Homeless, I fled into the mountains with Buddy.

He was a yellow mutt. After my parents died, he was all I had.

The town found us anyway.

They held me down and killed Buddy in front of me. Then they skinned him, cooked him, and laughed while the pot boiled.

I clutched one of his bones and screamed until my voice disappeared.

That year, I was sixteen.

On the platform, Claire watched my tear-streaked teenage face on the screen and sneered.

"Rachel, after what you did, did you expect anything else?

"If you had not protected him, would people have treated you that way? You do not get to feel wronged. You brought all of it on yourself."

The crowd agreed at once.

"Shameless. She's trying to make us pity her.

"Protecting a rapist makes you no better than one. She deserved hell.

"Lily's family was destroyed. Lily died, and her mother lost her mind. Rachel has no right to play victim."

Then a bright laugh rang out from the screen.

"Lily, slow down!"

Lily's young face appeared in the snow. She was running toward me across a white hillside, cheeks flushed, eyes curved with laughter.

"Incoming!" she shouted, and threw a snowball at me.

"My daughter!" Mr. Warren sobbed, collapsing toward the screen.

He stared at Lily's smiling face and broke down.

After Lily died, that once cheerful man had gone gray almost overnight. For ten years he had gone to the police station again and again, asking the same question: had they found the killer?

Every time, the answer had been no.

There had been no cameras in our rural town back then. My house stood alone near the woods. No one knew who had followed Lily that night.

No one except me.

The memory changed. After the snowball fight, I knelt before a weathered stone angel at the lookout and folded my hands.

"Please keep my friends healthy and happy," my younger self whispered. "Let our friendship last forever."

Claire could not contain herself.

"Rachel Vale, you fake little liar!"

She stormed forward, pointing at me with a shaking hand.

"How dare you show us our childhood? Who are you trying to disgust?

"Ten years. For ten years, you never told the truth. What right do you have to remember us as your friends?"

As if answering her, the next image showed me quietly throwing away a mango Lily had given me.

The crowd exploded.

"Look at that. Acting grateful to her face, then throwing it away behind her back.

"Claire and Lily were so good to her, and this is how she treated them? Cold-blooded from the start."

Claire knew I was severely allergic to mango.

But she said nothing.

She let them mock me.

"I bet she never imagined Claire would become one of the richest women in the country and come back to settle the score.

"Claire, keep going. We want to see the attacker's face."

The crowd shouted for the machine to continue.

Then the screen shifted again.

Claire's younger voice tore through the square.

"Lily! Don't die!"

It was the day Lily's body was pulled from the river.

Rain fell in thin gray sheets. Claire and I collapsed beside Lily's body, sobbing until we could barely breathe.

The water had swollen her. Her skin was cold and pale. She looked nothing like the beautiful, laughing girl in my memories.

I stumbled home that day and curled into the corner of my room.

I hit my own chest again and again as grief tore through me.

"Lily!" my memory screamed. "Why did you die? Why did you leave us?"

On the platform, my present self sat with my eyes shut, tears slipping down my face.

The crowd grew uneasy.

"Wait. Why does she look so devastated?

"If she really protected the attacker, why would she cry like that?"

Mr. Warren roared over them.

"Crocodile tears!"

He pointed at me, shaking with rage.

"My wife knelt outside her door until her forehead split open, and Rachel would not open it!

"She set that dog on us! How could someone like her be good?

"Lily grew up with her, and this is how she treated the mother of her dead friend!"

At that moment Mrs. Warren appeared near the front of the crowd, hair loose and tangled, clutching a worn doll to her chest.

"Lily's good," she murmured. "Lily's not scared. Mommy's here."

The crowd's anger flared again.

Claire's face turned ugly. She rushed up the platform and grabbed my shoulders, shaking me hard.

"Look at them, Rachel!

"This is what your silence did!

"You had no parents. Lily and I pitied you when you were seven and alone. We treated you like family, and this is how you repaid us?"

She slapped me across the face.

"Do you think these memories will soften me?

"Lily is dead!

"And the person who helped kill her was you, Rachel Vale!"

Her hatred was wild enough to tear me apart. Yet beneath it, I saw grief so deep it had never healed.

Lily's death had been a tidal wave to Claire. After the wave passed, everything inside her stayed soaked and ruined.

Then Claire straightened. She wiped her tears upward with the heel of her hand, and her sorrow turned back into ice.

"Rachel, hear me clearly. I will not stop until I find him.

"And when I do, I will send both of you to hell."

She ordered the technicians to widen the extraction range.

They adjusted the console. The red needle on the monitor jumped.

Inside the helmet, the probes drove deeper into my skull.

I screamed.

Electric current ripped through my brain. White light burst behind my eyes. My body thrashed against the restraints until the iron cuffs cut my skin.

Blood ran down my hairline and dripped onto the metal chair.

The screen flickered wildly.

Classrooms. Creeks. Mountain paths.

Memory after memory of Claire, Lily, and me together.

But not the night Lily was attacked.

The crowd stirred.

"Why isn't it showing that night?

"Didn't Lily's note say Rachel knew who did it?"

Claire turned to the technician.

"What is going on?

"Why can't you find the memory with the attacker?"

The technician wiped sweat from his forehead.

"Ms. Sutton, she seems to be resisting the system.

"She's refusing to let us extract that memory."

"Refusing?" Claire repeated.

Her face went dark. She slammed a palm onto the console.

"Rachel Vale, after all this, you are still fighting me?

"Who is worth protecting with your life? He is a rapist!"

Ten years ago, Claire had asked me the same question in the same voice.

After Lily's final note was found, I became the center of the town's rage. Everyone demanded the attacker's name.

At first Claire refused to believe I could protect him. Her doubt took less than a day to turn into accusation.

She was the only one who knew I had fled to a cave with Buddy.

When the town killed him, I begged them to stop. Claire picked up a wooden stick and brought it down on my head.

Blood blurred my vision.

She stared at me with bloodshot eyes and screamed, "Rachel, we grew up together. Lily and I treated you like a sister. What were we to you?

"For a rapist, you threw away the people who mattered most?"

That night, the town nearly beat me to death.

Claire's mother dragged her away after that. Two days later, the Sutton family moved across the state and never came back.

Now Claire stood in front of me with the same frozen eyes.

She lifted her hand.

"Expand it again. I don't care what it takes."

The technician hesitated.

"Ms. Sutton, her body is extremely weak. If we widen the extraction while she is resisting this hard...

"She may not survive."

Claire laughed coldly.

"Survive?

"I spent years building this machine so I could uncover the truth. Her life is not my concern.

"People like her are better off dead."

The technician, trembling, increased the parameters.

The machine roared. The helmet needles stabbed deeper.

Pain shattered me.

Blood poured from my nose, my ears, the corners of my eyes. My chest burned as if someone had lit a fire inside it.

The technician's voice shook.

"Ms. Sutton... should we continue?

"She's almost gone."

Claire stared at the screen.

"Continue."

The machine screamed louder.

My own screams echoed across the square.

Claire's eyes reddened. Suddenly she lost control and shouted, "Rachel, who is it?

"Who is worth this?"

Then she broke.

She leaned against my shoulder and cried so hard her whole body shook.

"We were your friends," she sobbed. "We were your friends."

Her tears fell hot against my hand.

Somewhere beneath the pain, I heard her.

My Claire was crying.

Instinctively, I tried to lift my hand and wipe her tears away.

That single moment of weakness was enough.

The memory I had buried for ten years burst onto the screen.

The crowd gasped.

Claire turned sharply.

On the screen, rain lashed through the woods.