Luckiest Girl Alive

by Jessica Knoll

  So much of what Arthur did for me, the protective brother act and even that nonsense he sputtered at the end, the knife handle extending from his chest perfectly parallel to the floor, “I was only trying to help,” was either an imitation of kindness or careful, chilling manipulation. Dr. Perkins wrote that psychopaths are particularly skilled at identifying a victim’s Achilles’ heel, and profiting from it in a way that suits their purposes. When it came to pulling off the ultimate con, forget Nell, Arthur was my original study.

  Ben was depressive, suicidal, not necessarily predisposed to violence the way Arthur was, but not opposed to the idea either. He and Arthur had traded violent fantasies about taking out their idiot classmates and teachers all through middle school. It was always a joke for Ben—Arthur was just waiting for something to happen that would make him seriously consider turning fantasy into reality.

  That something was Kelsey Kingsley’s graduation party. The humiliating thing that Dean and Peyton did to Ben in the woods that drove him to his first suicide attempt. According to Arthur’s diaries, he broached the idea of an attack, “a Bradley Columbine,” when he visited Ben in the hospital not two weeks after his ragged wrists landed him there. In his diary he wrote how he had to wait for the nurses to change shifts, when they would finally have a few moments of privacy, and it was so annoying. (“What are we, two helpless fucking babies?”) His father had a gun, the beginning of their arsenal. Arthur could get a fake ID, pose for eighteen—he looked older than his age already. There were instructions on the Internet for building a pipe bomb. They were smart, they could really do this. His instinct told him that Ben had snapped, turned a corner he would never retrace, and it was spot-on. Ben had nothing to lose because he wanted to die. If that was going to happen, he might as well make those guys pay for what they did to him.

  The media narrative concluded that Arthur and Ben were bullied—for being weird, for being fat, for being gay. But the police reports tell a much different story, a truth that has nothing to do with bullying, the cause du jour. Although it’s widely accepted that Arthur was gay, Ben wasn’t. That thing Olivia said she saw, Arthur giving Ben a blow job at the Spot? That was a lie—desperate, stupid teenage gossip that tragically, ironically, made the fire dance higher. The rumor infuriated and hurt Ben, and Arthur pounced. “I promised him Olivia,” Arthur wrote in his diary, the first blithe mention of a hit list. Only Arthur didn’t care about a hit list, not really. The attack wasn’t just about getting back at his tormentors, or about revenge, it was about his contempt. He was after anyone who was intellectually inferior to him, which was everyone, in his mind. He proposed the idea of a list only to tantalize Ben. His goal had been to take out the entire cafeteria with his bombs—the Shark, Teddy, the sweet lunch lady who built his sandwiches, cheese layered between the roast beef and ham, just how he liked it—we were all fair game. He hid out in the empty dormitory rooms on the third floor of Bradley, waiting for detonation so he could go downstairs and savor the carnage before he ended his own life. The cops would shoot to kill anyway, and a psychopath’s worst nightmare is relinquishing control. If he was going to die, it would be on his terms. He started shooting when he saw that only one of his amateur bombs went off, inflicting “minimal” damage.

  There was a part in Dr. Perkins’s report, which was available for the public to read, that I started in on and only when I realized it concerned me did I double back and reread the first few paragraphs. It was like seeing a picture and not recognizing yourself caught in the frame—who is that salty girl frowning in the background? Doesn’t she know it gives her a double chin? The meta-moment of experiencing how the rest of the world sees you, because the salty girl is you.

  Dr. Perkins classified Arthur and Ben’s “partnership” under the dyad phenomenon, a term criminologists coined to describe the way murderous pairs fuel each other with their bloodlust. Between a psychopath (Arthur) and a depressive (Ben), the psychopath would most definitely be in control, but as a psychopath craves the stimulation of violence, a hotheaded partner can provide an invaluable service: riling him up for the slaughter. Arthur and Ben planned the attack for six months, and for almost that entire time Ben was confined to a mental rehabilitation center, putting on a show for the doctors and nurses to convince them he was no longer a threat to himself. In the meantime, Arthur found himself a new cheerleader, someone whose pain and anger padded the void of violence. This sidekick kept him on a low simmer until he finally had the opportunity to boil over. She didn’t name me, but there was no one else it could have been. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t set Arthur off the last time I saw him in his room. If he was gearing up to tell me about his plan. Ask me to be a part of it.

