Chapter 11

I knew I liked a man when I started to feel like I might die if he didn't contact me. With Max, that manifested in eating cheese until I was constipated and sending him long strings of unanswered text messages about any relevant topic in hopes that he might reply. When I went too long without a letter from William, as often happened due to the slowness of the jail mailing system, I scrolled the forum relentlessly, looking for any new pieces of information. The other forum users didn't know that I was corresponding with William and I knew that the moderators would likely block me if I told them, though not before quizzing me about every word he'd written. There was a type of pleasure in keeping the secret, like having an affair and then coming home to my spouse at the end of each day and pretending that all was well.

When a new letter arrived, I swore I could feel the dopamine hit my brain like the way I felt after my first few sips of coffee in the morning.

I bought a protective case to keep William's letters in and kept the case inside my purse so that they were available to me at all times. I reread my favorite parts in my downtime at work or when I struggled to focus on whatever television show I was watching in the evening. I told myself that I was looking for clues, something that I'd missed on my first read-through. Finally, I was conducting analysis the way that my high school English teacher had wanted me to.

I judged my brother when he got married,William wrote in one letter. I thought he was too young and I worried that his wife was wrong for him. I'm envious of their relationship now. He has someone who will always be there for him no matter what. I can't remember why I was so frightened at the prospect of a committed relationship. I think I was afraid of getting hurt or, worse, hurting someone else. I would leap at the chance to be with someone now.

This might sound stupid, but I miss my couch,he wrote in another. You know that feeling when you're really tired at the end of a long day and you're finally at home on the couch, and it's such a relief to be there? I'll admit that sometimes I'm grateful to be left alone in my cell after a long session with my lawyers even though I'm nearly always alone now. The loneliness is a penance that I have to pay, but I wish that they would at least allow me the pleasure of a cushion. Of all the things that I took for granted, I didn't realize that furniture was one of them.

You're very funny, Hannah,he wrote in a third. I confess that I like to imagine what you look like. I hope that's not weird to say. Maybe you could send me a picture of yourself sometime, if you're comfortable, so that I know who I'm talking to.

I knew I was behind in work, though I didn't realize how behind until my boss pulled me aside one day.

"Hannah, this is a disaster," she said.

"I'm sorry. Time got away from me," I apologized. I looked down at my hands. I wasn't used to failing like that.

One of my biggest tasks of the year was helping plan the spring gala held every April, which was meant to encourage our deep-pocketed donors to keep us funded for another year. Something that I hadn't realized before getting involved with nonprofit work was that fundraising was expensive. I always thought that fundraising meant sending out a couple of mailers or emails each year and that was the end of it, which revealed my middle-class ignorance about how charity worked. Fundraising for rich people meant throwing giant parties and at the end of them, the guests wrote checks so that the nonprofit could continue to scrape by.

It was my first year planning the event on my own and I'd assured my boss that I could handle it. As it turned out, planning an event on my own was neither as gratifying nor as simple as I thought it would be.

It was stupid of me to ever think that I could change the world, I wrote William.

"We don't have the caterer arranged or a photographer. What were you thinking?"

The March calendar stared at me accusatorily from my desk. A frightening number of days had already been checked off. I didn't know how to explain that time didn't feel anything like those boxes.

"I've been busy working on other things. I—"

"Working on what? Hannah, what have you been doing?"

I tried to picture the last few months of my life and the only thing that appeared in my brain was an image of William's face.

"I'm sorry," I said again.

My boss assigned the associate director to oversee my efforts. Carole raised her eyebrows in my direction when he pulled up a chair and sat down behind me. I mentally told her to shut up. William's words floated through my head: Take it from me, Hannah. It's not worth staying where you're not appreciated.

I spent the rest of the week making endless phone calls to caterers, finally securing an Ethiopian restaurant that was able to provide what we needed, albeit significantly over budget. I thought that I would be able to make everything balance in the end by finding an inexpensive photographer, only to learn that there was no such thing as an inexpensive photographer who could produce the quality and quantity of images that we wanted.

"This is why we do things earlier," the associate director said when I hung up the phone in frustration.

