They told a story, but no one knew what this story was: A car had been found in the parking lot, vandalized. A Honda Civic—nine years old, already dented and scuffed, one of those hand-me-downs that the less wealthy kids puttered around town in. Someone had taken a key to it. It appeared that at first some sort of words had been scratched onto the hood, but this had been crossed over, gouged out with hundreds of scribbles, and so whatever it said couldn’t be read. The rear driver’s-side light had been smashed in. The driver’s-side mirror was shattered. There was a hairline crack in one of the windows. It belonged to Jules Turnbull. This is all that was known. Theories about who could have done it and how grew into rumors, which were elaborated upon until they became conspiracies. Then another rumor would spread through the student body, replacing the first and the second and the third, and the excitement would rise again.
