Nothing to Lose

by Alex Flinn

I don’t remember lurching forward. But I must have, grabbing the iron fireplace poker—so cold—aiming it at Walker’s skull, bringing it down, again. Again. I don’t remember her screams. I didn’t hear them.

  But I remember the feeling, the shock to my arm as it hit hard bone, over and over. Then the relief as the bone crushed in. As Walker’s skull broke and let me inside. The warmth of the spattering blood hitting me. I was on the floor. This was the only way it would end, the only way was if I ended it.

  He was on the floor. I kept hitting him. Then he was just there, motionless.

  Dead?

  I stopped and stared at the nightmare face that had been Walker. I held the fire poker up, ready to hit him again if he moved. But he didn’t.

  I was glad he was dead. I was glad. Glad.

  Glad.

  I dropped the fire poker, and it clattered to the floor.

  THIS YEAR

  “I killed him,” I tell Angela. In my arm I can still feel the vibrations, the cramp in my hand where I held the poker, the airy exhilaration of seeing him fall. Then the horrible realization. I was a killer.

  At her desk Angela is completely still, quiet.

  Behind me I hear a voice.

  “You were protecting her,” Karpe says. “Her and the baby.”

  “The baby,” I say, dully. “Yeah. The baby.”

  LAST YEAR

  So much blood. A puddle below Walker’s head and small droplets all over, some as high as the ceiling. And other stuff. Images flipping past my eyes like the shadows on a movie screen. My mother crouched over Walker. The fire poker in my hand. Walker’s body, still now. My mother shook him. She wasn’t crying. He didn’t move, didn’t speak.

  “Oh, my God, Michael. Oh, God, what have you done?”

  I couldn’t speak. Her face was covered with blood. I didn’t feel it on my own face, but it must have been there. I couldn’t be clean.

  “I had to,” I said, feeling strong. “He’d have killed you. Don’t you understand? He’d have killed you, or killed the baby.”

  She’d sunk forward onto Walker’s bloody body, embracing, cradling him. She moaned.

  She stayed there a long time. Finally she said, “There’s no baby, Michael.”

  “What?”

  “There was never a baby. There was never one. Never. I only told you that so…”

  “So I wouldn’t go,” I finished for her.

  “I didn’t think … oh, God.” It was a sob. She looked down at Walker’s bloody face and recoiled. Then she was frantic, removing her shirt so she was only in her skirt and bra. She started trying to wrap the shirt around Walker’s head. She couldn’t do it, and his head flopped onto the floor.

  “What do we do?” I still hadn’t moved. My heart was ramming against my ribs, and I felt like it might stop beating entirely. I stared; the horror of what I’d done hit me like a sudden wave. “I killed him. Oh, God, I killed him.” His head was bloody, unrecognizable. A smell filled the air. Blood. I even tasted it in my mouth, and I wondered if I’d swallowed it somehow, and suddenly it was like I realized what it was, like it had come into focus. Walker’s head. Walker’s bloody face, and Mom trying to cover it. I felt the sickness well up in my throat. I crouched and puked on the tile. I tried not to look at him again. I was choking on the blood-filled air, and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move. Then I did. I put my hands to my face, and they were clean.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. . . .” She tried to wrap the shirt again. She was crying, gritting her teeth. She was covered in his blood.

  Then her face changed, somehow, and she said, “You have to go.”

  “What?”

  “I did this.” She let go of Walker and stood, trembling. She was all covered with his blood. “I did it, and that’s what I’ll tell them.”

  “But…”

  “You have to go. You have to let me do this for you. You’re my baby.”

  And suddenly I felt tired. Tired enough to lie down on the floor beside Walker and never get up again. Too tired to resist.

  “No, I can’t let you.” I started toward her.

  “Don’t move!” Her voice was sharp. I looked at the Oriental rug, where my bloody footprints were about to be. “Wait there.”

