Emma was murdered in the early hours of the morning, following a night out on the town celebrating her 18th birthday.
The police questioned the three of us, Julie, Lexi, and me, for hours, separately, together- they took our phones and then returned them. Eventually they had to release us. Our stories, our phones, forensic analysis, everything all checked out, there was no way they could link us to Emma’s death although god knows they tried. We backed each other up- and most important of all, we were innocent. We had absolutely nothing to do with Emma’s murder- in fact, I tried to help her, and only got a blow to the head as a result. The police were particularly interested in that, but I stuck to my story that I tripped and bashed my head on the way back from the club.
Yes- we lied to the police- we said we weren’t with her when she was murdered and we didn’t know who murdered her. We were, and we did.
It was around 5am when it happened- we were huddled round our phones in Emma’s room, hotly debating which ones should be posted on social media. Some pictures had already gone up during the course of the night- and we didn’t delete those, blurry and poorly lit. But we deleted everything else before the police picked us up.
The photos spanned the night, from the early hours when we first were getting ready in Emma’s room, with reams of bright make-up and discarded glittery clothes forming the background. Then we had the hit the streets, brightly lit under the lamps, the downtown ablaze with neon, the line-up to the club, the people, the crowds, and then the club itself, lights, faces, sparkles, cocktails, dancers, the DJ, the costumes.
We were making funny faces, holding up V signs with our colour-tipped fingers and all other sorts of odd gestures thinking we were so cool, our lipsticked glossy red and orange mouths pulled in different expressions, our eyes ringed with black and arched with silver and gold and glittery-green, wide open or crinkling from laughter, our hair immaculate and smooth at first, frizzy and rough towards the end. There were even photos from the club washrooms, a drunkenly hilarious idea at the time.
“What’s that?” Lexi pointed to a shadowy figure in one of the first photos, taken from when we were still in Emma’s room, getting ready. Our excited chatter about which photo to post died down as we all leaned in closer, squinting. It could have just been an odd juxtaposition of hanging clothes, the corners, and shadow, but it did look like a human silhouette was in the background, leaning slightly forward towards the four of us who were crowding around the dressing room table and closet.
We swiped on. Then I spotted it: “Is this the same guy?” I blurted out, before realising what I said. It was a brightly-lit photo of us out on the streets. The streetlights lit up the scene. It was only the four of us in this selfie, Lexi holding her phone up high, and this time the figure of a guy standing quite close and behind us could be seen clearly, his head tilted forward so his face was partially shadowed, but not completely dark.
We fell silent. I couldn’t help looking up, my eyes sweeping the corners of the room, and I noticed the other girls do the same, while also averting our glances from each other. Everything seemed ordinary, but also not. Nobody answered my question.
We kept swiping, in dead silence. We were no longer analysing our faces and bodies for the most social-media-friendly poses, but looking in the shadows and corners of each photo.
“Emma- it looks like – is it - Jack?” Julie finally asked what we had all been thinking from the very first photo. “I’m sorry but it does! It looks like him!” she cried, her voice rising.
“Don’t be crazy, he’s been dead for years!” snapped Emma.
Jack was Emma’s boyfriend from four years ago. He had killed himself. The police had found Emma’s texts from the days before his suicide on his phone, telling him multiple times to “kys”. She had been investigated at the time, but she had been only fourteen then, and no charges were laid. She had said she didn’t realise he would actually do it, but later said she wanted to see if he would or not. She had been sent to mandatory therapy for weeks, and emerged much the same as she always had been.
“Look at this,” Julie showed us a picture on her phone, of the club line-up just as we were entering the club. There was a mass of people crowded behind us and around us, the club lights were shining on our faces. Amongst them, the figure of the guy with the face who looked like Jack was visible.
Lexi said “Well, if it’s not Jack, it sure looks like him!”
“You bitches have been watching too many horror movies with your loser boyfriends” cried out Emma. “This guy must be some nut job stalking u-“ My shriek of terror cut her off.
Wordlessly, I showed a photo on my phone, it was one of the last ones of the night, in the club washroom. The four of us had gone in together, and at that moment, no one else other than us had been in the washroom.
Julie and Lexi had vanished, giggling and laughing into the stalls, while Emma rummaged in her purse. I lifted my phone and snapped a picture of her as she leaned into the mirror.
The boy who looked like Jack was standing quite close behind Emma. She was putting on lipstick, fiercely concentrating on her image in the mirror. His face was clear in the mirror, although Emma and I were oblivious to his presence at that time. There was no mistaking Jack’s face in the picture on my phone.
Emma buried her face in her hands.
“Why now, Emma?” asked Julie quietly.
Emma shrugged. Lexi answered for her. “She’s adult now. She has to pay for what she did.”
Then, Emma’s head snapped back and she started making choking sounds, scrabbling at her neck, her eyes bulging horribly. Julie and I screamed while Lexi held up her phone and started recording. We craned in and on her camera, the figure of Jack strangling the life out of Emma was clearly visible. Instinctively I reached out and tried to to pry his fingers loose from around Emma’s neck, and for one terrible split second, I saw his face outside the camera as he turned to me, snarling, his eyes burning deep into mine. As he pushed me away, I felt his ice cold touch. I staggered and fell back.
When I came to, Emma was dead.