Chapter 3 Why Is Your Name Here Rina
The hallway outside the cafeteria was lined with officers, most of them just standing there, arms crossed, watching students file past like we were suspects in a lineup nobody had asked for. I followed the aide past all of them, my sneakers still faintly pink at the edges even after I'd tried scrubbing them in the bathroom sink twenty minutes earlier.
I stood against the wall outside the front office for almost ten minutes, watching officers move in and out of the hallway with the kind of quiet urgency that made everything feel more real than it had in the cafeteria. One of them was on his radio, saying something about securing the scene until the coroner arrived. I hadn't let myself think about that word until I heard it out loud.
A younger officer glanced my way at one point, not unkindly, more like he was cataloguing me the same as he would anything else at a crime scene. I wrapped my arms around myself and stared at the floor until he looked away.
A woman was waiting near the front office, holding a thin folder against her chest like it was something she didn't fully trust to stay closed. She had short dark hair, sharp eyes, and the kind of stillness that made you feel like she was already three steps ahead of whatever you were about to say.
"Rina Vale?"
"Yes."
"I'm Detective Carter. I need to ask you a few questions."
She led me into what used to be the guidance counselor's office, the furniture pushed to different corners than usual, a folding table set up in the middle like the room had been hastily rearranged for exactly this. I sat across from her, my hands pressed flat against my knees to keep them from shaking.
"Walk me through your morning," she said.
"Everything, even the parts that don't feel important."
So I did. The alarm. The walk with Jenna. The quiet hallway. The door. I got through most of it before my voice caught on the part where I actually opened the door, and Carter didn't rush me, just waited, pen resting against her notepad without moving.
"Did you touch anything in the room?"
"No."
"The body?"
"No." My stomach turned just hearing it phrased that way. "I didn't go near her."
"You're sure."
"Yes."
She studied me for a moment, the kind of look that made me feel like she could see straight through whatever I said next, whether it was true or not. Then she opened the folder and slid a photograph across the table.
It was Maya. Not from this morning, an older photo, the two of us standing near the old pool behind the school, both of us in regular clothes instead of uniforms. Maya was smiling in it. I wasn't.
"Do you remember this?"
I stared at it. Nothing came. "No."
"Nothing at all?"
"I don't even know when this was taken."
"Three months ago." Carter watched my face while she said it, like the date itself was supposed to mean something to me. "You don't remember being there?"
"I don't remember this at all."
She didn't look surprised, which somehow scared me more than if she had. She pulled a second item from the folder, a photocopy of a handwritten page, the ink slightly smudged like whoever wrote it had been in a hurry.
"This is a page from Maya's journal. We found it in her locker this morning." She turned it so I could read the last few lines.
Rina doesn't remember. She never did. If I tell her the truth, I don't know what happens to either of us. But I can't keep carrying this alone anymore.
The words didn't make sense, and also, somehow, they made too much sense, in a way I couldn't explain and didn't want to.
"What does that mean?" My voice came out smaller than I meant it to.
"That's what I'm trying to find out." Carter leaned forward slightly. "Maya wrote your name in this journal more than twenty times, Rina. Always in the context of something she was carrying alone. Something she was afraid to tell you."
"I don't know what she's talking about. I swear."
"I believe you don't remember." She said it carefully, as the wording mattered. "That's different from there being nothing to remember."
I didn't have an answer for that. I wasn't sure I wanted one.
She let the silence sit there a moment before closing the folder. "You're free to go home once your parents arrive. The school will remain closed tomorrow while we continue processing the scene."
I stood, my legs unsteady, and made it almost to the door before she spoke again.
"Rina."
I turned.
"If anything comes back to you, even something small, something that doesn't seem connected, I want you to call me directly." She slid a card across the table. "Not the front desk. Me."
I took it without really looking at it; my hand was shaking too hard to focus on anything printed on paper.
"Why me?" I asked. "Why did Maya write about me like that?"
Carter's expression didn't change, but something behind her eyes did, just for a second, there and gone before I could name it.
"I don't know yet," she said. "But I intend to find out."
I walked out of that office with the photograph still burned into my mind, Maya smiling beside a pool I didn't remember standing next to, and a version of myself in the picture who looked less like she was posing for a photo and more like she was waiting for something bad to happen.
My mother met me in the parking lot before I'd even reached the doors, moving faster than I'd ever seen her move, and she didn't ask a single question. She just pulled me into her arms and held on so tightly it almost hurt, like she needed to confirm with her own hands that I was still in one piece.
"I'm okay," I told her, even though I didn't fully believe it.
"You don't have to be okay right now."
We didn't talk much on the drive home. She kept glancing at me in the mirror like she always did on drives home, but this time something else sat behind it, something closer to fear than concern. I didn't tell her about the photograph, or the journal entry, or the detective's card sitting in my pocket like it was burning a hole through the fabric. I didn't know how to explain any of it in a way that wouldn't scare her more than she already was.
I kept thinking about how Carter had looked at me before I left. Not like she suspected me exactly. More like she was waiting for me to become someone she needed to.
By the time we pulled into the driveway, my phone had already started buzzing again.
Unknown number.
I stared at the screen for a long moment before I made myself open it.
You already knew her. You just don't remember why.
