What We Kill

by Howard Odentz

  “No,” says Marcy.

  “Not up to you,” he says.

  “It’s not up to you, either,” she tells him. “Don’t you get it? We’re all in this together, whatever ‘this’ is. So we’re all going to see it through.”

  Anders stiffens. It’s a new look for him. Anders Stephenson trying to hold in a powder keg of anger is something that none of us are used to seeing. After a moment, his shoulders drop and he lets a quiet sigh slip from his lips.

  “Fine,” he whispers.

  “Good,” says Marcy.

  I clutch my to-do list in my left hand and stare down at the bandage I have on the triangle. The fact that I’ve been able to blot out the pain emanating from the burn is almost surreal. It’s been there all day, a persistent stinging without end, but I’ve stubbornly refused to acknowledge its presence.

  Whatever I’m doing must be obvious. Myers says, “Still hurt?”

  I look up and my friends are all staring at me—beautiful Marcy, angry Anders, and Myers in a ridiculously oversized shirt. I catch all their eyes and hold them in mine as the light outside turns a deep burnt orange that is only reserved for this time of year in New England, and without realizing it, I start to cry.

  Marcy’s face scrunches up, but it’s not because she’s going to cry, too. It’s because I know she finally, finally feels the totality of my pain. Not only the pain in my arm, or the weirdness of the drugs. She feels everything.

  Myers buttons his lips. No snarky comments spill out of his mouth. No sarcasm.

  Anders is there, too. I see a glimpse of the protector that I’ve always known. He’s always been there for me, for all of us, and he’s still there. Right now his pain is as big as any of ours, but he’s still the old Anders deep inside. I know he is.

  So my tears fall, getting harder and faster, spilling out of my eyes so freely that I can’t do anything but let them fill up imaginary buckets at my feet that will be swiftly taken away by walking broomsticks, only for more buckets to be filled and more broomsticks to take them away.

  This time, however, no magical wizard is going to suddenly appear and make everything better with some sort of lame morality lesson.

  What’s left is only me and my friends, the decisions we make, and the lies that we tell ourselves and others out of sheer self-preservation.

  I cry, and I cry, and I cry. Suddenly, Marcy is there, right in front of me, pulling me to her in a tender embrace. Myers is there too, his floppy sleeves curling around the two of us as best as he can.

  Finally Anders gets up, comes to stand in front of our mass of tears, limbs, and emotions, and engulfs all of us in his lanky basketball arms. He squeezes, in probably the most real and profound way that he has ever hugged anyone, ever.

  “We’ll get through this,” the old Anders whispers, his mouth pushed into Marcy’s hair and his arms grasping onto all of us in an embrace that none of us want to ever end. “That’s what we’ll do. We’ll get through this. Together.”

  54

  THEY SAY THAT everybody is searching for their fifteen minutes of fame. I’m not. I’ve never wanted that kind of publicity. Others want it though, like people who are only famous for being famous without ever doing anything to earn the notoriety. They plaster themselves all over social media in a desperate attempt to add meaning to their lives, because, let’s face it—none of us really know why we’re here, or why we’re put through some of the hell that’s heaped upon our heads like foggy whipped cream christened with a blood red cherry.

  I’m not so sure Calista Diamond was after her fifteen minutes of fame when she left The Bellingham School yesterday. I think she was more into letting her inner demons out to play. The way I see it, Calista wasn’t looking to force feed herself to the masses. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what she did when she landed in the middle of Meadowfield and somehow ended up inside the lair of Viktor Pavlovich.

  I don’t think she expected a monster to shave her head, mark her with black ink for a fantastically brutal death, and churn her special brand of crazy into something even crazier. I don’t think she thought beyond what was going to happen to her once she found herself locked inside that house down on Covington Circle.

  I think she expected her life to end.

  Pffft. All gone.

  That’s not how it happened for her.

