The Killer in Me

by Margot Harrison

  With all the Thief has taught me about being on the other side, the hunter’s side, I shouldn’t be so scared. But I know my natural role is prey, not predator.

  This dude is gaining on me like he’s late for a lecture or a hot date. My eyes sweep the street.

  Jazz floats from an open apartment window. A gray-haired couple feeds a parking meter fifty feet up the hill. He could pull me into an alley, and they wouldn’t notice a thing.

  Someone might see from a window, though, and the Thief doesn’t like risks. If he killed me here and now, it would be a nineteen-, twenty-point kill. Twenty points is the top of his scale, a number he’s never reached.

  Victorian rentals, tin mailboxes, and robin-mobbed lawns fly by. This is not the Thief—can’t be. I know where the Thief is, more or less. I’ve monitored his progress since he cased the Gustafssons’ house.

  The Thief lives in New Mexico, two thousand miles from Schenectady. After the scale-modeling conference, he headed north to visit a friend with a cabin in Ontario. He cached his two rifles in a deep trench off I-90 before he crossed the border, along with his newly bought supplies. Eight days ago, he was driving to Canada, dirt under his fingernails. He could still feel the cold of the earth from digging the cache, the satisfying heft of his shovel.

  Schenectady is a detour from his route home, but he will return. He wouldn’t have made that cache otherwise. Like me, he can’t stop thinking about the Gustafssons’ ranch house.

  But he’s been sleeping better than me. Since he reached his friend’s cabin, he’s been going to bed early, exhausted from hiking and fishing and whatever other manly men stuff they have on the agenda.

  On Sunday evening, he called his girlfriend, Eliana, who has a silky curtain of black hair, an elegant nose, and a desk job with benefits. The kind of girlfriend a nice, steady, attractive guy would have.

  She doesn’t know him like I do.

  They talked about Eliana’s four-year-old daughter, Trixie. “She’s been bugging me about wanting to furnish the dolls’ attic. I told her attics don’t need furniture,” Eliana said.

  “Sure they do,” the Thief objected. “I’ll stick a busted couch and some clutter up there.”

  “Yeah, if you’re around, hon. Putting major miles on that Sequoia, huh? I thought this was gonna be a two-week trip.”

  “I’ll be back a week from Tuesday. Promise.”

  Every time Eliana gets weird about all the traveling he does, the Thief uses that tone of voice. If he were home right now, he’d touch her face. She’d melt toward him, and he’d draw her into his arms.

  He moved into Eliana’s house a year and eight months ago. Trixie’s real dad is out of the picture. The Thief made the kid a dollhouse; he reads her stories about talking foxes and hedgehogs. Those two are the best things in his life, and he can’t, won’t, lose them.

  He’s careful. He’s always got modeling and carpentry stuff in his Sequoia, so he can tell Eliana he’s delivering to a distant client. Crafting minutely detailed models of historical sites is the Thief’s passion. He builds cabinets and beds and bureaus for clients all over the Southwest, and insists on delivering everything himself.

  I have two logbooks. One with dates, where I record his movements, and one where I note down every single thing I know about him.

  I know his name, and my research probably would have told me his street address. But when I found the Web site for his home business, I couldn’t click the link.

  Some crazy superstitious part of me thought that if I saw his photo, he’d see me, too. Memorize my face. Know me.

  Yesterday, the day I tried to warn the Gustafssons, was Tuesday again, a week after the Thief left for Canada. If he plans to be in Albuquerque next Tuesday, he’ll need to return to Schenectady by Friday or Saturday at the latest.

  The Gustafssons’ house is on a dark block of ranches leading to an intersection where a sign reads 890 VIA CHRISLER AVENUE. I’ve found it on Google Street View.

  Friday, then. Day after tomorrow. I should’ve gone home with Warren today, made him take me out to the range, convinced him to lend me a handgun.

  For what? It’s not like I’m going to step into the Thief’s path and yell Stop! My phone call to the Gustafssons was a waste of time.

  The Thief is a soldier, a woodsman, a tinkerer, the kind of person who survives a zombie apocalypse. I am a nervous honor student.

