Who the hell killed Evelyn Long

Wake up

1

Oh god.

She looked so beautiful, like the perfect mold of a human being. Her skin was porcelain but dirty, the dusting of freckles tracing down her neck but stopping short of her hairline. Every part of her looked perfect like this.

I rest a hand over her cheek, tracing the small divet under her lips, where her smile would normally play. For an eternity I just laid with her, memorizing those freckles. I had never been this close to her when she wasn't moving, she was a ball of energy, an adventure wrapped into a person.

We were both filthy, having spent our last few nights together under a bridge, like trolls honestly. Fighting for the territory. We splayed out on a thick blanket made of the itchy type of wool. Somewhere inner city in some state I could never pronounce as a child. A normal person would have thought that sentence odd, but not for me, for us.

I wished her eyes would open, it was still so early in the morning but if I could just see her eyes-

"Police, put your hands up."

A single tear welled in my eye, we weren't ready.

They pulled us up and away from each other, I watched them, so delicate with her, so rugged and angry with me. Like we weren't both criminals. And like she was just a body and not her anymore.

"You're under arrest for the murder of Evelyn Long."

And that was her, her entire life summed up to those two words. If there was anything to know about the girl named Evelyn Long, it was that it wasn't really her name at all. She didn't believe in names, especially the one given to her. Names, should be earned.

This is absolutely not the story of how I killed Evelyn Long, but it is the story of how I helped her do it.