by Dan Chaon
3. Claimed he was the child of a demon. While this was obviously made up, it showed that his mind was deranged. Also that he didn’t know who his father was and his mom was a prostitute and maybe also a member of a cult. Many serial killers have moms who are prostitutes. Plus, who knew what cultish beliefs had been taught to him? No doubt he was a mental case.
4. Told Dustin that he was in a gang/cult and that they had committed a murder. Probably a lie but shows that he has been thinking about killing/murdering for a long time.
5. Had done sex stuff to Dustin when he was a kid. Proof that he was a predator and perverted. Was also a sex addict? Had sex with her and Wave and how many others? Also, how many other kids had he molested? More proof that he had no morals and was twisted.
6. Talked about Satan and Satanism all the time. Was a fan of bands like Black Sabbath, Venom, Judas Priest. Drew pentagrams on stuff. Took hallucinogenic drugs.
7. The night before the murders performed a Satanic ritual in a graveyard while high on peyote. Danced and sang to Satan. A girl sat down on a grave and spread her legs and said, “O Guland, please don’t make me go to Yellowstone!” And then the parents died, so the girl didn’t have to go to Yellowstone. Could Rusty have killed them because he wanted to make her prayer come true in some fucked-up way?
It was #7 that seemed most convincing, and Kate didn’t particularly like that.
She didn’t like that she herself had been the drug-addled girl who had taken off her panties and spread her legs in front of two boys. And then prayed to Satan, or a demon, or whatever.
It made it seem like she was possibly on Rusty’s side.
Could she be blamed? Could they frame her as one of Rusty’s accomplices? It made her seem like one of those Manson girls, she thought.
That’s how they could make her look if they wanted. They could possibly make all kinds of awful things about her appear.
—
Was it weird that Kate and Dustin slept together at night in his dead mother’s bed? You’re fucking right it was. He was just starting to go through puberty, and so there were the beginnings of smells. Underarm smell. The awful sour odor of teenage-boy feet. The slobbery mouth against her arm, the disturbing thirteen-year-old erections that he got and pressed against her thigh unintentionally in his sleep. The way he would whisper. “O Guland,” she thought he was saying. “O Guland, Guland.”
But she had no choice. She knew he would be scared otherwise. If she made him sleep on the floor, he would see the ratty stuffed animals that she and Wave had stowed underneath the beds; he would see their button eyes looking at him through the darkness.
If he was on the floor, there would be more sleepwalking, which had been worse since the murders—night after night, this zombie of Dustin would rise and try to wander around if he wasn’t woken up. If he didn’t sleep beside her, he would be able to wander off in the night and she wouldn’t wake up to stop him.
She had a good idea of what kind of boyfriend he would become when he grew up. He would be the horrible baby boyfriend that some poor girl would be tricked into taking care of. The boyfriend who was always experiencing some kind of inexpressible longing and unexplained sadness.
Some girls really dug that. Kate didn’t.
But it was what she had to do, she thought. Otherwise—
—
Otherwise what?
It was a question that she considered frequently. What did Dustin remember? What would he eventually remember in the future? He sat next to her on the bus and made the signs with his hands, gnarling his fingers into shapes like a wizard casting spells. “Sssss,” he murmured, and she hoped no one could see them.
They rode to school on a bus with children of all ages. Country kids in cheap clothes. They traveled up and down dirt roads where children stood at the berm of a driveway, waiting to be picked up. The whole process took about forty-five minutes, and Kate sat there next to Dustin as the school bus poked along, and it seemed endless.
She remembered how she and Wave used to drive to school in a car their dad bought them.
An orange Mustang hatchback that they called “Tiny.” They took turns being the driver and the passenger, and sometimes they took long detours, driving up and down Main Street several times before they finally pulled into the school parking lot, knowing they would get a tardy slip.
Wave was the more reckless of the two of them. Once, they’d taken the Mustang out onto some back roads and Wave had got it up past 80 miles an hour, until the frame of the car started to actually shake and they thought it might bust apart.
