by Karen Rivers
James’s clothes.
“Oh,” I say, sinking into the chair. My legs are shaking. “I can explain.”
“Can you?” he says. “It’s funny how I have a feeling that your story won’t make sense.” He pours a cup of tea for me, his hand shaking slightly, his eyes fixed to my face. “I’m sorry about your grandma.” He stares out the window and rubs his throat. “She was very accomplished but not terribly easy to get along with.”
“She just didn’t like men that much,” I say. “She probably really liked you and your weird tea, she just couldn’t let on.” I think about it. “She didn’t let many people get close to her.”
“Like you,” he says.
“Like me,” I agree.
I gulp the tea, which is too hot. A bit of a leaf gets stuck in my throat. I cough. Pee tea, I think, and I want to laugh but I don’t. “You can’t tell anyone,” I croak, choking on it. “You have to promise.”
“Cross my heart,” he says. “Cross my heart and hope to die. Now talk.”
PART TWO
SOUP
I am still alive and Piper is still dead. Those are the two things I know for sure.
Two is an even number—good luck. But there is nothing lucky about any of this.
I’m not going to school, I’m not doing art, I’m not doing anything but replaying all of it in my head, the stuff I know. The stuff I can’t know, but I can guess.
I was watching the news when they brought him to the bail hearing. The reporters were all asking questions, shouting things at him as he ducked through the crowd, surrounded by lawyers. He was ignoring them, but then someone shouted, “Why did you do it?”
And he stopped in his tracks.
He turned to stare right at the camera. “Why not?” he drawled.
That’s the fact that erases the other facts and stands out, like ugly paint applied to a clean blank wall.
That’s what they keep replaying on TV: his sly grin—that’s totally what it was, sly—and the shout, “Why’d you do it?” Then him freezing, standing still, and the quietness, like something he chose, like he waited for it, and into the silence he lobbed those two words: “Why not?”
His mouth looked soft, like a girl’s.
He smirked.
I want to know if Sloane saw it. If she knows he said that. I want to know what she thinks.
Who is he?
I want to know what she knows.
She won’t answer me. Not now. Not ever, probably.
She’s busy going back in time to stop my parents from screwing without a condom, which is funny because I don’t have a dad and Mom says he did use a condom but it must have broken because here I am.
He doesn’t know.
She says she didn’t know how to find him but she told me his name.
So I know who he is.
I follow him on Facebook.
The only connection I have with my own biological father is on social media.
I’m one of 4,566 people who follow him on Facebook. Even. Good luck.
But I’m the only one who is his son.
* * *
If I hadn’t kissed Sloane, Piper wouldn’t have run.
Piper loved equations, so here’s an equation: Me + Sloane = Piper.
It’s my fault, even though I didn’t do it.
The guy who murdered Piper has a name: James Robert Wilson.
I wonder if he is a James, or a Jim, or a Jimmy.
He worked at the movie theater, selling tickets, cleaning up after movies. When they asked him if he knew her, he just shrugged. “Might have seen her around the mall, I guess,” he said. Like me, he has tattoos that sneak upward from the collar of his shirt. Like me, he looks a little bit Mexican, a little bit who-knows-what-else.
Like me, he killed Piper Sullivan.
We killed her together, me and James Robert Wilson. I gave him the time to do what he did. I gave him the opportunity.
I want them to arrest me. Charge me with something. But the lead detective in the case, Detective Marcus, won’t take my confession as anything.
He says, “Son, you need someone else to talk to.” But he doesn’t say who that is. I’d talk to God but I don’t think he’s listening to me, not now, maybe not ever. I can’t talk to Mom because she needs so bad for me to be okay even when I’m not, I’m definitely not. I could message my dad on Facebook, but what would I say? “Hi, I’m your son. My girlfriend was murdered when I kissed her best friend. Well, talk to you later! Philip.”
Not likely.
I look at James Robert Wilson’s photo, zoom in tight to his face on my screen. He has dark eyes. Pockmarked skin.
