“My arms!” He pretends to be offended, but I can see that he’s pleased. “You treat me like a piece of meat,” he complains.
“Let’s see if it can handle both of us.” I ignore him and climb onto his lap without being invited.
“You’re crushing me,” he groans dramatically. For a moment I remember the fat jokes in high school, the embarrassment I felt being the owner of my own skin. But Judah is joking, and I’m no longer fat.
I spin around to look at him. “How do you figure? You have no sensation in your legs.”
“Oh yeah,” he says playfully. “Let’s do this shit.”
“Onward!” I lift a fist into the air, and we surge forward on the sidewalk. It’s only when you’re pushing a wheelchair, or hitching a ride in one, that you notice how shitty sidewalks actually are. We are gliding forward at a snail’s pace, but I hold on for dear life, afraid I’ll be thrown by one of the cracks or the general unevenness of the sidewalk. There is a couple sitting on lawn chairs outside the bad people house. They cheer and hold up their drinks as we scoot by. I am conscious of everything during our painfully slow ride up the street—the way his arm wraps around my waist, his head peering around my arm to see where we are going, the sun warming our skin. We stop when we reach the eating house. I feel self-conscious being this close to the house while sitting on Judah’s lap. Judah looks up at the sagging, decrepit house. His eyes linger on the newspaper that covers the hole in my bedroom window.
“It’s kind of scary looking,” he says. “It feels like it’s looking at me, instead of me looking at it.” He moves his chair back and forth in absent little jerks, while I stand beside him, admiring the monster house. I hate the eating house, but I feel somewhat unsettled by his comment, like I need to say something to defend it.
“It’s … not that bad.” But, even as I say it, I can smell the mold and feel the relentless chill that creeps through the walls at night. “It is that bad,” I admit. “At night I always get the feeling that someone is watching me. And the wood floors give me splinters and shit.”
“And shit,” Judah says. “All right! Hop on, we’re going back!”
Despite his offer, I walk beside him, the hum of his chair reminding me of distant helicopter blades. As we pass the bad people house, Judah points to a twenty-dollar bill on the pavement. I bend to pick it up, glancing at the house like someone is going to come charging out, demanding their money back.
“Finders keepers,” says Judah. The bill is slightly damp. Someone had drawn horns on Andrew Jackson’s head and written Fuck you America underneath his picture in red ink. Suddenly, the memory of the last time I saw Nevaeh comes rushing back to me.
Neveah went missing with her backpack. The Hello Kitty backpack with the teddy bear stuffed at the bottom, and her matching wallet with her ten one-dollar bills folded neatly into the bill flap. The ten dollars that she never got to spend because she didn’t live a week past getting them. I remember her pulling out a purple marker from her pencil case and drawing a heart in the corner of each of the dollars her grandmother had given her. I remember thinking that it was an odd and endearing thing to do. Before the bus reached her stop, she had straightened the dollars into a pile and carefully placed them back in her wallet. I left her at the bus stop that day wondering what she would buy with her ten dollars, and imagining what I would have bought when I was her age. How exciting was the prospect of ten dollars to a little girl.
Had she died the same day she disappeared? It was something I thought of almost every day. I hoped so. I hoped that whoever took her didn’t make her suffer. To think of Nevaeh suffering caused a tightness in my chest that wouldn’t go away. I hope she died quickly, and that she didn’t know it was happening. Sometimes I fantasized about finding her before the sick bastard killed her. In my daydream, I would strangle the perpetrator, then pick Nevaeh up from the floor and carry her to Judah’s. There we would devise a plan to get her out of the Bone, together. We’d go somewhere bright, where the sun never stopped shining. I’d come back to reality, lying on my mattress and staring up at the ceiling, convincing myself that it was too late, and that she was already dead.
There were suspects who the police were questioning. That’s all they told us: suspects. I saw them in my mind as dark, shadowy figures without faces. How the police were finding these suspects, and who they were questioning, nobody knew. But Nevaeh was still making national headlines, and everyone was looking at the Bone, so the news had to say something positive about the case. Leads … detectives were always following leads. There were even reporters wandering around the Bone, wearing pressed khakis and Oxford shirts, carrying fancy messenger bags. They always wore a look of careful determination, like they were going to be the ones to unearth Nevaeh’s killer. Sometimes I saw them talking to the locals, trying to extract little bits of story here and there. I avoided them. They didn’t have a look of despair on their faces. I couldn’t trust that.
