Brooke

She's been sleeping with Jake a lot, ever since the murders. She's been loving him, too, but that is kind of beside the matter.

At first, it was meaningful sex, and then, for a while, it was just fucking—and now, it's somewhere in between. The whole time, she loved him. That was never a question. The thing, Brooke's starting to realize, is that you really screw yourself—your psyche, and your sexuality, and all that shit—over when you start having wild, passionate, illegal sex with your thirty year-old English teacher, all as a means of escaping your grossly unhealthy mental and emotional state.

Yeah, that shit really messes you up.

The first time she slept with Jake, it was soft and sweet—all tiny, little murmurs: I've got you, I'm here, We're alive. They made love like in old movies, back before anyone wanted to experiment with anything but happy endings.

Then all the other colors—the ones that weren't black and white—started to flood in, and things changed. She could feel herself being emptied out inside, could feel her body revolting against the murmurs, the I love you's, the happy endings. There were nights when she thought of Seth, his animal-like sounds and the spidery veins in his wrists, the bulge of his muscles, the instinctive want in his eyes. She thought of the way he said "goddamn" the night it all ended—how he was so goddamn happy to see her. She thought of what it was like to love somebody—or even to think you love somebody—when people were dying all around you.

(A hint: it's easier.)

Audrey

She talked to this girl for a while—this girl, Miriam, who wore baggy, thrift shop sweaters and pulled her socks down over her boots. Audrey couldn't quite tell if her old-lady name was a result of her parents' own vintage tastes or if Miriam had just been stuck with it and decided that there was no other way to pull off a name like that—no other way but to wear baggy, thrift shop sweaters and pull socks down over your boots.

Miriam was one of those people who was so hipster, she hated hipsters. She'd run her hand through her hair a lot, nervously, like Kristen Stewart, and she didn't text good-nights or good-mornings or anything like that. She stuttered sometimes when she talked and read graphic novels, because "God, not everything in this world has to be so fucking poetic all the time, you know?"

This girl made sure that she wasn't fake.

Audrey talked to her for a little bit, mostly because there was this numbness growing increasingly powerful inside of her—this numbness that might have started when Mrs. Murray told her that Rachel was hanging from a ceiling fan but also might have started when Mrs. Murray told her that it would really do her some good to start going back to church again, with her father. Audrey talked to Miriam like you talk to someone when there's literally a negative percent chance that you'll know them in two years—but when their lips, just like any lips, will probably feel nice whenever it comes time to stop thinking.

Audrey knew that that wasn't the way that Miriams ought to be talked to. (They were special, real. They were the girls you fell in love with.) Audrey knew that, but she didn't care.

See, the only time Miriam had ever been out of character was the first time that they met, down at some old coffee shop in the Square. Audrey hadn't had intentions of stopping in, but the air outside was so cold, it was dry, and she felt like if she walked a few more blocks to The Lounge, where Emma might be working, her sinuses would crumble up, and her head would concave, and there'd be a weirdass story about how a girl who'd looked into the eyes of the Lakewood Killer had been the first human case of death by global warming.

So, she stopped for coffee and met Vintage Miriam.

Actually, first she met Anna From Minnesota, who was visiting a college upstate but just had to travel through Lakewood. Anna was alright. She was that kind of person who is so simple and child-like that, once you've experienced any form of loss or sorrow in your life, you can never truly connect with again—but that was okay. She was okay. All she wanted was a picture with one of the Lakewood Six. All she wanted was a picture with a tremendously, incomprehensibly fucked-up individual.

And, honestly, Audrey was so numb, and the air was so dry, and eight kids were so dead that she didn't care about the morbidity of it all. She was just happy Anna didn't understand. She was just happy Anna was getting her picture.

After that, Miriam sat down—Miriam, who pulled socks down over her boots, and played a little bit of piano but couldn't sing, and wasn't sure how she felt about labeling her sexuality, and liked the idea of falling in love with a broken-up, small town celebrity.

And she didn't mention Anna or the picture or the murders. She just said: "You should try the Chai. It's good at clearing out your head."

But if she'd really understood—if Real, Authentic, Vintage Miriam was truly the non-hipster, painfully real human she wanted to be, who knew pain and loss and numbness—she would have never sat down.

Kieran

"Do you ever hate me for it? Like, even if you know it doesn't make sense to, do you ever look at me and just …"

She's watching the ceiling, her eyes glazed over—but not in the way they get right before she has a panic attack. Her chest is lax and loose, her hands folded up softly; it's just her eyes, and they're not weak, they're just empty.

"Just what?" His own voice is so soft, he can't feel it.

"I don't know. Just … want to look away?"

"No," he lies. Then, to even it out with some truth, he says, "None of it is your fault."

In his head, he thinks of what he would say if he was somebody else:

Of course, Emma—of course, I want to look away sometimes. Of course, I hate that you went off to your fucking retreat, and dealt with all your fucking guilt, while the rest of us just stayed behind with the damage—because, after all, that's all that we were: collateral damage in your horror story. Long live the Survivor Girl.

But he's not like that, not now anyway, not while she's here with her loose chest and soft hands and glazed-over eyes—not when she's surviving just like him, little by little. Is it hard to look at her? He doesn't know; he's not sure; he just does it, is doing it right now. And that's all he can speak for anymore is right now.