The Memory Trial

Homeless, I fled into the mountains with Buddy.

He was a yellow mutt. After my parents died, he was all I had.

The town found us anyway.

They held me down and killed Buddy in front of me. Then they skinned him, cooked him, and laughed while the pot boiled.

I clutched one of his bones and screamed until my voice disappeared.

That year, I was sixteen.

On the platform, Claire watched my tear-streaked teenage face on the screen and sneered.

"Rachel, after what you did, did you expect anything else?

"If you had not protected him, would people have treated you that way? You do not get to feel wronged. You brought all of it on yourself."

The crowd agreed at once.

"Shameless. She's trying to make us pity her.

"Protecting a rapist makes you no better than one. She deserved hell.

"Lily's family was destroyed. Lily died, and her mother lost her mind. Rachel has no right to play victim."

Then a bright laugh rang out from the screen.

"Lily, slow down!"

Lily's young face appeared in the snow. She was running toward me across a white hillside, cheeks flushed, eyes curved with laughter.

"Incoming!" she shouted, and threw a snowball at me.

"My daughter!" Mr. Warren sobbed, collapsing toward the screen.

He stared at Lily's smiling face and broke down.

After Lily died, that once cheerful man had gone gray almost overnight. For ten years he had gone to the police station again and again, asking the same question: had they found the killer?

Every time, the answer had been no.

There had been no cameras in our rural town back then. My house stood alone near the woods. No one knew who had followed Lily that night.

No one except me.

The memory changed. After the snowball fight, I knelt before a weathered stone angel at the lookout and folded my hands.

"Please keep my friends healthy and happy," my younger self whispered. "Let our friendship last forever."

Claire could not contain herself.

"Rachel Vale, you fake little liar!"

She stormed forward, pointing at me with a shaking hand.

"How dare you show us our childhood? Who are you trying to disgust?

"Ten years. For ten years, you never told the truth. What right do you have to remember us as your friends?"

As if answering her, the next image showed me quietly throwing away a mango Lily had given me.

The crowd exploded.

"Look at that. Acting grateful to her face, then throwing it away behind her back.

"Claire and Lily were so good to her, and this is how she treated them? Cold-blooded from the start."

Claire knew I was severely allergic to mango.

But she said nothing.

She let them mock me.

"I bet she never imagined Claire would become one of the richest women in the country and come back to settle the score.

"Claire, keep going. We want to see the attacker's face."

The crowd shouted for the machine to continue.

Then the screen shifted again.

Claire's younger voice tore through the square.

"Lily! Don't die!"

It was the day Lily's body was pulled from the river.

Rain fell in thin gray sheets. Claire and I collapsed beside Lily's body, sobbing until we could barely breathe.

The water had swollen her. Her skin was cold and pale. She looked nothing like the beautiful, laughing girl in my memories.