Chapter 15

I ran into Max Yulipsky and Reese at the grocery store when I was buying snacks for the trip. My apartment was nearly empty. The emptiness made me feel antsy. I knew I was on the edge of something. I just didn't know how tall the cliff was.

Max and Reese didn't see me at first and I watched the two of them laugh in the pretzel section before putting peanut-butter-filled pretzels in their cart. They were so clearly in love that I couldn't pretend that it was any other way.

In another lifetime,I told myself, that could've been me. That was a lie, of course. It was never going to be me. There was nothing that I could've done to make Max love me. It wouldn't have mattered if I were thinner or smarter or more mysterious. He didn't love me because he didn't love me.

Max looked in my direction and froze. We made eye contact. I thought about turning around and walking the other way. No, I decided. I didn't want to make decisions based around his comfort. I walked toward him, forgetting about the rice cakes that I was considering putting in my cart.

"Hey, Max. Hey, Reese."

"Hey, Hannah."

"It's been a while," I said, like it was just a coincidence that we hadn't seen each other.

"It has."

"You've been good though?"

"Yeah," Max said and looked at Reese. "Really good. You?"

I knew I shouldn't say it. I tried to keep it in, but it came out of my mouth like bile.

"I'm good. I met someone."

Max looked relieved. It wasn't the feeling I wanted him to have.

"Yeah," I continued. "He's a lawyer. Very handsome and wealthy. Nice hair. All of that."

In my head I made a list of all the things I left out of the description. Accused serial killer, in jail, might get the death penalty, lives in Georgia.

"I'm so happy for you," Max said. Reese gave a subtle tug on his arm. I recognized the move. The girlfriend pull, the one that said We need to leave now.

"It was good to run into you," I said.

Later, I would regret all the things that I didn't say. Why wasn't I good enough? I should've asked. What was it about Reese that was worthy of love that wasn't true about me? Was it the sex? My body? Was there some deficiency that was obvious to everyone except for me?

"You too, Hannah," he replied.

The two of them walked off. I grabbed the same peanut-butter-filled pretzels off the shelf that they had, suddenly struck with a craving for that particular flavor.

"I need to get out of this city," I said under my breath.

Minneapolis was large, but eventually every city grew too small.

The last thing I did before leaving my apartment building for the final time was send a letter to William.

I've never put much stock in the idea that everything happens for a reason. I've never believed in fate or soulmates, but right now I feel like all of this is happening for a reason. I think I will look back and see this as a pivotal time in my life that changes everything.

I was meant to lose my job when I did because it means that I can come see you. I guess the "seeing" is literal in this sense. I know that we will be unable to touch, unable to speak. It'll be nice, if nothing else, to be in the same room together.

I don't know what the future holds, but I know that I need to do this. For me, for you, for us.

I got a breakfast sandwich on my way out of town and a large coffee. There was no one to wave goodbye.

My fingers gripped the steering wheel, my body tightly wound like I was about to climb a mountain instead of drive for nearly seventeen hours. I took a deep breath and tried to lean into the fear. I always resented how cautiously I lived my life. Becoming an English major shouldn't be the bravest thing that anyone has ever done.

The tension started to leave my shoulders a couple hours outside the city. I put the car on cruise control and blasted my favorite songs from my youth. The Spice Girls, I thought, wanted me to do this. Britney would applaud my choices. The May air was warm without being too humid and I tried to open a window to let my hair fly back with the wind like a carefree character from a movie, but the long strands wound their way around my face and made it hard to see. I rolled the window back up and appreciated the peacefulness. My fingers unclenched. I sang along to songs that my vocal cords had no business trying to match.

After eleven hours of driving, I stopped at a hotel in Kentucky. Too overwhelmed to attempt to find a restaurant, I compiled dinner from a series of vending machine snacks. When I lay down in an attempt to sleep, my heart pounded with the intensity of a bass drum. It was like being inside of an Edgar Allan Poe story, but the only heart beneath the floorboards was my own.

The second day of the trip was a blur of sleepiness. I passed several road signs that warned of the dangers of driving while tired and didn't listen. I tried singing along to the same songs I had played the previous day to lighten the mood and discovered that they no longer worked. Although I had never been a podcast listener, I put on an episode of a true-crime podcast dedicated to discussing the murders of Anna Leigh, Kimberly, Jill, and Emma, and, by extension, to discussing William. I laughed out loud while the podcast hosts talked, because there was so much they didn't know. I wanted to interrupt them, tell them all the things I'd learned on the forum, all the things that William had written to me.

I wonder sometimes if anyone has ever really known me,William wrote in one of his letters.

I found a cheap hotel in Atlanta. I charged the room to the new credit card that I'd gotten for the trip. They had an outdoor pool that was plagued by suspicious-looking algae, but at least they provided continental breakfast every morning.

I sat down on the bed. The mattress squeaked a little as I shifted my weight. The room was reflective of the inexpensive price. There were water stains on the ceiling and the bathroom was dated. I shuddered to think of the things that might have occurred in the bathtub or on top of the comforter. There was a novelty to the shittiness of it, like the whole thing was a kind of roleplay instead of my life.

I looked up the distance to the courthouse on my phone and picked out what outfit I wanted to wear to the first day of the trial, settling on a red dress with a black blazer that had a rip in the armpit that I hoped would remain hidden. The feeling inside my chest was recognizable, the same as the day before the first day of high school or when I moved into my college dorm. On both of those occasions, I told myself that it was a chance to start over, become someone new, only to find that I was exactly the same person that I'd always been.

I'll be wearing a red dress,I'd written William several days prior. I hoped that he would get it in time.

I alternated between telling myself that I was at the trial in order to investigate William and that I was there in my role as his girlfriend. In truth, those were the same activities for me. I didn't want to be with him in spite of his misdeeds; I wanted to be with him because of them.

At that time, I wasn't worried he would kill me. I worried only that he wouldn't find me beautiful when he finally saw me in person. Like I, Hannah, would be disappointing to him, an accused serial killer. In retrospect, it was possible that the order of my fears was misguided.