If it wasn’t for the murders, they might still be driving to school. If it wasn’t for Rusty! she thought. She sat there on the bus next to Dustin and looked at the back of Wave’s head, a few seats in front of her. Would you really choose Rusty over me? she thought. Really?
—
She didn’t like her new school. It was a lot of rough, stupid low-class white kids—their dads all worked construction, building the new power plant, or in the strip mine—or else it was standoffish Mexican kids who spoke Spanish to each other in the lunchroom. Kate and Wave were not assigned to any of the same classes, so they rarely saw each other during the day.
Sometimes Wave would be spotted in the hallways, talking and even laughing with her new friends. The new friends looked like druggies, trailer-park girls who were trying to look punk but they didn’t even know what punk was, Kate thought, they were just copying someone they saw on MTV.
As for Kate, she didn’t make any new friends. She felt weirdly self-conscious. She had the idea that people knew—she was the murder girl, they thought. She’d been in that Satanism trial, and did you hear that she was raped on a grave?
No way! Yes, way!
Probably they didn’t know anything, but Kate felt like they did; she didn’t want to talk with them or interact like Wave apparently did. She had so many new friends! She was such a popular new girl!
For a while Kate actually tried writing little notes. It was pathetic, really. She wrote the word Foxy in elaborate bubble letters and colored it in with marker and folded it and put it in Wave’s jacket pocket. She wrote I love you and put it in Wave’s shoe.
She tried to think of things that Wave would like, that would make her laugh like they used to. But it became harder and harder to remember what such things might be.
When they were little, Kate and Wave had loved being twins. There had never been much psychic anything between the two of them, though of course she could hear Wave’s thoughts now, for sure:
Liar, Wave was thinking. Liar liar liar liar liarliar
—
She was not a liar.
There had never, never been any doubt in Kate’s mind that Rusty was the killer. After that night at the pool, when Dustin talked to her, there wasn’t any question. She had written all of the evidence down in a notebook, numbering it, trying to make it sound official. Every time she remembered something incriminating that Rusty had told her, she kept adding it to the list.
She had reached #20 when she finally decided to talk to Wave about it. A few days had passed since the murders, and the three of them were still “sequestered.” Being “questioned.”
But things had not been going well between Kate and Wave. For some reason, Wave seemed to think that she was more deeply affected by the deaths than anyone else, and she had begun to act very melodramatic. She slept, like, eighteen hours a day, and when she was awake she traipsed around in their mother’s white nightgown, padding slowly on bare feet down the hall with a sort of sleepwalker-y slowness. She would give Kate these stricken, accusatory looks.
Kate knew why, of course. It was because of that one time that she said that she hoped that Vicki got cancer. It was because she told Wave that Dave had a nice ass and because she gossiped about the idea that they all—Dave, Colleen, Lucky, Vicki—were screwing each other. It was, no doubt, because Kate had prayed to Satan that she did
n’t want to go to Yellowstone. Wave thought that just because Kate wasn’t performing her grief like a silent-movie actress, she didn’t care. Wave sent out ripples of judgmentalness whenever they looked at one another.
So it was awkward when Kate gave her the notebook. It was a Sunday afternoon, and they’d been forced to go to church that morning with the councilman and his wife. More theater: People had gaped at them, and they all had to try to look like you were supposed to after your parents were murdered.
They were sitting in the grass alongside the cyclone fence, on the edge of the garage, just beyond where the trash cans were, and Kate watched as Wave read her notes. Proof that Rusty is the killer. Wave made a little frown and then turned a page. Her eyes crawled along the lines of Kate’s handwriting and then her eyes stopped and she let out a soft grunt of disagreement. She flipped the next page with quiet disdain.
And then finally she lifted her head. Blank. No expression, no acknowledgment. She handed the notebook back as if it was a joke that was more disgusting than funny.
“Well?” Kate said, frowning. Their eyes met for a moment, and Kate tried to hold the gaze but Wave didn’t want to. She looked down grimly.
