miller monroe | district nine; cb

It's your fault Hannah and Beth are gone. No, not gone. Dead. Presumably. And it just goes to show you that things can go too far: jokes can be hurtful, people can be cruel. You were cruel enough to trick a girl who loved you into thinking you felt the same. You were cruel enough to lead her into a room full of people, friends, who laughed at her so much that she ran into a blizzard to get away from them. You did not follow her, none of you did, so her sister did.

And no one ever saw either of them again.

You'd expected your life to come to a grinding halt: some time in the detention center, maybe a public whipping... you'd even let your brain venture as far as avox territory, and you forced your friends to keep quiet: to tell no one, not even the brother who'd been asleep upstairs. No one. The secret was born between the lot of you, and it died with Hannah and Beth's disappearance. You did not pay for your sins. In fact, you got so good at pretending you had no idea what happened that night that, sometimes, you start to believe yourself.

And now, look at you: top of the class, top of the social heap, and an internship at the mayor's office others would've had to work up to for years. You made the right decision, you think. And though you think you hear their names, like whispers in the wind, though you see them in the corner of your eyes, hidden in the shadows, you know now its too late to tell the truth. You're happy and you're thriving. It's selfish of you, you know, but you can't risk letting it go to waste.