Megan MIRANDA - The Perfect Stranger

He grinned, raised his spoon filled with dry cornflakes to me. “Hope you don’t mind,” he said. And then he looked down, as if embarrassed.

“Not at all,” I said. “Can I get you anything else?”

“No, thanks. I’m on duty later today, so I’ve got to head back. I didn’t want to leave before saying goodbye, though.”

I smiled. “Let me grab my shoes and I’ll drive you back.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Really,” I said. “It’s fine.”

Kyle was rinsing out the bowl when I came back with my sneakers. There was an easy comfort between us as long as we kept moving. He slid the front door open while I found my purse, and I saw him bending over, reaching for something just out of sight.

He turned back around, his arm extended. “Your paper,” he said with a grin. He handed it to me, bound in a clear plastic bag.

“I don’t–” And then I stopped. Caught a glimpse of the headline as I turned it over.

The top of a B, cut in half. My spine stiffened, and I cleared my throat. “Thanks.” I dropped the paper on the countertop like it was nothing. Grabbed my keys, tried to keep them from shaking in my hand. “Ready?” I asked.

“Ready,” he said.

I locked up after us, and he walked slowly by my side, his arm occasionally brushing against mine. But all I could think of was the paper and what it was doing there. If maybe it was nothing but the local paper, a trial service or a misplaced delivery. If I was letting my imagination run away with me and there was absolutely nothing to be worried about.

“So,” he said, standing beside my car, letting the thought trail.

“So. .” I said, distracted. This sounded like the start of any number of interchangeable excuses. I was drinking. It was the night. The bar. You. It’s not you. It’s just not me. I didn’t need to hear it. “How about we skip the awkward part, huh?”

He smiled then, laughed to himself. “Sure thing, Leah.”

We drove in silence to the parking lot, where there was a single car remaining. A black midsize SUV in the middle of the second row, mud streaking the wheels. “Guess that’s you?”

“That would be me.” He sat for a moment, decided better of it, left the car. As I shifted into gear, ready to drive away, there was a tap on the driver’s-side window. I lowered it, and Kyle leaned his forearms on the base of the open window, his head almost on my level. He leaned in through the gap to kiss me, one hand on my chin, his thumb on the side of my jaw – I had just barely caught on, and then he was gone.

IT WAS WAITING ONthe kitchen counter, exactly as I’d left it. A paper inside a plastic sleeve, rolled up and bound by a dirty rubber band. Print circulation had fallen off in Boston, but I imagined here it was still going strong.

I preferred the hard copy, like this. There was a logic to the layout. There was a predetermined hierarchy, and you always knew where you were in relation to everything else, in a designated order of importance. Not a list of clicks you’d forgotten you’d made. There were no automatic-playing videos (a personal hatred), or pop-up ads, or a computer history of your reading habits curated to provide you only like-minded news in the future – your worldview shrinking and morphing without your knowledge.

The paper smelled of morning dew, the edges curved and brittle.

It was probably a mistake. A wrong address, a fill-in delivery guy. Or a free copy, a marketing campaign to entice more subscribers. The B could be for Bulletin or Beacon or any number of words. There could be any number of reasons for this paper to be on my front porch.

I slid the rubber band off, unrolled it so I could see the rest of the header. Felt my heart hammering inside my chest as the words slowly revealed themselves. Boston. The Post .

My paper.

I felt a tightening in my shoulders, a twist in my stomach, had to place a hand on my chest to remind myself: Slow down.

Okay, okay, this wouldn’t be so hard to figure out. I’d said I’d worked as a journalist. I’d told my students. I’d done this to myself. There was no reason for them not to know. I’d needed my job history to get this new job. Treat it like it doesn’t matter, and it won’t. Nothing would appear incriminating, looking from the outside in.

Except.

My eyes flicked to the date, and my heart ended up in my stomach. April 23. Someone would’ve had to call the paper or the local library to find an old copy like this. The last story I would ever print. The story the paper and I both wanted so desperately to forget, holding our collective breath, hoping nothing came of it.

I counted the pages by heart, flipped directly to the story, the paper trembling in my hand:

A Season of Suicides: 4 Girls Take Their Lives at Local College – Is Anyone Listening?

There they were. Their pictures in a square grid, images provided by the college registrar’s office. I knew the facts by heart, clockwise from top left:

Kristy Owens, shower floor, razor blade.

Alecia Gomez, Dermot Tower, jumped.

Camilla Jones, Charles River, pockets weighed down with rocks, Virginia Woolf – style.

Bridget LaCosta, bathtub, overdose.

I’d seen Bridget’s cause of death, her blood chemistry report, was perusing her class schedule when I saw his name listed – Professor Aaron Hampton – and everything had clicked . My blood was thrumming, seeing all the pieces lined up.

A bottle of pills, his smiling face, the sound of running water.

There was nothing explicit in print that put forward what I believed: that Bridget LaCosta had been killed. There was nothing in this paper that would give away all that came before or after. There was no rebuttal or follow-up – the story was left to die.

I folded the pages back together, hid the paper in the back of the utensil drawer, wondered who could’ve gotten it and brought it to my doorstep in the middle of the night.

Had it been here earlier in the evening? Before I’d returned home with Kyle? I didn’t think so. So someone had been by my house between nine P.M. and eight A.M. Someone could’ve seen straight inside with the light turned on. Could’ve noticed Kyle’s clothes strewn in the hallway or his shoes kicked off in the living room. Could’ve wandered the perimeter, listening at my window. Could’ve stood on their toes and peered inside my room, between the gap of curtains.

I went outside, circled the house, looked for footprints, for evidence that anyone had been here. I searched for cigarette butts, kicked-up dirt, flattened soil, anything – but there was nothing unusual.

I imagined Davis Cobb crouched in the bushes, the paper stashed under his arm, thinking, I got you now . The faces blurred, and suddenly, it was Paige who had tracked me down and brought this to remind me–

A deep breath in to stop the cycle. Calm down, Leah. Calm down.

I could not let myself get like this. Couldn’t make something where there had been nothing, as had been the claim about my story.

But it was not nothing – I knew him, the vile hidden center.

I was not surprised that he had continued to slide under the radar, as sociopaths often do. Charming, remorseless, not held back by conscience or guilt.

So I had taken a page from his book, and I’d struck. I remembered the moment I’d decided to do it, after Noah had left that night. I’d probably decided even sooner, which was why I’d been pacing the apartment. I had already known what I would do.

The words in print, looking no different than any other: A source speaking on condition of anonymity adds more complexity to the case of Bridget’s overdose. “One of her professors gave her those pills,” she said. “I know because he gave them to me, too.”