A few days into January I pass a man reading the paper as I walk to work. The charred remnants of Nevaeh’s Hello Kitty backpack are on the front page. The picture is grainy, and I glance at it for just a moment before I quickly remove my eyes, my heart pounding. The last time I had seen her, she’d been wearing that backpack, shiny and clean, and now the plastic on the backpack was bubbled and black. I remember her braids, and I wonder if they were still in her hair when the police found her body. I’d touched her hair, and then she died.
A week later I watch Lyndee Anthony count out five one-dollar bills, and hand them to cashier at Wal-Mart, the gallon of milk she’s buying tucked under her arm. Each dollar has a purple heart in its corner. I reach up to touch the pink hair tie on my wrist. That’s when I know I’m going to kill her.
IT TAKES TIME TO PLAN SOMEONE’S MURDER. There are a lot of things to consider; for one: you have to ask yourself if you are trying to kill an innocent woman. Two: how do you want this potentially innocent woman to die, and should you establish absolute non-innocence before reviewing your options? Three: if she were innocent, how did she get those dollars?
Poison is my first choice—clean and easy. But poison can be traced. And I don’t know Lyndee well enough to offer her an arsenic-laced bon bon, and there is always the chance someone else could eat it, then I really would be responsible for an innocent death. That would make me just like her.
There is strangulation, which sounds more appealing than poison, but takes more work. The risk that something could go wrong is bigger—I could be overpowered, or even caught.
I can buy a gun; there are ways. But guns are messy and loud. There is no art in a bullet. No class in a knife. I want her to die in the right way. A way that serves the most justice to my little Nevaeh.
Lyndee Anthony told police that the last time she saw her daughter was on the morning she disappeared, when she sent her off to school with her backpack. Nevaeh got off the school bus that afternoon, walked the two blocks to the bus stop on Bishop Hill, where she caught the 712 with the intention of going to her grandmother’s house. And on that rainy day, I braided her hair—cuffing the braid with the pink hair tie I now wear around my wrist—and bid her farewell, reminding her to be careful in the briny Bone. Which means Nevaeh went missing with her backpack, her hair in the pigtails I braided, and her ten one-dollar bills tucked safely away in her wallet. There was, of course, the possibility that Nevaeh drew that same purple heart on her mother’s dollars. It might have been her trademark. That’s what concerned me the most. Deciding a woman was guilty of murdering her only daughter based on a purple heart.
My worries about Lyndee being innocent are put to rest one evening in November when I decide to take the bus home from the Rag. In winter it gets dark around four o’ clock. The chill creeps in from the Sound, blowing over the Bone, then skirting on to Seattle. The early darkness paired with the dragging rain is enough to chase an avid walker to the bus. I stand huddled underneath the shelter, my jacket soaked from the short walk over. My limbs, which have become accusto
med to the walking, long to be stretched and pushed up hills. But, as I climb onto the bus and choose a seat in the back, I am glad to be out of the nasty weather. I wonder what Judah is doing tonight, and if he wants to watch a movie. When I look up, I notice Lyndee sitting across from me. Her short hair is plastered to her forehead like she was caught in a bad downpour. Aside from being wet, she looks quite happy, smiling down at her phone every time the chime of a text sounds. She’s not wearing the T-shirt with Nevaeh’s face this time, but a low-cut top and a cheap-looking necklace that spells out SEXY. When we arrive at her stop, she reaches for the backpack that has been sitting between her knees. Unzipping the top, she pulls out a bottle of water, upsetting some of the contents inside. Her keys come falling out, and I am given a glimpse of a small, pink bear—Bambi. My heart hammers.
