Our name became "The Beaumont Girls".

After the media found the story, the Beaumont Girls were on every newspaper, blog, and television station. There was one particular picture that the media plastered everywhere: a photo of Ivy, Marisol, Carlisle, Aspen, Lindsay, and I at the Beaumont Ball. I'd watch television and flip through channels and be greeted by our smiling faces more than once. It was such a strange feeling—constantly encountering people talking about us—and every time I would hear one of our names on television or read it in a newspaper or magazine, my stomach would somersault.

I would frequently receive calls from journalists, begging for me to answer questions regarding Rosterford, the murders, and attempted murders. Marisol would too. Finally, we both changed our numbers to avoid this.

Right after the whole situation occurred, my parents flew me back to Bunting for about a month. While I was there, my schoolwork would be sent to me. Fortunately, all of my teachers didn't assign much so it was easy for me to stay caught up. I didn't know if this was because they felt bad for me due to what occurred, or if they were in shock themselves because someone they had known so long had completely surprised them. Both made sense.

The four of us were able to graduate on time and flew back to Boston to walk alongside our classmates—and each other—during graduation. At first, my parents thought it would be a bad idea for me to go back, but I was able to convince them to let me walk instead of getting my diploma mailed to me. Graduation was a defining moment, and despite what had happened, I didn't want that to be taken away from me.

Media attention stayed on us, and due to this, a large amount of rumors circulated. Most were harmless and quite funny—such as Marisol and I fighting back Rosterford with some karate—but a few were hurtful. There was one rumor in particular a few weeks after Rosterford's arrest that devastated Aspen. Some reporter found records about her abortion and spread that it was really Rosterford's baby and the two of them were having an affair. Aspen was so upset that she refused to answer her phone for a week and a half and wouldn't leave the house for half a month. Words couldn't describe how terrible I felt for her.

Right after graduation, each of us received a call from Boston Top News, a news station in the heart of Boston that wanted us to come on their show and speak about what had happened. Something inside each of us stirred, and we realized that this would be the best way to tell our story. That took a lot of convincing for me to be able to go on the news with the other girls, but eventually my parents gave in. Sitting in front of the mirror in our shared dressing room, it finally started to sink in that our lives would never be the same.

"Sleeves down or rolled up?" Carlisle asked from behind me, fumbling with the sleeves of her pale-yellow chiffon top.

"Rolled up," I replied, analyzing her outfit in the mirror. "It looks more professional."

She nodded and rolled them up, just as a knock sounded at the dressing room door. Lindsay got up from the black leather futon that she and Marisol shared to answer it. Sarah, an intern who was in charge of making sure we were where we needed to be when we needed to be there, stood in the doorway, one of her hands on the headset she was wearing.

"Girls, ten minutes," she said. "Do you need anything?"

Aspen cleared her throat from the chair beside me, still wrapping sections of long blonde hair around a curling wand. "Can I get some water?" she asked, her voice raspy.

"Of course." Sarah disappeared back into the hallway, closing the door behind her.

My stomach started to growl, and I realized how hungry I really was. All morning, I had been so nervous for this that I didn't eat anything, and now my hunger was really starting to hit me. I reached for a glazed donut from a box on the futon, where Marisol was stuffing them in her mouth like they were the last donuts on earth.

"I wish we were going on television for something else," she said between bites. "You know, like a huge movie we're starring in, or a cool party we attended. Not almost being murdered by a sociopath."

"Guys," Lindsay blurted a bit too loudly. "Look at this."

As we all neared her, she held out her iPhone screen for us to see. Pulled up on the phone was an article with the exact same picture from the Beaumont Ball that all news stations seemed to be using. The headline was what really got my attention: The Beaumont Girls Speak Out on Boston Top News Today at Noon.

"Why can't they use a different picture?" Aspen complained. "My eyes are closed in that one."

"Who posted this?" Carlisle asked, grabbing the phone from Lindsay's hand and holding it close to her face, her eyes quickly skimming the article.

"The New York Times."

I felt my jaw drop. It was well beyond my comprehension why anyone, especially The New York Times would care so much about what happened to us. The case had become so sensationalized, and everyone wanted to learn about it.

"Pressure," Marisol whined, a donut in each hand. "Pressure makes me stress-eat."

The door creaked open, and Sarah walked in, carrying an entire case of water bottles. She sat them down by the futon. "I'll be back in three minutes to bring you onto the set." With that, she left again.

"Guys," I said, twisting open my mascara to coat my eyelashes one last time, "I think we should tell the whole truth."

Carlisle looked at me like I was crazy. "I don't know if you've forgotten about the police file—"

"Okay, maybe not that. But we shouldn't be worried to talk about the tunnels, or Ivy, or the diary. We don't need to hide that anymore."

