The class of the dead

I never understood why they accepted me into that seminar.

And that’s not false modesty. My grades were good. Good enough to keep my scholarship, avoid awkward phone calls from my mother asking whether I was throwing away my future, and feel like I had my life somewhat under control.

But they weren’t extraordinary.

And Advanced Forensic Criminology had twelve spots.

Twelve.

One hundred and forty-seven applications, according to the email San Jerónimo University had sent to remind us just how special we should feel about being selected.

I’d submitted mine at two in the morning, after three beers and forty minutes of listening to a friend tell me I’d never figure out what I wanted to do with my life if I kept being afraid to try new things.

Two weeks later, I got my acceptance letter.

My first reaction was to assume they’d made a mistake.

My second was to accept before they realized it.

The Monday the seminar began, I arrived seven minutes late. Not because I wanted to make a dramatic entrance, but because Monterrey had apparently decided to cook me alive.

I crossed campus with the September sun beating directly down on my head, a bottle of water in my backpack that had already turned into something resembling broth, and my hair sticking to the back of my neck. By the time I reached the Social Sciences building, I was convinced that studying corpses was a perfectly reasonable career choice, considering I was about ten minutes away from becoming one myself.

I took the stairs two at a time until I found Room 304.

I opened the door.

Eleven people turned to look at me.

Perfect.

“How nice of you to join us,” said the man standing in front of the whiteboard.

He looked to be in his mid-forties. Tall, thin, wearing a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a pair of glasses dangling from one hand. He studied me as though my tardiness had just confirmed some theory he’d already developed about me.

Behind him, he’d written his name.

ERNESTO VILLASEÑOR.

And beneath it, taking up nearly the entire board, was a sentence:

DEATH DOES NOT BEGIN WHEN THE HEART STOPS BEATING.

“Camila Reyes,” I said, still trying to catch my breath. “Sorry I’m late.”

“I know who you are, Miss Reyes. Your name has been sitting on my attendance sheet beside an empty chair for the past seven minutes. Please, take a seat.”

Fantastic. I hadn’t even been there a full minute, and he already hated me.

I quickly scanned the room for an empty seat. There was one in the second row, beside a dark-haired girl who moved her backpack when she saw me approaching.

“Thanks,” I murmured as I sat down.

“No problem. And relax, you haven’t killed anyone yet,” she whispered. “Although, judging by the look he gave you, I wouldn’t rule out you being his first victim.”

I had to fight back a smile.

I pulled out my notebook and a pen as Ernesto resumed his lecture.

“As I was saying before we were interrupted, most of you have come to this seminar believing criminology is about finding the guilty party. If that’s what you’re expecting to learn here, you’ve probably signed up for the wrong class.”

He walked slowly across the front of the room and set his glasses on the desk.

“If you want to learn how to point at a man holding a knife and declare him the murderer, you can stay home and watch documentaries. I’m interested in a much more complicated question: how many decisions had to be made for that knife to end up in his hand?”

A few students started writing.

I did the same.

“A death might begin ten minutes before it happens. But it might also begin ten years earlier. A phone call someone decided not to make. A report nobody wanted to listen to. A door that should never have been opened. A car that took the wrong turn. A lie that seemed insignificant when it was told.”

He turned toward us and placed both hands on his desk.

“Or someone who chose to remain silent when there was still time to speak.”

My pen stopped moving.

I don’t know why.

It was just a sentence. Probably one of those things a professor repeated every semester because he knew his students would write it down.

Still, an uncomfortable feeling settled in my stomach.

“In forensic science, we’re not simply looking for the person who pulled the trigger,” Ernesto continued. “We’re looking for the chain of decisions that allowed someone to reach that point. Because sometimes, responsibility doesn’t end with the person holding the weapon. Sometimes, it also belongs to those who had the chance to prevent it and lived to tell the tale.”

The girl beside me leaned slightly closer.

“This guy’s been talking for less than ten minutes, and he’s already managed to make me feel guilty about things I haven’t even done.”

I let out a silent laugh.

“I showed up late. Technically, I already have something to feel guilty about.”

“Valeria,” she whispered, offering me her hand beneath the desk.

“Camila.”

