Treadmill

XIV.I

I'm kind of embarrassed about everything. I don't even think 'embarrassed' is the right word, honestly. I shouldn't be embarrassed. I should be ashamed, terrified, traumatized, so incredibly sorry that it keeps me up at night. Maybe now, it does. But then, it didn't.

It was so easy to go back to my regular life. It was easy because Kennedy told me to do it. She told me not to worry about anything, that she had taken care of everything, and that I shouldn't worry about anything. So naturally, I didn't worry about anything. I went back to my life. I went back to my life as if I hadn't bee witness to someone dying in front of my eyes, because of my car.

I'm ashamed of that. So incredibly sorry that it keeps me up at night. But that's now. That's after everything that's happened.

Regular life was so easy back then. I went back to classes, and work, and friends, and parties, and taking pictures of Kennedy in random outfits. I went back to editing out her scar in bikini pictures because Drew couldn't have the exact same scar as her. I went back to boys and drinks and completely demolishing any image I had had before meeting Kennedy Abrams.

How could I not? Kennedy had made me stop worrying. She had assured me that everything was taken care of. And, to be honest? She wasn't really lying. She didn't know that she hadn't taken care of everything.

And for the time being, neither of us would find out that she hadn't taken care of everything.

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Saturday, October 31, 2020.

Halloween. The day (and night) that everyone decided it was alright to slut shame girls for dressing up as 'slutty ____'—insert costume of choice there—while not saying a word about the guys who decided their costumes wouldn't include a shirt at all.

At least, that was how Rebecca had seen it for the past few years.

But Halloween as a part of Kennedy Abrams' inner circle was something completely different. Halloween with Kennedy meant getting ready at Kennedy's apartment with music blasting from every speaker, talking about every guy they were hoping would come to the party and pretending like they weren't going to go after the other girls' crushes. There was apparently no such thing as girl code when it came to the friend group that Rebecca Eaves had inadvertently found herself to be a part of.

But as Rebecca sang loudly to music with Kennedy, Lyla, and Rian, dancing around and pretending that she knew how to do makeup, she found for the first time that she wasn't thinking obsessively about the man and the car. It had taken over a month, but Rebecca Eaves had finally moved past something she definitely shouldn't have been able to move past.

It was probably because it had been over a week since the name 'Hank Wilcox' hadn't popped up on her Google alert in over two weeks. For the first few weeks since the accident, stories circulated constantly. People came forward left and right with phony information about the hit-and-run—just as Kennedy had predicted—and Elizabeth Wilcox seemed to get less and less hopeful about any real leads as each day passed. The news slowly stopped caring about Hank Wilcox, and as the news stopped caring about finding who had hit him, everyone else stopped caring too. It was unsolved. And no one was poking around 500 miles north, where Kennedy Abrams and Rebecca Eaves somehow slept peacefully in their beds.

The name that had been popping up on Rebecca's Google alerts with more and more consistency was Drew Parley. The social media 'influencer' had taken off in the past month, climbing in followers steadily until the account landed at about 250,000 followers a few days before Halloween and seemed to level off a bit. They had been contacted to do interviews and ad placements, all of which Rebecca remained the practical one about while Kennedy was always ready to go ahead without thinking. The interviews were all done over the phone at Rebecca's instructions in her new position as the account's 'manager,' while specific ad placements that wouldn't require Kennedy doing any in-person photo shoots as Drew also made the cut.