The room was quiet as everyone considered this. Our plan before was to answer questions with the least detail possible, but now that seemed to be a bad way of dealing with it. We wanted the public to trust us—they'd be seeing us at the trial, and it was already announced that it would be shown live on television—and being completely honest would be the best way to achieve that.

"You're right," Lindsay muttered quietly. "By not saying anything, we're only protecting Rosterford, not us."

"Exactly."

"The public already knows a lot," Aspen commented, no doubt referring to the abortion.

"What they do know doesn't compare to what they don't know," Lindsay pointed out.

"Are we sure we want to share almost everything?" Carlisle was chewing on her freshly-painted fingernails. She never did that unless she felt riddled with guilt. "We haven't exactly lived the cleanest lives. Well, except Lindsay of course, and maybe Kayleigh."

"What do you think they're going to ask? It's not like they're going to drug test us on stage or anything," Aspen said.

"Hopefully not."

There were three raps on the door, and it opened a crack, only enough room for Sarah to stick her face through. "It's almost time for the interview. Come with me."

If I squinted a bit, I could make out the faces of the people in the front row: my parents, Tatum, Ian, Marisol's mother, Lindsay's parents, Lysander, and Aspen's mother. People were scrambling all over the set, making last-minute changes to the lighting and sound. The five of us took up a couch and two chairs, a large plush armchair in front of us for our interviewer: Kari Armstrong. Kari wasn't here yet—still in her dressing room, most likely—but we had crossed paths briefly with her when we had first arrived. She looked pretty on camera, but even more gorgeous in person.

"How does my hair look?" Carlisle turned to me and asked. Her strawberry-blonde hair was naturally straight, but she had used a flat-iron on it to make it look sleeker.

"Stay still," I said, reaching up to fix a piece that had strayed to the wrong side of her part. "There. It looks good."

She breathed in deeply, and her breath sounded shaky as she exhaled. Since I had met Carlisle, I had never seen her nervous. She was always so confident, so ready for anything that could be thrown at her. It was weird seeing her unprepared, like a fish out of water. It wasn't normal.

"Five minutes!" a cameraman yelled from the audience, where he and a few other technical crewmembers were working on some extremely tall camera.

I closed my eyes to prevent eye contact with the other girls—everyone else was so nervous that I was worried their anxiety would rub off onto me. There's no reason to be nervous, I told myself over and over in my head, hoping that the more I said it, the more I'd be convinced of it. We hadn't done anything wrong; we hadn't killed anyone. Arthur Rosterford had, and he was behind bars. We had talked to the police, and they gave us permission to tell our story (besides a few minor details that they wanted to keep secret). Our psychiatrists thought it would be a good idea—possibly even somewhat therapeutic—to express our opinions in this way. But although I knew all of this, perhaps what worried me the most was the possibility that the public wouldn't believe us. On more than one occasion, bloggers and writers alike had posted how we weren't victims, but attention-seeking teenagers that made up the majority of the story for kicks. If only they knew.

As crewmembers ran around frantically, completing last-minute tasks as fast as they could, it became painfully clear to me how much my life had changed. I definitely wasn't my old self anymore, but a very new version of me that had somehow taken shape under the surface without me ever becoming aware of it, until now.

"One minute!" someone offstage shouted.

Lindsay looked over at me. "You ready?"

I nodded. "As ready as I'll ever be."

"I know what you mean. The whole country is about to see our faces. I mean, really see our faces. Not just pictures."

I was about to say something when Kari Armstrong dashed across the stage, her heels clacking rapidly against the wooden flooring. With an immeasurable amount of grace, she sat down, crossed her tanned legs, and smiled a blinding white smile. "Hello girls. It is so very nice to meet you."

Each of us quickly introduced ourselves, and then someone called out, "Fifteen seconds!"

"So, girls, don't be very serious during this interview. Have fun with it. And if any question makes you uncomfortable, you don't have to answer it," she told us.

"Have fun with it," Carlisle repeated under her breath. I had been focusing on the same thing. I didn't think it was possible to have fun with an interview talking about the time you almost got murdered.

"Three, two, action!" the camera guy behind the gigantic camera yelled out, and all of us sat up straight.

"Thank you for tuning into Boston Top News," Kari said, her voice completely shifting from friendly to professional. "This is Kari Armstrong. Today, I have with me the girls that television, blogs, and newspapers cannot stop talking about: the Beaumont Girls!"

