"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend." -William Blake

Halfway through Physics the next day at school, I realize that I forgot to brainstorm possible subjects of interest for the Dorsal Dispatch. I quickly jot down some rudimentary ideas while pretending to pay attention to Mr. Sharma's drab powerpoint about acceleration: movie reviews? Contests? Both are lame ideas but maybe later during the meeting a little working discourse will produce brighter ones.

Yuuko texts me halfway through the lesson that an administrator will be coming around during club later today to discuss the incident. She speculates that they discovered who the culprit is and want to talk to us about- I don't know, how much the case cost to repair or something.

I'm texting Yuuko a message back- I guess we'll see in half an hour- when Mr. Sharma creeps up behind me and with a disapproving frown confiscates my phone. I stay after to grovel for it back, citing some bullshit excuse about needing it for the club or something, I don't know. He reluctantly surrenders it after five minutes of begging, so I'm only a little late to the meeting.

Dr. Baranovskaya is, apparently, the "administrator" Yuuko warned me about. Even though newspaper club is a completely voluntary elective (tell that to Ms. Odagaki) and there are no consequences for tardiness, I still feel guilt for being late under her intense gaze as I slink into an empty desk with my back to the door. The other kids even sit up straighter than normal and put their phones away. Lilia- what we call her behind her back, as Dr. Baranovskaya can be quite the mouthful- has that effect, the ability to silence a room by simply walking in. I once heard a rumor that she used to be an operative for the KGB. A ridiculous claim, maybe- if you never met her.

Even Georgi looks alert and on edge, and I'm pretty sure Lilia used to be his foster mom. In fact, I think he's the one who told me the rumor about the KGB.

Yuuko quietly informs her that no one else is coming.

Lilia nods once, sharply, and clears her throat. "Of course, Ms. Ise. As I'm sure you have seen by now a member of the study body decided to vandalize the newspaper club display case. Yes?" Her eyes scan us fervently and we all nod to affirm our rapt attention. "Good. We have caught this student and are going to punish him fitly."

She says the word punish like you'd say pork or poodle. But I don't think anyone's correcting her word choice now, that's for sure.

Minami, a few seats down from me, fidgets with his pen and sketchbook and even though he doesn't speak, you could hear his thoughts a mile away. They're going to make us pay for the display, I know it. I just know it. And that'll be the end of newspaper club. And I'll probably never have friends again. Maybe that's a little more dramatic than he's emoting at the minute, but I know him well enough and come on. The poor kid's eyes glisten with unshed tears. I may have anxiety problems myself, but Minami takes the cake on sweating the small stuff.

Lilia continues to talk about the process of finding the culprit and the deliberation of choosing an apt consequence and I mostly listen out of both fear and respect (which are kind of the same thing, in her case).

I don't totally buy the stuff about "finding a proper punishment" because I'm pretty sure the incident counts as vandalism- a level 3 infraction according to the code of conduct with a minimum consequence of Teen Court and suspension. But if they were serving those consequences, we would know by now, which means whoever did it is a Special Circumstance kid- the basketball team captain, or the valedictorian. Maybe Yuuko was onto something.

But we'll find out soon enough, it turns out, because what the mighty Dean of Discipline has decided is "apt punishment" in lieu of court is to sic them with the newspaper club for the next two months. They'll work off their damages, starting today.

A righteous sort of anger engulfs me at the thought of working together with the culprit on the very paper they disrespected in front of the whole school and I'm not alone. Phichit would be proud. Everyone else in the circle adopts a tightness to their lips but don't dare say anything, not in front of Dr. Baranovskaya and not right before whoever he or she is walks through the door. We hear their footsteps.

I'm so angry that I don't immediately turn around to face them but I see everyone else when they do. Otabek and Anya predictably stay stone-faced, while Takeshi and Yuuki look concerned. Minami tilts his head to the side in confusion. But it's Georgi's reaction- an indignant yelp and loud cry of what I can only assume are Russian slurs before yelling "Of fucking course!"- prompts me to turn around. My jaw hits the floor when I do.

Whoever I expected the offender to be, it's not him.

Mr. Morooka stands next to the star of the football team, the gem of Thomas M. Fisher High, my former friend and not-so-former crush, Victor Nikiforov, with a comforting hand placed gently on one of his shoulders.

"Hi," Victor says lamely and gives a wave that's even more pathetic than the greeting.

He's met with silence from all of us students.

Lilia nods at Mr. Morooka. "Thank you for excorting him here. Ms. Ise, I trust you have this under control?"

Yuuko nods, still confused.

Lilia approaches the door but stops in front of Victor. "We let you off easy, you understand that? Don't mess this up."

He uncomfortably nods, and both teachers leave the room with an atmosphere of tension that is so tangible you could it with a knife. Victor takes a seat a few desks down from me. He tries, but I refuse to meet his eyes.

