I was also a little bit obsessed with Jenny’s mom, Irina Stewart, who’s an acting coach in Los Angeles. But I decided not to mention that, in case she thought I was a stalker or something.
“Wow,” she said. “You’re the first person I’ve met in Indiana who’s had any idea who he is. But Eden did tell me you’re moving to LA this fall, right?”
I nodded.
“I’ll be heading back there after graduation. So if you need anything or just want a buddy to complain about traffic with, hit me up. Maybe I can introduce you to my dad.”
I smiled at her, pressing my lips tight together to keep from shrieking with excitement at the prospect.
A minute later, we were on the top floor, and Jenny led us down a short hallway, stopping at a door near the very end. She drummed her fingers lightly against the wood instead of knocking, then turned the knob.
I’d heard people say college dorm rooms were small, but I still wasn’t prepared. Mom and I didn’t live in a big house by any means, but my bedroom, for just me, was the size of the room Eden and her roommate shared. There was hardly an inch of wall left uncovered. The decor was a mix of posters featuring different country music artists, anime wall scrolls, what looked like a few old protest signs, and drawings that I recognized as being done by Eden.
There were two beds—both neatly made—two dressers, and two desks. Sitting at one of them, her eyes transfixed on a laptop screen, was a tall girl with dark blond hair. Eden stood behind her, chewing her nails.
Neither of them looked up when we entered. I remembered Jenny saying Eden was working on something, so I didn’t interrupt. Instead, I just stood by the door, unsure of where I should go. While I could guess which of these roommates had chosen what decor (Eden had talked about Misty, the country music–loving activist, several times in our emails), it was spread pretty evenly around the square box of a room, making it impossible to know which side belonged to which.
I’d initially planned to follow Jenny’s cue, but she was no help. She’d moved to stand next to Eden, clearly reading the laptop screen over the other girl’s shoulder.
After a second, the blond girl, who I could only guess was Misty, sat back in her chair. “It’s good.”
“Yeah?” Eden asked. “I don’t know …”
“Well, I do,” Misty said. “It’s a solid presentation. I have a few tweaks—mostly just what order you go over everything in. And there’s some new research that was just published about gun violence that I think you could work in. But I can make those edits tonight, if you want. Overall, I think this is even better than your usual presentation. It’s really powerful.”
Eden didn’t sound like she was excited about this, though. “Thanks, Misty.”
“I’m sure it’s great,” I said. “Your presentations always are.”
She glanced over at me and gave a small smile.
For the past few months, Eden’s been giving speeches at colleges around Indiana and Illinois. Her focus is usually on campus safety and gun control, though of course she weaves in discussion of the shooting, too. A couple of her speeches have been filmed and are online, so you might have seen them.
I stumbled on a recording of one of her speeches one night when I was googling the massacre. It was strange to watch her stand on a stage and speak so calmly, so directly, about the shooting. Eden had always been quiet and uncomfortable with too much attention on her. But with an audience in front of her and a PowerPoint presentation projected behind her, she became a different Eden.
It seemed like she’d come such a long way in the last three years. Like she had it all together.
“Come on,” Jenny said. “You can worry about the presentation another time. Lee is here.”
“She’s right,” Misty said. “I’m staying in to work on some homework tonight. I’ll make the edits and you can take a look later.” She turned to me then and gave a quick wave. “Sorry. We’re being rude. I’m—”
“Misty,” I said. “I figured. I’m Lee.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said. “So what do y’all have planned for tonight?”
“Antonio—that friend I told you about from my freshman seminar—he’s having a party at his house. Just off campus,” Eden said, walking over to one of the dressers and sliding open the second drawer.
I noticed Misty and Jenny exchange a quick glance.
“Really?” Jenny asked. “I was thinking maybe we could stay on campus. Give Lee a taste of college life. There’s a two-dollar movie playing in one of the auditoriums. And I think one of the independent theater groups is doing a show. I know you like theater, Lee.”
