Page 183 of Sins of the Hidden

She was already gone.

EMTs arrived seven minutes later. They tried everything—defibrillator, epinephrine, more compressions. But I already knew. I knew the moment we entered the room. I just couldn't accept it.

"Time of death, twelve thirty-four," one of them finally said.

The room tilted sideways. Sound dulled to a distant roar, like I was underwater. I watched Anne's mother collapse across her daughter's body, her wails rising and falling in waves, her husband kneeling beside her, his face stripped of everything but raw grief.

She died believing she wasn't enough. Because I never told her how much she mattered. Because I didn't stop her from going to that barn. Because I wasn't fast enough that night.

They said suicide was selfish. As if staying behind to suffocate slowly on memories was selfless. Nobody blamed the boys who broke her. Or the world that stayed quiet. They blamed the one who couldn't carry it anymore. Love wasn't a cure. Family wasn't a cure. She didn't want to die—she just didn't want to live with it.

All I could hear was the steady ticking of Anne's bedside clock, marking off seconds of a world that no longer contained her. Tick. Tick. Tick. A relentless countdown that had started without my permission, measuring time in the after-Anne.

They wouldn't let me stay with her. A female officer wrapped me in a shock blanket and led me downstairs, speaking words that didn't register. Someone called my parents. Sirens wailed in the distance, more emergency vehicles arriving too late. The house filled with strangers in uniforms, their voices muffled and distorted like they were speaking underwater.

At some point, I found myself in our kitchen, a mug of untouched tea growing cold between my palms. The world hadtaken on a strange, glassy quality—everything slightly out of focus, colors too sharp, sounds too hollow. My mother kept touching my shoulder, asking questions I couldn't process. My father paced, his voice cracking as he spoke to someone on the phone. I existed somewhere outside my body, watching this scene play out like a movie I had no part in.

The days that followed existed only in scattered images. The devastating silence of Anne's empty seat at lunch. Her mother's hospitalization after a breakdown at the funeral. The grief counselor who appeared at school, offering platitudes that felt like violence. The prayer vigil I refused to attend. The way students who'd tormented Anne for years suddenly claimed her as a beloved friend.

We were disgusting to them, but not disgusting enough to be taken advantage of.

"Her mother couldn't accept it," my voice barely audible in the darkness of our bedroom. "The grief was too much. Anne's dad had to put her in a psychiatric facility about six months after the funeral. She still lives there."

V's hand rubbed up and down my stomach, resting his forehead on the back of my head.

"They divorced, but he remarried a few years later." My fingers twisted in the sheets. "He and his new wife visit Anne's mom in the facility every week. They take her to Anne's grave on her birthday and holidays. He never abandoned her, his new wife takes care of her too."

I stopped speaking entirely, the world fading to shades of gray, Anne's absence leaving a silence so profound it felt deafening. My parents moved cautiously around me like I was made of glass, watching for signs I might follow Anne. I was assigned a court-ordered therapist who asked questions I answered only with silence.

"She never opens up," the therapist's voice drifted through the door to my parents after our twelfth session. "If she won't talk about what happened, I can't help her."

"I didn't speak for three months after that. The doctors called it traumatic mutism." My eyes stayed fixed on my hands, twisting in my lap as I told V this part of my story for the first time. My throat constricted painfully, each word feeling like it might choke me. "Karson showed up to her funeral." My voice cracked on his name, broken glass in my throat. "He stood at the back, wearing a suit and tie. Like he hadn't...like he wasn't..."

My hands shook at the memory—Karson's ashen face as he watched Anne's casket being lowered into the ground. The sight of him sent bile rushing up my throat, the world spinning violently. I couldn't breathe, couldn't see, my entire body shaking so violently I thought I might shatter into pieces. The panic crushed my chest like I was being buried alive.

Michael and Jensen didn't show up to the funeral. Neither did Tyler. They didn't care about what they had caused. After the service, Karson tried to approach me, but I collapsed at the mere sight of him, panic seizing my lungs until I couldn't breathe. My father carried me to the car while my mother ran interference, unaware of what had really happened, thinking it was just grief breaking me apart.

After Anne's funeral, I couldn't stop vomiting. It was like my body was trying to purge the memory, purge the shame, purge the image of her hanging lifelessly—a ghost I couldn't escape even in sleep.

Each night at exactly twelve thirty-four, I'd stand by the window and whisper apologies into the dark, hoping the wind might carry them to wherever Anne had gone. My wrists bore permanent marks from twisting her bracelet tighter, punishing myself for surviving when she couldn't. The empty weeks bled into emptier months. I developed rituals. Sometimes I'd pressmy palms against the plaster, imagining Anne on the other side, just out of reach.

Food lost all taste. I stopped eating Anne's favorite foods—strawberry milkshakes, pepperoni pizza, chocolate-covered pretzels—because she couldn't enjoy them anymore. I dug the threads in deeper, rotating them until they carved into my wrist like a brand that I refused to let heal—physical scars to match the invisible ones.

In my head, I talked to Anne constantly.

Every "I should have" became an "I will never"—promises whispered to a ghost who couldn't hear them, regrets carving permanent hollows where her laughter used to live.

I learned to hide these thoughts behind a carefully constructed mask of "I'm fine" for my parents' benefit. But sometimes the mask slipped.

They found me once, scrubbing my skin raw in the shower at two AM, the water long since turned cold. My fingertips were pruned and bleeding, the loofah stained pink as I scoured every inch of myself. My mother pulled me out, crying as she wrapped a towel around my bleeding shoulders. "Talk to us, Oakley," she begged. "Please, just tell us what's happening."

But how could I explain that I was trying to wash away fingerprints only I could see? How could I tell them what happened in that barn without breaking what little remained of their trust in the world?

The nightmares came relentlessly. Sometimes I was back in the barn. Sometimes I was hanging from Anne's light fixture while she watched. Sometimes the roles were reversed, and she was the one finding me too late. I'd wake gasping, sheets soaked with sweat, a scream caught in my throat.

School became impossible. The hallways where those boys still walked free felt like tunnels closing in on me. I'd seethem laughing with friends, living their lives as if nothing had happened, while I carried the weight of Anne's absence.

"I begged my parents to let me be homeschooled." My fingers gripped V's forearm tightly. "The thought of going back to that building made me want to?—"

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