  She wasn’t sliced into bits, maybe in a lunatic’s insane attempt to make her into his version of ‘pretty.’ Somehow, she got free, and when she did, her quiet, crazy life was turned on end.

  What she found out in front of Viktor Pavlovich’s house was noise and people, cops and reporters. There were camera flashes and Eye Witness News choppers overhead. There was so much chaos that even a normal person would have probably gone mad from all the fanfare.

  It turns out, Calista was about as far away from normal as you can get.

  I keep saying ‘was,’ not ‘is,’ because sometime today, long before Val Buenavista and Ebon Ross ever showed up at the Cole’s house with a cell phone featuring a video from last night at The Stumps, Calista Diamond died.

  I’m so stunned as I watch the television in Marcy’s kitchen that I start to think that I’ve gone mad. How can this be real? How can any of this be real?

  This morning, shortly after Calista had to be pinned down and sedated in the back of an ambulance in front of thousands, she was transferred to an out-of-the-way hospital for observation.

  She couldn’t be brought to Stairway to Heaven over the border in Connecticut. It was too close to home. Also, that’s where Running Man worked. The place was probably crawling with the press. That would have been a mistake.

  They couldn’t bring her to Baystate in Springfield. The hospital is too big and there would have been too many people. News reporters and murder junkies would have descended on the place, flooding the hallways in a gross attempt to get a look at the girl who lived.

  In the end, she was taken to a small hospital called Wang Memorial up in Apple, the creepy town that Annie Berg had moved away from. I had never heard of Wang Memorial before. People in Meadowfield don’t go to hospitals like Wang. If we have a hangnail, we go straight to Boston to a top-notch specialist who doesn’t take insurance, because he or she is better than that.

  That’s how Meadowfield people think. If something costs more, it’s superior.

  Anyway, while up at Wang Memorial, Calista went even more bonkers than she already was. She managed to get a gun away from one of the officers who was probably taking her to a nice, comfy, and most likely padded room where she could rest and get her head on straight. It was all for her own good. As far as the news said, she wasn’t being charged with anything. She was the victim, not the assailant. She did nothing wrong.

  The grainy surveillance footage that has been cut, edited and streamed on television so fast that you would think the whole thing was planned, shows that Calista thought something entirely different.

  “I’m not going away for murder,” she screams, waving the gun wildly around, pointing it at anything that moves. A young cop, chunky, even though he probably had to go through cop training, climb a rope, or even do a dozen push-ups, stands there with his hands stretched out in front of him, like maybe he thinks he can catch a bullet between his fingers. The footage doesn’t show his face but I’m sure it’s riddled with terror. He’s probably the one who was stupid enough to let her get his gun.

  “Put it down, Calista,” orders a woman cop with her hair cut short and two hands pointing her own gun at the crazy bald girl.

  “I’m not going away,” screams Calista again, “It’s not my fault.” She points the gun at the woman, and then at the guy, then back at the woman again. “He deserved it,” she cries. ‘He good goddamned deserved it.”

  Then something insane happens.

  Calista Diamond turns the gun around an
d points it at herself. She screws her face into a knot, and although we really can’t see the details, I’m sure she’s crying big, angry tears. The chunky cop doesn’t move. He’s frozen in that weird position with his hands out in front of him and his knees slightly bent.

  “Put the gun down,” barks the woman cop one more time.

  Calista sniffs, closes her eyes, and says, “Oh, fuck it,” although what they show on screen is her saying, “Oh, BEEP it.”

  Then she stuffs the muzzle of the gun in her mouth and pulls the trigger, effectively ending up the same way that Dr. Viktor Pavlovich planned for her to end up all along.

  Dead.

  It’s just that she didn’t die by his hands. She died by her own.

  “Oh my God,” Marcy says, stunned. She is holding a box of matches and little plastic bottle of lighter fluid that she found in her Dad’s part of the basement. The four of us, together, are getting ready to go back to Prince Richard’s Maze where everything started this morning, and get Anders clothes from where they’re hidden in The Grandfather Tree.