I look away quickly. Too quickly. Lyndee sees my reaction and zips up the bag, her eyes fixed on my face in a bold challenge. Does she know who I am? Does she know I was one of the last people to see Nevaeh alive, and that I gave my statement to the police? I look out the rain-speckled window; I look at the ripped seat next to me. I cannot look at her face. Everything I’m feeling is naked on my face. She had something to do with it. My heart feels sore, like it’s tired and bruised. Mothers hurting their children, mothers giving up on their children, mothers loving something more than their children. I watch her sling one strap over her shoulder and climb off the bus in a hurry. To get away from me? I follow her down the stairs. When we reach the pavement, we head in opposite directions. For several minutes I keep my eyes straight ahead, pointed toward Wessex and the eating house. But, as I pass the corner store, and Knick Knack waves to me from the window, my curiosity gets the best of me. I stop walking and turn just my head, just enough so that I can see her. She’s already looking at me, paused on the sidewalk, her whole body facing my direction. I am racked with chills. She turns on her heel, quickly, almost running now. I watch her with the bitter look of conviction. I’ve convicted her in my head. Me, the jury of one. And I’ve issued her a death sentence. I decide to burn her, the same way she burned her daughter. An eye for an eye.
I COLLECT THINGS. It’s an art to buy weapons and not look suspicious. Rope, a hunting knife, arsenic, sleeping pills—my mother has a myriad. I won’t use most of them, but it’s become a compulsion. I think about burning Lyndee every day. I don’t buy a new lighter because I have the pink one and also a book of matches. That’s what I’ll use. I wonder if I’ll be able to watch, or if it will make me squeamish.
Some days, when I see her around town, laughing and flirting, I decide that I’ll watch every moment—the bubbling and crackling of her skin, the charring of her pretty white flesh. And other days—days when I feel sad and sluggish—I just want it to be over: fast and clean. She shouldn’t be here, walking around … living. It irks me. When I watch her, I pick at myself—the skin around my fingernails, the sides of my mouth. I have little scabs on the back of my neck and behind my ears. But I watch her every day. Just to be sure. You can never be too sure.
In the time not spent watching Lyndee, I search the house for my birth certificate. I get it now. Why my mother wouldn’t let me see it. She didn’t want me to see who was listed as my father. But I want to get a driver’s license. Open a bank account. I find it one day as I’m searching the attic. It’s stuffed in the middle of a book tossed with all my mother’s things. It’s one of those travel books that people get when they’re going to Europe. It’s yellowed, turned up at the edges. Well worn. I wonder if she was planning a trip before I was born. Perhaps with Mayor Delafonte. But who cares? I have my birth certificate. She listed him as my father. I can’t imagine why except if she was keeping it to use against him. Ammunition. My mother wasn’t stupid; she was just mentally ill.
I call from the Rag and make an appointment to take the test to get my learner’s permit. That will have to do for now. I need a way to leave if I have to. I stress for weeks about how I’m going to get Lyndee alone. Should I drug her? Lure her somewhere? Would she come alone? I planned for every possibility. Plan A. Plan B. Plan C. That’s what you need: a dozen plans in case something happens to change Plan A. I can’t sleep at night when the eating house is awake, making noises around me. I catnap during the day and stay up most nights—planning, thinking about the tiny coffin in the oven, the little body in the corner of my mother’s bedroom. Bones and blood, all in the eating house. Children died because of the evil inside of grownups. Selfish evil. The only time I don’t think about killing Lyndee Anthony is when Judah is near. He takes all of my vengeance away. Replaces it. But he’s not around very often anymore. His father comes to get him in his big, shiny truck, wheelchair folded into the cab, Judah’s face smiling. I am jealous, and I am not. I want him to have things, be happy.
I am in bed. I squeeze my eyes shut, block out the shadows that are dancing across my ceiling. Next to me, on the floor, is a bottle of chloroform that I paid Mo to make. Five hundred dollars for ten measly ounces. But Mo doesn’t ask questions, and that’s worth every penny. I open my eyes and pick up the bottle, lifting it to my face. I sniff, but there is no odor. Everything is sealed so there won’t be any accidents. Chloroform seemed like the boring choice at the time, but sometimes a choice needs to be boring to work.
When the sun comes up, I sleep. Just for a few flat hours while the house is still. Lyndee Anthony is up, eating the strawberry yogurt she buys from the market—have some in the fridge downstairs—putting on her uniform for another workday at the carwash. Today will be her last day. Today will be a good day.