His presence mixed with lingering thoughts from last night still lingering in my head almost convince me to leave the meeting early. Still, I think they need me here. While I doubt Victor will actually participate, there's an unmissable air of uneasiness from just having him here. Even Anya rolls her eyes and scowls.

Yuuko loses her train of thought there for a second so I clear my throat and gently prompt her, "Hey, Yuuko, didn't you say we were supposed to bring some ideas to discuss today?"

That snaps her out of it and she nods. "Yes, that's right. Thanks Yuuri." She surveys the room. "Did everyone think of something?"

Silence, mostly. Otabek and I nod and Minami pulls out several crumpled up pieces of paper from his backpack. Georgi just huffs and stares angrily at Victor. I pity their foster father. Anya doesn't bother to respond.

We try to brainstorm anyway, but don't get very far, at least not with good ideas. The best comes from Minami, some sort of community partnership? I don't exactly follow and it sounds far-fetched anyway. By the end of the meeting, we have nothing and everyone just wants to leave the uncomfortable atmosphere behind.

Yuuko caps the Expo market she used to write down what we said on the whiteboard and shifts on her feet. "Okay. Any other ideas, guys?"

Silence, at first. Then, just before Yuuko dismisses us, a throat clears behind me. "I don't think you're going about this the right way."

We all turn, surprised Victor decided to contribute. Spite curls cruelly in my stomach, next to indignance that he not only spoke, but had the gall to criticise us. No one responds.

Victor sighs and folds his hands on his desk. "Sorry. I know I'm unwelcome here. I understand. But I'm here now, so perhaps you could hear me out."

Georgi rolls his eyes dramatically. "You can never keep your mouth shut. We don't want you here."

Anya places a hand on his arm, maybe in support, maybe to keep him from jumping across our desks to deck Victor. Minami fidgets violently with his hands like he's ready to help Georgi. I don't want to strangle Victor presently, but that doesn't mean I agree with him.

Before I change my mind, I say, "Georgi isn't wrong. This isn't fair. If any of the rest of us had vandalised school property, we'd get suspended or worse. And your punishment is to join us?" I surprise myself by addressing him directly. I swallow. "Haven't you done enough already?"

My words end more like a plea than sharp jab. I want him gone. It's hard enough to be here as it is. Victor slumps back down in his chair. A hurt look flickers across his face. A few months ago, hurting Victor's feelings would have driven me to the edge. But my faith in him is just one of the many things I've lost since.

"Nevermind," he says, "Forget that I ever said anything."

Yuuko shoots me a look that fully communicates how uncalled for she believes my words were and Do you really want to risk Lilia for this, Yuuri?

She shakes her head at Victor, still maintaining a professional and ambassadorial front. "No, it's alright. We're open to all ideas, no matter where they come from. Please, share."

Victor hesitates but he's still confident, even here in what should be our territory. He has a similar effect to Lilia in that he totally occupies any space he enters. "I suppose… the newspaper used to be very popular, yes? Why was that?"

I want to say, Because we had Phichit. He actually knew how to do this stuff. But it sticks in my throat. Instead, Otabek answers, "They liked the stories."

Obviously. But no one is ready to totally humor him just yet.

Victor presses forward. "Of course. But what about them did they like?"

After a moment of silence, Yuuko says, "We published a lot of hard-hitting stories. They were interesting. But since then we've mainly focused on community and world news. Entertainment. Stuff like that."

She's assuming he doesn't read the newspaper anymore. Barely anyone does. But I don't remember him ever reading the paper in the first place, even when we used to be friends.

Anyway, her answer is basically the same as mine, rephrased. Phichit always wrote the "hard-hitting news", sometimes employing the others to edit or investigate or in my case, take pictures.

"I don't think that's why," Victor says and I'm offended. He catches on to this and quickly clarifies, "They were interesting, of course. But I think the reason everybody loved them so much was because they were about them. You could open the paper and read about your friends."

We don't respond right away because he has a point.

"So we could interview students with a special talent or something. Our foster brother Yurio plays violin." He pauses and waits expectantly.

Takeshi breaks the silence. "That's… not the worst idea I've heard today."

Yuuko nods, because she just wants to save the paper. "Yeah, actually. It's simple, but… it might work. Any other people in mind?"

I bite my tongue. The meeting ends thirty minutes later than expected because Yuuko takes Victor's idea and rolls with it, assigning us all roles in the process. It's irritating and not what I would have done in her position, but as I've told her several times by now, it isn't my decision anymore. If Yuuko wants to run a series of features about our most talented students, she can.

We spend the next two meetings before the weekend continuing to develop a gameplan for these interviews. I can feel everyone- besides Georgi- begin to warm up to Victor and that irritates me to no end. Do they not remember why he's there in the first place? Are they blind?