  I stood, staring at my clean hands, while she went, so carefully, and found a towel for me to walk across, another for over Walker’s face. I threw it onto him, feeling the puke welling up again but keeping it down.

  “I need to do this, Michael. You need to let me. I’ll explain that he was killing me, that he beat me. It will be okay. I won’t go to jail. It happens all the time.”

  And it was decided. I went upstairs, showered, and put the towel, bath towel, my underwear, which had only a few drops of blood on it, and my other laundry into the washing machine. I waited until the water ran hot over my hands, then added twice the normal amount of detergent. I found my still-packed duffel and brought it to the front door.

  My mother had put her energy into cleaning. When I reached the study, the puke was gone, but there was still blood. So much blood. And the smell. I could see the outline of footprints, her footprints, all over. I started toward the body.

  “Michael, no!”

  I spun.

  “Don’t touch anything.” Her hair, her face were still covered with blood.

  “We could bury him,” I said. “Or throw him in the ocean. We could leave town and not tell anyone. He doesn’t work at the firm anymore. No one will be waiting for him.” I couldn’t believe it yet. Everything had changed so horribly. It seemed like there had to be some way to fix it, to go back in time.

  “There’s no way to cover this. They’ll know he’s dead. They’ll know he’s dead, and they’ll know I killed him.”

  “But…”

  “I killed him. You have your life ahead of you. I have nothing. Nothing. It’s all over anyway. I’ve ruined everything.”

  I recognized the mother of my childhood, the woman who hadn’t wanted me to play ball, hadn’t wanted me to get hurt. Where had she been all this time?

  I waited for the wash cycle to finish and about half the dry, then packed the steamy, damp clothes into my duffel and started toward the only place I could think of. Julian Karpe’s. I went on foot after I told Mom to wait half an hour to call the police.

  I was halfway to Karpe’s before it hit me again: I’d killed a man.

  THIS YEAR

  “Where did you go that night?” Angela asks, and I can see from her face that she’s accepted it, maybe always knew.

  “I came here, Angela.”

  She fixes her eyes on Julian. “So you … knew all this?”

  I say, “I lied and told him my mother did it, like she said. I had to tell him that much, to explain why he couldn’t tell anyone.”

  “I knew,” he confirms. “At least, I thought you probably did it.”

  I stare at him. “But you helped me anyway?”

  “I know what it’s like to feel trapped, to feel like there’s no way out.”

  “I walked here,” I say to Angela, “then he drove me two hours to West Palm Beach to catch a Greyhound.”

  Angela looks at Karpe, assessing. “And you went back to school and told everyone you hadn’t seen him since that Thursday?”

  “He was a good friend,” I say.

  “Or an accessory after the fact, depending on how you look at it.”

  “I won’t get him in trouble,” I say.

  “No,” Angela says. “No, I know you won’t.”

  “You knew I did it,” I say to her. “Didn’t you?”

  “I suspected.”

  “Why?”

  “It didn’t seem likely to me that your mother would have beaten someone to death with a blunt object. Knowing my own mother, I just couldn’t picture it. And…”

  “And . . . ?”

  “You came back. I didn’t think you’d come back unless you had something to say.”

  I nod. It’s true, I realize. I have known
all along I’d tell. The whole time I’ve been talking, I’ve been standing, leaning against the chair across from Angela’s desk. But now, my legs feel tired, so tired, like they won’t support me. And then, everything begins to go black.

  When I come to, I’m on the floor. Angela and Karpe kneel over me.

  “Are you okay?” Angela says.

  “No,” I say. “I mean yes. I mean… I have to tell them.”

  Angela touches my shoulder. “Your mother clearly doesn’t want you to. That hasn’t changed.”

  “No,” I say. “I have to tell.”

  She nods. “Then let’s do it.”

  THE NEXT DAY

  Justifiable homicide. That’s what the state attorney tells the judge after hearing my confession, talking to my mother in jail, my mother’s lawyers, Angela, and me.