“The campus newspaper gave it bad reviews,” Eden said. She was still rummaging through the dresser drawer. “And the movie … it’s one of those midnight movie things, right? We can go to the party first, then go to the movie after. I promised Antonio I’d at least stop by. We don’t have to stay long.” She pulled a cute dark green shirt from the drawer. “Is that okay, Lee?”
“I’m fine with whatever,” I said, even though I really would have preferred to stay in this dorm room and just spend the evening catching up with my friend. We hadn’t seen each other since Christmas. But I also didn’t want to be the one to say no. “I don’t really have any cute clothes with me.”
“It’s okay,” Eden said. “Most people will be dressed like you. I’m only changing because I have ink stains on this shirt.”
Jenny grinned at her. “Like any true artist,” she said.
Eden ducked her head, looking embarrassed but pleased. She pulled off her T-shirt and replaced it with the green top. Then she adjusted her glasses and shook out her wavy black hair. “Okay,” she said. “Thanks for helping with the presentation, Misty.”
“Anytime. You guys have fun,” Misty said, and I noticed she looked meaningfully at Jenny when she added, “And call me if you need anything.”
An hour later we were in a large house just off campus, sitting on a couch that smelled like sweat and beer as at least fifty other people moved around us, laughing and chatting while hip-hop music played from a speaker nearby.
As much as I wanted to relax, to have fun at my first college party, I couldn’t help feeling a bit on edge. My eyes kept darting to the nearest exits, and the panicky part of my mind, that little voice that the anxiety meds never quite silenced, wondered how easy it would be to escape a space this crowded. If any of these people pulled out a weapon, how many of us would be lost?
If Eden was feeling similarly anxious, she didn’t show it. She was sitting between Jenny and me, already on her second cup of vodka and Sprite. She’d offered to get me a drink, but I’d said no. The idea of having my reflexes slowed in an unfamiliar place, especially one so loud and crowded and with so few easily accessed escape routes—that is literally the stuff of nightmares for me.
I tried to distract myself by looking over at Jenny, who I noticed hadn’t gotten a drink, either. “So is your dad working on anything new?” I asked her.
“Huh? Oh. I actually don’t know. He’s pretty private about his writing. I didn’t know about his last play until he had a cast and a director.”
“Are you like that, too?” I asked. “I know you write the scripts for Calliope, right?”
Jenny’s face lit up. “You read our webcomic?”
“Of course I do,” I said. “All of Eden’s friends back home do. Well, except Denny. He can’t see the illustrations. But I think Eden sends him the scripts, right?”
Eden nodded and took another sip of her drink.
“Wow,” she said. “I hope you like it. I’m not nearly the writer my dad is but—”
“Are so,” Eden said. “You’re great.”
“And you’re biased.” Jenny kissed her on the cheek, then looked back at me. “But, to answer your question, no. I’m the total opposite. I make about a million people read my scripts for Calliope before it’s final. Including my dad, actually.”
“I bet he gives great feedback.”
She laughed. “Not really. He mostly just tells me it’s great and how proud he is. My mom is the critical one.”
Eden let out a breath. “No kidding.” She turned to me. “Two months ago, her mom sent us a two-thousand-word email breaking down all of the world-building problems in our series.”
“Apparently we are very inconsistent in how magic is used.” Jenny laughed. “I had no idea my mom was such a nerd, but it turns out she grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons and is a bit of a snob about fantasy.”
“I’ve always wanted to play D and D,” Eden admitted. “I’ve just … been too shy to find people I could play with, I guess.”
“Aw,” Jenny said. “Well, when you come visit me, I’ll make Mom teach us. I’m sure you’d play a very sexy half-elf druid.”
Eden snorted. “I was thinking more like a gnome. A girl gnome with a sword.”
“Hey, that could be sexy, too.”