“What do you want me to say?” Wave said. “It needs to be proofread for spelling and grammar if you’re going to try to publish it as a novel.”
Kate was sitting cross-legged, plucking blades of grass and piling them, and she shrugged. “I think he did it,” she said. “Dustin and me want to go to the police.”
“Oh, please,” Wave said, and her look was wounding. It had seemed like they had been close not that long ago, but it was suddenly clear that they weren’t anymore. Kate felt herself actually flinch.
“Are you kidding me?” Wave said. “More than half of this is lies.”
Kate felt herself blushing, getting red, whatever—it was a sensation she hated. She had the kind of skin that showed her emotions more than most normal people, she thought, and it was maddening that her own face would betray her whenever she was angry or embarrassed.
So now she tried to give Wave a reasonable, thoughtful expression. I’m listening to you, the expression said, even though her cheeks were hot and probably bright red. I’m interested in what you have to say!
“What do you think is a lie?” she said. She thought she did a good job of keeping her tone neutral and calm. But then Wave actually made a soft scoffing sound.
“Pfft,” Wave said, and Kate knew the color in her face had grown brighter.
“For one thing,” Wave said, “most of the things that Rusty says about his family or Satanism or whatever—that’s just a joke. That’s, like, him trying to show off. It’s obviously fake. He’s just copying Ozzy Osbourne or somebody.
“And…” Wave said. “Well. The stuff that Dustin says? I mean, I am grossed out by it, but…it’s Dustin. He once told us that he saw a grizzly bear walking down the road! And he believed it, right? You remember that mean game we used to play with him. You know how gullible he is.”
Kate said nothing.
“None of this is true,” Wave said. “I was there. You weren’t in a trance. And they didn’t put a fucking crucifix in your vagina. How disgusting! You took off your panties and showed your pussy. That’s it. We were tripping. You danced with Rusty. Then we went home.”
“You don’t remember everything,” Kate said. “You were tripping more than I was.”
“Ha-ha,” Wave said. “I’m not as easy to screw with as Dustin is.”
Fuck you, Wave, she thought. She was not screwing with anyone. Why would she lie if she didn’t believe it? It was so clear, that was the thing. So clear that Rusty was guilty, the rest of it didn’t matter.
She guessed that Wave didn’t see it that way. The next day, riding home on the school bus, Wave sat across the aisle, three seats ahead as usual, and no matter how long Kate gazed at the back of Wave’s head, she didn’t turn. Wave thought Dustin was somehow Kate’s slave or something.
—
There was a game they had played with Dustin ever since he was little. Kate couldn’t even remember when it started. Was he six, that first time? Seven?
He was an adorable little boy. So happy and wiggly and tiny—small for his age, always mistaken for younger until he spoke. Then people were astonished by how smart he was. Where did he get that vocabulary? they wondered. He liked to read children’s encyclopedias, and he could recite facts from them. “He’s the funniest little guy!” said their mother, who was not prone to exclamation points. “Such a chatterbox! He’ll tell you anything you want to know about dinosaurs. And God! Such an imagination! I don’t know where it comes from. He sure didn’t get it from Colleen!”
The girls were ten or eleven. Eleven. They took him like a pet, like a doll. He was so small that he could fit into the Easter dresses that the girls had worn when they were three. They took him up into the tree house and made him try them on, and he didn’t seem the least concerned. He sat there in a lavender chiffon dress and told them about dinosaurs, reciting long lists of names.
“Dustin,” Kate said. “Make a duck bill with your lips. And close your eyes.” She put her hand firmly on the top of his head to hold him still. Behind her, Wave readied the tube of their mother’s lipstick, like a nurse preparing a hypodermic.
They thought he would resist being made up, but he seemed to be hypnotized. He opened his eyes and gazed up at Kate’s face the way a cat would stare at the moon, and she held him firmly by the scalp as she drew a line along the upper lip.
“Dustin,” Wave said. “You look just like your twin sister!”