  We’re going to burn them until there is nothing left but ash.

  “That didn’t just happen,” whimpers Myers.

  “Damn,” says Anders as he stares at the television.

  The reporter, who’s from national news and not a local station, continues to speak. “In a new twist in the ongoing tragedy unfolding in Meadowfield, Massachusetts, the sole survivor rescued from Dr. Viktor Pavlovich’s house has taken her own life.” More words follow, but I stop listening to them as they drone on.

  I don’t understand the sick media coverage that won’t end.

  I don’t understand why puking on a microphone is news.

  I don’t understand why Calista Diamond killed herself and her suicide is being broadcast on national TV for everyone to see, like we live in a weird sort of reality where horrific images are what feed our world.

  Soon, the station is going to cut to a commercial, and the commercial is going to be selling ice cream or diapers, and then it’s going to go cut back to the lead story of the day and show the brutal footage all over again.

  I think I’m losing my mind.

  Either me—or the rest of the world.

  55

  MARCY HOLDS THE lighter fluid in one hand and the television remote in the other. The screen is blank. She’s thankfully turned it off because we’ve all had just about enough. Besides, I have a sinking feeling that this is only the beginning. A new worry, glaring and urgent, comes rushing to the surface.

  “We’re screwed,” I whisper. “We are so screwed.”

  No one says anything. Our little Kumbaya moment that we all shared before we found out that Calista Diamond blew her brains out up at Wang Memorial in Apple is a distant memory.

  The idea that we’ll ever get through whatever ‘this’ happens to be is starting to grow transparent, like smoke.

  Smoke disappears. What’s left behind is fire, and fire is deadly.

  “Shit,” whispers Anders under his breath.

  “What?” says Myers. I should feel bad for him. He’s woefully behind the rest of us. I suppose that has to do with him eating a couple pieces of cold, drugged pizza this afternoon. I shouldn’t blame him for not putting the inevitable together.

  “How much time do we have?” I ask. I’m not looking at Myers or Anders. I’m looking at Marcy. Nobody matters right now except for those whose last name is Cole.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “It will be quick, though. I think it will be really fast.”

  Myers, in Marcy’s dad’s oversized shirt, wraps the loose sleeves around himself. He actually squirms in an absurd way like he’s getting ready to have a tantrum. “What are you talking about?” he whines.

  Anders stares down at his feet, probably trying to find that hiding place between the two of them where he’s never had to venture before. He’s never had the need. “Before the police come here,” he says.

  Myers’ one real eye grows so round and wide that I think it’s going to fall out of his head like his other one probably did somewhere in Prince Richard’s Maze last night. “Why . . . why would the police come here?” he whines, growing smaller and smaller until he seems as though he might actually disappear down the sliver of a crack in the hardwood floor of the Cole’s kitchen.

  “Because we’re in high school, and we were drugged.” I snap. “Because, even coming down off of the effects of getting wasted, we’ve been smart enough to put two and two together and figure out that Calista Diamond, her friends, and freaking Tate all know each other.” There’s an acidity to my voice that’s fairly close to the acerbic way that Anders has been talking all day. I’m well aware that the words are burning when they come out of my mouth. They aren’t burning like my scar, but they’re burning.

  Marcy licks her lips. “West is right,” she says. “Tate is at The Bellingham School. His friends all left The Bellingham School and came to Meadowfield. Tate’s family is from Meadowfield. Tate’s twin is from Meadowfield.” She takes a deep breath. “I don’t know if it’s going to be the police, or reporters, or maybe even someone who wasn’t totally shitfaced last night at The Stumps, but people know we were with that girl last night. That . . . that Calista person. First she was in Running Man’s house. Now she’s dead. Of course there are going to be questions.”

