You Are Not Alone

Two Months Ago

Two months prior, Amanda stands over James’s convulsing body with Cassandra, Stacey, and Valerie. She panics as the women begin to carve the word “rapist” into his forehead. He is clearly having a reaction to the medication she gave him. She is a trained nurse and yells out that she has to save his life. The other women disagree, noting that he showed no mercy to Daphne during the attack.

The plan had not been to kill him, and Amanda is horrified. She tries to perform an emergency tracheotomy, but he dies first. The women take his watch and wallet to make it look like a robbery and scatter. Amanda runs home instead of to Cassandra’s. She does not want to be anywhere near the other women.

Detective Williams ask Shay where she was on the night of August 15. That was months ago, and Shay has to consult her calendar. She tells the detective that she had an appointment and went for a run. She is then told that she may leave, but that Detective Williams will be in touch.

Confused and feeling horrible, she goes to Sean’s. She tells him the story, and he seems alarmed. He makes her the almond butter smoothie that she often makes for herself, mentioning that when he spoke with the Moore sisters, they’d said that they could picture Shay making her “famous” smoothie in her new apartment. This piques Shay’s interest: She’s never mentioned this smoothie to them. She wonders how they knew about it and about Amanda’s polka-dot dress. Suddenly, nothing seems to add up.

Shay wonders about all of their “coincidental” meetings and about the makeover. She begins to suspect that they are up to something and calls Cassandra. Coldly, Cassandra tells Shay to stop stalking her. Shay is even more confused and scared.

Two Months Ago

Two months prior, Amanda cannot handle the guilt. She lives in a constant state of panic, made worse by the fact that the other women will not leave her alone. They call, text, and stop by her apartment constantly. She begins to make mistakes at work, including knocking a chest tube out of a patient and nearly killing him.

She reflects on all of the group’s activities and realizes that it wasn’t justice they wanted, but revenge. They’d often gone above and beyond what they set out to do. They were not happy until they destroyed their victims’ lives. Amanda has no idea how to get out of this situation. She is terrified.

Sean invites Shay to stay the night at their old apartment, and Shay ends up having a long conversation with Jody. She notices that Jody has a distinctive vase, one that seems to be an exact duplicate of a piece in the apartment she house-sat for Cassandra and Jane’s friend. She asks Jody and finds out that Jody bought it after seeing one at a client’s place. Shay realizes that this client must have been Cassandra and Jane’s friend.

She thinks more about all of the strange events that have taken place since she met the Moore sisters: She now believes that they have been targeting her for something. She is sure that the makeover was purposeful, but does not yet know why they wanted to make her look like Amanda. She returns to the apartment where she house-sat and obtains the name of the tenant by pretending to deliver flowers. Then, she waits while the woman, Valerie Ricci, comes downstairs. Hiding outside where Valerie cannot see her, she is able to get a clear view of her face. It is Anne, the therapist Cassandra and Jane hired for her.

Shay realizes that Valerie is at the center of everything that has been going on. She needs to put all of the pieces together before she speaks with Detective Williams. Whatever it is she’s being accused of, or framed for, she must be able to exonerate herself.

Cassandra and Jane call Jody and tell her that they have to speak to her in person, immediately. They arrive only moments later. They explain that Shay has been stalking them, that she is dangerously obsessed with their recently deceased friend Amanda, and that they believe Jody and Sean are in danger. Jody is truly confused because Shay just told her that she herself was in danger, but Jody is easily swayed by Cassandra and Jane and soon comes up with all sorts of “evidence” to support the theory that Shay is dangerously unhinged.

The sisters tell Jody that they want to check the room Shay slept in for weapons, and Jody also suggests they search Shay’s “creepy” data book for any clues. While Jody is not looking, the sisters slip a photograph of Amanda with a large “X” drawn over her face into the book. When it slips out, they explain that Shay saw Amanda die by suicide a couple of months prior. Jody knew about this event, but not that Shay had a connection to Amanda.

The sisters tell Jody that Amanda and Shay had the same vet. Jody knows that Shay doesn’t have a vet, and the sisters suggest she call the police, suggesting that perhaps Shay had something to do with Amanda’s death.

Shay returns to her old apartment. Jody is no longer there, and she notices three teacups on the counter with hot tea still inside of them. She also notices that all of the doors are open. The tea kettle itself is still hot, she almost burns herself on it. Hurting her finger causes a sense of déjà vu: She remembers the day she’d cut her finger while housesitting. She is sure now that the Moore sisters installed some kind of surveillance while she was out. The story about the super must have been a lie.

