The door of the police station opened behind Jonah, who was in the middle of giving her name and address to the woman at the desk. The desk woman still seemed bored and had not yet tried to ask what crime exactly Jonah was trying to confess to. Maybe this was because Jonah did not look like the type of person who one thought of as needing to confess to serious crimes. She was, after all, a young white woman, and she wasn't known for being in trouble with the police.

"Can I help you, ma'am?" the police woman at the desk asked, leaning around to look at the newcomer.

"Sorry," that person said, and it was Bay's voice. Jonah blanched and turned around, a sudden wild panic on her face. Bay was about to screw everything up.

"Go," she tried to mouth to Bay, but Bay didn't see, or ignored her, and marched up to the desk, casting a glance down at the paperwork.

"I'm here to report a crime," Bay said.

"Well that makes the two of youse," the woman said. "Have a seat there and I'll take your information in a second."

"I'm not trying to report a crime," Jonah said. "I'm trying to tell you something that I did."

"What am I, a priest?" the woman asked. "You'll tell me what's been done first, and we can figure out the rest. You look too old to be playing pranks."

Bay hadn't yet moved. "Jonah didn't do anything," she said. "It was--"

"Shut up," Jonah hissed under her breath. "Let me do this."

"Do what?" the desk officer asked.

"Confess," Jonah said again. She felt like she was standing on the deck of a ship, Jonah, weathering the storm, begging the crew of the boat to toss her overboard to be swallowed up.

"She's trying to take the blame for something that she didn't do," Bay said. "Don't listen to her."

"You know what?" the woman asked. "It's too late at night for this. One at a time or I'll--"

The door opened again. All three woman turned to see the newcomer. It was Amanda, of course, standing with her hands on her hips. "Oh, so you are here," Amanda said.

"This isn't a public house," the police woman said. "What is it that you want?"

"I wanted her to finish taking me home," Amanda said, pointing at Bay. "But she got sidetracked, clearly."

"Can you take a seat then, ma'am?" The policewoman pointed at the dinky orange chairs that lined the wall. Amanda gave them a derisive glance, then dragged her feet as she went to sit down, glaring at Bay and Jonah.

"Hope this doesn't take too long," she said. "I want to go to bed."

"You're welcome to leave," Bay said, then turned back to Jonah and the policewoman. "As I was saying--"

"What's going on out here?" The scene further dissolved into chaos as the door behind the desk opened, and Officer Andover stepped out into the little glassed off space. "Mary?"

"That one wants to confess to a crime, that one wants to tell me information about a crime, that one is here for fun, apparently, because no high schooler in this town appears to have a reasonable curfew," Mary, the policewoman, said.

Andover squinted across at Jonah and Bay. "Didn't Mr. Calvin tell you both to stay out of police business?"

"Yes, but--" Jonah and Bay said the same thing simultaneously, then looked at each other.

"Mostly he only told me that," Jonah said, breaking into the opening in the conversation.

"I have new evidence for you," Bay said, getting the words out as fast as possible. "I know who killed Justine Mulvais, it was--"

"Me," Jonah said.

"No it wasn't!" Bay said, whipping her head around. "It was--"

"Jesus Christ," Andover said, waving his hand at the both of them. "It's too late for this."

"Can you hear me out?" Bay asked. "Then I won't bother you again."

"Fine, fine," Andover said. "Mary, you can take the back room. I'll deal with this."

"Only too glad to make this your problem," she said as she abandoned her creaky desk chair and slammed through the door at the back. Andover took her seat, pushed her abandoned novel out of the way, and looked through the glass partition at the three women in the lobby.

"You, you go first," Andover said, pointing at Bay.

"Justine Mulvais drowned," Bay said. "I can prove it." She pulled out the crumpled pieces of paper, the photographs that Jonah had printed earlier. She slid them through the little slot at the bottom of the desk.

"What am I looking at here?" Andover asked, smoothing the first printout out. The harsh blue lights inside gave the photo a dingy looking cast.

"That's the view from the top of the changing rooms above the pool at Arcadis," Bay explained. "My hobby is making pinhole photos, and I had set that one up to get a shot of the pool last Friday."

"Uh-hunh," Andover said. "I'm not particularly interested in your art projects."

"Look in the pool water," Bay said. "This is from the night that Justine Mulvais died-- that's her body, right there, you can kinda see it."