“I know. You made a pretty memorable entrance.”

“It was seven minutes.”

“Almost eight.”

“I take it back. I don’t like you anymore.”

Valeria smiled and turned her attention back to the front.

I liked her immediately.

I looked toward Ernesto again.

And that’s when I saw him.

He was sitting three rows behind me.

At first, all I noticed was the black hair, longer than I remembered, brushing against his shoulders. Then I saw his neck and the dark lines of several tattoos disappearing beneath a black T-shirt.

Something inside me stopped.

No.

It couldn’t be.

The man tilted his head slightly as Ernesto spoke, and I caught a glimpse of his profile.

The line of his jaw. His nose. A small silver hoop in his ear.

Five years had passed, and my body recognized him before my brain could finish processing what I was seeing.

Jaime.

I went completely still.

I could hear Ernesto speaking, but I’d stopped understanding the words. Every ounce of my attention was focused on the man sitting a few feet away.

Jaime was in my class.

No. This wasn’t even a normal class. It was a twelve-person seminar that nearly a hundred and fifty students had applied to. Statistically speaking, neither of us should have been there, and yet somehow, we’d ended up in the same room.

I had the ridiculous urge to hide behind Valeria.

Instead, I lowered my eyes to my notebook and discovered I’d written the same word three times.

Decisions.

Decisions.

Decisions.

I crossed out the last two.

“Are you okay?” Valeria asked.

“Yeah. Just thinking about something.”

Lie.

I wasn’t okay.

It had been five years since I’d last seen him. Five years without hearing his voice, without a text, a phone call, or even one lousy happy birthday.

Nothing.

For the first few months, I’d waited for him to show up. Then I’d waited for him to apologize. Eventually, I’d gone through a phase where I hoped he’d drop dead.

Not literally.

Well, not every day.

Eventually, I’d learned to expect absolutely nothing from him.

And now he was sitting six meters away from me.

He’d changed. Of course he had. He’d already been tall at eighteen, but now he seemed to take up too much space even while sitting down. He had more tattoos. I recognized some of the ones covering his arms, but the ones climbing up his neck were new. His hair was much longer, too.

I wondered if his eyes were still the same shade of blue.

I immediately hated myself for wondering.

“Throughout this semester, we’ll be working with eleven case files,” Ernesto said, finally managing to pull my attention away from Jaime. “Eleven deaths and eleven different reconstructions. I want you to forget everything you think you know about analyzing a case. I’m not interested in having you memorize procedures just to repeat them on an exam. I want you to learn how to ask questions, especially the ones nobody wanted to answer when the answers still mattered.”

Several black folders sat on his desk.

I hadn’t noticed them when I came in.

Ernesto picked one up.

A guy sitting on the other side of the room raised his hand.

He had brown hair, pleasant features, and an easy smile. He looked like the kind of person who could strike up a conversation with a stranger in a grocery store line and walk away ten minutes later with an invitation to their birthday party.

“Professor, when you say eleven deaths, are we talking about actual cases, or are these hypothetical exercises created for the class?”

“These were real people, Mr. Serrano. The documents have been prepared for this seminar, but the cases themselves are real.”

“And have they been solved?”

Ernesto studied him for a few seconds before answering.

“That depends on what you mean by solving a case. If you’re asking whether there’s an official version of what happened, then yes, in many of them. If you’re asking whether that version answers every question, we wouldn’t be studying them.”

The guy smiled.

“So basically, we’re going to try to prove somebody didn’t do their job properly.”

“No, Mr. Serrano. You’re going to try to prove that you’re capable of doing yours. If, in the process, you discover that someone else failed to do theirs, that will be a different problem.”

Several people laughed.

The guy raised both hands in surrender.

“Understood.”

“Nicolás,” Valeria muttered beside me. “He’s been talking for less than a minute, and I already want to punch him.”

“Maybe he’s just enthusiastic.”

“He has an incredibly punchable face.”

Nicolás turned around at that exact moment.

He caught us looking at him.

Valeria immediately dropped her gaze to her notebook, pretending to be deeply absorbed in something she hadn’t even written.

I held his gaze.

Nicolás smiled, raised an eyebrow as if he’d heard every word we’d just said, and turned back around.

