The Killer in Me

by Margot Harrison

  His eyelashes cast fluttering shadows on his cheek. “You think I’m going to terrorize innocent people?”

  “I know you like those old Clint Eastwood movies.” My blood pounds—not just with fear—as I imagine Warren as a gunslinger, lean and hard and pitiless, drawing a line in the sand with the Thief on the other side. “But in real life, suspects are innocent until proven guilty. Right?”

  If it were you versus the Thief, Warren, a distant part of my brain says, I’d root for you. But I don’t know if I’d bet on you.

  Maybe there is no Thief, though, and anyway there’s no room for him here, because I’m on my back and pulling Warren’s shirt off, running my hands up and down his sides, tracing the grooves between his ribs. He gasps, and then his lips are hot on my bare stomach, his hands peeling off my own shirt, and I arch my back and let myself fall apart into fragments of heat and light, my fingers tangled in his soft hair. And when it’s almost too much, blasting me like the desert at midday, I pull him up so I can kiss him again, catching his bottom lip between mine and releasing my hectic breaths into his mouth, against his neck, because I doubt too many things, but not this, not now.

  His lips against my cheek form the words, “I promise.”

  When I wake up, she’s gone.

  I’m alone in the wreck of a bed where we both spent the night, wearing my boxers, my mouth tasting like morning. The sky is barely blue below the blinds. The bottle of bourbon, three-quarters full, sits on the night table.

  Think I had a few swigs, too, at some point.

  All I have now is the memory of her head resting in the crook of my arm, my fingers tangled in her hair. Or is that something I dreamed?

  No. Other memories flood back so fast I feel dizzy as I stumble across the room to pull back the curtain and feel the sun.

  I shower quickly, dress, scrub my mouth with minty gel, and jog downstairs to the foyer where they lay out the continental breakfast. The Fair Trade coffee and croissants are in place, but Nina is not.

  I spot her through the patio door—in a lounger by the pool, knees folded to her chest.

  Please don’t let her be regretting anything. Please don’t let her have changed. It’s not like I’m that asshole who just wants to score, but I don’t want it to end like this. I want the next chapter where everything gets crazier, wilder, off the rails. I want my first time to be with her.

  My first impulse is to rush out there, but Don’t be a dumbass, Warren. I pour two coffees and fill a plate with pastries and grapes.

  When Nina sees me, she doesn’t wince, just slides her sunglasses down and takes a coffee. “Thanks, Warren.”

  Does she say my name differently now? Less of that my pesky kid brother lilt to it, and more huskiness, like This is my man?

  I push the thought aside—this isn’t about my insecurities. Before it all started last night, we were arguing about Shadwell—about her brother. I remember in a vague way how angry it made me to hear her changing her whole story, and then how worried, and then how scared, even though she was saying things I’d been saying all along.

  I kept seeing the Gustafssons—their eyes on the MISSING poster, half imploring and half accusing. Don’t forget. Someone did make us disappear.

  Then I promised Nina something. What was it?

  We eat and drink in silence, watching sun flood the deep end of the pool while the rest stays dark and still. Finally, I ask, “Did you see him last night?”

  “I didn’t sleep a lot.”

  That makes two of us. Too exhausted to move, too keyed up to sleep. “But don’t you always see him?”

  She doesn’t answer for a second. Then: “He was asleep. At home. Not even dreaming.”

  “Do you think maybe you’ll stop seeing things at night now that…?”

  Now that you realize it was just your imagination. But has she?

  “I don’t know. It hasn’t happened yet.” She catches me with those bronze eyes—does he have them, too?—and reaches out to smooth my hair off my face. It’s a casual gesture, yet I freeze, my mouth going dry with the need to touch her.

  “I’ve had him with me my whole life, Warren,” she goes on. “That doesn’t just vanish.”

  I wish it would. I wish I were the only one you dreamed about. And then, I’m not sure how it happens, but we’re sharing the lounger, her bare knees between mine. My arm’s around her waist, playing with the edge of her shirt, and she grabs my other hand and interweaves our fingers and says, “Remember what you promised me.”