He’s twenty-six years old.
Eight years older than me.
There’s something about him that’s familiar.
Maybe it’s that his face looks like the After picture of mine. His mouth is frozen in an almost smile, a happiness that pisses me off. I want to punch that smile right off his face, feel my knuckle crunching into his jaw. He’s wearing a plaid shirt, open a few buttons too far. He’s got pecs. He looks like he smells damp, musty, like he never lets his clothes dry the whole way, like he regularly lies on the driveway, underneath the body of an old car from the seventies that he’s fixing.
He doesn’t look like a guy who kills people for no reason, but who does?
My non-condom-wearing dad has a shaved head and a piercing through his nose like a bull’s ring. I guess he’s never killed anyone, but he looks like he could.
James Robert Wilson did.
He killed Piper Sullivan.
His mouth looks wet. He lived in a suite in the basement of his uncle’s house. His entire family died in a fire when he was eleven, dog and all. He tried to save the dog.
Everyone says he was a nice guy. He had no record. He did a year of art college and dropped out.
* * *
He could be me.
I could be him.
* * *
I stare at his face and I think about killing him, about how that would feel: my hands around his throat. A blade separating his skin from his muscles and bones. His eyes begging and me smiling into them and telling him “Why not?” even while I’m divesting him of his soul, cutting him free of the cancer in him that made it okay for him to kill her like that.
Piper could talk anyone into (or out of) anything.
How could she not have talked him out of this?
I don’t get it. I don’t get how it could have happened. I don’t get why.
I look at his photo and the way his eyes are squinting and his hair, which is the long, soft straggly-looking hair of a guy who is trying too hard to look a certain way.
When I rub my hand over my own head, it’s like touching a man’s stubbly face. I told Piper that touching stubble made me think of the father I never knew, and she laughed. She laughed until she was bent double, and I think I know that it’s possible to hate Piper Sullivan. I hate myself for wondering but I wonder what she did or said to James Robert Wilson. I hate myself for wondering if she laughed at him so hard that she had to hold on to something to stop from falling down.
Because is that like saying she was asking for it?
No one asks for that.
But mostly I hate him and I want to smash my laptop screen and I want her to text me something, anything. I want her not to be dead so bad that my skin hurts from it. Everything hurts from it and I’m inside out from hurting like this.
I kissed Sloane. Piper ran out, alone.
Piper was almost never alone.
It’s my fault. Mine and Sloane’s.
We did this.
I look at my phone, at all the texts from Sloane that I’m not answering.
“Please,” the last one says.
I shut the phone off.
* * *
The room is full of silence and of me. The shadows don’t want me here. I have to go to school but I can’t. I can’t stay here, but I can’t go anywhere. I don’t think Jim Bob—
that’s what I call him in my head now—knew what the body count was going to be. I feel like he killed me, too.
I bet he wouldn’t care, if he knew. I bet he’d do that now-famous crooked half smile and drawl, “Well, so what?”
Mom is at the dining room table, working. She’s working from home “for a while,” which means until I don’t need her here. But I don’t need her here. And I do need her here because I keep forgetting that Piper is dead. When I wake up in the morning, it takes me a few moments to realize what’s wrong. Then I hear my mom. Mom is home because Piper is dead.
Even just sitting on the couch, the smooth fabric of it cool underneath me, I can feel the rush of tears wanting to come out. I’m eighteen years old. I’m a tough kid, everyone says so. I’m not someone who cries.
Mom looks up. “You okay?”
I nod a lie in her direction. All I want is to unkiss Sloane, and I want for Piper to not be dead.
I close my eyes. I let it just sweep over me.
I let it pull me under.
Outside, I’m perfectly still, but inside, I’m screaming.
“Why not?” he says, grinning slyly, over and over again.
Nothing about him is real.
He’s an actor playing a killer, when everyone knows the real killers are me and Sloane. The only thing is that no one is going to be sending us to jail, no matter how much we deserve it.