  “This was at the shore too.” Mrs. Finnerman smoothed a wrinkle in the plastic. I was surprised to see Mr. Finnerman, elbows draped over the back of a bench on the boardwalk, roily black curls springing out of his tan chest. Next to him, Arthur standing, pointing to the sky and shouting something, Mrs. Finnerman’s flimsy arms anchored around his legs to keep him from falling.

  “How is Mr. Finnerman?” I asked, politely. I have the picture that immortalizes one of his most intimate moments with his son, and still I’ve never met the man. He surfaced on the Main Line when everything happened, of course, but faded away shortly after the funeral. The funeral. Yes, killers need to be buried too. Mrs. Finnerman humiliated herself calling rabbi after rabbi, desperate to find someone who would be willing to perform the service for Arthur. I don’t know what Ben’s family did. No one does.

  “Oh, you know,” Mrs. Finnerman said. “Craig’s remarried, so.” She took a sip of cold tea.

  “I didn’t know that happened,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, well.” There was a speck of tea in the valley of Mrs. Finnerman’s upper lip. She didn’t brush it away.

  “You know,” I said, “I have a photo of Arthur and Mr. Finnerman too.”

  The living room suddenly burst with light, the sun pushing a cloud out of the way, and Mrs. Finnerman’s pupils retracted. I’d forgotten her eyes were blue. “Excuse me?”

  I risked a glance at Aaron. He was guiding a microphone around the room, oblivious to what I’d just triggered.

  I clasped my hands around the coffee mug, lukewarm now. “I have this picture . . . um, Arthur used to keep it in his room.”

  “The one with the seashells?” Mrs. Finnerman wanted to know.

  “Of Arthur and his dad.” I nodded. “Yeah.”

  All the softness in Mrs. Finnerman’s face was gone. Even her wrinkles didn’t look so much like folds of skin as they did hard cracks in a pane of glass. “How do you have that? I’ve been looking for it everywhere.”

  I knew I had to lie, but it was like someone had taken an eraser to my mind. I couldn’t think of any way to answer her that wouldn’t upset her. “We got into a fight,” I admitted. “I took it. It was mean. I was trying to upset him.” I stared into my cold cup of coffee. “I never got a chance to give it back.”

  “I’d like it back,” she said.

  “Of course,” I said. “I’m so—” I stopped at Mrs. Finnerman’s scream.

  “Ow! Ow!” She flung her mug on the table, newspapers absorbing the remainders of her foggy yellow tea. “Ohhhh!” Mrs. Finnerman clawed at her temples, her eyes crunched shut.

  “Kathleen!” Aaron cried at the same time I did. “Mrs. Finnerman!”

  “My medicine,” she moaned, “by the sink.”

  Aaron and I rushed into the kitchen. He made it to the sink first, pushing aside dish detergent and sponges. “I don’t see it!” he called.

  “Bathroom!” came her strangled response.

  I knew where the bathroom was, and I beat Aaron this time. On the sink’s counter was a small orange prescription bottle, the instructions curved around the label: “Take one at the first sign of pain.”

  “Mrs. Finnerman, here.” I shook a pill into my hand, and a member of the crew offered her h
is bottle of water. She put the pill on her tongue and drank.

  “My migraines,” she whispered. Rocking back and forth, her fingernails white on either side of her head, she began to weep. “I don’t know why I thought I could do this.” She held her head tighter. “I never should have agreed to this. This is too much. It’s just too much.”

  “Can I give you a ride back to the hotel?” Aaron offered in Mrs. Finnerman’s driveway.

  I motioned to the street. “I have my car, thanks.”

  Aaron squinted at the house, slanting in evening’s gray limbo. It had been beautiful and bright once, but that was long before even Arthur lived there. I tried to imagine it as the Bradley girls would have seen it fifty years ago, traveling from all over the country to receive a top-notch education that they would never put to use once husbands and babies took priority. “Not to take anything away from you,” he said. “But I think it must be harder for her than it is for anyone.”