“I take it back,” I whispered. “He’s definitely unbearable.”

“Told you.”

Ernesto began handing out the folders.

When he reached our row, he placed one in front of Valeria and another in front of me.

It was heavier than I’d expected.

A white label with a number was stuck to the upper-right corner.

CASE FILE 01.

Below it was an alphanumeric code and a date.

I ran my finger along the edge of the folder.

“Before you open these, I want to establish one rule,” Ernesto said as he walked back toward his desk. “Everything you find in these documents stays in this classroom. Some materials have been anonymized. Others have not. You’ll encounter photographs, witness statements, medical reports, and, in certain cases, images that may be difficult to look at. If any of you feel unable to work with sensitive material, there’s absolutely no shame in admitting it. But I need to know now.”

He looked around the room.

Nobody moved.

“Good. You may open your files.”

I lifted the cover.

The first page was face down.

Valeria turned hers over before I did.

I heard her inhale sharply.

“Shit.”

“What is it?”

She didn’t answer.

I flipped the page.

There was a photograph of a young woman. Brown hair, fair skin, and a small, almost uncomfortable smile, as if someone had asked her to pose when she really wasn’t in the mood.

Her personal information appeared beneath the picture.

I read the name.

And forgot how to breathe.

FABIOLA MENDOZA RÍOS

Age at death: 21.

I read it again.

It couldn’t be.

There were thousands of women named Fabiola. Probably hundreds named Fabiola Mendoza.

It could have been some absurd coincidence.

But not with that face.

Not with those eyes.

Not with that tiny scar above her left eyebrow, the one I’d seen hundreds of times when I was seventeen.

My eyes moved to the next line.

Date of death: June 14.

Three months ago.

I felt cold.

A completely ridiculous kind of cold, considering Monterrey was still melting beneath the sun outside.

“Camila, are you okay?” Valeria asked, without a trace of humor this time. “You’ve gone pale. Did you know this girl?”

I couldn’t answer right away.

The last time I’d seen Fabiola, she’d been screaming at me.

I’d been screaming right back.

Then she’d walked out through a door.

And disappeared.

Five years without a phone call, a message, or any sign that she was still alive.

Five years without a body.

The police had stopped looking for her.

Her family had eventually moved away from Monterrey.

I’d spent months waking up every time my phone rang, convinced someone was finally calling to tell me they’d found her.

That call never came.

Because Fabiola hadn’t died that night.

She’d lived for almost five years after disappearing.

“Yes,” I finally managed. “I knew her. But this can’t be right. She disappeared when we were seventeen. Nobody ever heard from her again.”

“Well, according to this, she died three months ago.”

“I know what it says.”

It came out harsher than I’d intended.

“Sorry. That wasn’t directed at you.”

I slammed the folder shut harder than necessary.

Several people turned around.

Including him.

Jaime.

Our eyes met for the first time in five years.

And everything I’d ever felt for him seemed to come rushing back all at once, as if my body had been storing it somewhere, waiting for this exact moment.

Love.

Anger.

Desire.

Hatred.

Guilt.

But there was something else in his expression that I hadn’t expected to see.

Fear.

Jaime had recognized Fabiola.

“Miss Reyes?” Ernesto called from the front of the room. “Is there a problem with the material?”

I tore my eyes away from Jaime.

“I need to step outside for a moment. I knew the person in this case file, and I wasn’t prepared to see this.”

Ernesto’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly.

He didn’t seem surprised.

And that made me even more uncomfortable.

“I understand. You may step outside, but the file must remain in the classroom.”

“Of course.”

I left it on the desk and stood up.

I didn’t look at Jaime on my way out.

I didn’t need to.

I could feel his eyes on me.

I made it to the corner of the hallway and pressed my hands against the wall.

I just needed to breathe.

Fabiola had been alive.

All that time.

I closed my eyes, and a memory surfaced before I could stop it.

Give me back my phone, Camila.

My eyes flew open.

No.

I wasn’t going back there.

Not yet.

I heard the classroom door open behind me, followed by approaching footsteps.

I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was.

He’d always walked the same way. Slowly, confidently, as though the world was obligated to wait for him.

“Camila.”