  “We don’t have the answers,” I say. “We don’t even know her, or that guy with the greasy hair or the other one with the afro.” Marcy looks pained when I mention the greasy guy. Her face turns red.

  “Don’t we?” says Anders.

  We’re all quiet.

  Anders’ words unleash a huge bomb that explodes over everything and leaves little invisible pieces of shrapnel flying in all directions.

  ‘Don’t we?’

  ‘Don’t we?’

  Do we?

  Marcy puts the lighter fluid down on the kitchen island and turns around so that her back is facing the rest of us. She bows her head and her shoulders start to tremble. The first thing I realize is that I’m not the only one having memories of the last twenty-four hours. I think we all are but don’t want to admit it.

  Then, without warning, and brutally honest, Anders’ words tumble into my head and open up a combination lock that has been hiding the events of the last day behind it since I woke up this morning.

  Another memory falls into place, vague and amorphous, but still there, like a dream, or a memory of a dream where you have to fill in the missing pieces as best you can.

  I’m downstairs in Marcy’s basement with Anders. He’s flipping through an old Playboy magazine that is part of a collection her father keeps in a bin underneath the stairs. The glossy pages are foreign to me. Nobody buys magazines anymore. Everyone goes on the Internet and looks at stuff.

  In my memory, he’s making comments about some of the pictures, but I know that can’t be true. Anders has never been like that. I guess we’ve all grown up thinking that it’s crass to talk about people like they’re sex objects.

  Meadowfield people are more civilized, or we’d like to think that we are.

  Myers certainly isn’t. He’s there, too. He’s wearing his Master Baiter tee-shirt and eating something out of a bag. I don’t know what it is, but Myers is a bottomless pit so it could be anything that he’s found in the Cole’s junk drawer. Anything at all.

  As for me, in my memory I’m hungry but I’m also relishing the hunger pangs. Since losing weight I have come to regard my hunger pangs as close, close friends. We go everywhere together. The more insistent they are, the more powerful I feel. I might not be able to control much, but I can control them.

  I feel as though I can control them forever.

  ‘Knock. KnockKnockKnock.’

  I remember the knocking and I remember wondering why anyone woul
d be knocking on the door from the basement to the garage, but I don’t think much about it. Myers doesn’t move. Anders doesn’t stop flipping through the pages of the magazine. Marcy is nowhere, but I think in reality she’s upstairs in her bedroom probably sifting through clothes or trying on shoes.

  So I go to the door, but in my memory, I float to the door, my feet barely touching the ground, and I open it.

  A greasy guy is standing there wearing sunglasses. I’ve never seen him before and my brain registers a whole lot of things all at once. First, I think he needs zit medicine. His face is covered with red welts. Second, I notice his hair and realize that the greasy look isn’t as much a fashion statement as it is an unfortunate outcome of never being taught that you have to bathe on a regular basis.

  I barely notice the sunglasses. They are stupid and affected. I gloss right over them.

  He’s smiling, but his smile is almost demonic, or at least it is in my memory. I don’t know if that’s one of those things that I’m making up in my head, or if his smile is really like that. The third thing I notice, behind his smile, is that his teeth are gross and jagged. They look as though the greasy guy has gone out of his way not to brush or floss or do any of the things that you are supposed to do to take care of your teeth.

  They seem mossy green.

  Finally, my eyes fall on the box he’s holding. It’s big, and square, and white, and I remember thinking it’s a pizza box.

  I don’t understand why there’s a greasy guy at the garage door holding a pizza box. How did he even get into the garage to begin with? Who ordered pizza?

  I remember him talking, the words coming out of his shark mouth with his snaggle teeth, but I don’t know what he’s saying. All I know is that suddenly Anders is calling for Marcy and shortly she’s down the spiral staircase wearing jeans and the same top she woke up in this morning, and the whole room seems to light up with her presence.

  I even remember her saying something about her parents being so cool for ordering a pizza for all of us, and Marcy giving the guy some money for a tip and thanking him.