Regardless, I'm relieved when Saturday finally arrives. Because while Victor is a problem in and of itself, I have larger matters to lose sleep over.

At 8 a.m., I tell my mother some flimsy excuse about working on a group project in the library and hop in my car to drive the ninety minutes it takes to get to the state penitentiary, wondering all the while if I'm crazy. What am I thinking, visiting the man who confessed to killing my best friend less than six months ago?

He's not expecting me, that's for sure. While I sit in a hard chair with my hands flat on the small table in front of me, I hear a commotion coming from behind the door where the COs bring prisoners out. It pierces through the relative silence of the visitation room, which is empty except for me.

"I'm telling you, you're making a mistake," an Italian voice bellows. The door opens widely and out comes the very man I'm here to see. His CO escorts him over to my table but I guess he hasn't seen me yet. "No one beside my kid has visited me in four months and no one's-"

Then he notices me and stops his objections. "Yuuri. I didn't expect to see you here."

I shrug. "I'm on your list, aren't I?"

He takes a seat across from me and places his hands on the table as well. "Well, of course, but-" He swallows, and blinks, before continuing, "I didn't think you'd actually show up."

"Good to see you, too, Celestino," I reply dryly and he shakes his head with the flick of his hand. He hit the nail on the head, but while I've sheltered my fair share of resentment towards him, but I don't hate him. How many people drink and drive? The only difference between them and him is that when he did it, he killed me best friend.

But I'm not in the habit of holding grudges. I know the guilt of what he did weighs him down. To me, that's adequate punishment for his crime.

"No, no, you know I didn't mean it like that." He presses the wrists of his hand together and stares at the place they touch, avoiding eye contact with me. "If you came here because you pity me, you might as well go home, Yuuri, and forget all about me. I've done enough."

His words echo words I said to Victor at the newspaper club meeting three days ago. Haven't you done enough already? It reminds me why I'm here- that this isn't a social visit.

I sigh and tap lightly on the table with my ring finger. "No, that's actually not why I came."

He looks up at that, suspicious. "So what, then? You want to yell at me for what I did? Go ahead. I suppose I deserve it."

But I shake my head. Maybe coming was a mistake, but it's one I'll follow through on. "No, that's not it either. But I did… I did want to talk to you. About- you know. What happened."

I want to clarify, say more about it, but like a few days before, his name sticks in my throat. It doesn't matter anyway. Celestino knows exactly what I mean.

He nods slowly and takes a long breath. "I owe you as much." He shoves his shoulders back and tries to put on a brave face but this probably hurts him as much it does me. "What more do you want to know? I had too many, went driving when I shouldn't have, hit the kid." He flinches. He doesn't say Phichit's name either. "Not much more to it than that."

He has a point, but I'm not convinced. I can't be if I'm really entertaining this theory. "Okay, sure. I knew all of that."

He shrugs. Celestino is only about 45, but he looks nearer to 60 because of the life he's lived. I remember him telling me and Phichit years ago about all of the crazy things he did living in the projects just to get by. Ate crackers and ketchup from Wendy's when his mother couldn't feed him. Donated plasma twice a week just to pay for the rundown trailer he rented in Phichit's neighborhood along with his drinking habit. The man is no stranger to poverty, which makes him the perfect scapegoat for a crime. His story is predictable from beginning to end. Especially in his own head.

"How drunk were you that night? How many beers had you had?" I press on. There's something more here than either of us knows.

He shifts in his chair uncomfortably. "I don't know, Yuuri. Clarissa called me, said I couldn't have Angelina for the weekend. So I drank maybe two bottles of wine, maybe three. I don't remember exactly. But I got really upset about Angelina and tried to go see her. That's where I was going when I-" he swallows. "Hit and ran."

I nod. He may not be the most morally upright man, but he loves his daughter Angelina to death. I'll give him that. "Right, okay. But do you remember specifically hitting him?"

He thinks, long and hard about this. "Not exactly," he replies reluctantly. "I don't know what you're getting at here, Yuuri, but I know I hit him. I was shit-faced, pretty much driving in the middle of the road. I remember seeing their lights coming towards me and swerving off the road and into the ditch." He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. "I must've hit him then, I know it. Who else could it have been? The police said they were looking for a drunk driver around 9:15 p.m. Friday night who hit and run. That's me, Yuuri."

It takes me a second to process this because I didn't actually think I would be surprised by this visit. "So you don't remember seeing him?"

He shakes his head and leans tiredly on one hand. "No, but why does that matter? I probably did, just forgot."

My mind runs too fast to answer his question, so I ask him another. "And when you veered off the road to avoid the other car, you ended up in the ditch to your right?"

He nods. "That's right. Opposite of the other car."