With his eyes on me, I could no longer spend my days scrolling the forum or scribbling letters to William in my notebook, and I craved it the way that I used to crave looking at my phone. I went home and wrote tomes complaining about my job, my coworkers, and my apartment to William. I almost felt bad for sending such trivial concerns to him when he no longer had any of that, but then I reminded myself that he was a serial killer. He would take what I could give him.

Despite my lackluster efforts, the spring gala happened as planned.

I got ready by myself in my apartment, putting on the dress that I had bought on sale from a fast-fashion website. It'd been a while since I'd dressed in anything other than work clothes or the loose-fitting athleisure I wore at home, and it felt good to look nice. I took some pictures of myself to post on social media and then, after a moment of consideration, I ordered some physical prints to send to William.

I knew it was ill-advised to send photos of myself to a serial killer, but imprudence had never stopped me from sending pictures of myself to men before. It seemed that I barely needed to know a guy before he was comfortable requesting naked photos over text. I always refused at first, as I understood that such pictures could end up getting spread online, but after a few requests, I always found myself caving. There was pleasure in knowing that another person found me attractive enough to want to see me naked when a world of porn existed at their fingertips. In return, men liked to send pictures of their penises, which I didn't particularly care for and mostly used for fodder for jokes with Meghan. Or at least I had when Meghan and I were more regularly in touch. Without Meghan to send them to, the disembodied dicks seemed more tragic than anything else.

Sending William pictures in jail was almost safer than the nudes that I sent those other men. For instance, I wasn't naked and the pictures were printed, which meant they had limited spread. Besides, I liked knowing that he had a face to my name; it seemed only fair after I had watched his perp walk so many times that I had memorized his stride.

Any confidence I had going into the gala was broken when I walked inside and found myself surrounded by opulence. The whole thing was like prom for rich people, and, like my actual prom, it was a disappointing experience.

I listlessly picked at a plate of food, making small talk with the guests that my boss directed to me.

"Oh my gosh, it's the best place to work," I lied. "There isn't a better cause to give your money to."

Rich people donate money because they think it gives them license to do anything they want,William wrote.

When my boss got on the microphone to thank everyone for their generous donations, she omitted my name from the long list of thank-yous she gave. I knew the exclusion was purposeful.

At one point in the evening, a married man of at least fifty approached me and asked if I was single. I didn't know who he was but knew that if he was at the event, then it meant he was wealthy.

"I'm not married," I said with a polite smile on my face.

"What? I can't believe someone hasn't snapped you up," he replied. His eyes flickered down toward my chest.

"Oh, you know. Dating is hard these days," I told him before excusing myself.

I clapped along with the rest of the crowd when my boss announced that the fundraising totals had surpassed the amount raised the year before. My fuckups, it turned out, hadn't even mattered. When my boss called me into her office on the Monday following the event, I expected to be congratulated for a successful gala. Instead, her face was grim.

"Hannah, what are your goals here?" she asked. Her office was cold. No matter how many layers I put on, I could never achieve warmth in the workplace.

I stammered out something about helping people. I wasn't accustomed to getting in trouble. I was the sort of person who always did everything they were told.

"Listen," she continued. "I don't know what's going on in your personal life, but this isn't like you. You're normally someone that I can count on. Lately, though, it seems like you're somewhere else. I'm sorry, Hannah, but I'm going to have to put you on probation."

"Probation," a word used for people after they committed a crime. My body tingled like how my mouth felt when the dentist was injecting Novocain. A burst of pain followed by numbness.

"I'm sorry," I said. "It won't happen again. I'm just going through a lot right now." I didn't elaborate. I knew whatever she imagined would be more satisfying than the truth. It wasn't fair of me to ask her to extricate trauma from my vague statements, but it seemed like the easiest way out of her office.

"We're rooting for you, Hannah," my boss said as I left, like she was Tyra Banks and I was a beautiful model.

It's all such bullshit,I wrote William that night. Is it a relief to be outside of this system? To know that no matter what happens, you can never go back to who you used to be?

I picked up the prints I'd ordered from the convenience store after work. Though I'd taken the shots only days earlier, it was like looking at a different person whose lips pouted sexily. The woman in the pictures didn't care that she was on probation at work, didn't mind that she was increasingly isolated from her friends and family. She gazed at the camera confidently, as if to say, What would you do if you got your hands on me?