To Save Her I Became the Monster Chapter 2

The first image: three days after Lily’s death.

I was being dragged before her casket at the funeral home, everyone screaming at me, demanding the killer’s name. They spat on me. They threw rocks. Hands grabbed my arms, tore at my hair until it hung in wild clumps. Fists rained down on me until my face was a swollen, bruised mess. I broke free and ran, the sound of the angry mob chasing me through the streets.

Ahead of me, the sky glowed orange. My house, the only home I’d ever known, was engulfed in flames, a bonfire built by their rage. I could only stand and watch, helpless.

Homeless, I fled with my dog, Buddy, into the deep woods of the ridges. But they found me. As I watched, screaming, they cornered Buddy and beat him to death with tire irons.

They cooked him over a fire.

I clutched a piece of his charred leg bone and sobbed until my throat was raw.

That year, an orphan with no one in the world, I was sixteen years old.

On the stage, Sloane stared at the image of my weeping, teenage face on the screen and laughed without humor. “Wren, you deserved every bit of it, didn’t you? Do you really think you were the victim here? Would any of that have happened if you hadn’t protected a monster? Of all the people in the world, you’re the last one who gets to feel sorry for herself. This was all your own doing.”

Others in the crowd chimed in.

“Shameless! Acting like she’s the one to pity.”

“Trying to get sympathy with this sob story? Pathetic! Covering for a criminal makes you a criminal! She should rot in hell!”

“Who does she think she’s fooling? Lily’s family was destroyed. Their daughter is dead, her mother lost her mind. Anyone is more pitiful than her!”

Just then, a girl’s bright laughter echoed from the screen.

“Lily! Slow down!”

Lily’s young, innocent face filled the display. We were on a snow-covered mountain, and she was running toward me, her eyes sparkling with joy.

“Heads up!” she yelled, tossing a snowball at me.

“My baby girl…” Lily’s father cried out, stumbling toward the screen. Looking at his daughter’s smiling face, he finally broke, his body wracked with deep, gut-wrenching sobs. In the ten years since Lily’s death, this once-jovial man had become a ghost, his hair turning white overnight. Every year, he went to the sheriff’s department and asked the same question: Have you found him yet? And every year, the answer was a sad shake of the head. Our town had no cameras back then, and my house was isolated. No one knew who had followed Lily into the woods that night.

Except for me.

In the memory, after our snowball fight, I knelt reverently before Spirit Rock, a local landmark where kids made wishes. “Please,” I whispered, my breath fogging in the cold air, “let my friends be healthy and happy, and let our friendship last forever…”

Seeing my earnest expression, Sloane’s control finally snapped. “You two-faced, hypocritical snake! You ungrateful parasite!”

She stormed onto the stage, jabbing a finger at my image on the screen. “How dare you remember our childhood! Who are you trying to fool with this act? For ten years, you never once told the truth. Do you have any right to call yourself our friend?”

As if on cue, the next memory showed me secretly throwing away a mango Lily had given me.

The crowd went wild.

“What the hell? She takes their food and then throws it out behind their backs!”

“Sloane and Lily were so good to her, and this is how she repays them? She’s nothing but a selfish, cold-hearted ghoul!”

Sloane knew I had a severe mango allergy.

But she didn’t explain that to the crowd. She let their insults continue.

“She probably never imagined Ms. Davenport would become the richest woman in the country and come back to settle the score!”

“Come on, Ms. Davenport, get on with it! We’re all waiting to see the killer’s face!”

Amid the jeers and curses, the scene on the screen shifted again.