The newspapers called Janie “Death’s Valentine”. They feasted on her demise like vultures. They were in the town within a couple of hours, and her blood was still pooled on the ground in the courtyard outside the main building of Groswell Prep. After the press got there, they didn’t leave for a fortnight. I suppose what made them stay was the mystery of it, that and the fact that there wasn’t really any need for them to embellish or sensationalise the story because the truth was already so remarkable in itself. Four-hundred students had seen Janie’s body on the ground; everyone in any of the classrooms facing the courtyard heard the thud and the crack and they all ran to the windows to witness. It was easy for the story to swell and fester because Janie had always been pretty sad. There wasn’t a single person in Groswell who didn’t have something to say about the girl, and the more they talked, the greater the gaggle of journalist-vultures grew. What was worst about the whole thing was that most everything they said was true, and they turned Janie into a circus freak for the whole word to point and laugh at, ostracising her in death even more than they had done when she was alive.
George told me that he saw her final moments, as she fell past the window of the fourth-floor classroom. No one else had been watching; it was a warm, sleepy afternoon in the middle of spring and all heads were on desks or huddled together exchanging whispers. She must’ve flown by, so quickly that he might’ve thought he’d dreamt it. But what George told me I could never forget, though I scarcely believed it. He said that as she passed, she smiled and she waved, or she was already waving, a jolly gesture that said “farewell, I’m off”. I always preferred to imagine her like that, waving as though she was popping out for a breath of fresh air or going home. And I guess, in some perverted, romantic way, she was.