  And now that I know what he’s going to do, I’m his accomplice.

  My whole body goes so hot and tight that I barely notice the brick college buildings appearing over the hill. I nearly crash into a kid with red dreads coming the opposite way, who calls, “Hey, bro, how’d last night go?”

  He’s not addressing me—and I turn to find Plaid Shirt. I’d forgotten all about him.

  “Not bad,” Plaid Shirt says, fist-bumping the kid with dreadlocks and grinning. “Went home with that girl with the tongue piercing.”

  I’m staring at them, yet neither gives me a single glance. My body goes lax with relief.

  Like the Thief, I pass as normal, just another person on the street. No one suspects. No one knows.

  When I get home, the first thing I notice is the security system: not armed. The second thing I notice is the windows. Mom’s cracked open two in the living room and one in the kitchen, letting in the smell of earth.

  Mom thinks open windows are just part of enjoying warm weather, even at night. She has friends who don’t lock their doors.

  I start to text her a reminder about arming the system, when something catches my eye—a raffia handbag on the coffee table. It’s not mine, and it’s not hers, so—

  A stranger’s in the house.

  I put down my phone, gingerly, and tiptoe into the living room. That’s when Mom and seven other women lurch from behind the couch and surge from under the kitchen island and bellow, “Surprise!”

  I scream. Not happy-scream, really scream.

  The women are wearing goofy party hats and glittery feather boas and are all talking at once, too fast, like they started drinking Mom’s white wine before I arrived. When they see I’m still standing there with my hands over my mouth, my eyes panicky wide, they flock around and make reassuring noises.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, kiddo.”

  “Did you forget it was your birthday?”

  I let my hands fall and force out a laugh. No, I didn’t forget—just assumed that Mom would make me filet mignon and aioli fries to go with the bakery cake, like she usually does, and we’d have a quiet evening together.

  I dodge explanations by hugging Suzy Wolfsheim, the tough-as-nails assistant state’s attorney and my favorite of my mom’s friends.

  People are more likely to trust you when you hug them—another thing I’ve learned from the Thief.

  Mom knows I don’t have many friends, so she invited her own. At least she knew enough to pick the outrageous ladies who make raunchy jokes and laugh too loud, not the hippie-dippy ones who give “birthday blessings.”

  In the corner hides my only age-appropriate friend, Kirby Blessing, taking in all the middle-aged outrageousness and looking more comfortable than I feel. I can still tell she didn’t put on that sparkly hat of her own volition.

  She grabs me with arms strong from shooting hockey goals, and swings me around. “Happy sweet seventeen!”

  Everybody in Kirby’s family is always hugging and ruffling hair—and not just as a way of making people trust them. Part of me likes it, but I still stiffen until she lets me go. “Can’t believe I freaked like that. Sorry.”

  Kirby tilts her head, her heavy ponytail swinging, and asks so only we can hear, “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah. I just—well, I couldn’t sleep last night.”

  “Oh, shit,” Kirby breathes. She grasps my arms again, like I might fly apart.

  “It’s okay!” I keep my voice low; luckily, Mom’s friends are busy admiring our new soapstone woodstove. “I didn’t do anything.”


  Her blue eyes hold mine, alarmed and reassuring at the same time, like my mom’s. “But I saw you with Warren. Today, outside.”

  Kirby thinks I’m craving the pills again—a natural assumption, since we made friends at my addiction support group. I was forced to sit in that moldy church basement once a week for three months, while Kirby only came to pick up her younger brother, Pierce. I thought she was just another tough-talking, sporty girl with tons of friends, somebody who’d dismiss me as a freak, until the night I emerged from that basement feeling like I would fly apart, and Kirby put her arms around me and said, “Hey, it’s okay. Cry if you want to.”

  I don’t cry in front of people, but that night I did. And I didn’t hate Kirby for seeing it, because she’d dodged my defenses as nimbly as she does on the ice going for a goal. She senses what I’m feeling deep down, sometimes better than I do myself.

  Which is why I have to be extra careful around her. As far as she knows, the cravings for uppers are my only secret.

  “Warren and I were just talking,” I promise her, as Mom marches out of the kitchen bearing a sheet cake from the culinary school with seventeen lighted candles.