The audience clapped. I used that as a chance to look away from Kari and out toward Tatum. We locked eyes, and he smiled at me. He was trying to calm me a bit, I knew that, but somehow looking at him only made me more anxious. Perhaps it was because he knew the story, and was one of the few people who had actually experienced it with us.

"If you don't know who the Beaumont Girls are, you must be living under a rock. But in the slight chance that you don't recognize these five lovely ladies with me, these are the girls that discovered the secret behind two murders at Beaumont Academy, an all-girls boarding school here in Boston. They went face-to-face with the Headmaster, Arthur Rosterford, and outsmarted him, sealing his fate." Kari turned toward us. "Girls, news reports claim that it was Marisol Harrington and Kayleigh Stockholm that defeated Arthur Rosterford. Is this correct?"

Marisol and I exchanged a glance, and I motioned for her to answer.

"Yes. He and Mrs. Peterson, an English teacher at the Academy, had a plan to drug us and then kill us in the secret passageways that went through Beaumont. He tried to take our phones from us while we were knocked out, and I guess that he didn't see mine because I was wearing yoga pants and it was tucked into the waistband. But when he was talking to us and telling us his plan, I called the police on my phone, and Kayleigh got him to keep talking. The police were able to figure out where we were because of it, but if anything had gone differently, Kayleigh and I probably wouldn't be here right now," she explained.

"Well, you two are obviously extremely intelligent. I know that if I had been in that situation, I probably would have just given up and cried," Kari said with a smile. The audience laughed, and she smiled bigger. It was obvious that the energy from the live studio audience energized Kari. "I also heard that this was Kayleigh Stockholm's first year at Beaumont Academy. So, Kayleigh, how'd your first year go?"

The audience laughed again, but this time, I didn't think it was funny at all. Actually, the question made me a bit mad. I glanced over at the other girls, and none of them were smiling. They just looked at me, wondering how I'd react and what I'd say.

"You know," I said, taking in a breath and crossing my legs, "my year was going amazingly until a psychopath drugged me and then tried to murder me in a secret passage. But you know what people say, senior year is an adventure."

However hard the audience had laughed at Kari didn't compare to their laughter at my comment. I heard one person's laugh particularly and felt the corners of my mouth curl up into a smirk.

Kari looked at me for a moment, her smile unwavering, but I could tell she was trying to figure out what to say back to me.

"Oh yes, senior year definitely is memorable. Maybe for some more than others."

Each of us took turns talking, but she seemed to direct most of her questions toward me. By the end of the interview, we had explained how we knew Ivy had been murdered, why we were so interested in the case of Vivienne Aldridge—which we had a difficult time explaining, since we weren't really aware of the reason ourselves—and how we felt about the upcoming trial.

The last question was the one that made us think the most. I didn't know about the rest of the girls, but for me, the trial was absent from my mind. I tended to think about the past more than the future. The mention of the trial made us all realize something we hadn't thought about before: we'd most likely have to take the stand.

"How long do you think Arthur Rosterford should be in jail?" Kari asked.

Marisol was the one that jumped on that question. "From the bottom of my heart, I truly believe that Rosterford is evil. When I looked at him in the face while we were in that secret passage, I saw no shred of humanity, only an evil that shouldn't be allowed to roam the streets. If capital punishment wasn't unconstitutional in Massachusetts, I fully believe he deserves that. But because that isn't an option, I think he needs to spend the rest of his life in prison."

"Do you truly believe that the death penalty is a good idea?" Kari raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, we think so," Carlisle piped up. "Until you experience something like we've experienced, you have no idea the feelings of victims and the justice that they deserve. Not only are we victims, but our best friend, Ivy, is too. And it isn't fair that he killed three people and tried to kill two more, and he's still alive. He's old, and he's going to die in prison, but he deserves so much more than that."

Everyone was speechless, especially the other girls and I as that was exactly what we were each thinking.

Kari made a big show of checking her watch and pretended to be surprised. "We don't have much time left, but I have one final question for whoever thinks they can answer it the best: What lesson have you learned through this?"

This question was for me—I knew it, and I could tell that the other girls knew it too. "Life is unpredictable. It's full of twists and turns, adventures and dangers. You meet people that change your life for the better," I glanced out into the audience at Tatum, who nodded at me, "and you make friends that help you grow as a person and experience things that you never imagined. You need to value it, and as cliché as it sounds, it's important to live every day as if it were your last. After being so close to death, I realize now how life can change or end at any moment. It was an experience that I wish I never had, but it's taught me many lessons."

"Thank you, girls," Kari said. "It was great having you here with me today. I wish you all the best, and I'll definitely tune in to see the trial." She turned toward the tall camera and said, "And thank you for watching Boston Top News. Until tomorrow."

"Cut!"