"You know, any kid with a computer could have made this," Andover said. "You can't even see her face."

"She's face down," Bay said. "That's how you know she's drowned."

"And how do you know this is from that night? That it's her?"

"Who else could it be?"

"That doesn't explain how she ended up in the lake," Andover said.

"Did you tell him about the missing shears?" Bay asked, turning to Jonah. "Before?"

Jonah stared down at the mottled wooden surface of the police desk beyond the pane of glass. She wasn't going to respond to Bay. She wanted to take the fall for this.

"Yes, Ms. Wylan told me about tools that had gone missing from the maintenance crew," Andover said. "We never recovered them from the lake."

"I found them," Bay said. "That's them, in the second photo. They were in the trunk of--"

"She's lying," Jonah cut in.

"No I'm not! I don't know what the hell you think you're doing, but you're not going to take the fall for Kyle and Zach being idiots," Bay huffed.

"Ms. Rodriguez, please just continue with your story," Andover said, sounding extremely tired. His hair was mussed, Jonah noted, as though he had been woken from sleep.

"They were in the trunk of Kyle Traver's car. He and Zach Hicks worked together to cut up Mulvais's body and toss it in the lake."

"And why on Earth would they do that?" Andover asked. He was bored now. "Mr. Calvin will not appreciate you two trying to pin the blame for Ms. Mulvais's death on park employees."

"Mr. Calvin doesn't know any of this," Bay said. "It's true, though. They were in the park that night."

"How do you know that?" Andover asked.

"There's always these parties on Friday nights-- look at that first photo again," Bay said. She then proceeded to explain Amanda's ghostly presence in the chair.

"And you say you were asleep that whole time?" Andover asked, leaning around to look at Amanda, who was playing a game on her phone.

"I sleep through anything, I guess," she said. "But yeah, Kyle and Zach were definitely there. And they did it. I don't know why you don't just tell him that they confessed and then drove out of town."

"Oh, yeah," Bay said. "They did do that."

Andover stared at her. "Cool," he said flatly. "This is all a very funny story. I'm glad that you've decided to waste police time by telling it to me. And you. What's your deal?" He turned to Jonah.

"I did it. I killed Justine," Jonah said, though with every moment her voice was less steady. She had felt ready to confess before, but now that Bay was standing here, and had presented her own, real, evidence, Jonah wasn't quite there.

"No, she literally didn't," Bay said, glaring at Jonah.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"I was guarding the pool that day."

"No she wasn't."

"Justine drowned while I wasn't looking. When I was at the party--"

"She wasn't at the party."

"--I discovered her body and realized what had happened. So I used the shears to cut her up, and I put her in the lake."

"No, Kyle and Zach did," Bay said.

"And so why did you pull out her head from the drain?" Andover asked, looking across at Jonah.

She had given a thought to this question. "Because I was worried that no one would find her. I wanted to get caught."

"You're trying to tell me you're some kind of psychopath?"

"I'm trying to--"

"She's lying," Bay said again. "And I don't know why."

"I let you have your turn to talk," Andover said. His tone changed, suddenly, and he looked at Jonah with a kind of pity on his face that overtook his tiredness. "Look, Ms. Wylan, I understand that this has probably been an extremely difficult time for you. But what happened to Ms. Mulvais is not your fault. I highly recommend that you find a qualified therapist to discuss this with."

"I'm not crazy," Jonah protested, horrified that her words were being misconstrued.

"I've seen this happen to people in the past," Andover said. "They'll try to rationalize a horrible event by taking on the blame for it."

"But I buried the shears out in the woods," Jonah said.

"Ms. Wylan," Andover said, then stopped. He sighed, a defeated thing. "Ms. Wylan, I'm taking your statement because I am obligated to. Please take a seat and fill out that form."

"Sure," Jonah said. That might be the best she was going to get. She took the form and the pen from the desk and went to sit down on one of the chairs, a couple seats away from Amanda. It squeaked loudly at her. She didn't have a desk, so she struggled to begin filling out the form on her knee.

"She didn't do it," Bay said again. Andover shared a look with her.

"She didn't do it," Amanda said from the back.

"Will you both shut up?" Jonah said.

"Ms. Rodriguez, may I talk to you for a minute, alone?" Andover asked. He held open the door for Bay, and they vanished into the back for a minute, leaving Amanda and Jonah alone in weird silence.

