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THIRTY-NINE

Danielle leans against the brick wall, her slumped shoulders speaking to exhaustion, but the weapon she grips tightly still serves as a threat. I watch her closely and listen.

“I was heartbroken when Layla decided to go to another school,” she says. “I always thought we’d stick together. Maybe even room together. I couldn’t understand why she’d ruin our plan and do her own thing.”

Her face changes, shedding years of maturity, and for a moment, she appears younger, the lines across her forehead and around her eyes gone. I can almost imagine that version of herself, before time and tragedy changed us both.

“We stayed in touch as best we could,” she continues.

“We’d catch up over winter and summer breaks.

Made plans to meet up on weekends. Of course, it was always easier for me to shift my schedule around.

I never made the connections she did at college.

Layla was my only true friend. I was always willing to make time for her. ”

The last few sentences come out as an accusation, as though Crystal and I did something wrong by befriending Layla.

We weren’t trying to take her away from anyone.

In fact, I barely remember Layla talking about her relationships back home.

There could have been the odd weekend she met up with an old friend and didn’t tell us.

I recalled all the times she’d return from a visit and seem bothered.

Maybe it wasn’t a complicated home life that was causing her problems, but an obsessive friendship.

This fact raises my guard against everything Danielle is about to say.

How much is the truth and how much is a carefully created narrative?

“I was going to visit her at WU,” Danielle says, recapturing my attention.

“I knew Layla was busy with exams, and I told her I’d be happy to hang around until she finished.

Then we could spend all our time together, just like the old days.

She’d blown me off for several months in a row, and I was starting to think she was avoiding me.

The real Layla would never do that, not to her oldest friend.

She was just so distracted with her life at school.

Every time I tried to make plans with her, there was always an excuse.

She said we should wait until after the semester was over.

“What she didn’t know was that I’d already driven to Whitaker. The last thing I wanted to do was get back in my car and go home. I figured I’d surprise her. Once she saw I’d come all this way to visit her, she’d be happy to take a few hours away from her studies.”

Danielle looks down, rolling the hammer between her hands.

It’s visibly painful for her to tell this story, and for a moment, I pity her.

I’ve spent the last decade revisiting that awful night, trying to work out where I went wrong, what I could have said differently.

When she lifts her head, there’s a hardness to her stare, her eyes almost completely black.

“I was on my way here. To this very apartment building,” she says. “I was going to surprise her. Imagine my shock when the three of you came out, dressed to the nines and ready for a night on the town. Layla was too busy to hang out with me but had all the energy in the world for her new friends.”

Like a movie replaying in my mind, I envision us.

The smell of hairspray rising from Crystal’s stiff updo.

The cold chill in the air. Layla’s flushed cheeks.

I’m back in that moment, on our last night together, watching as three young women stumble down the sidewalk, our unified laughter echoing through the streets.

“I figured you two pressured her into going out,” Danielle says, halting my imagination, forcing me into her story. “Sure, she looked happy, but she was just trying to please. Like she always did. There’s no way she would have ditched me for the two of you, not when she got to see you every day.

“I followed you to that awful bar. I don’t know how Layla could stand it for a second. All those gross frat boys everywhere and the vulgar music. It wasn’t the type of place we would have ever gone. I decided I’d wait a little longer, surprise her there and we could leave together.”

I revisit the scene at the bar. The three of us huddled around the sticky countertop, fighting to get the bartender’s attention.

Only now, I imagine Danielle lurking in the back, watching and dissecting our every move.

I never knew she was there, and inserting her into the scene now makes my body shudder with fear.

“Except, the longer I waited, the more I realized Layla was having fun. She was enjoying herself,” Danielle says, her words filled with hatred. “Even after the two of you wandered away and left her with him .”

“We were just having fun,” I say, the words out of my mouth before I’ve thought them through.

This is the part of the night that’s most painful for me to remember.

The actions I took before leaving Layla alone.

Even now, I wish I could somehow scrub the memories from my mind, imagine a situation where I grabbed Layla by the hand and urged her to come home with us, but I didn’t do that, and I’ve lived with my guilt ever since.

“Fun? You were getting wasted. Not even spending time with one another. I don’t understand it, how people somehow think they’re close to someone else because they get shit-faced together.

That’s not quality time. That’s not friendship.

It was obvious just by looking at the three of you that you weren’t really her friends. ”

I open my mouth to speak but stop myself.

My eyes land on the weapon, and I’m reminded that Danielle is still a threat.