* * *
He strangled her with her own shoelace. He raped her. He sliced her skin with blades. He stole a boat and rowed out as deep as he dared and pushed her body over the side. Was she still alive? Did she jump off? Was she trying to escape?
Her blood was in the boat. Her blood was on the beach. It’s like he didn’t even try to hide it. He didn’t bother.
They found him on the top of the island, not even trying to hide or run.
I’m hollowed out, but I’m still here, on the couch. I stink. I can smell my sweat. Mom yawns and types something on her computer, leaning close to the screen. Squinting. Sometimes she hugs me so hard, it’s like she’s forgiving me for something I didn’t do.
When she’s done with her work for the day, we sit in the living room and watch TV side by side. Sometimes Mom cries, even when the show isn’t sad. Last night, during Anchorman, the guy said, “I love lamp,” which is the best line, the funniest in our favorite funny movie, and she burst into tears. I got up and stormed out of the room, slamming doors hard behind me to cover up the fact that her crying made me cry, too. “Soup!” she called after me. “Philip, come back!”
I ignored her. I put my headphones on. I filled my ears with music. Anything to not hear that tone in her voice.
She didn’t even like Piper that much. She’d make this clucking sound with her tongue when Piper threw herself onto the couch like she owned the place. She’d shake her head sadly when Piper would jump into the pool and then come up screaming swear words because the water was so cold. She never liked the way Piper wore her body like a loosely buttoned shirt, always something showing that shouldn’t be shown.
“MOM,” I yelled when she knocked. “LEAVE ME ALONE.”
But today, I’m not going to take it out on her. Today I’m not going to be so angry.
The phone beeps and Mom answers it, talking work talk, her voice small and singsongy, her professional voice, and I can’t stand it. I punch my fist into the palm of my hand, bruising my knuckles.
There’s something wrong with me. I have to get out of here but I can’t leave. I have nowhere to go because I can’t get away from myself. I really want to see Sloane and I also want to never see her again and the only person who I want to talk to about this is my dad, who I know only on Facebook, who exclusively posts jokes and gig schedules.
He’s a musician.
Everything I know about my dad can be summed up in the following:
He plays the drums.
He likes jokes with punch lines you have to think about. Intellectual jokes.
He’s playing at the Fall Fair with his band in three weeks. Piper and I were going to go to his show. She’d talked me into agreeing to introduce myself.
And now we’re not going. Because Piper is dead. Because I kissed Sloane.
Simple, right?
I didn’t kill Piper, but I’m guilty of Sloane, that’s for sure.
* * *
“Mom, are you ready?” My voice cracks.
Mom looks down at what she’s wearing, which is a black dress, black stockings, black shoes, like she’s surprised to find herself in that kind of outfit on this kind of day. Outside, it’s sunny. The weather has been so perfect, it’s like an insult to everything I feel. The skies should be weeping for Piper, for me, for all of us. It should be winter. There should be ice.
“Ready as I ever will be,” she says, squaring her shoulders.
She hasn’t been sleeping. Under her eyes, there are black shadows. Her skin looks dry and pale. I pour her a glass of water, add ice cubes. I slice up a lemon, the blade slipping and nicking my thumb. The juice runs into it and stings so bad that tears are in my eyes. I squeeze some lemon in her water, make her sit down, make her drink it until she feels more like herself.
“You’re so sweet,” she says, and I shake my head because she’s wrong.
The funeral is in an hour. Sometime between now and then, we have to get to the car, drive to the church, pretend that everyone isn’t staring at me. Thinking about what they know: me making out with Sloane while Piper was dying.
“The lawn’s dead,” I say. “I’m sorry about the lawn, Mom.”
Mom says, “Never mind, it’s not a big deal.”
I go, “It is to me.”
“It’s just grass,” she says. “I don’t care.”
Piper, Sloane, and I were lying on that grass only a couple of weeks ago and it was green and soft, like a different planet from this one, where the lawn is dead and so is Piper. Piper was giving Sloane a bad time about some guy she apparently hooked up with. The whole thing was hard for me to imagine. It seemed nothing like what I’d think Sloane would do. But Piper wouldn’t lay off her about him. “Go out with him again. Give him a chance. Don’t be such a prude,” she said.
