All Eyes on Her

by L. E. Flynn

  HER

  HER VOICE SHAKES. “I made a mistake.”

  Nobody dares to breathe.

  “I trusted Keegan Leach. We became friends. But we were nothing more. He was lonely and needed a friend, and we had Mark in common, so we hung out sometimes.”

  Hands clasped in her lap. Her hair is off her face in a ponytail, no wisps obscuring the view. “Then he started getting more suggestive, and making comments about us being together. I was going to tell Mark about it, but it was a hard conversation to have. Keegan was his best friend. I didn’t know whose side he would take. When we went into the woods that day, there was a sick feeling in my stomach, like something was going to happen.

  “We didn’t talk very much as we hiked. He kept wanting to go higher, farther, and the farther we got, the more I decided to keep it inside. What I wanted to say. I’d save it for somewhere I felt safe. But then we got up there, to the Split, and he turned around and started accusing me of sleeping around.”

  She clears her throat, wipes her eyes. Tears are pooling in them.

  “I guess Keegan told Mark we’d been hanging out, but made it sound like I came on to him. I denied it, of course, because nothing happened. Mark got mean. He said things like, I should feel lucky to be with him because I would never find anyone else who would put up with me. At that point I fought back a bit. With my words. I asked him how he could be so quick not to trust me, when I believed him when he told me the girls on his Instagram, in all his photos, were just friends.”

  You can’t tell what the jury is thinking, only that they’re thinking something. The judge nods periodically, as if maybe she agrees.

  “I asked him if he was going to break up with me, and why he had to drag me all the way out here just to do it when he knew I hated hiking. He told me Keegan said it was best to do things in private. That Keegan suggested the hike. That was when I knew that Keegan had a whole other motive. The night he made a pass at me, he made some comment about wishing Mark weren’t in the picture. I thought he only said it because he was offended I turned him down, so I didn’t tell anyone.”

  She makes a gesture like she’s pushing her hair behind her ears, but there’s no hair to push back. She’s a girl who isn’t used to wearing a ponytail, but maybe today she felt like it was necessary not to obscure her face. She wants them to know she has nothing to hide.

  “Mark lunged at me. I didn’t realize we were that close to the edge until we were. And I screamed, even though nobody could hear me, and pulled back. He lost his balance and fell.” She squeezes her eyes shut. “The sound he made when he fell—I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life.”

  Now she’s steely, determined. “I didn’t know anything about the backpack. I didn’t ask him what was in it, and I didn’t pack it for him. I had the picnic basket. I started running. I just needed to get out of the woods, to get help. Maybe I should have gone down to the creek, but I didn’t even know how to get down there. I ran. I fell down the steep part of the trail and cut up my legs and hands. I got lost a bunch of times. Then I had to run home from the woods because Mark’s car was there and I didn’t have his keys, and my phone was dead, which was so dumb, because usually I charge it before leaving the house. There was nobody around, because it was really late. Nobody who could help.”

  A shuddering breath, shaking hands clasped in a seashell fist. “I didn’t know Keegan was waiting for us in the woods. Sometimes I wonder if he planned to get rid of both of us, and I just managed to get away. Mark Forrester didn’t deserve to die. And my involvement will haunt me for the rest of my life.”

  Her fingernails are painted black. They drum on the podium in front of her. “I know Keegan is telling a different story, but this is mine. I can’t make you believe me, but I hope you at least heard me.”

  Then Paxton comes in, asks her so many questions, attempts to flay her open and dissect her, but she remains neatly stitched up. She answers everything. She has nothing to hide. She’s not the Blue-Eyed Boyfriend Killer but just a girl, a girl who wants the truth to reign.

  The jury takes two hours to deliberate, and when they do, Tabitha Cousins is found not guilty of Mark Forrester’s murder.

