What We Kill

by Howard Odentz

  “Right now, you’re my problem, you fucking dyke,” the deep, hoarse voice says. “Put it the hell away.”

  “Whatever,” Val says, and then the video stops.

  What?

  What?

  In the here and now, Anders takes the phone and hands it back to Val. Then he turns to Barry Kupperman and says, “It’s over, right?”

  “Yeah,” says Barry, still squatting on the ground with blood oozing out of his face. “It’s over.”

  “Good,” says Anders and stomps away from me like I’m the one who’s done something wrong and just the sight of me will make him want to punch a wall or something.

  Why me?

  What did I do?

  Feeling so far lost that I’ll probably never be found, I turn to Val Buenavista and say, “Who was the guy who told you to stop filming?” She shakes her head and takes a swig out of the bottle she’s holding. “Please,” I say, and my voice goes up half an octave.

  “You’re the one who brought him here,” she slurs, and I squint my eyes.

  “Huh?”

  “The asshole with the afro. He’s your friend.”

  Last night, when the four of us showed up at The Stumps, we had two other guys and a girl with us. I don’t have any memory of them. Still, it’s all right there on Val’s video. It happened, and it can never un-happen.

  There was a greasy guy with Marcy.

  There was a skanky girl with Anders.

  There was a guy with an afro who threatened Val Buenavista.

  Myers was tripping out and I was hiding in the shadows like I always do.

  But there’s one thing I know for sure. Barry might think it’s over, and for him, it probably is. As for the rest of us, it’s not over.

  It’s not over at all.

  36

  MARCY IS SITTING in the driver’s seat of her car. She’s staring straight ahead, but she’s probably a million miles away on a planet where only she and Anders live. Myers is curled up in her back seat. We haven’t decided what we’re going to do about him yet. Even though we’ve already covered ourselves and he’s not going home for the night to his fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck of a mother, part of me thinks that he needs to go to a hospital.

  None of us do drugs, but we’re not stupid. His pupils are dilated so much they look like they are going to give birth at any moment, and what will crawl out of them is an abomination.

  Even though I know a hospital is probably the right thing to do—even the smart thing to do, I know we’re not going to bring Myers to one. That’s too many cans of worms being opened at the same time, all wriggling around in a sad mass, addled and confused like the gray matter inside our heads.

  Anders is in the back seat of my truck. Like before, he’s staring out the window, also a million miles away but probably light years from the planet that Marcy is on.

  As for me, I’m leaning against my door. I don’t want to get behind the wheel yet. I need to process what just happened. I need to know what it all means.

  Everyone lives through one bad day. I don’t mean bad like you get a B on an important paper when you think that you are going to get an A. I mean, a really, really shitty day that will never leave for good. For years to come, when you least expect it, a particularly terrible part of that day will crawl its way to the surface of your memory and play over again, just enough for you to be reminded how miserable you felt having ever lived it at all.

  Today is that day for me.

  As I lean against the driver’s side door of my pick-up, I close my eyes and squeeze the muscles on my face really hard. Like an epic zit, I imagine that if I apply enough pressure, the grossness that’s inside will shoot out and I’ll get some temporary relief.

  No matter how hard I try, my face won’t pop.

  I need my memories. I need them to come back right now so I know what to do next. How can they be gone? How can they vanish into thin air?

  Anders with a skanky girl from another town is old news. He’s done that dance before. Myers and I aren’t quite ready for that sort of thing yet. Myers is still a child. As for me, I’m not the same person that I was a year ago. I’m somebody newly minted, who’s half the size I used to be, and I don’t know who that person is.

  I might very well be someone who picks up strangers, parties with people he doesn’t know, and gets shitfaced with the popular burnouts.

  I’m certainly someone who sports a triangle brand that aliens may or may not have given me, although that theory is rapidly deteriorating and being replaced by something darker and much more sinister.