“Leave it,” Sloane said. “It’s none of your business.”
That’s how they talked to each other. Like they hated each other.
But they didn’t.
“I love you, but shut up,” Sloane added.
We’d made cold drinks. We’d spread huge towels on the grass and lain down, reading books or pretending to, or listening to music, or just sleeping in the sun, the gentle softness of the green, alive lawn holding us up and cooling our skin. Sloane took her drink and poured it over Piper’s head. Piper pushed Sloane into the pool. The whole time, they were laughing. Like the jokes that my dad posts, it took me a while to figure out what was funny. I’m still not sure I know.
Anyway, if you lie down on that lawn now, it would be like lying on sticks, prickly and unforgiving.
I pull out a chair and sit down next to Mom and drink a glass of water of my own, with four ice cubes, an even number for good luck.
There’s something about Piper being dead that makes everything I do seem exaggerated, like a performance. He raises the glass to his lips. He sips the water slowly. He remembers the lawn and the fun time they had there, together, which was neither happy nor sad, just time spent. My inner narrator has an accent, a serious tone, a heaviness that clunks along in a boring monotone that I can’t shut off.
Maybe Sloane can make a movie about that.
I’m going to see Sloane today.
I’m going to talk to Sloane.
I have to talk to Sloane.
I take a deep, slow breath and practice not crying. I’m not going to cry at the funeral. I’m not going to be the one everyone is staring at.
Mom smells like she’s freshly showered. Her hair is neat and crisp, just like she is. I pick up my water and put it down again. I make four perfect drink rings on the tab
le and then wipe them away with the sleeve of my black wool suit. I only have a black wool suit because of Halloween last year. I’m wearing a Halloween costume to my girlfriend’s funeral.
Here’s something I’d never admit out loud: I think Piper knew that Sloane and I had a connection that she and I didn’t have. That she was playing with us, both of us, and the way we kept catching each other’s eye like kids in some dumb movie, thinking no one noticed.
Turns out, I have a lot of reasons to say sorry to Piper. Is that what funerals are for? People call them the last goodbye, but maybe they should be called the last apology. I’m so freaking sorry, Piper.
I am every bit as guilty as the murderer.
Right?
I wore this suit to a Halloween party in someone’s backyard. A bonfire that got too big. The fire department had to come and put it out. Drinks in red cups. Everything always spinning slightly out of control. Piper and Sloane laughing in the firelight, sparks landing in their hair. Piper and Sloane before I really knew them. Piper and Sloane before I ruined everything by asking the wrong girl out in the first place.
I’ve had a crush on Sloane since fourth grade, but when I saw Piper at the art show and she was crying because she said my art made her feel so much, I don’t know what happened. I mean, that kind of thing is a pretty hard thing to not fall for, when someone likes you enough to cry about your paintings.
I thought she got me.
She never got me.
Not really.
Mom stands up. She goes and looks through the gap in the closed curtains, her high heels clip-clopping on the über-clean floors. “Hot day,” she says. “Too hot. Global warming.” She sighs. Even in heels, she looks little, like a kid playing dress-up.
Let’s skip it. Let’s stay home and watch TV, I want to say. I want to protect her. Or me. I don’t want to do this thing but we have to do this thing. I have to do this thing.
“We could get a sprinkler put in,” Mom says.
“No,” I say. “I can water it. I’ll do it after. I’ll start doing it again. I’m sorry about the lawn.”
She shrugs.
I actually love taking care of the lawn, which makes me sound like a middle-aged man, but I’ve always been my own dad. I was proud of that stupid lawn. It was the best one on the block. It died so fast; I can’t believe how fast. Only a couple of weeks of sunshine and neglect and it browned up and crisped, dried out and gave up, and even though the weather is cooling, it’s showing no signs of coming back to life.