  PART IV

  After

  PEOPLE.COM

  December 14, 2019

  Murder charges laid in Blue-Eyed Boyfriend Killer case: Cousins released

  By Talia Sims

  The trial of Tabitha Cousins, 17, has ended, with a jury unanimously deciding that Cousins is innocent of all charges in the hiking death of her former boyfriend, Princeton swimming champion Mark Forrester, 20. New evidence proved that Forrester’s friend Keegan Leach, 20, was more than likely the one who initiated the murder, using Cousins as a pawn to get Forrester into the woods.

  “I had no idea he was such a bad guy,” a source close to Leach tells People. “He just seemed like the kind of guy whose life had lost direction. I guess he really resented Mark for having everything he didn’t.”

  A trial for Leach will be scheduled in the coming weeks, but reports from inside the courtroom at Cousins’s trial paint the portrait of a troubled young man with more than enough motive. According to insiders, Leach had been obsessed with Cousins for months, and was looking for revenge after she turned down one of his advances. A Gatorade bottle retrieved from underground at the crime scene included DNA from both Leach and Forrester, and Leach’s computer search history revealed he had looked up a way to make Forrester’s death appear accidental.

  “I noticed his behavior was erratic in the weeks leading up to Mark’s death,” says a former coworker of Leach’s, who wishes to remain unidentified. “Plus, he didn’t even take any time off after. He seemed unaffected by the whole thing.”

  Cousins has been the subject of a media hailstorm since her release, and could not be reached for comment. Multiple sources claim that a bidding war is underway for her first televised interview, and there has already been talk of a tell-all book revealing her experiences being judged as guilty until proven innocent.

  COMMENTS HAVE BEEN DISABLED

  PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM

  February 7, 2020

  Accused teen’s memoir to be published after bidding war

  By Harriet Best

  Eighteen-year-old Tabitha Cousins, the girl behind a media frenzy that took the country by storm last year when she was accused of murdering her boyfriend on a hike, will publish a memoir after an eight-house auction among major publishing houses. Cousins will purportedly write the book herself, recounting her harrowing experience in the woods, and her treatment as a monster in the weeks leading up to her trial.

  “It’s truly a fascinating story,” says Addison Lowe, senior editor at Hartley Books, the winning house, which has a celebrated history of best-selling celebrity memoirs. “Readers will finally be able to learn everything about Tabitha, a girl who has piqued the curiosity of a nation.”

  Publication of the memoir is tentatively scheduled for next winter.

  1

  BECK

  SEE? I TOLD YOU she didn’t do anything wrong. Take that and shove it up your ass, Officer Old Man.

  And yeah, no comment on anything else. I think I’ve been asked enough questions already, sweetheart.

  2

  ELLE

  WE’RE SPLITTING UP, me and Tabby. We talked about going to the University of Denver together but she didn’t even apply—at first she said it was because she missed too much school, that she would never be able to catch up. But we both know that’s not true. She’s staying home, working on the book. Which I don’t really understand, since it’s the last place I’d want to be after everything.

  After everything. After Keegan got sentenced, after Tabby stopped being infamous and started to become famous instead. The girl, misunderstood, whose life almost got taken away because she befriended a sad loner who wanted more than she was willing to give. Keegan still hasn’t admitted he did it—I can’t help but still follow everything happening with
him. But the evidence says otherwise. More like, it screams otherwise.

  Tabby is coming over to help me pack. We spent the summer together, just like old times, watching bad reality TV and taking long walks and eating all the snacks Mom tried to force on us. We never talked about Mark, or what Tabby had gone through. I waited for her to bring it up, but she never did. Maybe she had talked about it enough. Our friendship has somehow become more about me, like Tabby wants a way to step out of her spotlight.

  I hear her ring the doorbell. In the distance, somebody is riding a motorcycle, which always makes me think of Beck. I haven’t seen him all summer, and I heard he’s staying in Coldcliff to work at a bike shop. I don’t care anyway. Dallas and I are back together—well, sort of. We’re figuring out what we are, if we can be anything. He’ll be in Coldcliff another year, so we’re not that far away. Maybe we have a chance.

