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The grief counselors make their way to Jefferson High, unannounced.
It isn't long after everything that happened at the old Winter lodge; Lisa doesn't think she could bear it if it were. Because until then they're dealing with one dead classmate and one that's been arrested, and the rumor mill is churning - loudly, unceasingly, wondering whether Justin finally snapped as though it was always a certainty that he would one day. Wondering whether he killed Richard Haywood, wondering what finally got him to do it, and by the time the counselors show up it's entirely too late to rectify the damage.
Lisa is aware that if she's been damaged it's collaterally so, and she shakes her head when she's asked if she's experiencing guilt. Because survivor's guilt is a real and potent thing, and she hasn't survived anything - the most she's dealing with is one dead classmate and one that's been arrested, an empty seat next to her and another diagonally at her back. She isn't alive because she did anything; some sick part of her wonders if she's alive because of what she didn't do. She didn't follow Justin that day; she didn't tell Richard "no" emphatically enough a few days before that. She didn't do much of anything; all she did was outlive them, which doesn't seem like enough of a feat to talk about. She'd been pulled out of philosophy to discuss this, thankfully enough, and after she's been let go (with a business card in her pocket, and she's tired of receiving business cards from people who show up to her school unannounced) she spends the rest of the period wandering around campus, collar turned up against the chill in the air.
She's heard, by now, that Justin confessed to what happened; while she isn't sure she believes that, if she's honest she can't be entirely sure that she's surprised. That's probably the worst part, how little of this surprises her as the days slowly wear on, one sliding into another until it's impossible to separate them; she had never believed Justin to be a bad person, but he was always intense in a way that other people weren't. In a way that she wasn't, and in a way that Richard wasn't, and if Justin were the sort to chase forever then he needed to do it with someone that wasn't either of them - with someone he deserved, whatever that means.
That always leads to the roundabout notion that he may have deserved Richard in the end, and she doesn't like that.
She doesn't visit Justin in the days that follow; it's not like she thinks he deserves to rot or anything, because that isn't it, but there's the loud part of her brain that can't make herself. On good days she's angry about it, and on bad days she feels like a coward, and on days like this she drives out to the Winter lodge; it's no longer a crime scene but definitely condemned, and far enough out of the way that no one will ever do anything about it even though somebody died here.
A fall, they'd said. An accident. It doesn't feel right.
None of this feels right, as she makes her way past a NO TRESPASSING sign that no one can be fucked to enforce, through strings of police tape that no one's bothered to take down. She's never seen the place for herself, and it's the bed in the corner that does it, that strikes her as unexpected and out of place and nonsensical, and it's in that brief moment where she sees it and her breath catches and she stares that it finally hits her. Why Richard had given that tape to Justin - why he hadn't just kept it or sent it to goddamn everyone if he wanted to embarrass her, why he'd done such a weird, targeted thing to a guy she'd thought he barely knew, to a guy that they shared a class with and he had no business knowing about otherwise.
She'd been so humiliated; she'd skipped the next period to cry. But...
The floorboards are weak; she starts up the stairs to the second floor before deciding halfway up that maybe, in the end, she doesn't want to know.
Not really.
She's never been one to listen to love songs. Can't relate, she's always felt, just because she's never put enough faith in anyone to truly let go, and she's never put enough trust in anyone to be truly brokenhearted. Sex and relationships are fun enough, and when they end it's cause enough to be angry, but she's never felt that deep ache that so many of the writers of the bullshit on the radio seem able to commiserate with each other over. But something hits differently that evening when she gets back in her car, and she can't hit the dial fast enough to change the channel or turn it off, and she's crying like an idiot outside a place she has no business being.
It's weird, and she hates it, and she hates how she doesn't feel like she'll get over it like she usually does; she doesn't even know, in the end, who she's crying for. A guy she hated died here; a guy she liked confessed to murder here. And if she's been damaged, it's collaterally so.
Is it fucked up, she wonders, to wish they'd cared enough to take her down with them?