  Oh, shit, what did I promise? Something about not going near Shadwell’s family—why would I do that? Oh yes, and guns. No guns, she said.

  I copied the key to the UNM film department’s van, and I’m pretty sure I can sneak it out—or just tell them I’m collecting more B-roll. They trust me, they’re busy in their editing suite this weekend, and I think they’ve forgotten I’m under eighteen.

  The just-in-case guns are locked in the Legacy. I can get my rifle out without her noticing, leave her the Sidekick. Maybe I’ll even load the revolver for her—just the smallest precaution.

  For the Gustafssons—and for her safety—I want to be sure.

  I press my palm tighter to hers, kiss her knuckles, and say, “I remember what I promised.”

  No Wild West showdowns or shoot-outs. That should be easy.

  “Thank you.” She tickles me under my knee, and I try to bat her hand away with my other foot, which leads to us both tipping the lounger over, which puts me in a better position to tickle her.

  “Oh my God, stop it, stop it!” she mock-shrieks, sitting up on the concrete.

  I stop horsing around and cup her face in my hand. “This whole time I’ve been imagining you in Arizona with Becca, and you haven’t even met her. Weird.”

  Nina drops her gaze. “I hated lying to you.”

  “It’s okay. I get it. But now that you’re finally going to see her, are you excited?”

  “More like weirded out. And tired.”

  I lift her chin gently. “If she’s related to you, she’s probably awesome. Because…”

  “Because why?”

  Because you are. I squeeze her hand, so fragile in mine, and say teasingly, “Never mind.”

  She smiles, visibly relaxing. “Were you going to say I’m awesome? Because you can, you know. I might even say you’re awesome back.”

  “I’m trying to think of a better word for you. ‘Awesome’ isn’t scoring me any extra points on the SATs.”

  “Oh, you’re scoring points all right,” she says, smirking.

  “Awesome,” I say, and kiss her.

  The woman who gave birth to me lives surrounded by birds and wind chimes.

  Most of the wind chimes hang from Becca Cantillo’s porch roof or dangle from the mangy trees nearby, which also hold dozens of bird feeders. As you step onto that porch, out of the hot breeze that scours the northern Arizona desert, you hear tinkling and plinking and clanging and other fragments of tuneless music, mixed with the cheeping, cawing, and warbling of the birds indoors.

  Inside Becca’s house, they occupy seven tidy cages—canaries and other songbirds and parakeets and a giant rescued parrot named Señor Bitey, originally from Argentina. Their music is tuneless, too, though the combination of all their voices with the wind chimes and the AC’s hum can fool you into hearing a melody.

  Dylan built the cages, Becca has told me. Most of the feeders, too—the tiny Taj Mahal, the replica of a Bavarian castle. Back when he lived with her, he spent every weekend hammering in the garage, making her something amazing, a handyman and an artist in one.

  So far, the Dylan she keeps praising is the same one I know in the flesh. But if there’s another side to him, a darker one, Becca must have seen hints of it. She raised him alone—how could she not?

  After dinner, we sit on a patched-up leather sofa while the breeze blows the spindly trees in the bright vastness outside, and Becca leafs through a family album. The sun has just set.

>   Becca Cantillo is a large woman—tall and thick waisted, with a big head. Her hair is still black as mine, and she lets it fall to her elbows, held back from her face by a silver clip. I wonder if we have Native American blood, the two of us—and Dylan—and I ask her.

  “Sure,” Becca says after a deep chuckle. “My great-grandmother was Navajo, but around here, that’s not exactly noteworthy, honey.”

  Boy-band faux rapping filters down from the second floor, where Georgia, Becca’s eight-year-old daughter from her second husband, Edgardo Cantillo, is doing her homework. Georgia helped Becca make the peach crisp for our dessert and served it herself. She hasn’t asked me any questions, only politely answered mine.

  Sometimes I hear her sniping back and forth with her six-year-old brother, Jackson. They were on their best behavior with me, a stranger.

  Good kids, but they don’t feel related to me. None of this feels real.

  Hours of driving across the desert will do that to you.