  I watched the wind snatch a leaf off a branch. “Not at all. I’ve always said that. It’s like, at least everyone else died nobly, in a way.”

  “Noble,” Aaron repeated. He nodded once the word made sense. “People do love a good victim.”

  “It’s a privilege I’ll never enjoy.” I frowned, feeling sorry for myself. “I know it sounds so self-pitying, but I feel cheated by that.” I didn’t admit that to Aaron, but I did to Andrew last night, sitting on the edge of his childhood bed. His parents had left for their shore house. They liked to drive out late on Friday night. Less traffic then. Why didn’t I come over for one drink before I went back to my hotel? That’s what I suggested when we tumbled into his car, the stairs from the Athletic Center still challenging our lungs. Andrew turned to answer me and furrowed his brow.

  “What?” I demanded.

  He reached for me. “You have something in your hair.” He pinched a section between his fingers and pulled, tugging various coordinates in my scalp that seemed to blur my thoughts, obliterate my conscience. “It’s like wood chips or something. From the underside of the desk.”

  After the vodka in Andrew’s kitchen, after the tour of his house that ended in his old bedroom, Luke came up again. And again I tried to explain what he did for me, how he was evidence that I was a good, decent person. “Luke Harrison wouldn’t marry a murderess skank,” I said. “He fixes me.” I looked down at my hands, at my stunning armor. “I just want to be fixed.”

  Andrew sat next to me, his thigh warming my own. There are times I’m on the subway and it’s so packed I can’t escape the legs on my left and right. New Yorkers rage about this forced physical contact, but I secretly savor it, so soothed by the heat generated between bodies I could fall asleep on the shoulder of a stranger. “Do you even love him?” Andrew asked, and my eyes fluttered, fighting exhaustion, as I thought how to answer him.

  I feel anger and hatred and frustration and sadness like they’re physical fabrics. This one’s silk, this one’s velvet, this one’s crisp cotton. But I couldn’t tell you what the texture of loving Luke is anymore. I slipped my hand into Andrew’s, watched him turn my engagement ring around. “I’m too tired to answer that.”

  Andrew guided me onto my back. A few tears leaked into my hairline, and I made a great honking noise as I attempted to breathe through my nose and failed. I was so nervous and hot a thermometer would have deemed me too feverish to go to school. Andrew felt my skin, boiling, tacky with sweat, and left me for a moment to turn off the lights and struggle with the window. I heard the rhythm of outside, shivered gratefully when the chill reached me several seconds later. “The cool air will help,” Andrew promised. I wanted to kiss him again, but then he tucked around me and draped his large arm across my body. I was still wearing my shoes when sleep exploded over me, rare and dazzling as a meteor shower.

  Yangming was always the special-occasion dinner place. New Year’s Eve, birthdays, that sort of thing. Mom took me and the Shark there after high school graduation. Dad didn’t go, said we’d probably enjoy it more if it was just “you gals.”

  Andrew’s BMW was wedged between two SUVs in the parking lot, and I had that feeling this place always gives me, rarer and rarer these days, when I pushed open the door to the restaurant and saw the nicely dressed crowd of middle-aged parents, smelled that savory air, pickled with salt and fat. Like I couldn’t wait for the next thing to happen.

  After I’d left Mrs. Finnerman’s house, I called Mom and apologized, told her I really wasn’t up to going out to dinner after all.

  “I’m sure it was a tough day,” Mom said, which was more than Luke had said to me in the last twenty-four hours. All I’d gotten from him was a one-line text asking how everything was going. “It’s going fine,” I wrote back. His silence made me bold.

  “Good evening.” The maître d’s eyes crinkled pleasantly at the sight of someone like me. “Do you have a reservation?”

  I didn’t ever get a chance to answer him. Because I heard a voice speak my name high with surprise, and I turned to see Mom and my aunt Lindy, both dressed in black dress slacks, busy patterned scarves knotted around their necks, and bracelets that tinkled every time they sipped on their water. A mom’s nice dinner uniform.