They smiled at each other in that way that couples do, and I had to look away. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with this feeling of missing Miles. I’d seen him just a few hours ago, on our ride home from school, but the way Eden and Jenny looked at each other, the way they talked to each other, made me wish he was here.
I forced that feeling away as hard as I could. Miles and I were not a couple, and we weren’t going to be.
After a minute, Eden and Jenny seemed to remember that I was there with them. I heard Eden clear her throat, and then Jenny said, “You’d like Dungeons and Dragons, Lee. It … involves acting. Sort of.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But it also involves math, right? With dice and stuff? That’s not really my thing.”
“Also any kind of acting in D and D would be improvised,” Eden pointed out. “Which Lee hates.”
“I don’t hate improv,” I said. “I’m just not good at it. I’m the kind of person who likes a script.”
“I’m sure you’ll get better at it when you start taking acting classes,” Jenny said. She turned to Eden. “And since both Lee and I are going to be in LA come this fall, you had better come visit.”
“I know, I know,” Eden said.
“So you guys are going to do the long-distance thing?” I asked.
“We’re … going to try,” Eden said, taking a swig from her cup.
“We know it’s not ideal,” Jenny admitted. “But I don’t have a job lined up—thank you, English major—and I can’t afford to stay in Indiana without one, so I’ve got to move back in with my parents until I find something or opt for grad school.”
“You’re not quitting the webcomic, though, right?”
“Of course not,” Jenny said. “Calliope is our baby. Our weird witch baby.”
“With inconsistent magic use,” Eden said. She said it like a joke, but something in her face seemed to tense as the words came out. It was a flicker of stress I’d seen there before, and it made me uneasy.
Jenny noticed, too. “Hey,” she said, her voice a little softer. “I’m the one who does the writing, remember? If the story has faults, it’s because of me. Not you. My mom had nothing but nice things to say about your illustrations.”
“I know. I’m fine.” She took another drink.
I was about to ask another question, try and change the subject, when a shadow passed over us. A large figure had stepped in front of the couch, specifically in front of Eden. I was so startled that I pushed back, pressing into the cushions. But Eden just looked up at him slowly; her eyes had a weary look to them that no one her age should ever have.
“You’re that chick, right?” the guy standing in front of her said. “The anti-gun chick.”
Jenny cut in before Eden could answer. “Back up, dude.”
The guy ignored her. He was tall, dressed in a red T-shirt and jeans, with a baseball cap perched on his head. He had the wispy beginnings of a goatee, though it did nothing to mask the fact that he had a baby face. “So what? You just don’t give a damn about the Constitution? The Second Amendment?” he asked.
“Oh my God,” Jenny said, rolling her eyes. “Seriously, leave us alone. Go home and write some angry tweets or something.”
“Stay out of it,” the guy told Jenny. “We’re talking here.” He gestured to Eden, though she clearly wasn’t doing any talking at all.
I wrapped my arms around myself and huddled as far into the corner of the couch as I could, already picking out the exits in my head. This guy was standing too close, his voice was too harsh. My brain was screaming, Threat! Threat!
I started imagining what it would be like to die right here. Would the whole world just be swallowed in black? Would it feel like sleeping? What would happen to my mom when she found out? Or Miles? Did it really matter since they were going to die one day, too?
Chill, I told myself. It’s fine. You’re fine. You’re not going to die at a house party. You can be an anxious nihilist later.
I made myself look over at Eden, but I immediately regretted it. I’d expected her to snap back at this guy. To retort with all the facts and statistics I’d seen her use in her presentations. To be the stronger Eden, the girl she was onstage. But that’s not what I saw.
She was curled in on herself much the same way I was, her head bent, her hands shaking. Shriveled. Scared. Sad.
“Do you have any clue how ignorant you sound when you give those speeches? You think taking away our guns is the answer?”
“She never said anything about taking away your guns,” Jenny growled. “She advocates for harsher restrictions and for campus safety measures.”