"Kyle's not going to thank you for taking the fall for him," Amanda said with a yawn. "Not like you're going to be able to. That guy thinks you're crazy."

"I said shut up," Jonah said.

"I don't know what's gotten into you," Amanda said. "Like an hour ago you were happy to figure out that Kyle and Zach had done it. It's their problem you know." Amanda paused for a second and looked over at her. "You've always been too much of a pushover."

"I'm not a pushover," Jonah muttered, stabbing the pen into the paper so hard that it accidentally punched through and marked her knee.

"Just because Zach or whatever asked you so nice to not tell on them, that doesn't mean you have to do it."

Jonah didn't respond, just continued writing down her statement. In the silence of the lobby, Jonah could hear a muffled conversation happening between Bay and Andover, though she couldn't hear the words, just the tone.

"Bay's gonna hate you for this," Amanda said finally.

It wasn't fair of her to bring up Bay, the one good thing that Jonah had going for her.

"Mr. Calvin's probably going to fire you," Amanda continued.

"I'm doing this to protect Arcadis," Jonah said through gritted teeth.

"Yeah, well, it's not fucking working because no one believes you."

The back door slammed open, and Bay emerged back into the lobby.

"Ms. Wylan, I'd like to take your fingerprints."

That felt like a smidge of victory to Jonah, and she stood hastily, putting the papers down on the seat beside her. She followed Andover into the back, where she looked with some curiosity at the fingerprint machine. Andover walked her through the process, smushing each of her fingers in turn against the glass, the image of the prints showing up on the screen.

When she was done, he gestured wordlessly for her to sit in a nearby chair, and she did, suddenly feeling the lateness of the hour.

He looked silently at his computer for several minutes, clicking and typing in rapid bursts.

"Ms. Wylan," he began, then paused, looking over at her as she sat, rather hunched, on the chair. "Your fingerprints are not on any of the evidence that we collected," he said. "Not even the evidence that you yourself provided to us, those wire snips that were used to cut the fence."

"But the shears--"

Andover pulled another chair out, turned it around, sat on it backwards, leaning over the back of it to look at her. "I should have told you to get counseling earlier," he said. "It's very traumatic, to go through what you did. No one is prepared to walk into work one day and end up seeing a person who was mutilated. It can sometimes cause the mind to play weird tricks on itself."

"I'm not crazy," Jonah said.

"I'm not saying that you are crazy," Andover said. "I'm saying that everyone processes trauma differently, and if you're processing it by taking on feelings of guilt, that's natural. But it doesn't mean that you were responsible for what happened to Ms. Mulvais, and it doesn't mean that you need to be punished for it."

The breath was catching in Jonah's throat, and she couldn't exactly tell why. She knew she hadn't actually killed Justine. She hadn't cut her into pieces and thrown her in the lake. She knew that. So why was Andover's quiet voice getting to her now?

She opened her mouth to say something, and only a ragged kind of wheeze came out, the words frozen in her throat.

"Take all the time you need," Andover said. Jonah stared at the floor.

"I have to be responsible for what happens at Arcadis," Jonah finally managed, tears welling up in her eyes. "That's my job."

"Arcadis is a different question entirely," Andover said. "But you did not kill that woman."

"I--"

Andover handed her a tissue, a rough thing that was clearly in position to wipe down the surface of the fingerprint reader, not meant to comfort crying women. "It's alright," he said. "I think it's time for you to go home. Up you come."

She followed Andover back into the lobby, clutching her now damp tissue like it was a lifeline.

"I'd like to interview you as well," Andover said, pointing at Amanda. "Follow me."

She groaned, standing with reluctance. "I shouldn't have come in here," she said as she passed Jonah, following Andover into the back, leaving Jonah and Bay alone in the lobby.

Jonah sat down at the seat that she had been in, and noticed the form she had left there was gone. She refused to look at Bay, figuring that she had taken it.

"What are you doing, Jonah?" Bay asked. "What is this all about?" Her voice was pathetically quiet.

Jonah shook her head mutely. She shredded the tissue in her hand, wrapping it around her index finger.

"Do you want to go to jail and get blamed for all of this?"

Jonah couldn't answer.

"I didn't want to come here to have to save you from yourself," Bay continued. "But I guess I am." She sounded sad and angry at the same time. "Don't you have anything to say that's not a false confession?"

"I'm sorry," Jonah said. "I had to."

"No, you didn't."