Kate had just started on the bottom lip, and she was very focused on his face, so she saw his eyes widen.
“I don’t have a sister,” he said.
Kate and Wave exchanged looks, and Wave gave her a little smile. They were able to do that then—to communicate with just their eyes, just their expressions.
“You probably don’t remember,” Wave said. “You were so little when she got sent away.” Dustin frowned, and Kate hesitated before she started on the lower lip.
“We shouldn’t be talking about this,” Kate said. “He’s too little to understand.”
“He doesn’t remember, anyway,” Wave said.
“I remember!” he said: offended to have his memory questioned. He stared up into Kate’s face—maybe to see if it was a joke—but Kate didn’t return the gaze.
“I don’t think so,” Wave said. “You couldn’t.” Dustin shifted a bit in his chair. His brow creased.
“Poor Desirée,” Wave said. “They had to give her to the circus.”
“Wh—?” Dustin said. Kate held his jaw between her fingers and ran the lipstick along the plump skin of his bottom lip.
“It’s better that you don’t think about her,” Kate said, because Dustin’s eyelids were fluttering, and she could see his face tightening—as if he were having a memory. His lower lip trembled, and she stumbled out of the lines as she was drawing lipstick on it.
“Why did they send her to the circus?” Dustin said, and Kate looked deeply at his face. She could see that he was “remembering,” and it fascinated her.
He believed it.
“Well, obviously,” Wave said. “Because she was so deformed. She had to go to the circus because she was a freak.”
“Wave,” Kate said. “Don’t say ‘freak.’ ” She smiled at Dustin. “I thought she was beautiful,” she told him.
Dustin nodded. His lips parted as Kate touched the edge of his mouth with a tissue. “I thought she was beautiful, too,” he murmured.
“But you don’t really remember,” Wave said. “You were so little when they sent her away.”
“Yes I do!” Dustin said. He grimaced, and Kate gave Wave a hard look. Did she really want him to spaz out and run crying to his mom and dad, and then they’d get in trouble?
“Of course he remembers,” Kate told Wave. “It was his sister.” And then she leaned down and spok
e gently to him. “Tell us,” she said softly, and tucked his hair behind his ears, so it looked more like a pixie cut. “What do you remember about her, honey?”
His eyes dreamed up at her. “Well,” he said. “She had red eyes. Like a white rabbit has red eyes. And she had long white hair. And she had a hole in her stomach where she put her food.”
“Oh,” Kate said. “Interesting.”
“But I was sad that she had to leave,” Dustin said.
“We all were,” Kate said, and she and Wave widened their eyes at one another with astonished pleasure. “But we can’t talk about it, because it makes your mom cry. She couldn’t have any more babies after you were born.”
“I know that,” Dustin said.
—
It was a mean thing to do, they both agreed later. But it didn’t really hurt him, either. It was just…so interesting and funny.
“She had a hole in her stomach where she put her food,” Wave said. “Oh my God! Do you think he’s crazy?”
“No,” Kate said. “He’s just a spaz.”
“It’s going to be terrible for him when he gets older,” Wave said. “The boys are going to murder him.”
Kate shrugged.
“Well,” she said. “We have to protect him.”
The next time she saw Dustin—a few weeks later—she was alone in the tree house. She had stolen a pack of her mother’s cigarettes, and she was teaching herself to smoke. Wave didn’t know, and she liked that fact, though it also worried her. What if Wave also had secrets?
It was then that she heard Dustin talking—if that’s what you wanted to call it. It was a kind of noisy mumbling, like listening to the sound of a cartoon in another room. She peered over the railing and he was standing in the yard not far below, talking to himself and dancing around.
After she observed for a while, she guessed that he was pretending. He was whispering, mostly, though his voice rose and fell. He gestured while he talked, and then ran a little ways and pretended to hit himself on the chin, and then made the sound of a cartoon explosion, and then he drew himself up and squared his shoulders. “Why you…!” he exclaimed, and then he put his palms above his head in the pose that Superman makes when he is flying.