At noon I get up, dress. I go to the shed first, to get things ready, then I stop by the carwash to make sure Lyndee is there. I see her through the window, talking to a customer. She hands him his change and points in the direction of the coffee machine, where customers can sit and drink muddy caffeine while their cars are pushed through the washer and dried by two meth heads named Jeremy and Coops, who I went to school with. I touch the rubber band on my arm as I watch her, and suddenly I am struck by what I am about to do. It’s like I am looking at myself from some high vantage point outside of my body—a stranger. I remember the girl, who, just a few months ago, was timid and afraid. Now she is something else. Something deadly. Determined. I am scared of her. I go home to wait out the afternoon. At six o’clock it begins to rain. That was not in my plan. I worry about the rain making it difficult to drag Lyndee’s body through the woods. But, in the end, I know that I will get her to the cabin … rain or not.
Two blocks over from where Lyndee lives is a small park bordered by the woods. It’s a decrepit excuse for a park—a patch of dirt with a swing and a grungy yellow tunnel slide jutting from a wooden platform. The neighborhood kids don’t really play there anymore. There are swear words spray painted down the slide, and you can always find a used condom inside of the slide. Teenagers come here to drink—late at night normally. I will be gone by the time they arrive.
For three weeks I’ve been leaving Lyndee love notes. Sometimes I put them in her mailbox—a plain white envelope with her name—or I leave them in her cubby at work when she has a day off, sneaking into the break room when the girl at the desk goes to the bathroom. In the notes, I pretend to be a man named Sean, who lost a son to drowning four years ago. Sean is empathetic to Lyndee, complimenting the poise with which she handles the negative media attention. He tells her about the ridicule he received from friends and family as they blamed him for his son’s death. At first it was just Sean writing her all the notes, but then he gave her the option of writing back to him … so they could really get to know each other. You can leave a note taped to the bottom of the slide at the park on Thames. Within a day of his last note, Lyndee left a three-page response taped with duct tape to the underside of the slide. Her handwriting is childish, little circles dotting each “i.” She does not speak about Nevaeh in her letters, instead detailing her own suffering, the injustice with which she’s always been dealt. It makes me hate her mor
e that she won’t talk about her dead daughter. I test her, writing long details about Sean’s son, telling her stories, and in turn asking her to tell me about Nevaeh. She ignores the topic of her daughter altogether to talk about herself, over and over. I become angrier at each bubble-dotted letter. More sure.
Judah would defend her—say that she’s lonely and has trouble talking about Nevaeh. But her letters are too sensual in nature. She’s flirting with Sean, playing the part of the vulnerable, grieving mother. Steve had broken up with Lyndee shortly after they let her out of jail, saying she brought too much drama to his life. He moved out of the house they shared with their roommates, and in to a house with Genevieve Builo, his high school sweetheart. Lyndee, scorned and still under media scrutiny, needed a hero. I decided to be that hero. During the first week or two of us exchanging letters, she would wait at the park to see if “Sean” would show up to collect her note. But eventually she would grow tired of waiting in the rain, and walk home, my note stuffed in her backpack. I am still astounded that she didn’t question things more. Become suspicious. But the truth of the matter—as I’ve come to understand it—is that people will ignore every warning sign when blinded by their thirst for something. It’s better to not be thirsty.
It’s dark when she arrives. She’s told no one she’s coming; she’s afraid of the media finding out. They’ll say awful things about me if they hear I’m happy, she said in her last letter. I agreed, saying we should meet in secret. So we agree. The shed in the woods. Take the path by the park, walk half a mile. I smile when I see the yellow glow of her flashlight through the trees.
THE NIGHT IS COLD. I can see my breath—human steam disappearing into the night. I wait for Lyndee to wake, blinking languidly at the space on the floor where I’ve laid her. I have no sense of urgency, no need to move, and fidget, and do. I’m content to wait. My thoughts are delicate, forming frail arguments of why I shouldn’t be doing this, then breaking apart in the firmness of my resolve. So, I watch Lyndee, I watch my breath, I wait. In the early hours she stirs, mumbling something under her breath and rolling onto her back. Despite her impending death, I’ve brought a blanket and spread it across her body. In her sleep she pulls it tighter around herself. I shift on my stool, sighing deeply. It was easy—so easy. She fell right to the floor, the rag pressed to her nose.
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