"It would be better for everyone if I took the blame."

"I can't imagine what could cause you to say that."

"Zach would make a better aquatics head than I would. And Kyle is just a kid."

"You're wrong on both counts." Bay paused. "And even if you weren't, you're worth a hundred thousand times what they are."

"Thanks for thinking so," Jonah said.

"You want to throw your whole future away for them? Everything you have?"

And Jonah couldn't help but say, "What future?"

"Jesus, Jonah," Bay said, breathless. "You want to move to the desert, you want to graduate, you want to get away from here. You told me yourself."

"None of that's going to happen, though. It's just..." Dreams that she had to keep herself getting through every horrible day. But she didn't say that out loud.

"Of course it's not going to happen if you send yourself to jail for something you didn't do!" Bay was loud, and when she stopped yelling, the sound of her taking a couple harsh breaths filled the room. "Besides..."

"What?"

"I thought you cared about me."

And that made Jonah look up at her, to see the twisted expression on Bay's face, the kind of pathetic, kicked puppy look that she had taken on, with her hair all falling around her face.

"I do," Jonah said.

"Then why the hell do you want to throw that away?"

Jonah couldn't answer that question, and she didn't get a chance to, because Amanda emerged from the back room, along with Andover, and gave a thumbs up.

"Alright," Andover said, rubbing his eyes. "I'm not going to keep the three of you here. I would advise you to not leave the state, for the time being."

"Wasn't planning on it," Amanda said.

Jonah just silently nodded.

"Go home. Get some sleep. If I need additional information from you, I'll contact you in the morning."

Andover watched silently as the three women left, moving with varying degrees of both energy and enthusiasm.

The cool night air once again hit Jonah, and she felt for a moment like she was drowning in it. She stared around herself, at the yellow halos of streetlights, at the way the stars lay half-masked by clouds in the sky, at the way that Bay's dark hair glinted when she passed directly under the spotlight.

"We going home?" Amanda asked, disentangling her bike from the other two with a crashing sound that broke the chorus of bugs.

"Yeah," Bay said. "Come on, Jonah."

Jonah grabbed her bike as in a daze, and merely followed behind Bay and Amanda, heading to Amanda's house first. Amanda didn't even say so much as goodbye as she abandoned her bike around the front of her house and vanished inside, leaving just Bay and Jonah.

"I'll bike you home," Bay said.

"It's fine," Jonah replied. "I can go by myself."

"No, really," Bay insisted.

It wasn't that much of a fight, and Jonah kicked off, down the streets, to the slight outskirts of town where her rather rickety house stood. All the lights were off, and the overgrown front yard looked menacing and dirty.

"Are you going to be okay?" Bay asked, when they stopped.

Jonah leaned on one foot, half on the bike and half off. The streetlights were far away here, so it was mostly the moon that lit Bay, casting her as a statue cut out of the darkness.

"I'm fine," Jonah said.

"You aren't acting fine."

"I'm sorry. This isn't going how I planned."

"That's because your plan was stupid," Bay snapped.

"Sorry," Jonah apologized again.

Bay sighed. She reached out her arm, but she wasn't quite close enough to touch Jonah, so she let it drop. "Don't do anything else crazy, okay? I can't take it."

"You shouldn't have let me drag you into this."

"I'm gonna go home before I say something that I regret, okay?" Bay said. "You should probably sleep on this and do the same."

"Okay."

"Goodnight, Jonah," Bay said. Even though she was clearly beyond frustrated, there was still an affection in her voice that caused Jonah to want to cry again. She wondered how permanently she had messed things up with Bay, with herself, with everything. It all felt horrible, and she wanted to sleep for a thousand years.

"Night, Bay," she said. She wanted to call after Bay as she biked away down the street, tell her something else, that she was sorry again, or that she loved her, maybe, but she couldn't fight past the block in her throat, and Bay vanished down the street, tiny form on silver bike disappearing into the darkness.

Jonah headed into her own house, leaning the bike against the outside wall, and fumbling her way through her dark and cluttered house until she found her couch. She collapsed onto it, fully dressed, and stared sleeplessly up at the dark ceiling above her, the occasional car passing by on the road outside casting their headlights' eerie shadows onto the ceiling. She thought that she wouldn't, couldn't, ever sleep, but then sleep overcame her, pulling her down into the sea, or worse, into the thick mud of Arcadis Park.