Terrified, she backs out of the apartment and leaves. She gets a hotel room so that she can hide from Cassandra and Jane. She googles Valerie Ricci and learns as much as she can about her, but there is little information that helps her understand what is going on.

Two months prior, Amanda is fired from her job at the hospital. She knows what she must do: She puts the scalpel and bloody towel into a manila envelope and stuffs it into her mailbox. She contacts the police and speaks with Detective Williams. She arranges to talk to her in person so that she can confess to her role in James’s death. She puts on a green, polka-dot dress and heads to the station. On her way, she realizes that Cassandra and Jane have had her followed.

She rushes into a subway station. She sees Valerie walking down the stairs and knows that she is there to kill her. Cassandra and Jane always send Valerie for the “toughest” jobs. There is another woman who seems to want to help her, but Amanda knows that she is past helping. She steps in the path of an oncoming train, finally feeling free.

Shay wakes, feeling disoriented, in her hotel room. She left her data book in her old apartment, but she has bought herself a new one. She fills it with as many details as she can about Cassandra and Jane, hoping to fit the pieces together. She is now sure that they have woven a large, complicated web around her and that they knew who she was even before they met.

She calls her boss to tell her that she is sick and cannot work, but is told that she does not work at the company. She realizes that Cassandra and Jane must have fabricated her job. She needs air and heads outside. She places a small square of toilet paper in the door latch so that she will know if anyone entered her room in her absence.

Valerie is puzzled when the police do not immediately arrest Shay. She even has Beth check arrest records, but there is no sign that Jody’s call to the precinct had any effect. She also cannot locate Shay. She wonders if they misjudged her.

She gets a call from Tony, a man with whom she had a brief green card marriage 15 years ago. He had gotten a call from a woman asking about Valerie. It must have been Shay. She is now sure that Shay has gone on the offensive, and she begins to worry. She thinks that an arrest might not be the best option for Shay now. Perhaps they will have to make her disappear themselves.

Shay walks around the city, trying to think. She finds herself drawn to the Moore sisters’ office building. There, she sees Valerie helping a woman into a cab and realizes that she must actually work for Cassandra and Jane. Cassandra and Jane then exit the building and get into a cab with Valerie. Shay immediately hails a cab and follows them: They go to her studio, Amanda’s former apartment.

She waits until they leave before entering and methodically searching to see what they’ve taken or left. She finds only a receipt for Twist, a bar that she’s never heard of. Not yet understanding why they left this item, she scoops it up and leaves. When she arrives back at her hotel, the toilet paper in her door lock is missing.

Shay runs from the room and finds a seat, with her back to the wall, in a local diner. She scrutinizes the receipt and notices that it is for two drinks on August 15, the night that Detective Williams asked her about. She begins researching to find out what happened in New York on that night. When she enters the name of the bar, Twist, into her searches she gets a hit: A man named James was murdered in Central Park very near Twist. She is sure that she is being framed for his murder, but still does not know why. She gathers as much information as possible about him, hoping to find a clue that will lead to his connection to the Moore sisters or Valerie. She knows that she does not have a good alibi for the night of his death. She will have to prove her own innocence or someone else’s guilt.

Nineteen Years Ago

Nineteen years prior, Cassandra and Jane sit at the table with their mother. Their stepfather comes home early, and they know that this means they must disappear to their room. Jane has not finished eating, but she lets it go. Their new life has new rules, and their stepfather comes first.

The girls hear a tension in his voice that they find alarming, so they wait on the landing and listen in while he talks to their mother. Apparently someone sent him an anonymous letter saying that their mother was cheating on him. He tells her to leave. The girls and their mother once again live alone. Their mother is sad, but they are not. When she speculates on who might have sent the letter, a knowing look passes between the sisters.

Shay has a message on her phone from Detective Williams, ordering her to come in. She ignores it, hoping to tie all of the various, still confusing pieces of the case together before she tells the detective her story. She spends hours digging up information on James and finally has a breakthrough: In an old high school photograph she finds online, she is astonished to see Valerie’s face peering out at her. Valerie was in the school play. This makes sense, as Valerie was an actress in LA.