  “I’m glad you’re staying in town,” Mom says to Tabby. When I’m on the landing, I can see them downstairs, Mom’s arms wrapped around Tabby.

  “Me too,” Tabby says. “All my memories are here. The good ones and bad ones. I don’t think I’m ready to leave it all behind yet.”

  That Day in the Woods. That’s the name of her memoir, the one Tabby is writing with the help of some woman named Aria, an author from New York who she has long Skype calls with. Of course there was going to be a book. I’m just surprised Tabby is the one writing it. She says she needs to tell her whole story, not let somebody else do it and get it wrong. She wants people to understand her. She wants the media circus to end.

  That is what she calls it. The circus. She’s still a regular on websites, even big ones, like People and the Enquirer. I wonder how they always know where she is. When we went shopping in Boulder a few weeks after her trial, there was a picture of the two of us with Starbucks cups, me a blurry figure beside her, half of my face cut out. Tabitha Cousins and Friend.

  “I wish they’d just leave her alone,” Mom keeps saying. “That girl has been through so much already.”

  There’s going to be a movie, too, about Tabby’s life and the case and everything she went through. I have no idea who’s going to play her, or if there’s going to be some actress playing me. I don’t like the idea of other people acting it all out, stepping into our skin. When I asked Tabby how she could let it happen, she just shrugged.

  “People are going to talk about it regardless of whether I let them,” she said. “You don’t know what it’s like, for the entire world to be talking about you. It’s like you’re shaking a snow globe full of bullshit and the truth never lands.”

  I don’t know what it’s like, and I doubt I ever will. Drama follows Tabby. Mom asked her last week if she was dating anyone, if there were any special boys. Tabby rolled her eyes and kind of smiled. She gets tons of “fan mail” from people around the world, people claiming they always knew she was innocent. Marriage proposals. Invitations to take a ride on their luxury yachts. She reads every single one, sometimes out loud to me.

  “Hey,” she says now, thumping up the stairs. “College girl. We’d better get you packed.”

  Tabby is merciless at dividing what she calls “the crap” from the stuff I should actually bring with me. She shakes her head when I stuff a pair of platform boots into my suitcase, calling them “ancient.” She starts pulling things out of my drawers, tossing them into piles. She and Mom read that Marie Kondo book about how decluttering is supposed to enhance your life, as if how much stuff you have in a room really matters.

  “This is kind of exciting,” she says. “You can pick and choose your baggage. I kind of wish I was going with you.”

  “I wish you were coming, too.” I sit on the edge of my bed. “We could have been roommates, like we talked about. It won’t be the same without you.”

  It won’t be the same without her. But maybe that’s a good thing. We can finally stop dueling for the same sun, the same one that seems to perpetually shine down on Tabby. Maybe ours is a friendship that will get stronger with distance.

  “I just need time,” Tabby says. “My publisher wants this draft done by the end of next month. I think I can have it finished by then, but I can’t imagine dealing with college at the same time. And there’s all this publicity stuff. Plus, they’re flying me out to LA to meet with the movie people in a few weeks. I keep telling myself that college will always be there.”

  I nod, and I try to understand why she’s doing all this. It’s like everything that happened cleaved Tabby into two different versions of herself. The girl I knew, the one who walked around like a zombie in the days after Mark died, the one who screamed when she got arrested, teary when I visited her in juvie. I didn’t do it. She’s so much harder now, like a shell has formed around whatever soft underbelly she might have had. I have to say something especially sharp for her to even hear it.

  “I guess we can probably say goodbye to this one,” Tabby says, holding up a blur of orange, and all the breath goes out of me when I realize what it is. Mark’s sweatshirt. The Princeton one that I wore to the clinic. She never asked for it back.

  “I don’t want it,” I say. “I don’t need another memory of … that.”

