"Why'd you kill him?"
August 23, 2011
Abella stands by the stump in Vista Court, slapping on the trunk to scare out crickets.
This stump was a pine I climbed fifty times. The landscaper, Mrs U, axed the tree for throwing pinecones into the pool.
“Have to get rid of it,” she said. “Nuisance.”
I yelp as the wings of a free cricket brush my cheek.
Abella grabs an insect from a hole in the stump. She pulls its wings off.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“It’s fun. Oooh, look. Squirmy.” She grins and pushes beady eyes and a kicking body a centimetre from my face.
I shriek and jump to safety, behind the border of the playground. I climb onto a geodesic dome and wrap my arms around the cold relief of a metal rung.
For five minutes Abella de-wings crickets. I count, and with each one the swelling in my chest grows.
Pity?
Jealousy.
Though I want to do something, I don’t want to touch the crickets.
Jumping from the playground set, I step on a crawling insect Abella threw to the ground. And another. And another. Each crunch goes “POP” like bubble wrap.
Abella doesn’t stomp on crickets mindlessly. She plucks one from the ground. With her fingernail, she cuts a line from its neck to its abdomen. Like scratching a dried pimple (always a mistake.)
The insect’s legs twitch. Blood pours pale yellow. Abella cuts the stomach horizontally, too, drawing a cross.
December 23, 2020
The door slams; I peek past my bedroom curtains as Dad climbs into his Rover. I’m like a dog, worrying when her owners disappear. Worrying they’ll never come back again. Because in the past, they haven’t.
From my desk I grab a Golden Delicious. Walking across our second floor to the master bedroom, I bite through the entire apple. I cross Dad’s room, and enter his bathroom. My free hand reaches for his drawer of pills before something stops me.
Newspaper splays on the floor, sucking bathwater from the tiles. Dad likes to splash while bathing. The paper sticks to my feet; the dry wetness of sand. I peel the newspaper from the underside of my foot like a temporary tattoo.
I glance at the front page.
The body of a murdered graduate student has been found at Saint Josef School, authorities said.
The corpse of Orlando Bills, 26, was found on Friday morning by the brick wall near Saint Josef School in Caplet, the city prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Mr Bills’ body had wounds vertically along the thorax and horizontally across the stomach, state prosecutors said.
Dad’s bathroom tiles have chilled the pages. Droplets darken the photograph, but I recognize the mark on the body’s stomach.
My apple core thuds to the floor.
I’d recognize that mark anywhere. I’ve seen her kill before.
There is Abella’s cross on the body on the front page of Caplet News. This morning a roll-up was on everyone’s front door.
The wet paper sticks to my finger, leaving a thumbprint-sized hole as I drop the news. I rush out of Dad’s room, slipping on the bit of water the paper didn’t manage to blot.
I catch myself on the side mirror. The bloodless look on my face turns my gaze from myself. I push out of that room.
I knock five times before Abella opens her door. Her flat stomach lends the impression she does Pilates or cocaine. Either is impressive, isn’t that sick?
“It’s nine o’clock in the morning,” Abella says. Bags puff under her eyes.
I wring my sleeves over my hands. When we were twelve, I could knock on her door 7 a.m. no problem. What’s happened to us? How could we have let that go?
She looks sick in more ways than one. She grips the doorknob like it’s an anchor keeping her ashore.
Yesterday I applied for a cruise ship job. Number 23 on my list of ways to escape this town. But I learned that boat-goers can get Mal de Debarquement syndrome. They come ashore and can’t walk properly. I’m just the type of person to get Mal de Debarquement. When things happen, they always happen to me. Not that I’m the centre of attention, but I’m always there. I see too much.
Being off-balance might be a blessing. I wouldn’t feel pressured to go outside. I’d have an excuse to stay in 196 Vista Court with the curtains closed.
I pull at my straightjacket, smoothing it over my thighs.
“Why’d you kill Orlando Bills?” I ask.
Abella’s silence pours words into my mind as she stands there, pulling at the scarf around her neck. Why’s she just standing there like that?
She’s not lying; she’s withholding. I can’t read her mind, but we are the same person. We’ve spend half our lives together; we must be the same.
Abella gestures me into the house and up to her storey. I follow her into her room. Notebooks litter her bedroom. Last time I saw her, Abella bragged that she’d become a straight-A student, now that she was taking courses she agreed with.
Her floor is smeared in five pages spilled from her printer, its guts open. We used that printer for a Religion class project in ninth grade. Back then we shared every day of the week. Now, we haven’t seen each other in a month. She hasn’t called once.
“Why’d you kill him?” I ask again.
“How did you know?” she asks, like a slap in the face.
I’ve figured out why it’s easy to tell your best friend anything. It’s because you’ve told them so much that anything you say is not worth much in the total ratio. Whereas with a new friend, each sentence can tip the scales. Problem is, sometimes I think the scales are canting when they’re not.
“I recognized your mark,” I say.
She blinks once. Only once.
“You know what, I’m busy. I can’t talk now,” she says. She grabs me by the bicep and escorts me outside, out of her bedroom, out of her house, out of her life.
