadie shivers. “Do you ever get scared there won’t be any tissue?” she asks. “That you’ll go blank, and all those people will stare, and Elliot will smirk, and the whole thing will crumble in dead air?”
I think of every time I blanked on a word while recording and rammed electrodes of caffeine and self-loathing into my brain until I got it right on the tenth take. I think of court, of hostile cross-exams. Of my unedited confession episode, of the rawness that found its own rhythm once I surrendered to it.
“I’m more scared of silence if I don’t do this,” I say. “The kind where the town slides back into regattas and gala photos and nobody ever says ‘dock’ out loud again.”
Luz pushes away from the wall. “Then you rehearse the worst-case scenarios,” she says. “He storms out. He refuses to speak. He issues a canned statement and sends a PR rep instead. You don’t freeze; you pivot. You say, on mic, ‘We offered him a chance to respond. This is what he chose.’ You let the absence indict him.”
I nod, the pen tip digging into the paper.
“And what if he goes the other way?” Sadie asks. “What if he loses his cool again? Yells. Threatens. Comes at you.”
Luz’s gaze sharpens. “Then my ‘private citizens’ earn their coffee,” she says. “And the advocacy lawyer earns hers. But you still keep that mic live until it’s unsafe not to. Rage exposes pattern. That’s the whole point, right?”
My hand shakes once, then stills. “Right,” I say.
We spend another hour filling in boxes: who calls the gym to confirm electrical capacity, who coordinates with the advocacy groups, who handles press invites, who quietly lets Katie know she can attend without any obligation to speak. Through it all, the muffled thump of bass outside keeps time, like the town itself is doing a soundcheck.
By the time Luz leaves to meet one of her off-duty allies and Sadie heads home with her laptop hugged to her chest, the wall is a dense grid of ink and tape. My kitchen smells like nerves and instant noodles. The laundromat downstairs goes quiet between cycles, leaving only the far-off hush of waves against rocks.
I clear a space on the table and open my laptop. The cursor blinks in a new document. GLASS ROSES — LIVE FINALE SCRIPT (DRAFT).
I type the opening line without letting myself overthink it.
Good evening. We are live from the old Crescent Bay High gym, the place where this town once crowned a prom queen under glass roses while a different girl’s body broke on the rocks below.
The sentence stretches across the screen, stark and unapologetic. For the first time in weeks, my heartbeat slows instead of racing. The plan, rough and risky and stitched together with string and hope, has a shape now.
I know this could be the episode that ends me—legally, professionally, maybe literally. I know I’m inviting a man who hired a PI and wired my vent for sound to meet me on my own stage.
I save the document under three different filenames, upload it to two separate clouds, and slide a printed copy into the hollow space behind the cabinet drawer where I used to hide rent cash.
Then I pin a fresh card to the center of the wall and write three words in thick, black ink: NO RETREAT LEFT.
I stare at those words until they stop looking dramatic and start looking like geography. The cliffs. The dock. The warped gym floor. There is no version of this story where I walk away untouched. There is only the choice of whether I walk toward the mic anyway.
My phone buzzes on the table. A new email notification lights the screen:
Subject: Re: Inquiry about Use of Old Gym for Community Event
From: Crescent Bay High School Board Chair’s Office
My breath snags.
I don’t open it yet.
I sit there, the glow from the screen painting my hands pale, and listen to the ocean breathe in and out past the rock shelf where kids still sneak cigarettes after dances, waiting to find out whether the town that buried Juliet is about to sign off on the stage where I plan to exhume her story in front of everyone.