  I slept maybe two hours last night, drank sixteen ounces of coffee, forgot to put on sunscreen, and my skin feels tight and itchy. Not in a bad way, and not just because of the sun.

  My skin remembers last night. When Warren touched me, he took away my old skin and gave me a new one that feels hot and snug and burnished, like a statue’s bronze shell.

  Does he feel the same way?

  If I told Kirby about last night, she’d probably say, “He’s hot, he’s into you, and you finally did something about it. Welcome to the human race. What’s the big deal?”

  The big deal is, I started it. I touched him first, and I did it so he’d stop asking me about memories I can’t make sense of anymore.

  I never thought I could have someone in my life like Dylan has Eliana. I didn’t think it would be safe to share a bed, or even a dorm room, because sooner or later I’d have to explain my nights.

  Warren knows everything, and he hasn’t turned his back on me yet.

  I can’t forget to call Mom when I get back to the B-and-B. I’ve been texting her too often; she deserves a full-fledged conversation, and I need to hear her voice.

  Four days ago, when I was pretending I’d recently arrived at Becca’s house—after my surprise-brother freak-out—I described Becca to Mom as “really cool” and “so incredibly nice,” like she was a camp counselor. Partly because I had nothing better to say, partly because I wanted Mom to think that meeting Becca hadn’t meant much to me.

  Thing is, it did. When I finally walked up to Becca’s wind-chimed porch and she dashed down the steps to meet me, I tried to shake hands. She threw her arms around me and drew me into her smells of basil and cinnamon, and I didn’t pull away.

  “Dylan told me you met,” Becca said into my shoulder then. “I should’ve let you know about him, honey. It shouldn’t have happened by chance.”

  Her voice betrayed decades of pain, and tears welled in my eyes, so I could only shake my head.

  Mom doesn’t need to know it felt good to be in Becca’s arms. Familiar. Those feelings don’t change my mom and me. They just are, like the desert spreading under the sun.

  Now Becca is showing me pre-digital snapshots from the days when they lived in a trailer, just her and Dylan.

  The Becca of those days matches up with the mom I remember from Dylan’s early years: skinnier, almost gaunt, partial to tight Levis. Pretty. She often had a cigarette in her fingers—no longer.

  I catch my breath when I see the first pic of Dylan as a kid—messy hair and those enormous, pale-brown eyes. In several shots, he’s got his first BB gun.

  And—oh. There’s little Dylan beaming as he points to a house of cards—then, in a second shot, posturing like he’s going to knock it down, a wicked grin on his face.

  I remember a house of cards, don’t I? But as I gaze at the photo, I’m not sure if I saw something similar in my night visions, or if I’m just telling myself I did.

  “He could always make me laugh,” Becca says, turning the page. “Honestly, when we were living out there alone, I don’t think I could’ve survived without your brother. He kept me on level ground. It was the same when Edgardo and I split—Dylan came out here for a whole week. Cooked for me, took the kids to mini-golf.”

  I nod, remembering Dylan with Trixie. “He’s good with kids.”

  At the same time I wonder why Becca keeps harping on the theme of Dylan’s greatness. Is she just a proud mom, or does she feel like she needs to convince me?

  “Oh yeah. I know it sounds strange, Nina, but I always wonder if Dylan relates well to kids because he didn’t have a real childhood. Not like he should’ve.”

  “What about…his dad?” I ask. Unable to say my dad.

  Becca flips more pages in the album and shows me a wedding photo. “There’s me and Steve.”

  Stephen Shadwell, my biological father, was tall and lean with a crooked grin and a squint. He had Dylan’s cheekbones. A very young Becca clings to him like he’s a superhero who just saved her from a burning building.

  “You look beautiful,” I say, a lump rising in my throat, because I can’t imagine being as sweet and innocent as she looks there.

  Becca clicks her tongue self-deprecatingly. “Those were the days.”

  She points to another shot, a little out of focus: a shirtless young man with a gun slung over his shoulder, beer in hand. It could be Dylan, with those owlish eyes that seem to be accusing the camera, but it’s our dad again.

  “First year we were married,” Becca says with a throaty laugh. “When Stevie and his buds got together and fired up the BBQ pit, it was redneck heaven at our place.”