I frown because that shouldn't be right. A few weeks after Phichit's death, someone from the local Baptist megachurch erected a gigantic memorial in his honor, all ribbons and flowers and crosses despite the fact that he was Buddhist and his family requested its removal. Everyone who's been on that road since now knows exactly where he died.

But Celestino hasn't been on that road since, has he? So he wouldn't know.

I breathe in and out slowly. My hands shake. I feel dizzy because now I'm on to something, and I didn't want to be. "Celestino," I start slowly. "If what you just told me is true-"

"It is," he interjects. "I've gone over what happened a thousand times in my head since then, you know? I told you what I'm sure about."

"Then you couldn't have hit him," I finish. "He died on the other side of the road. Hit by a car that was incoming, not outgoing. It must have been the other car that did it- the one that made you swerve off the

I wonder how the police never caught on to that, but it's not that far of a stretch. The police department here is quick to convict poor drunks like Celestino. I doubt he even made much of a statement.

Celestino waits to respond. I'm not sure what he's thinking. I half-expect him to start cursing about his innocence, or demand to see his lawyer, or maybe try to hug me from relief.

He does none of those things. Instead, he closes his eyes and sighs, running a hand tiredly over his face. "So you think I'm innocent? You aren't telling me anything I haven't thought about already, kid," he says. "I'm sorry you wasted a visit."

My face turns hot with indignation. "What do you mean by that? You are innocent, and you're sitting in jail while the person who really did it runs free on the outside!"

He shakes his head and does the thing with his wrists again. He starts to look agitated. "Even if I didn't hit him, I'm not innocent, Yuuri. I deserve to be locked up, if not just for all of shit I put my family through over the years."

I must look lost. I put a hand to my head incredulously.

He notices and elaborates, "I know what you're thinking. The person who really did kill your friend should be here instead, right? Or at least here with me?"

I nod, still confused. But I don't miss the detached way he refers to Phichit- your friend- like we hadn't known him since childhood. Like we hadn't spent countless summers on the small piece of grass in front of his trailer, searching for four-leaf clovers and listening to his crazy stories inappropriate for kids our age.

"As far as I'm concerned, I did kill him. He'd probably be alive today if I weren't a drunk. Maybe the other car swerved to avoid me too, and hit him then. Maybe for some reason I'm remembering it wrong and I veered off the wrong side of the road. Like I said, it doesn't matter now."

Softly, I ask him, "But don't you want to get out of prison to see Angelina?"

He chuckles. "She visits me here. She's sixteen, she's a big girl. She can handle herself out there, with just her mother for another five years until I get out of here. In the meantime, they don't treat me so bad. Hey, you know I joined AA? I just got my fourth chip. Three months clean. The guy who runs the meetings- his kid goes to school with you. We call him X-man, but," he shrugs. "Not his real name, obviously. Ring a bell?"

I shake my head. I'm happy for him, but he's deflecting. "So you're seriously going to reject any help to get you out of here?"

He nods and crosses his arm. "I barely used my lawyer, even. I know where I should be."

I sigh and stand up. There's no point to me being here anymore. "Well, I'm sorry to disturb you. I'm sure you had many more worthwhile things to do with your time."

He waves the thought away. "Yuuri, I know it doesn't seem like it, but I'm not sad I got arrested. It's gonna turn out to be a good thing, in the end. I'm sorry you can't see that now."

I shove the chair back under the table. His wrongful imprisonment- which I'm pretty sure now that's what it is- may have been the wakeup call he needed, but to him, Phichit was a martyr. To me, he was my best friend. And that means that whoever killed him, really, is still free. And if I'm right about his suspicious behavior the night he died, it wasn't the accident Celestino thinks it is. If he won't go to the police, then they won't reopen the investigation. That means if I want them found, I'll have to take matters into my own hands.

"I know you're trying to do right by your daughter. I get that." I turn to stalk away, but throw back one last jab. "But because of you a murderer is free. Just think about that." I turn just in time to see his hurt face. "Take care of yourself, Ciao Ciao."

I can't get away from the jail fast enough. But it's not enough. I want to drive far, far away from that stupid town and classist police department back to a time when things weren't easier, but simpler and the investigation of our lives was searching for four-leaf clovers in the ditches of a road untouched by blood.

a/n: i hope you enjoyed the new chapter! this one was a lot of fun to write, but also a pain in the ass. reviews/favorites are greatly appreciated! as always, find me on tumblr at antspaul or on fanfiction . net at goddess of percabeth, where this is also posted. make sure to follow to get alerted to when I update next! i'm not sure i'm going to update next monday, but i'll definitely be back in action some point next week. i just want to create a backlog of chapters, that's all.

next chapter, yuuri creates a list of suspects and continues to clash with Victor, not to mention with his prime suspect. let me know down in the comments if you have any idea who the killer is! i know i've hinted at it a little, lol.