I watch their faces, awaiting their horror, but they are kind, expectant, waiting for me to continue. And it hits me: this is old news.
“You know?”
“We know,” Sue says quietly. “It was in the police report.”
“It was?”
Sue nods. “They said it explained how she got that poison. It’s common with those groups.”
“The Final Solution.” Joe practically spits the words. “That’s what the Nazis called the Holocaust. Meg knew that. I can’t believe she’d fall into a group that used that as its name.”
“Joe.” Sue puts her hand on his arm.
“So the police found the encrypted files? They know about Bradford?” I’m confused. Bradford didn’t seem to know anything about Meg’s death.
Now Joe and Sue look confused, too. “What files?”
“On Meg’s computer. In her trash.”
“I don’t know about that,” Sue says. “They just said they found evidence that Meg was involved with this group from her Internet searches.”
“Who’s Bradford?” Joe asks.
“Bradford Smith,” I say.
They look at me blankly.
“He’s the one, from the boards. Wait, I thought you said the police knew about this.”
“They told us she was involved with these sickos who preyed upon vulnerable people like Meg, encouraging them to commit suicide,” Joe says.
“But you don’t know about Bradford?” They shake their heads. “Bradford Smith? On the boards, known as All_BS?” Still no recognition. “He’s the one who helped her, pushed her. He was like her death mentor. He coaxed her, offered her advice.”
Sue nods. “Right. That’s how these groups work.”
“But it wasn’t the group. It was him.”
“How do you know about this, Cody?” Joe asks.
I back up and explain. The encrypted file, which led me to the Final Solution boards, which led me to Firefly1021, which led me to All_BS. “I spent weeks on the boards, trying to smoke him out. It took a while, but I did it, and then I guess I got him to believe I was like Meg, and I sort of fooled him into calling me. He was careful about it, calling via Skype on a tablet, but I was able to trace the call and from there figure out where he worked and then where he lived.”
They’re still staring at me. “You did all that yourself?” Sue asks.
“Not exactly. Harry Kang, Meg’s former roommate, he did all the technical stuff, and another person drove me to Laughlin to see Bradford—”
“You went to see this man?” Joe interrupts.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I just now got back.”
“Cody!” Sue admonishes in the same tone she’d scold Meg and me for staying out too late or driving too fast. “That was very dangerous.”
Joe and Sue are watching me now with worried parental expressions. And though I’ve missed this, so much, I don’t want them looking at me like that. I don’t want to be their child. I want to be their avenging angel!
“Don’t you see? This guy did it! She wouldn’t be dead if it weren’t for him.”
“He told her to kill herself?” Joe asks. “He helped her do it?”
“Yes! And he tried to help me, too! Look.”
I flip open my files to show them the notes, the messages. But as I read what he wrote to Meg and me, what I see is a bunch of other people’s quotes. Links to other pages. Everything at arm’s distance. He didn’t tell Meg to use poison. He didn’t buy it for her. He didn’t offer me any specific advice beyond cold remedies. He never once outright said to me: You should kill yourself.
I told no one anything, I hear him say. He’d almost taunted me when he asked me what specific advice he’d given. I remember wanting him to ask me about my chosen method so badly, but he never did.
But that doesn’t change anything. He’s still responsible. “It was him,” I insist. “Meg wouldn’t have killed herself if not for him. He’s the reason.”
Joe and Sue exchange a glance, and then they look at me. And then Sue tells me exactly what Tree told me a few weeks ago, only I didn’t hear it. How long have I not been hearing it?
“Meg suffered from depression, Cody,” Sue tells me. “She had her first clinical episode in tenth grade. She had another last year.”
Tenth grade, the year in bed. “The mono?”
Sue nods, then shakes her head. “It wasn’t mono.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why didn’t she tell me?”
Sue taps her chest. “I’ve struggled with this for such a long time, not only depression but the stigma of it in a small town, and I didn’t want her saddled with that at age fifteen.” She pauses. “If I’m honest, what I really didn’t want was for her to be saddled with a disease she got from me. So we kept it quiet.”
Joe looks down at the table. “We thought we were doing the best thing at the time.”
“We got her on antidepressants, of course,” Sue says. “And she improved. So much so that she wanted to go off them after she graduated high school. We tried to talk her out of it. I know depression, and it’s not something that visits once and disappears.”
Sue’s moods. The house’s smells. Depression. That’s what it’s like?
“We knew things weren’t right as soon as she got down there,” Joe says. “She was sleeping all the time, missing classes.”
“We tried to get her help, to get her on track,” Sue says. “We were thinking of making her take a term off. We talked about it—fought about it, more like—all through winter break.”
“That’s why we couldn’t invite you to join us,” Joe says.
Winter break. My family is driving me crazy.
“We had decided to force the issue if she wouldn’t take steps. To bring her home if we needed to, even if it meant losing her scholarship. But then in the New Year, she seemed to get better. Only she wasn’t. She was planning her escape.”
“I didn’t know,” I say.
“None of us did,” Sue says, starting to cry now.
She was my best friend. If I’d been there, for the winter break, or for the school year, I would’ve known. About her depression, how bad she was feeling. It might be different. She might be here.
“I didn’t know,” I repeat, only this time it comes out as a piercing howl. And then my grief bursts like an aneurysm, the blood everywhere.