She can find no more mention of Valerie at the school, and decides to cold-call one of James’s old friends. She pretends to be desperately looking for Valerie and is astonished when the guy flippantly calls her a “piece of work” (318). He tells her to call Valerie’s mother Belinda, who is a waitress at a local restaurant.

When she asks Belinda about Valerie and James, she finds out something astonishing: Belinda was once married to James’s father. James, who went by the nickname “Trey” in high school, even lived with them. Belinda tells her that Valerie and James most likely were not friends in adulthood. She advises Shay to speak to Valerie’s sisters: Cassandra and Jane.

Nineteen Years Ago

Nineteen years prior, after Valerie’s mother marries her new stepfather, Valerie transfers from her public school to the local prep school. She is uncomfortable around her new peers, but happy to have been chosen to play Rizzo in the school’s production of Grease.

One day after school, her stepbrother offers her a ride home. First, he says, he wants to stop by the river where some of the other kids are hanging out. Valerie doesn’t want to go, but when they get there she is happy to see that Mateo, her crush, is there. They begin flirting. Trey notices, gets upset, and forces her to leave with him. In the car he calls her a “whore” and then tries to rape her. She fights him off and runs home. Her mother is angry at her for being late, and when Valerie tells her what Trey has done, her mother doesn’t believe her. She tells Valerie that Trey could have anyone he wants and that she should stop making up stories.

In the days and weeks that follow, Trey spreads vicious rumors about Valerie at school. Finally fed up, she runs away to Los Angeles, but not before sending an anonymous note to her stepfather. She is sure that Trey will target her sisters next, and she wants to keep them safe even though she will not be physically there to protect them.

Shay decides to finally head to the precinct to talk to Detective Williams. She hails a cab and when she tells the driver the address, the woman does not smile. Shay worries that the cabbie works for the Moore sisters, but tells herself she’s being paranoid.

On the way she gets a call from a Detective Santiago, who tells her that she is the lead investigator in James Anders’s death and that they suspect the Moore sisters are involved in both James’s and Amanda’s deaths. She wants to speak with Shay. Shay is suspicious and lies that she is in New Jersey, but on her way back. The detective asks which exit she is on, and Shay lies again.

Valerie waits for Shay in the subway station. Shay has not seemed to anticipate anything that she and her sisters have done, although she is a clever, resourceful researcher. Valerie is irritated but impressed that she tracked down her mother, but struck by the fact that Shay would not have anticipated their mother would call one of her daughters. She is sure that Shay will not realize that Detective Santiago is a fabrication.

Cassandra and Jane are at a nearby restaurant, surrounded by people who will be able to testify to their presence. Valerie is perfectly willing to kill Shay. In fact, she thinks, it must be done. She must preserve the integrity of their group and keep them all out of prison.

As children, Cassandra and Jane were closer in age and had more in common with each other than their older sister. Still, the three were bonded, and the girls had looked up to Valerie. She didn’t tell them that she ruined their mother’s marriage until she returned from LA and shared with them the story of Trey’s attempted rape. That story was entirely true, but the tale she told about her role getting poached by Ashley through treachery was made up: Valerie was, after all, an actress. She had steered her sisters toward their newfound roles as vigilantes and had deftly made them feel as though they were the leaders of their group. Valerie though, had been the true mastermind of every crime they committed.

Valerie accosts Shay immediately after she exits the subway. She has a gun, and she tells Shay that Cassandra and Jane just want to talk. She steers Shay toward the platform, and Shay can see from the station’s LED display that a train is approaching. She understands that Valerie means to kill her.

Just as Valerie is about to shove her in front of the train, a voice screams Valerie’s name and identifies itself as the police. In the scuffle that ensues, it is Valerie and not Shay who falls before the oncoming train. Shay breathes a sigh of relief. She’d called Detective Williams, who had promised to help her every step of the way. The police had been watching the entire encounter, even though she could not see them.

Two Months Later

Two months later, Shay reflects on the role that her good memory and habit of collecting data played in her ability to figure out the details of how she was being framed. She was able to provide Detective Williams with all of the missing pieces that she needed, and Detective Williams had assured her that the Moore sisters, as well as the other women in their group, would be convicted.

She was also able to fight off Valerie as Valerie tried to push her in front of the train. Shay spent years strength training, and her work paid off. In the end, she was stronger than Valerie. Shay has a new job and a new apartment, and she looks forward to the future.