  Mom and I just stared at each other while I concocted a lie to tell her. I was lucky she was standing where she was, with the bar behind her. Lucky she couldn’t see Andrew in the far corner, waiting for me. I’d texted him after I’d texted Luke, inviting him to “take advantage” of our reservation. Three little dots appeared immediately after I hit send, then disappeared. This happened two more times, before Andrew finally settled on his response. “What time?”

  “I had no idea this place does takeout,” Mom said, after we’d been seated. She flipped a page of the menu. “That’s good to know.”

  I smoothed my napkin in my lap. “Why? They’re not going to deliver to you or anything.”

  “It’s so far,” Aunt Lindy complained. She tapped her acrylic nail against her empty glass and scolded the busboy tidying up the table next to ours. “Water?” Aunt Lindy was Mom’s younger sister. She was thinner and prettier than Mom growing up, and she wasn’t gracious about it. Mom has the upper hand now, what with Aunt Lindy’s daughter marrying a cop and her daughter marrying a Wall Street guy.

  “Lin,” Mom said, “believe me, it’s worth the drive.” Like she was old hat in this place.

  Mom had decided to keep the reservation even after I backed out. I don’t suppose it had anything to do with the fact that Luke had left his credit card on file to pay for the dinner. I fumbled around for a bit before telling her I’d decided to just swing by and order something to go. I’d eat back at my hotel room.

  When she told me Dad wasn’t interested in coming, I muttered, “How out of character for him.” Mom sighed and asked me not to start with her.

  Aunt Lindy laughed suddenly. “Spicy veal ravioli?” She made a face. “Doesn’t sound very Chinese.”

  Mom gave her a pitying look. “It’s fusion, Lin.” Beyond Mom’s shoulder, I saw Andrew stand and motion to me. He walked along the perimeter of the restaurant, toward the hostess station and bathrooms.

  “Will you order the lemongrass shrimp for me?” I bunched up my napkin and tossed it on the table. “I need to use the bathroom.”

  Mom scooted back and pulled out the table for me. “But what do you want for an appetizer?”

  “Just pick a salad,” I said over my shoulder.

  I tried the bathrooms first. I even swung open the door to the men’s room, pretending like I’d mistaken it for the ladies’. A mustached father drying his hands informed me where I was. I called out Andrew’s name and left when the man repeated himself, angry this time.

  Mom and Aunt Lindy were sitting with their backs to me, so I hurried toward the front door. Outside, the air smelled so much like nothing I wasn’t even sure if I was breathing. It took a second for the night’s objects to focus before my eyes, and then I saw Andrew, leaning against the scuffed-up trunk o
f his car, like he had been waiting for me there all along.

  I apologized to him with my arms. “She blindsided me.”

  Andrew shoved off the trunk and met me by the restaurant, underneath some scaffolding where the streetlights couldn’t reach. He wiggled his fingers, witchily. “Mother’s intuition. Like she knew you were up to no good.”

  I shook my head and laughed to show him how wrong he was. I didn’t like Andrew referring to us as “no good.” “No. She just really likes a free dinner at Yangming.” I backed into the restaurant’s brick siding as Andrew came up on me.

  He brought his hands to the sides of my face, and I shut my eyes. I could have fallen asleep right there, standing up, his thumbs stroking my cheeks and the odorless breeze teasing hairs across my face. I layered my hands over his. “Just wait for me somewhere,” I said. “I’ll meet you wherever. After.”

  “Tif,” he sighed. “Maybe it’s for the best.”

  I held on to him tighter and tried to keep my voice light. “Come on.”

  Andrew sighed, and his hands slipped out from underneath mine. He cupped my shoulders in a brotherly way, and I started to splinter up a little inside. “We could have done something we couldn’t take back last night,” he said. “But we didn’t. Maybe we just walk away from this now, before we do something we regret.”

  I shook my head and measured out my tone carefully. “I won’t ever regret anything with you.”

  Andrew hugged me to him, and until he said, “I might though,” I actually thought I had convinced him.

  The door to the restaurant opened, releasing a shriek of laughter. I wanted to scream at everyone inside to shut the fuck up. It’s never harder to stay in control than when everyone else is having a good time. “We don’t have to do anything,” I said, hating how desperate I sounded. “We can just go somewhere. Have a drink. Talk.”