  I’m definitely someone who will always be from Running Man’s town—Dr. Viktor Pavlovich—the murderer of Covington Circle.

  “Weston?”

  Marcy has gotten out of her car, walked around the hood, and is now leaning up against her passenger side door so that we are facing each other. I’m so lost in my thoughts that I don’t even notice her at first. When I finally pull my eyes free from whatever scary daydream is playing out in front of them, I’m once again stunned by how pretty she is.

  Anders is such an asshole. Why did he have to go and push her? Why did he have to do any of the things he’s done today, flip-flopping like a droplet of oil on a hot skillet?

  How could he?

  “I’m here,” I say to her. The truth is, I’ve always been here, ever since I can remember. I’ve always been the shoulder to cry on or the friend who will listen.

  “I’m scared,” she says.

  If I were a better person—if I were a better man—I would engulf her in a bear hug and tell her that everything is going to be okay, but I’m not that kind of person. Maybe someday I’ll morph into whoever he is, but right now, I’m only a frightened child in a foreign body, scared and alone.

  “Me, too,” I say with my arms crossed over my chest, hugging myself for comfort instead of asking for it from somebody else.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Do?” I ask her. “About what?”

  Ordinarily it would sound like a really dumb question, but it’s not. There are so many things we should probably do. Each of them will lead us down a different path and I don’t know where to start.

  Marcy swallows hard. I hope she doesn’t think that I’m powering down. The last thing Marcy needs is all three of us—Anders, me, and Myers—as useless husks. I just don’t know which way to turn.

  I’m literally afraid to get back into the car with Anders. I have no idea what he’ll do. I’m clueless about Myers. I don’t get this whole drug thing, or flashbacks, or any of it. I just have to hope he’ll sleep it off because that’s about the only thing he can do.

  I don’t know what to make of us being at The Stumps last night with three other people that none of us seem to know. I don’t even know what to make of seeing the greasy guy with the long hair pawing at Marcy.

  How does that even happen?

  How?

  Marcy closes her eyes and says, “I’m going back to my house. I’ll take Myers and stick him in my bedroom. Hopefully he won’t sleep for a year or wake up and start talking about space stuff.”

  I nod my head. “Okay.” I look over my shoulder at Anders sitting in my back seat. “What about him?”

  I really want Marcy to tell me to leave Anders at The Stumps and let him figure out everything for himself. I really want her to tell me that Anders needs an enormous time out away from everyone and everything, but she doesn’t. Instead she says, “Bring him. We’ll figure this out together.”

  I take a deep breath and shake my head.

  Together.

  We’ll figure this whole mess out together or maybe we’ll never figure it out at all. Honestly, who’s to say?

  37

  IT’S 3:15. NOT TOO many hours ago, my world was very di
fferent than it is right now. There was no blood. There was no death. Sandra Berman was a distant memory, and Dr. Viktor Pavlovich was just Running Man, the good looking older guy who Marcy sometimes fantasized about because he had a nice ass.

  Anders was a good guy. He wasn’t a prick. He was nice and funny. He was my brother. Now, that relationship has been severed at the knees and once something is cut like that, I don’t think it can ever grow back.

  Drugs? How can you even say the words ‘wasted’ or ‘shitfaced’ in the same breath as you say our names? Things like that don’t happen.

  Still, they are happening. They’re happening to all of us.

  Back at Marcy’s house we somehow manage to get a spaced-out Myers up the spiral staircase, through the living room, and into Marcy’s wreck of a bedroom. Marcy and I drag him between us, his feet barely scraping against the ground, as he mutters nonsense about space.

  Meanwhile, Anders locks himself in the bathroom, the same bathroom where Tate Cole took a knife to him so many years ago while he was trying to defend Marcy. Anders showers for a second time. If I were him, I would be scrubbing and scrubbing until all the dirt of the day comes off, but I think skin would be coming off with all the filth, and a red pool of slime would be circling the drain.