  Tabby lays the sweatshirt on my bed with its arms outstretched, as if it’s a person and it’s telling us to stop. “Same. I don’t need another memory either.”

  I don’t know if she’s talking about my abortion and the rumors, or about Mark’s death, or her relationship with Mark, or all of it, a tangled mess. Despite the heat—our air conditioner is broken again, yet another thing Dad says he’ll fix—goose bumps cover my arms when she pulls me in for a hug.

  “I’m going to miss you,” she says, her embrace hard, her arms like strong wires across my back. “Sometimes I think you’re the only person who knows who I really am.”

  “I’ll Snap you every day,” I say. “Pictures of shitty cafeteria food and my dorm room.” Tabby has a new phone number now, because her old number was blowing up with calls and messages.

  “You better,” she says. “But you’re not even far away. I’m gonna be up there visiting pretty much every weekend. You can’t get rid of me so easily.”

  “I don’t want to.” I’m lucky to have Tabby. We’re lucky to have each other. I’m lucky my secrets haven’t surfaced and we can build over them without crushing our foundation.

  Her phone goes off, and she smiles at it. “Look, I’ve gotta go. I think you’re good to finish this on your own, right?”

  “Sure,” I say. “But I thought you were staying for dinner. My mom’s making beef Stroganoff.”

  “I know,” she says. “But there’ll be plenty of days I can eat beef Stroganoff with Maggie. There’s just somewhere I need to be.”

  “Okay,” I say. “I guess this is goodbye, then.”

  “For now,” she says, pulling me in for another hug. “I love you, Elle, no matter what.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Then she’s gone, with Mark’s sweatshirt over her arm, and I realize she didn’t help me pack at all. She just took clothes out of drawers and tossed them into a pile of nos on the floor. I barely have anything she deemed worthy of taking.

  That’s when I hear it. That sound. That motorcycle. I run across the hall into my parents’ room, which overlooks the street, and look down. Beck is in front of the house, just like I used to fantasize about. For a second—just the tiniest sliver of time—I think he’s here for me, and the old feelings bubble back up. He did feel the same way.

  But then I see an orange blur hop on the back of the bike. He hands her a helmet. Before they speed away, I swear she looks up, even though she has no way of knowing I’m standing here.

  I swear she looks up and smiles.

  3

  BRIDGET

  TABBY’S BACK HOME, back in her room. She sleeps a lot, wears the same makeup, eats the same food. She spends more time with me than she used to, because she cleared away some of that mess. There aren’t boys anymore, or so she claim
s. She reads and writes and takes long walks without telling anyone where she’s going. And my parents let her, because they know they’re never going to be able to rein her in anyway.

  Things are normal with us, or as normal as they can be. I guess in a way, our family is in a better place now. My parents weren’t thrilled when Tabby told them she wanted to defer college—they accused her of wasting an opportunity—but she pacified them. “College will always be there,” she said, all calm and collected—Tabby is always calm and collected now. It’s like she left her temper back in juvie. “I have to take this opportunity.”

  This opportunity—her book. Tabby did tell me she wanted to be a writer, once. I think she was thirteen and I was eleven, and we were new to Coldcliff, and she said something like, I’ll have stories to tell someday. Just wait. My little eleven-year-old body couldn’t begin to comprehend all the messiness that it was about to go through.

  I’m in the book, of course. I let Tabby and Aria “interview” me, Aria with her exaggeratedly round Harry Potter glasses that I’m pretty sure are just for display, to make her look cool. I see the glances she and Tabby share and I wonder if Aria has replaced Elle, has replaced me.

  I’m in the book but I don’t want to read it.

  Tabby hugged me fiercely when she was released after the trial. Her body on mine, pulsing and electric. I couldn’t remember when she got that strong, or maybe she had always been strong, and I just noticed other things about her first. That’s what I’ve realized, through all of this. The world sees what it wants, and makes sure everyone else sees it, too. If you want to know the truth, you really have to burrow. And most people don’t have the energy for that.