  “It explains the blood spatter,” one of the lawyers for the state, a guy named Miller, said to another, after I told them what happened. The other two attorneys glared at him, but he said, “Well, we’ve all been talking about it.”

  “The what?” I asked Angela.

  “The blood-spatter evidence,” Angela explained. “The experts try to figure out what happened by the way the blood spurted from the wounds. Your mother says she was fighting Walker off when it happened, and they’re trying to show that she snuck up behind him and killed him. But the way the blood spattered didn’t mesh with either story. She was covered in blood when the police arrived, and she shouldn’t have been if she did it—just like you weren’t. The state has ignored that evidence.”

  “Blood spatter is a very inexact science,” the young assistant state attorney said defensively. “And we accepted her confession.”

  “Even though you didn’t believe her about anything else?”

  “Obviously we didn’t have all the facts before us.” He looked at me.

  “So you thought he was going to kill her?” one of the older state attorneys, a woman who introduced herself as Toussaint, said.

  I nod. “He had her against the fireplace. He was beating her head against the stone.”

  “But he’d done that all before, according to what you said.”

  “This time was different.” I remembered the screams, the ripped runner. “I’d been there a dozen times when he did this, but this time was different. I really thought he’d kill her. I wouldn’t… I mean, I never wanted to kill anyone. But I thought he was going to kill her.”

  And something about my face must have persuaded her. She said, “And you would be willing to give a sworn statement to that effect?”

  “Yes.”

  For the first time in a year, I felt like I could breathe.

  And so the next day I’m sitting in court. I watch Toussaint’s lips as she says, “In light of new evidence, which we’ve just received, the State will nolle pros this matter.”

  Toussaint glances over at the reporters when she says this. There are gasps, and I see the reporter with the sketch pad switch his attention from my mother to Toussaint.

  Me, I’m sitting in the back of the courtroom with Angela. We walked in with the state attorneys and the security guards. I still have the beard, but I borrowed some khakis and a blue jacket and tie from Karpe so I don’t look like a carny anymore, though I don’t look like Michael Daye anymore either, which is about right. The jail people brought my mother in separately, so I haven’t spoken to her. I don’t know whether she’s seen me yet.

  I watch her from behind. With her brown hair and her navy blue suit, she doesn’t seem like what the reporters have been calling her. She sits quietly, her hands clasped before her face. I wish I could see her eyes, but she looks only at Toussaint.

  “Newly acquired evidence?” the judge asks when the noise dies down. “Mind telling me what that is?”

  Toussaint says, “We’re still sifting through it ourselves, Your Honor.”

  “Can you tell me whether anyone else will be charged in this case?” The judge looks directly at me when he says that.

  “No, Your Honor. We believe the new evidence will show that this is a case of justifiable homicide.”

  My mother’s lawyer hugs her, but now my mother’s eyes look for me.

  THREE HOURS LATER

  I still haven’t seen her. Angela and I sit in Angela’s car outside the jail, waiting for my mother to fill out the paperwork, which will release her forever. The top is up to escape the curious glances. But the windows are open. I feel the sun and breeze on my face.

  “Happy?” Angela says.

  I stare at the sun glinting off the barbed wire. “Happy isn’t exactly the right word. I mean, I’m relieved, but…”

  “But what, Michael? Because I was thinking we did pretty good in there.”

  “You did … but it’s hard to explain. Sometimes I feel like I’ll never be happy again.”

  She frowns. “You’re free to be happy, Michael, free to go on with your life, play football, go to college. It’s over now.”

  I picture myself, walking into school and explaining that I want to be on next year’s football team. Then I think of the cheers the other side would make up about me.

  “I guess,” I tell Angela. “But it’s different. I’m different. Most people, they go their whole lives thinking, I could never do that. I could never kill another human being, knowing they could never use their hands on someone and make the life go away. I used to know that about myself.”

  Angela nods, understanding. “You thought you knew.”