As I cross the same path I always have from her house to mine, the taste of rejection lingers in my mouth. So does the remainder of that Golden Delicious. I bit too deep into it, past the skin and into the core, where the softness becomes the sleekness that covers the seed. The bitterness fouls my mouth.
That afternoon, my stomach tenses as I push the cart after Dad in the grocery store. I can’t seem to relax an invisible grip on my abdomen.
As the rush of shoppers passes me, I check every jean pocket for a knife. If Abella could kill someone, who else could?
Anyone.
I could.
Could the police arrest me, if they discover what I know?
Metal slams into my elbow, jolting me from my slump over the shopping cart—a police baton?
No—Dad threw a gallon of cranberry juice into the cart.
Outside the mall, each tree is wrapped in lights like the lines on toilet paper rolls. Blue light cries down the branches.
Mistletoe hangs above the grocery store as I enter. In a wreath, red berries cluster on gold branches. Steps from the doorway gleam candles and flowers and teddy bears, all brand-new.
It’s Christmas Eve Eve, the tipping point into holiday rush. Mom was never home for the holidays. She played Christmas shows in New York one year, Manchester the next.
Last-minute shoppers fill each aisle in the shop. With the trees on sale, I feel isolated in a snow globe. A crystal ball that someone’s about to shake, capsizing my world on its head.
I wind to the personal care section, lingering at the lube.
I need to get over her already. The boat will be just the time to do it. Will there be condoms? I should buy some just in case. Which size?
A hand grabs my forearm.
“Oh, look who it is. I haven’t seen you in months! How are you, dear? You must come over for dinner, and your father, too. Can’t have you being alone on a holy day.”
The wanting gaze of Abella’s mother clings to mine.
Tomorrow at 5. Yes, we’ll come. I’ll tell my father.
When she lets me go, I cross to the counter, and startle —chocolate-covered crickets. There’s a whole company making cricket stuff. Cricket chips. Cricket flour.
I’ve been miserable in this town, and my entire life, since my mother died. Why do I live here? I’m that woman who got sent to an asylum by the town physician in 1919. She returned to her hometown despite her reputation of being Crazy, capital “C.” Why did she return? Stockholm?
“Christine. Christine!”
“Hmm?” My head raises.
“Fruit,” Dad says.
Fruit fruit fruit. All we eat is fruit.
Hands trembling, I unload our plastic bags onto the conveyor belt.
You know those people who can’t sit still? Yeah, that’s me.
In front of us in line, a kid—nine?—shakes coins from a ladybug bank. The cashier must be mad.
The cashier is a fifteen-year-old with a blond ponytail. He throws the kid a smile, saying, “That’s right, get rid of your shrapnel.”
My mind is clouded with the headlines that would appear in Caplet News, if the police uncover the criminal. How to Catch a Criminal. When my scarf falls forward, I jump. I swear it was arms reaching around my neck.
Dad scowls at me. “Why so jumpy this afternoon?”
“Sorry,” I say, blushing as I hand the cashier Dad’s credit card. I am a dog scared by her own tail.
At dinner, the smell of oxidizing sugars slaps me back to Dad’s bathroom. But I must eat. Dad would yell.
As I open my mouth for baked apple mash, Dad plops the town paper on the table.
“Have you seen this yet?” he asks.
The body of a murdered graduate student has been found at Saint Josef School, authorities said.
The corpse of Orlando Bills, 26, was found on Friday morning by the brick wall near Saint Josef School in Caplet, the city prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Mr Bills’ body had wounds vertically along the thorax and horizontally across the stomach, state prosecutors said.
When Dad sees the look of horror on my face, he says, “This is why we have Block Watch. Don’t be too scared to go outside. Your mother got like that, when she was at the peak of her fame.”
“She did?” I ask, lowering my wooden spoon. He hasn’t talked about my mother in years. Seven.
“Only after the death threats. Before that, she paraded me around town,” he says.
“You? Really?” I ask.
He hoots. “Yes, me. You wouldn’t remember, but I was a model.”
“Yes, I’ve seen the pictures,” I say. At twenty-two, Dad didn’t have wrinkles. His face was heart-shaped, not gone square.
“You’ve seen? From where?” Dad asks.
“Your closet.” I grin and spoon apple mash. The sweetness doesn’t register anymore, we eat so much sugar.
“She—she was scared to go outside?” I ask.
Dad talks around the mash slop in his mouth. “I always told her she shouldn’t live in Caplet for thirty years. But she didn’t want anyone to forget her.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“No one ever believed she’d get rich. Why do you think she had that Bugatti? She wanted everyone to know,” Dad says.
“They did know. They heard the songs,” I say.
“Oh, the songs.” Dad turns away and looks out the window, but we have the curtains closed. He turns back. “The songs that made her stop going outside.”
He folds the newspaper in half, then in quarters, and pushes it into the wastebasket. “Don’t be like that. I shouldn’t have shown you this. I don’t want you to ever isolate yourself like that,” Dad says.
Too late.