  I don’t want to hear Becca Cantillo lie, so I get in ahead. “Dylan told me.”

  “About our secret sauce recipe?” Her breath catches.

  “About what Steve did. Dylan didn’t want me finding out online. It was better just to tell me, he said.”

  Becca’s hand clasps my knee as if to say, Stop. When I make myself meet her eyes, they’re wet.

  Mom doesn’t cry, doesn’t dredge up the past. “Water under the bridge,” she always says. I learned from her to keep my brave face on, and then I learned from the Thief how to stuff my direst memories away in a dusty corner of my head. How am I supposed to deal with a mom who brings things into the light of day?

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I shouldn’t have ever…I mean…I know you…”

  Becca’s grip on my knee tightens, and her arm snakes around me like I’m the one who needs comforting. Me, who never even met my father.

  Should I hate Steve Shadwell? He tore the family apart, and Dylan and I both still feel it in our different ways. But only we can take responsibility for the things we do.

  “I’m the one who’s sorry,” Becca says. “No, maybe I’m not sorry you already know. It would’ve been a hell of a thing to explain.”

  “Dylan pretty much explained everything,” I reassure her. “And I understand a lot more now. About why—you know.”

  Why you gave me up.

  My birth father ripping the family apart, then ripping himself away from us. He and my aunt and uncle, all dead in the span of what—a year? Handcuffs, courtrooms, newspaper articles, funerals. Grieving must have been practically Becca’s full-time job, but still…

  “You don’t know, though, honey. You won’t ever know.” Becca speaks with no bitterness, still patting my knee. “Nobody ever knows till they’ve walked a mile down the same road.” She laughs and wipes her eyes. “I’m brimming with life lessons, huh? Regular greeting card.”

  The woman who gave birth to me talks like a country song. She cries about stuff she can’t change, she feels strange and familiar at once, and I like her.

  As I pull onto Piedmont Drive, I remember that night in Schenectady when Nina made me drive in circles for hours, searching for Dylan Shadwell’s car.

  That night I kept telling myself: Now I know she’s crazy. Next Monday at school, I’m not gonna look over at her in AP English and imagine ru
nning my finger along her dark eyebrows or down the nape of her neck. I’ll just think: bitch made me drive around Schenectady for six hours.

  I’ll be cured.

  But I wasn’t. Nina has set me adrift in a world where everything is a shimmer of disappearing water on the highway. All I can do is try to orient myself with good old detective work. No assumptions, just evidence.

  I park the UNM van well up Shadwell’s block and take out my binoculars. First thing I notice is a house with a FORECLOSURE SALE sign, two down from Shadwell’s with sight lines into his backyard.

  I get out and dodge into the driveway of the foreclosure. A glimpse inside tells me it’s been emptied down to the bones, so I walk around to the back patio, where I have a view of Dylan Shadwell whacking weeds in his backyard.

  I duck behind a planter that must have been too heavy to move, take out my binocs, and watch him. After the weed whacking, he goes in the house and returns with a travel mug. Unlocks the shed and disappears in there. A few more minutes, and the whine of a lathe trickles outside.

  Thrill a minute, this guy.

  In the backyard to my left, a little girl has started splashing in a kiddie pool, so I keep low as I leave the foreclosure’s yard and scuttle back to the van.

  There I spend nearly two hours reading a Dashiell Hammett paperback and eating an entire bag of pretzel sticks and half a bag of licorice. When Shadwell finally backs his Sequoia out of the driveway, it’s such a shock that I almost don’t make it out of the cul-de-sac in time to follow him.

  Maybe he’s visiting a carpentry client. Or hitting up Home Depot for supplies. I can’t wait to find out.

  Anyway, he’s leading me to the eastern edge of the city, where the streets grow narrow and curvy, closer to the Sandia Mountains. We leave the green suburbs and turn onto a two-lane that cuts through desert scrubland—houses bigger and farther apart, just silver grass and sand and coral mountains on the horizon.

  Wind whistles in my ears and flattens my hair against my scalp. I never guessed the world had this much flat space open to the harsh blue sky.