  Kirby releases me, but she doesn’t look satisfied. The lights go off, and everybody chants, “Make a wish, make a wish, Nina!”

  Suzy Wolfsheim says, “Wish for a speed machine,” which is a joke because I still can’t drive over fifty without feeling a panic attack coming on.

  Kirby says, “Wish for us both to get into Middlebury with financial aid,” which is something we talk about—her and me at the same college, roommates. I’m still trying to figure out how to tell her I can’t sleep in the same room with anyone, even my best friend.

  So many things I can’t do.

  “Wish for world peace,” somebody yells.

  Mom says, “Wish for health and good fortune.”

  I wish for the Thief to stop. I don’t care who makes it happen or how, whether he ends up shot dead by a cop or sitting in a maximum-security prison. I would even accept him deciding he just doesn’t want to hurt people anymore.

  Yet as I formulate this wish, I imagine myself standing over the Thief’s faceless body with a gun in my hand. I can’t help it—that’s what I see.

  I blow out the candles on the first try.

  “So, how is Warren Witter?” Kirby asks as the party thins out. “And what were you guys doing in the woods?” She waggles her eyebrows suggestively at me.

  “God no. Not what you think.”

  The second those words leave my mouth, I want to exchange them for a nice, laid-back, he’s-okay-but-not-my-type kind of no. As far as Kirby’s jock friends are concerned, Warren is a weirdo who lives in a “compound” surrounded by ten feet of cyclone fence while his dad stocks canned goods and water purifiers for the apocalypse. As far as Kirby’s concerned, he’s the bad influence who sold me drugs. But I know him better, and I should defend him.

  Kirby smirks, then to my surprise, says, “Well, you could do worse. He’s kinda blossomed. Hot and smart.”

  I punch her shoulder. “How would you know he’s smart?” I never told Kirby about the hours Warren and I spent in middle school bonding over books, star charts, weird science facts, and anime.

  “I saw him coming out of Dr. Reardon’s office. She was talking about the SATs and National Merit Scholarships, and he looked like he’d just won Megabucks, so he must’ve qualified.”

  “He is wicked smart,” I allow, remembering how Warren used to talk about going to NYU’s film program. “He’ll probably get in everywhere—he just needs major financial aid.”

  “And maybe to stop being a freaking drug dealer.”

  “I don’t think he does that anymore.” I don’t know if it’s true, but I hope so.

  “You should ask him to do SAT prep with you. Perfect excuse. But you’re not going to college with him unless it’s still Middlebury, ’kay?”

  She goes on like that, mapping out our next five years. Kirby and the Thief, they’re both great planners.

  Me, I can’t see past what might happen to a couple in Schenectady on Friday.

  And my options? Buy a gun (that terrifies me). Drive to Schenectady (in my mom’s car, too nervous to gun it to sixty). Stake out the Gustafssons’ house.

  And wait.

  By the time the last guest leaves, all I can think about is that I need to sleep tonight, need it desperately, and that I don’t want to. I almost grab Kirby and ask if I can come over later to work on trig. But that won’t solve anything.

  Mom and I load the dishwasher. Then, instead of disappearing into her home office like usual, she makes me sit down at the dining room table. “Big birthday, Nina. Do you feel different?”

  “No,” I say like I do every year. My mom gets new-agey about “milestones,” though I’ve told her a million times I don’t think anyone changes much from sixteen to seventeen, or even from twelve to twenty. They just reveal new sides.

  “I can see the difference in you,” Mom says, her face tightening with emotion, framed by the stylish-middle-aged-lady haircut she finally submitted to this year. It’s classier than her flowing hippie locks, and more appropriate to her job in the state attorney general’s office, but it makes her look older. And seeing that difference in her scares me.

  First on Mom’s birthday agenda is the same gift I get every year: a check. This year, she slides my second, special present across the table—a fat snail-mail envelope, the kind Kirby wants from Middlebury.

  This one’s from the Arizona Division of Children, Youth, and Families.

  I knew this was coming. My mom lived in Arizona when she adopted me, and it was an open process, which means, she’s reminded me a million times, that I have the option to contact my birth parents, and at any time they may decide to contact me.