  “Right. But now I know I could do it. I have done it.” In my arm I can feel the motion of it, the tightness of my arm as I hit bone. “Sometimes, I can even feel the pressure of his skull before it cracked. And when I get mad at someone now and say, ‘I could kill him,’ I think maybe I’m not just exaggerating. Maybe I could. I wish I didn’t know all that about myself. I wish I could just feel like whether I make first team next year is important. And…”

  I stop. I don’t know what else I wish, actually. That everything could go back to the way it was before, and we’d be trapped with Walker? That I’d run away with the fair when I said I would, and then maybe it would be my mother who died, and Walker who was charged with her murder? No.

  I say, “The fair leaves town tomorrow.”

  “Will you be with it?” Angela asks. “I guess they’d take you back now.”

  “I don’t know if they would,” I say, thinking of the system of secrets and lies at the fair. Now that they all know, it changes everything. “But no, I’m not going back. I can’t keep running away. Wherever I go, this will always be part of me. Nothing will ever be the same.”

  She puts a hand on my shoulder. “Listen to me. You lived with that bastard for—what?—two years?”

  She means Walker. I nod.

  “And now he’s dead, but he’s still beating you up.”

  “It wasn’t me he beat up. It was—”

  “Maybe he didn’t beat you up in a physical sense. But he beat you up. That’s what these guys do—they beat people up on the inside, where no one can see the bruises. I look at you and I see a kid who’s beat up, and who’s still being beat up.”

  “I can’t do anything about that.”

  “You can. You can let the bastard die. Whether you make first string is important, because that’s the future. That means you’ve moved on. And that’s what you need to do—move on. The state isn’t charging you with murder. They’ve ruled it a justifiable homicide. That means a killing that is justified. You took a life to save a life, Michael. They didn’t need to put you in jail for that.”

  I shake my head. “I’m in jail now. In my head, where it matters.” I glance at her hand on my shoulder. “But thank you for doing this for me.”

  “I did it for a reason, Michael—because I knew you did it, but I also knew you were innocent. I hope someday, you’ll realize it too.”

  Then she nods toward the jailhouse door, and I see my mother coming out. I open the door and run toward her.

 
; EPILOGUE:

  SUMMER BEFORE SENIOR YEAR

  Last night I dreamed I was playing football. In my dream I finally made first string. It’s the last game of the season. The scores tied. We’re lined up at the ten. The center snaps the ball. I fade back, looking for my receiver. Tristan. I pass it to him, and I’m watching the ball soar toward the end zone, when suddenly something in the stands catches my eye, a bit of green mixed in with all the crimson and gray.

  It’s Kirstie. The green is the same green T-shirt she wore the first time I saw her. She stands in the middle of the screaming, cheering crowd, calm and alone. But when she sees me, she waves.

  Her eyes meet mine, then travel downward. I follow them in time to see Tristan catch the pass, scoring the winning TD. When I look back into the stands, Kirstie is gone.

  I awake to Kenny and Footy, screaming on Y-100’s morning show. I’d set the alarm for early this morning, five thirty A.M. Today Coach will post the rosters for this year’s teams. If all goes as planned, part of last night’s dream will be reality. I should finally make starting QB this year.

  But I won’t be throwing any passes to Tristan. All my friends graduated back in June. They’ve gone away to college, mostly. Julian Karpe, who’s staying in town to attend U of M’s six-year medical program, says he’ll see me around. But probably he’ll move on with his life like everyone else.

  Me, I’ll be a year behind them. I finished my sophomore year in summer school, then started last fall as a junior. The year off doesn’t affect my eligibility for high school or college football, and—as Coach says—that’s the important thing.

  But there are other things. It was weird going back to school at first, with everyone knowing what happened. Some people avoided me. Others went out of their way to be nice. A couple of girls I’d never met slipped love letters through the slats of my locker, but I got some hate mail, too. I pretty much deal with it, because that’s all you can do really. After a while, it died down. Sometimes I’ll be at the mall or on the beach and I’ll see someone looking at me but, you know, trying not to look at me. It happens less often than it used to, though.