Transmitter Failure (Reprise)

[Dr Adjective]

[After a stalemate, Evie McKown ponders her game.]

Perhaps they were wary of legal trouble for overstepping, perhaps of bad press for roughly handling an injured teenage girl and terror survivor, perhaps it was something else. Either way, once she’d been forcefully jostled out of the hall, Evie was essentially left to her own devices. She could try to go back in, but it seemed as though June and Marshall had once again come to her aid by chance, and they were ably stoking the fire she herself had started.

Matthew could bring along some RWNJs with his rhetoric, sure, but Evie was confident the disruption to the narrative would be enough to turn normal people against him.

Just… where did that leave her?

She’d spent long enough responsible for and to only herself, it hadn’t even occurred to her that her reckless play might have some blowback, but standing there aimless in the lobby, it dawned on the girl that she’d be on TV now. Maybe her parents had already seen it.

She hadn’t even told them yet.

Perhaps an hour later, a few missed calls and frantic texts seemed to confirm those suspicions. Sat in the afternoon chill of North Point Park across the river from the station that’d take her home, enjoying the solitude among joggers and their headphones braving the brisk winter air, Evie finally called back.

Her father picked up on the second ring.

“Dad? … Y-yeah, hi, sorry I … yeah. Yeah I’m in Boston, next Salem train’s in about twenty. Um… is mom there too?”

A biting gust pulled at her new overcoat, and Evie almost forgot that there wasn’t a jagged hole in it any more the way that her flank stung in protest at the icy blast.

“I… yeah, yeah I know. I meant to talk to you but… you know, how do you even start, right? … But, yeah, yeah you’re right. I should’ve talked to you, should’ve… confessed, personal-like. Yeah.”

An awkward silence descended. Evie’s eyes drifted across the park, ensuring she was still more-or-less alone.

“I… Matthew wasn’t there, it wasn’t like that, I… I… fuck, should I just…”

No. Not in person. Seeing their faces drop? She couldn’t take that. Better to do it this way. Maybe just not go home, if it turned out as badly as she feared.

“I… I did kill Chloé. It wasn’t like he said, though, she…”

And once the dam broke, it all flooded forth. The truth, the excuses, the perspective, the whole sordid affair. Everything she’d said to the camera, everything she’d said to Gomez, everything she could bear to admit. Chloé, DeMarcus, Lara, Dani, Anthony, Kaede. And Kelsey, not an afterthought, but safely separate from the pain. The bright spot, and the truth she’d been too nervous to admit until now.

Finally, how it had ended. The smoke. The flare. The cavalry. Matthew. June.

“I… I think I missed that train. I’ll um, I’ll get something to eat here, don’t worry about me. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

The unspoken sign-off hung in the air for a moment. Evie couldn’t quite say it yet, wasn’t sure she deserved to say it first. To prompt it in return. Eventually her father said it first. He sounded hesitant. Of course he did, now that he knew his daughter was a murderer.

“Love you too, Dad.”

The line went dead, and Evie McKown tucked her phone into an inside pocket. It didn’t feel like hers yet. The data was all there, backed up and restored, and yet… she wore another girl’s overcoat, talked to another girl’s parents on another girl’s phone. Looking up, she regarded the lonely figures, all red faces and misted breath. Not one of them knew her. Salem would be a different story.

Looking across the river, the survivor, the killer, the girl called Evie studied the facade of North Station.

She could stay here alone a while longer. The cold and the solitude, all she has there, but they’re something. It’s somewhere to be. The sky, the world, the bitter chill in her bones.

She savoured them.

[She was still alive.]