  I’ve always just nodded. And then, to deflect her attention, I’ve asked her to tell me the story again—hers and mine.

  Sixteen and something years ago in Arizona, Mom was dating Dory Biedenkopf, and it was Dory who wanted a baby. Dory worked with child services, and when she introduced Mom to me, ten months old, Mom fell in love with my “big bronze eyes that wouldn’t let go.” Lesbian couples couldn’t adopt, and Mom, with her lawyer job, looked the best on paper as a single parent. So Mom and Dory put off moving in together while my mom jumped through the state’s adoption hoops. It took long enough that they drifted apart, and Dory fell in love with somebody else. My mom and I moved to Vermont and lived happily ever after. Dory’s new girlfriend had three kids, and she lived happily ever after, too. They still have marathon phone convos a few times a year.

  That’s how Mom tells the story. Yet now that I’m older, I can’t help wondering if I ruined my mom’s one chance at love. Oh, she’s dated, sometimes for as long as a year, and most of her exes stay her good friends. But could Dory have been the One?

  As for my birth mom, the woman who couldn’t be bothered to keep me for more than ten months, I try not to think about her.

  But now, it seems, I have no choice, because the letter in the fat envelope tells me this mystery woman wants to contact me.

  Once I get my breathing under control and decipher the legalese, the situation seems pretty mellow. Per the adoption contract Mom’s lawyer wrote up, my birth mother has to initiate communication through the state agency until I turn eighteen. She can’t just show up on our doorstep.

  The worst part is how closely my mom is watching for my reaction.

  “Okay,” I say. “Well, that’s cool, I guess.”

  When I was seven, I went through a phase of fantasizing about my biological parents. Was my mom a nurse? A soap opera star? A scientist? Did my dad drive a bus? Did he have scratchy cheeks like the daddies in books? Did I have brothers and sisters?

  As suddenly as it came, my curiosity vanished. Now all I feel as I gaze at the documents is embarrassment, because they could make my mom uncomfortable.

  “You know,” I say, “I think I might wait. It’s no
t gonna hurt her if she doesn’t know anything about me till I’m older, right?”

  My mom touches my hand. Her face looks pretty good, and her abs are better than mine, but every time I see her hands, I remember she’s fifty-six. Old enough to have lived a whole life before I came along.

  “Nina,” she says, “this is totally up to you. But I want you to know that if you do start communicating with your birth mother, you don’t need my permission, and you have my blessing.”

  “You’re not worried she’s gonna turn out to be way cooler than you and steal me away?”

  My mom knows my sense of humor, and the corners of her mouth quirk up. She’s tan from hiking and biking every weekend, and her eyes are uncomplicated blue. Unlike me, she has no trouble looking people in the eye. “No,” she says.

  “You know what’s the last thing I need? A new insta-mom telling me what to do.”

  Mom laughs, and I know we’re both remembering last fall, when she had to come down hard on me over the pills. My mom prefers being the good cop, and neither of us liked it one bit when she was lecturing and interrogating me.

  I knuckled under, though. I had to kick the habit for my own reasons, and besides, I couldn’t hurt her.

  She thinks I’m a good person. I don’t want that to change.

  My mom’s smile fades. “I didn’t want any parents when I was your age. I wished I was an orphan.”

  She doesn’t say the next part, but I already know: she regrets not hugging my grandma before she died.

  But what does her mom have to do with my birth mom? “Look,” I say, “this chick gave me up. That’s the only thing I know about her, and it’s a big thing, wouldn’t you say?”

  “She’s still part of you, Nina.” Mom pats my hand. “Some adopted children say the biological parent is the missing piece that helps them understand themselves.”

  “I understand myself fine,” I say.

  “Take it at your own pace. Those forms say she can’t contact you directly until you give her permission.”

  “Okay, okay.” I take the envelope to make her happy.

  That’s when it hits me in a real-world way, the shit I’d be in if I drove to Schenectady day after tomorrow. I’d need to “borrow” her car, put a gun in the trunk—and maybe miss school on Monday, assuming I came back at all.