  Not too long ago, the four of us rented a horror movie about a girl who was possessed. Myers made us watch it. He was geeking out over how good it was supposed to be. The movie sucked. Still, I’ll never forget what the possessed girl said when she tried to describe what it felt like to have a demon inside of her.

  She said she felt like she would never be clean again.

  If that’s true, I must be possessed because I feel covered in dirt.

  Marcy and I turn on the television in the kitchen, flipping channels to find anything that’s not about Meadowfield, but who are we kidding? We are sucked right back into the horror as soon as we hit upon a news anchor showing familiar pictures, along with that dreaded clip of the dotted girl sitting with her legs dangling out the back of an ambulance, screaming and staring at us.

  We watch and we listen, but somehow the words aren’t hitting anywhere beyond the surface of a dream. My mind is floating far away, desperately trying to remember anything about last night and coming up woefully empty.

  My memories have been scooped out of my head and thrown down a deep, dark drain. I’ll never recall lurking in the woods at The Stumps, hiding in the shadows with a beer in my hand. The weird thing is that I don’t even drink. I’ve tasted beer once, and it tasted like ass. I wouldn’t be holding a bottle in my hands unless someone put it there.

  On Val Buenavista’s little video, I’m nothing more than a human coaster—a prop in a movie along with all the rest of the background noise.

  “. . . name is Calista Diamond,” says the newscaster on the TV. “Eighteen-year-old Diamond is a resident of Bellingham, Massachusetts. No more is known about her in this developing story. Once again, we are live here in Meadowfield, Massachusetts where tragedy has struck this small New England community . . . ”

  The newscaster keeps talking, but I no longer care to listen. Marcy doesn’t either. She’s sitting on the counter again staring at her feet. In the background I can tell that Anders is still in the shower. There is a steady hum running through the household. It’s the sound of water rushing through the pipes. It’s the sound of water washing away the dirt that is never going to wash away.

  My stomach gurgles and Marcy looks up at me.

  “Eat something,” she says.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Marcy gives me a look that only a caring parent would give to a child if that child told a huge lie and got caught. “Eat,” she says again.

  I stare at the empty pizza box, still sitting on the kitchen island. Knowing Mr. and Mrs. Cole and their knack for living in chaos, that pizza box will probably sit there for weeks until little bits of congealed sauce and cheese stuck to the lid will turn fuzzy, signifying that it is no longer food.

  There was a time not too long ago when I would scrape that excess cheese off the cardboard, remnants of pizza sliding under my fingernails, and suck on my fingers until every last bit of it was in my mouth, down my throat, and right to my stomach where it would be morphed into fat cells to be painted on my sides, layer after layer.

  There was a time when I would order two small pizzas from Rinaldo’s Pizza, one Hawaiian and one with everything on it, have them delivered, tip the guy way too much, then go hide in my room and alternate eating different flavored slices while steadily flipping channels, trying to find anything that would pull me away from Beryl, and reality, and my sad, miserable life.

  Not anymore.

  “Why can’t this be yesterday?” Marcy whimpers. She’s going to cry again, and I’m not going to know what to do.

  Meanwhile, the reporter on the background keeps blathering on and on and says that name again.

  “ . . . Calista Diamond. The eighteen-year-old resident of Bellingham, Massachusetts appears to be the only survivor rescued from the house that you see behind me,” he says.

  I stare at the pizza box, not really listening, not really thinking. Suddenly, the words on the lid, with a picture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and a fat chef, all printed in red, pop out at me, like they are the biggest things in the room.

  They say, ‘Pizza Depot, Bellingham, MA.’

  Bellingham.

  Bellingham.

  BELLINGHAM.

  I stare at the white box on the Coles’ counter as something awful walks into my head, squats down, and takes a dump right in the middle of my brain. Without even knowing what’s happening, my world turns on its side. I topple off the kitchen stool I’m sitting on and hit the ground with a thud.

