I knew how easily a story could shift. How quickly the public could turn. I’d seen it happen, twenty years earlier. A game sliding into a crime. A tradition twisting into a nightmare.

I watched as an arc slowly emerged from the series of headlines and police bulletins, until the story had a shape, the truth a sharp end point.

Structure Fire at Perimeter of Wyatt College Burns Through Night

Two Local Men Deceased in Steam Tunnels Under Campus

Police Seek Public’s Assistance in Locating Missing Student, Adalyn Vale

Person of Interest Named in Fire Deaths of Two Men

Wanted for questioning: Adalyn Vale

Wanted for murder: Adalyn Vale

In the days that followed, I’d felt a shift happening inside of me, too.

Confusion. She’d been my roommate for nearly four years—had been my closest friend in those earliest years of adulthood.

Denial. Thinking that the witnesses were mistaken. That she hadn’t meant to do it. It must’ve been an accident—flames in the wind, catching and spreading.

Anger. Because she had fled without a word. And in her absence, I was the only one left to answer for her.

And finally: Fear.

Fear that she’d done exactly what they claimed and I hadn’t known her at all.

Fear because the police thought I was protecting her. And now they kept coming back to me.