"That's all there is to it."

[MurderWeasel]

((Juliette Sargent continued from Dress For Success))

Did anyone else left alive mourn Quinn?

It was a question that had been lingering heavy over Juliette for a day and a half now, and one that had guided her course of travel for want of a better option. What really got to her wasn't just that she wasn't sure of the answer, but that, had the shoe been on the other foot, there was no way Quinn would've spared more than a passing second for such sentimentality. Most likely the girl would have chastised her for it, and certainly she wished she had greater control over her feelings in this case, but it was what it was.

The shoe tree looked much the same as it had before. Juliette had at least enough navigational acumen to avoid approaching from the same side as last time, and as such had been spared sight of Ariana's body. It wasn't like there was much to glean from going back to the corpse; Marco was gone too, now. So was Johnny, apparently. The number of people Juliette had interacted with in more than the briefest passing who were not dead could probably be counted on one hand.

With nothing better to do, she tried. Her right thumb was Kelly, still presumably doing alright, laying low after the poison incident. It all still brought a wistful smile to Juliette's face. Index finger—trigger finger—was Faith. Middle for Blaise. Her ring finger was Julien, her pinkie Connor, and whoops, perhaps she was getting ahead of herself because that left Erika and Valerija unaccounted for. Of course, both of those girls (as well as some of the others, if she was being honest with herself) were living on borrowed time. The safest bets for a long remaining tenure were Connor, Kelly, and Faith. Erika had too many enemies, just like Quinn. It was some cosmic coin toss which perished first. And Valerija, well, ultimately Valerija had held nothing to back up her attitude and condescension.

Come to think of it, Erika was probably mourning Quinn too, but for her own dubiously-empathetic reasons. Sure, Erika had pulled ahead in their little race, but Quinn had been the first major threat, and for most of the class remained the less-known quantity. Put simply, Quinn always looked like she might stab someone in the ear with a mechanical pencil, while Erika was more suited to distributing flower crowns at Woodstock. Appearances meant less than nothing, but that didn't change the power they held. With Quinn gone, there wasn't anyone credible left to draw attention away—even the other up-and-coming killers were clearly second fiddle. Erika's life was a lot more dangerous now, not that that had stopped her, with two names added to her tally Juliette should've maybe felt worse about losing track of.

Juliette kicked at the bark of the tree. The rubber sole of her sandal scraped against the rough wood, but the tree was so gnarled and ancient that nothing flaked off. She was looking at the various shoes again, considering whether or not to try to pry something free, but the impracticality of it made that nothing more than idle contemplation. Many of them weren't even matched. A man's leather dress shoe was affixed right next to what appeared to be a child's sneaker, once bright red but now faded to a kind of mildewed pink. Neither shoe's mate was anywhere Juliette could see it. And that fading, the faint but inescapable reek of leather going bad and rubber baking in years and years of sun and rain, it told her liberating anything here was just a fast track to toenail fungus.

They had a cream for that, in the kit. Juliette had taken to rubbing some on her feet before bed, partially because she figured it couldn't hurt, and partially because it was therapeutic, a sort of stand-in for lotion because she did have a little bit of that left among her belongings but no way were her feet high enough priority to merit its use.

Had Quinn ever used lotion? Maybe for the most pragmatic of purposes, but it was hard to imagine her engaging in much self-care. Juliette wished she could've asked, or maybe even offered to help her with some absurd Breakfast Club makeover. There were so many questions she'd not been close enough to the girl to ask. She knew what Quinn liked about killing, but she really wanted to know what the girl liked about Paloma Salt. Paloma was alright-looking enough, but her demeanor had always struck Juliette as this writhing blend of barely-contained rage and prim prissiness. The hats looked like they'd been stolen from the wardrobe of a tiny replica of Queen Elizabeth. What about that drew Quinn? Was she too distant to have really interacted with Paloma, or was there simply no accounting for taste?

Arizona was presumably not sad about Quinn's demise, given her responsibility for it. Sam hadn't come on the trip for some reason. Aleks hadn't either, but Juliette had heard the whys on that one. She'd thought it a tough break at the time, but now realized the difference between good and bad luck was often just perspective. Rhonda was dead (courtesy of Quinn, wasn't it?). Who else was left? Shauna, Garnet, Luca, maybe another one or two? How many people were on a basketball team again? Which of them were even here?

With a sigh, Juliette sunk back down against the tree. It was too much being alone getting to her, maybe. Slowly but surely she'd half-consciously cultivated a strategy of staying out of the way, passing days in the woods by herself. She'd never been much for the outdoors, but by now she knew so many different types of birds, had observed the differences in animal activity cycles, had figured out ways to fend off bugs. It was probably a pretty good look for her eventual goal, a piece of proof of adaptability she could toss on the table to show that a transition to a life as an international fugitive would be no big deal, but it was still hard in its way. While it was more or less working (they'd apparently breezed past the halfway mark) Juliette missed having someone to talk to. She wished Julien had tagged along. She wished Connor hadn't run off.

She wondered if anyone left had seen and interacted with as little violence as she had. She'd come across Ariana's body, and had been up close with Drew's injury, but that was about it.

Maybe it wouldn't hurt to go explore the town again, just a little. There had to be well under a hundred of her classmates left. There were enough houses to make encounters somewhat unlikely unless everyone else had the same idea. And it would be good to scrounge a little. Juliette had been pacing herself and still had five ration bars left, but it would be nice to be able to be a little less stingy with them. And while she had undoubtedly made the right choice in consuming the perishable food first, the lack of variety was getting to her. A slice of the bland bread that had been so dull and unstimulating at the start sounded divine right about now.

Speaking of which...

Juliette dug around in her things again until she found it, at the bottom: her last peppermint. She'd been rationing those, too, one or two a day. Had Quinn taken her up on her offer last time she was here, she'd be out now.

It seemed fitting, then, that this would be where she enjoyed the last.

She unwrapped the mint and popped it into her mouth, then leaned back against the tree and closed her eyes, focusing on the taste and on the sounds of the world until finally the sweet disc had melted entirely away.

A few minutes of stillness more, and Juliette stood and set out again.

((Juliette Sargent continued in Signal Flare))