  38

  I’VE FALLEN ON my burned triangle and a sickening jolt of pain runs up my arm, but I don’t care.

  “Are you okay?” Marcy blurts out.

  No. No. I’m not okay. I’m not okay at all.

  “Where did that come from?” I babble, as I struggle to my feet, pulling the upended kitchen stool along with me.

  “Where did what come from?” Marcy asks, her eyebrows creased and her face painted with confusion.

  I back up against the counter until I can’t back up anymore. “That,” I say, raising one hand and pointing at the pizza box.

  “What?” says Marcy, not even quite sure what I’m pointing at. There is so much junk piled everywhere that I could be talking about a stack of newspapers or a bowl full of browning bananas or a pile of woefully out-of-date telephone books.

  “That,” I say again, not using my words. “That . . . the . . . the . . . ”

  Marcy follows my pointed finger and shrugs. “I don’t know,” she says.

  Still, I continue holding my arm out, with my extended finger pushing at air so vehemently that I might as well be clutching a crucifix and holding it up against a vampire.

  “It’s . . . it’s . . .” I jabber but the words can’t form anything coherent. All I know is that the word ‘Bellingham’ is printed on the box. The reporter just said Bellingham. What’s more, there’s something else that I can’t quite remember that has me scared silly, but I don’t want to look at it. If I have to look at it then I’m going to have to think about it, and if I have to think about it, my head might crack in two.

  Marcy leans over and reaches out for the pizza box.

  “It’s empty,” she says, not understanding what I’m trying to say. “Myers ate the last couple of pieces.”

  “The box,” I cry. “Read it. Read the box.”

  She picks it up and turns it around in her hands.

  “Pizza Depot,” she says. “Where’s that?”

  “Read it,” I say again, almost whining. I think I might cry.

  “Pizza Depot,” she says agai
n. “Bellingham, MA.”

  I watch her face, waiting scant seconds before I see the color drain from it in a palpable way. Her eyes turn glassy. I wait for her to add two and two together and come up with the fact that the reporter on the television has just said that the survivor girl, Calista Diamond, is from Bellingham, Massachusetts. Now we have an empty pizza box from there, too. It was filled with pizza that none of us remember ordering or eating, except for Myers a couple of hours ago when he scarfed up the remaining two pieces.

  Marcy opens her mouth. She’s smart. We all are. We’re all going to go away to college next year to make something of ourselves. That’s what kids from Meadowfield are expected to do.

  She says, “Tate’s in Bellingham. He’s at The Bellingham School.”

  The air rushes out of me in a great whoosh. Marcy’s smart. She’s just a different kind of smart than me. She doesn’t add the facts together the same way I do. She adds them together using new math and coming up with a new answer that’s as viable and true as mine.

  I feel my legs grow weak and noodle-like. I expect them to buckle under me at any moment because I’m as huge as a house.

  But I’m not.

  Things are different now. I just haven’t gotten the memo yet.

  Tate Cole, the demon of Primrose Lane, lives in Bellingham, and now, eighteen-year-old Calista Diamond who survived Viktor Pavlovich’s shredding blades is from Bellingham, too.

  So is that pizza box.

  So is that pizza.

  How?

  How?

  Anders comes walking into the kitchen with his jeans on, no shirt, toweling his hair. He doesn’t look at us. He looks at the floor. I think some part of him is embarrassed for everything he’s said and everything he’s done since we woke up this morning.

  “I can’t be here,” he whispers.

  “Fuck you,” I say, not because I’m angry at him. I say it because he doesn’t have a choice. He has to be here. We all have to be here. Myers is in Marcy’s room, tripping out on something that none of us know square one about, and now there is a pizza box here, in Marcy’s house, that has no right being here. It’s from a town that’s about an hour away from Meadowfield and none of us, not one of us, ordered a pizza from Bellingham last night, even if we were totally blitzed out of our minds.