WE FOUND JULIET in winter.
I mean, I didn't. The police did. They found her body washed up on the banks of the lake, piled with snow. They didn't put pictures in the newspaper, but I saw it, as clear as day. Her blonde hair in her mouth, spread outwards out of her head like a cloud. The ring on her finger—the one made of jade, the one she let me kiss, once—too small for her bloated hand. Her coat ruined with three weeks' worth of mud. I was there when she bought it and when she paid for it with her credit card, without once looking at the price tag. We drank bubble tea afterwards. She let me eat all the pearls.
I suppose her body might have been in the advanced stages of decay by the time the police found her. I suppose the rot might've been slowed down because of the cold. I suppose not. I suppose, I suppose, I suppose. But, it's funny. Even when I saw her in my head as nothing more than a frozen and bloated corpse with blackened fingers and maggots and mud in her mouth, I saw her as she was, too. I saw her pristine, untouched by death. I saw her sleeping half-buried in the earth. I saw her slender limbs as white as the last time I saw her and I saw her putrid and browned by decomposition.
I saw her life; I saw her death.
Funny, considering I only knew her for half a year.
The police said it was suicide. They found a note on her bedside table. They showed it to me. I recognized the paper. It was good quality paper, thick and creamy to the touch, and I knew she'd taken it from her father's study in her house. I had a bundle of the paper with me, hidden under my bed, from when I stole things from her father's study. She watched me do it, and we both laughed afterwards.
To this day, I still haven't used a single sheet of that paper.
Juliet's note was written in blue ink, in her odd and crooked hand.
Don't forget me, it said.
It's why I'm writing this now, I guess. So I don't forget her. So that maybe one day, long after I'm dead and Juliet's gravestone is nothing but dust and debris, long after this town is a heap of rubble, someone might find this. If you're reading this, let me tell you about Juliet, let me tell you what she looked like, what she loved, what she hated. And let me tell you this:
It wasn't suicide.