Five years without hearing him say my name.

I turned.

Jaime stood a few feet away.

Up close, it was even worse.

Tattoos covered both arms and climbed up his neck. A line of black ink disappeared beneath his shirt, across his chest. His hair fell around his face, and dark stubble outlined his jaw.

But it was him.

Unmistakably him.

“I didn’t know you’d be here,” he said after studying me for a few seconds. “If I had, I probably would’ve tried to talk to you before class. I guess that would’ve been better than running into each other like this.”

I let out a humorless laugh.

“After five years, your first concern is that our reunion was awkward? Relax, Jaime. I think I’ll survive.”

“That’s not what I said. And I wasn’t expecting you to welcome me with open arms, either. I’m just trying to tell you I didn’t plan this.”

“What a relief. For a second there, I thought you’d organized an entire criminology seminar just to see me again. That would’ve been a little excessive, even for you.”

The faintest hint of a smile tugged at his mouth, but it disappeared almost immediately.

“You still do that.”

“Do what?”

“Make jokes when you’re about to lose your mind.”

I felt my expression harden.

“And you still think you know me.”

“I knew you for almost three years, Camila. Some things aren’t that easy to forget.”

That hit harder than I wanted to admit.

“Five years without speaking to someone helps quite a bit.”

Jaime lowered his eyes for a moment.

When he looked up again, there wasn’t a trace of sarcasm left.

“Yeah. I guess it does.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

His eyes moved across my face, then down to my tattooed arm. He didn’t comment, but I noticed the way he looked at it.

I hated that I cared.

“Did you know she was alive?” I asked.

Jaime looked back at me.

“What?”

“Don’t do that with me. Fabiola. Did you know she was still alive after that night?”

His jaw tightened immediately.

That was enough to make my stomach twist.

“Camila, we just saw a case file saying she died three months ago. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I want you to answer a pretty simple question. During all those years when nobody knew where she was, did you know Fabiola was still alive?”

Jaime stayed silent for far too long.

Five years vanished in an instant.

Another room.

Another question.

Another silence.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he finally said.

I studied him.

He could’ve changed his hair, his tattoos, his clothes, even the way he said my name.

But Jaime was still a terrible liar.

At least when it came to me.

“Right,” I replied. “Then I guess we have nothing else to talk about.”

He tried to stop me as I walked past him.

“Camila, wait. You shouldn’t keep going through that file until we know why it’s here.”

I turned.

“Until we know? There is no we, Jaime. You can do whatever you want with your file, and I’ll do the same with mine. It’s an arrangement we’ve been practicing for five years, and so far, it seems to have worked out perfectly for you.”

“I’m not talking about us. I’m talking about Fabiola.”

“Which is exactly why I’m going back inside.”

I returned to the classroom before he could answer.

Ernesto stopped speaking when I opened the door, but this time, I didn’t ask permission.

I sat down and opened the folder again.

First page.

Fabiola.

I turned it.

Preliminary report.

Another page.

Timeline.

I kept going until I reached a photograph I’d barely had time to notice before.

It had been taken on a restaurant terrace.

Fabiola was shown in profile. The date printed in the bottom corner was just a few days before her death.

But she wasn’t alone.

There was a man sitting across the table from her.

Shoulder-length black hair.

Tattoos covering his arms.

Jaime.

My heart started pounding so hard that, for a moment, I thought Valeria might actually hear it.

Then I noticed the necklace.

A silver chain hung around Jaime’s neck, with a small black ring dangling from it.

I knew that ring.

I’d given it to him for his eighteenth birthday.

“Camila?” Valeria whispered. “Isn’t that the guy who followed you outside?”

I didn’t answer.

The door opened.

Jaime had just come back.

He looked up at me.

I picked up the photograph and waited until he reached his seat.

“Earlier, you told me you didn’t know what I was talking about,” I said, loud enough for him to hear. “So now there’s something I really want you to explain.”

I turned the photograph toward him.

“What were you doing with Fabiola three months ago?”

Jaime looked at the picture.

He didn’t answer.

But he didn’t need to.

I watched the color slowly drain from his face.

And in that moment, I understood two things.

Fabiola had been alive.

And Jaime had known.