“Except her version of keeping campuses safe is no guns at all, even for those of us with permits,” the guy said, giving in to the fact that Jenny wasn’t going to stay out of this. “Which is stupid. I know what she went through at her high school. And if one teacher had had a gun in their desk, they could’ve stopped that kid.”
“Are you kidding me?”
Eden stood up then. It was so abrupt that I jumped and the guy in front of us stumbled back a step in surprise.
“Yeah. You know what I went through.” Her voice was so quiet I almost didn’t hear it over the music and party chatter around us. “You know,” she said, the words cracking in a way that told me she was on the verge of tears, “what it’s like to open your eyes and see that everyone in your classroom is dead.”
“They wouldn’t be, though,” the guy insisted, “if that teacher had been armed.”
“Sure.” Eden stepped past him and began walking toward the kitchen.
“Eden,” Jenny called.
Eden glanced over her shoulder. “I’m just going to find Antonio. Tell him I showed up. I’ll … I’ll be back.”
Jenny watched her go, and I could see that there was more than a hint of worry in her eyes.
Meanwhile, the gun guy turned to me. “So who are you?” he asked. “You anti-Constitution, too?”
Jenny responded before I could answer. “She’s my cousin, and she’s not involved in any of this, so leave her alone.”
He looked at me, then at Jenny. “She’s … your cousin?” he said, a note of obvious disbelief in his voice.
“My mom’s white, dumb-ass,” Jenny said. “And this conversation is over.”
It took a few more minutes of Jenny shutting him down before the guy finally walked away. Eden still hadn’t returned.
“Sorry for speaking for you,” Jenny said once he was gone. “I’m sure you could handle yourself. I just … didn’t want to keep arguing with him.”
“No, I appreciate it,” I said. “Eden’s really strong to stand on a stage and relive what happened and argue for what she believes in. But I’m not quite there yet.”
“Yeah,” Jenny said, looking off toward the kitchen. “She’s … she’s strong.”
We made awkward small talk for a while longer. I tried to ask more questions about her parents, about Los Angeles, but I could tell she was distracted, constantly casting an eye around the room in search of Eden, who’d never emerged from t
he kitchen.
Eventually we both left the couch and began moving around the living room, navigating through the crowd. “If we’re going to make that midnight movie,” Jenny said, “we’d better get going.”
But we both knew the movie wasn’t going to happen. There was just this feeling that the night had shifted into something darker. I don’t know if it happened when the guy came over to us or in the moments before, when Eden’s face had tensed as she talked about Jenny’s mother’s critique of their comic. But the whole mood of the evening had changed.
Eden wasn’t in the kitchen. We found her twenty minutes later in one of the house’s bedrooms, sitting in a corner with a bottle of vodka in hand while she watched two girls play video games on the TV. In the hour since we’d seen her, she’d clearly been drinking quite a bit.
“Eden,” I said, moving toward her. “You okay? We were looking for you.”
She looked up at me with glazed eyes. “Lee,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m ruining your visit.” She tried to stand up, but her legs shook and she splashed some of her vodka onto the carpet. “We should go to the movie.”
“We don’t have to,” I said. “Are you okay?”
But I knew the answer. I realized it when I looked over at Jenny, when I saw the sadness and exhaustion in her eyes. I could hear it in the way she sighed as she stepped forward and gently pulled her drunk girlfriend to her feet. Jenny knew, and now I did, too.
Eden was not okay.
I didn’t know Eden before the shooting. Her cousin, Rosi, was in my grade and we were friendly, if not friends.
Rosi and Sarah had sat next to each other in several classes throughout the years, a side effect of alphabetically arranged seating charts, and they’d always gotten along. So once every couple of weeks, Rosi would sit at our little table during lunch. I’m not sure she ever sat at the same lunch table two days in a row, honestly. Rosi had friends from every clique, which meant there was always an empty seat for her, no matter what side of the cafeteria she was in the mood for.
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