But her analysis is wrong. She’s basing her idea of our friendship off a few glimpses of us in a bar on one night.

She never saw the way we comforted each other after breakups, the way we revved each other up to get through challenging courses.

She never saw the laughter, the love. Danielle’s reduction of our relationship angers me, even if it’s only intended to make her own connection to Layla superior.

“I decided I’d wait until you headed home to confront her,” she says.

“I watched as you and Crystal stumbled to the entrance, waiting for Layla to join you. But she just stayed there, talking to him . It was a whole other layer of betrayal. She wasn’t just choosing her fake friends over me, but now a complete stranger!

“Finally, she got up to leave. I thought maybe it was for the best. She’d ditch this guy and I’d be able to catch up with her.

Just the two of us. Maybe we’d take off and have our own fun.

As I followed them, my anger continued to build.

I kept thinking of how I kept putting Layla first, only for her to put everyone else in the world above me.

By the time he took off and left her alone, I was fuming. ”

I raise my eyes suddenly, the scene playing in my mind jarred.

For years, I’ve imagined it. His hands around her neck.

The fear she must have felt when she realized no one was around.

The way he callously left her body in the gully, as though she was no more than a discarded cigarette butt or other piece of trash.

“You said he took off?” I ask, trying to clarify. “Layla was alone?”

Danielle raises her eyes to meet mine, the intensity of her stare sending fear, cold and sharp, through my entire body.

“Yes,” she says. “He left, and it was only the two of us.”

“But then, how did he?—”

I imagine Layla turning around, still smiling from her night. She sees she’s not alone and takes a step back, fear shooting through her, only to see it’s not a stranger behind her. It’s Danielle. Her friend.

“I asked her why she lied,” Danielle says.

“I wanted to know why she’d cancelled our plans together.

Clearly, she wasn’t studying. And she couldn’t say her friends talked her into going out.

You were long gone by then. Even the man from the bar was gone, and it was only her, and I wanted to know why she lied.

“She became angry that I’d followed her. That I’d been hiding out all night watching. I told her I’d come to Whitaker to surprise her, but that was before I realized she was ditching me.”

I imagine Danielle and Layla arguing. How invasive it must have felt for Layla to know one of her oldest friends had stalked her all night. I imagine Layla’s eyes cutting from left to right, searching for a witness, but finding herself alone.

“She told me I was smothering her. That she’d chosen WU to put some space between us, and that I was disrespecting her boundaries by showing up unannounced. She even said I was scaring her!

“We both started shouting. I hadn’t come all this way to listen to someone who didn’t understand what real friendship meant. I felt so hurt, so rejected. I ran toward her.”

The scene in my mind changes. It’s not his hands around Layla’s neck, it’s not his voice shouting—it’s Danielle’s. It was always Danielle.

“You killed Layla,” I say, the accusation leaving my mouth in a whisper.

“I didn’t realize what I’d done until it was too late,” Danielle says. The darkness in her eyes recedes, replaced with sorrowful tears. “I was just so angry, you know? I felt betrayed by my only friend. Next thing I know, she was just lying there, mouth open, eyes wide, silent.”

“You murdered her,” I say, trying to force the image of Layla out of my mind. “For no reason at all.”

“I had a reason!” Danielle corrects me, her voice charged. “We were supposed to be there for each other. She discarded me, and I couldn’t let that happen.”

“You let another person take the fall,” I say. “He’s been in prison for nearly ten years?—”

“He wouldn’t have taken the deal if it weren’t for those other accusations against him,” she says. “I’ve lost sleep over the past ten years, but never over that.”

“You killed Layla. My best friend! And then had the nerve to use her death against me. And Crystal. You urged her parents to file that civil suit against us.”

Danielle is standing straighter again now, fueled by her own sense of justice.

“If you hadn’t gone out with her that night, none of this would have happened. If you hadn’t left her, she’d still be alive. You’re to blame just as much as everyone else,” she says. Then quieter, “I was just helping her parents see that. It’s what real friends do.”

The past ten years have been a puzzle, but finally the pieces are falling into place.

The way Layla’s mother described her daughter’s close friendships from childhood.

The way Danielle talks about Layla now, as though she only saw her yesterday.

The strange behavior Layla exhibited whenever she came back from a visit home, acting like something bad had happened, but not wanting to talk about it.

I realize now, long before Danielle became my stalker, she’d been fixated on Layla, and it’s that infatuation that led to my friend’s death.