TRUST ME. I LOVE YOU AND NOTHING WILL EVER HURT YOU AGAIN.

SYNOPSIS:

Emily James is a typical wealthy upper class students from the suburbs: Bored with her life, sociopathic in her relationships with people, rude in her relationship with her parents and teachers, and one of the school’s biggest bullies. Her biggest source of enjoyment is to tease the boys, get high, do things that will shock everyone, and bully her neighbor’s abused, Asperger’s suffering son Trevor Martino. However, all of this has gotten common and even her extreme living has left her empty and unfulfilled.

While taking her AP Psychology class, her teacher gives a project: To examine abnormal psychology, look at a famous murderer or serial killer, and examine how they could convince their victim(s) to trust and believe them, using psychology. Before she can take the ones she wants, the others in the class do. Complaining that the ones she knows are gone, the teacher suggests looking at Leopold and Loeb and how they convinced their victim to trust them.

As she does the research, she is fascinated by what these two men did and believes it would be the ultimate thrill which will get her remembered forever. She ponders and looks for her “toy,” and decides that no one will miss Trevor Martino. She begins to change for Trevor, taking him into her “heart,” and trying to build him up.

She uses every weapon in her arsenal to gain Trevor’s trust: empathy, sympathy, protection, having her “in crowd clique” accept him, etc. What she doesn’t plan for is her friends, after finally getting to know Trevor, actually sincerely like him. Like a spider with a fly, Emily begins to worm her way into all aspects of Trevor’s life, and Trevor, desperate for escape from his abusive home life, and his bullied school life, surrenders to her. She finally overpowers him by having sex with him, something she pretends to enjoy, but is ultimately bored with.

Finally, with completed control of Trevor emotionally, she begins to twist him, using his suicidal thoughts as her chance to get her thrill: She begins to tell him convincingly that suicide is his only option and that he should do it publicly as a way “to get back at all those that hurt him.” After getting her friends to turn against him, and after a severe beating at him due to his report card, Trevor sees no way out and

Emily sees her chance. After a little prodding, Trevor streams on Facebook Live his suicide as Emily plays innocent and tries to “convince” those watching to “stop him.” But, as the police break in, it’s too late.

Proud of what she did, Emily goes to school the next day and is her typical sociopathic bully, but has instantly become ostracized. Everyone knows what she did, every knows she made it happen. When confronted, she not only does not deny it, but laughs and says she could make anyone do it, and that no one will miss “that little worm.” The police arrive and arrest Emily for her part in Trevor’s death. While she is in the back of the police car being taken to the police station, her ego and arrogance overcomes her and she proudly admits what she did, claims she didn’t kill him, and that she will be remembered forever for doing it. When she is asked why, she simply says “because I could.

BECAUSE I COULD