Perfect

If it ever came to this, Kelly had the suicide playlist. Her finger hovers over the play button as she watches the cop in the rearview mirror. The police cruiser dips as he squeezes out of it. Sausage fingers. Swollen knee caps.

He probably has gout, she thinks.

She’d always pictured a hot cop in this fantasy. Played by Ian Somerhalder, if she’s being honest. And Ian pulls her over for speeding down the Pacific Coast Highway, not for unpaid parking tickets off Olympic boulevard. But that’s what you get when you live in Santa Monica. You get parking tickets. And in real life, this morbidly obese guy is the cop who pulls you over. Kelly digs her nails into the steering wheel. There’s no do-over at this point. Her 22nd birthday is tomorrow and she’s going out on her own terms. Not the Iris way.

The cop taps Kelly’s window. As she rolls it down, he’s midway through telling her that he’ll need three things: ID, registration, and the radio off. Officer Gout must not know who she is. Middle aged men, after all, are her fan demographic. He looks at her ID, then at her, then back at the ID. Her hair doesn’t match the license photo. It’s much shorter now with an emo black dye job. She hasn’t updated the picture since her senior year of high school. The sweet girl with long red hair is now a scowling 21 year old, sucking on a dragon fruit e-cigarette.

“Wait here” he says.

A fat grin spreads across her face as she watches him waddle back to the squad car. She hits the gas and gravel sprays him and the radio, which is back on, fades away. Kelly peels out and merges onto the 405 South, singing under her breath. She shifts into all-wheel drive and cuts off a semi.

Kelly checks the rearview mirror. No cop. She cuts across four lanes and swerves onto the shoulder. Her bumper scrapes the divider, shaking the car so violently her teeth rattle. She jerks away from it and knocks the mirrors off the cars waiting in traffic. The noise is terrific, louder than the music. Her manager gave her the Range Rover only six months ago.

It was so shiny and new. Now it’s trash.

A siren wails behind her. She checks the rearview and blinks out the tears.

Thank god, someone is chasing me. A one-sided chase would have been humiliating.

A helicopter appears in her sunroof. She frowns when she sees it’s only NBC. Where’s Fox?

She’s had enough of Guns N’ Roses. The next song is Don’t Stop Me Now. Perfect.

Then she sees the concrete pillar of the 10 overpass. She’ll have to get off the shoulder if she doesn’t want to hit it. Ten seconds until impact.

This is it, then.

Kelly spits out the e-cigarette and sings full blast. She never liked the sound of her own voice, but screw it. No one will ever hear it again. Her and Freddy Mercury are burning through the sky at two hundred degrees.

Eight seconds.

The police behind her have slowed. They won’t follow her into oblivion.

Six seconds.

They’re getting out of their cars, baffled by the sight.

This will make the news. Even if Fox doesn’t catch it, a stringer will sell the footage. I’ll be on every channel. In every home for one more night.

Three seconds.

Just try and forget me now.

One second.

Her agent watches the crash. It’s the NBC helicopter that caught it. Kelly is clocked in at 112mph when the shoulder comes to an abrupt end at the 10-freeway overpass and her car collides with the concrete column.

In future replays of the crash, a warning will be shown: “This material may be unsuitable for some viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.”

When the flames are finally out, the fire fighters find the column sandwiched neatly in the middle of the engine block. Her manager thinks it’s poor taste that they don’t cut before the EMT checks Kelly’s pulse. They count zero heartbeats for 15 seconds and multiply that number by zero. Kelly is pronounced dead at 6:12pm on August 3rd. 16 hours from what would have been her twenty-second birthday.

A brief statement is being prepared by her family: “She only had a day left. It was So Kelly to go out on her own terms.”

Before it goes public, her lawyer recommends an addendum. A trademark symbol after her catch phrase, ‘So Kelly’.