You weren't supposed to know—not about this, not about what they'd done. But you did. And in that moment of clarity, you understood the weight of your mistake.

When you first came to Hampden, everything was different, charged with something rare and electric. You’d come to study English Literature, a passion so deep it felt like a second skin. Julian Morrow was almost mythic here; his words opened realms you’d only dreamed of. He noticed you, drew you in, long before you ever thought to approach him. And that’s how it all began.

Your classmates, however—how could you even begin to capture them? A collection of gilded, hollow shells, every one of them too detached, too polished to recognize the rawness of life. There were the pale twins, oddly beautiful but colder than marble; the lanky redhead whose cigarette smoke wrapped around him like a cheap mystery; the obedient one who fell into line at the slightest hint of approval, desperate for belonging; the loud-mouthed, golden-haired boy, the one who was dead now, whose brashness had worn on everyone’s nerves. And then, there was Henry Winter—a figure so inscrutable, so maddeningly precise, it set your teeth on edge.

They didn’t like you, and that suited you fine. You belonged to the world of Judy Poovey, her wild laugh and thrifted sweaters, worlds away from their varnished pretension. You didn’t want their friendship. Or so you told yourself.

After Bunny’s funeral, everything felt altered, wrong in a way you couldn’t articulate. Whispers, looks, a stray word muttered too softly; they slipped through the seams of your everyday, insidious as poison. You saw it all. Maybe you were unraveling, haunted by the specter of Bunny Corcoran’s bright grin and careless laugh, or maybe—maybe—you were right, and they had done it, pushed him from that cliff.

You could hardly stand it, that gnawing doubt. So when you saw Henry alone one morning, with frost crisp on the leaves, you seized the moment. You stepped forward, your heart pounding, and finally, you spoke.