Casually Homicidal, page 13
“Thanks,” he says, mostly confused, but there’s a twinge of self-indulgent arrogance thrown in. It hits a nerve, sending waves of feeling through me. Elliot always used to brush off my genuine compliments with something cocky. It was to mask his crushing insecurity.
I blow air through my lips, as if that would expel the painful nostalgia of times gone by.
‘Socha’— the hidden vulnerability of others
Sometimes I hate that Sarah won’t get out of my head. There isn’t a day that goes by where her impression isn’t bearing down on me, in the little moments when a word from her favorite place gives an experience meaning. When I see—no, feel—those fleeting moments of authenticity, of intimacy, of vulnerability. Moments her and I had together. Moments I so desperately lack now.
Hendrix and I wander back into our room via the sliding glass door. Each ground floor room leads right onto the pool deck, but all the curtains are drawn. There are only three cars in the parking lot, not including mine. No one has their lights on.
We’re silent as we take turns showering and getting ready for bed. I keep the shades open, letting the thin light seep onto the threadbare, patterned carpet so I can see the mountains, the trees, and more importantly, the stars.
As Hendrix and I climb into the same bed, it strikes me how strange this is. I’ve never routinely slept in the same bed as someone else. I’ve gotten to know his habits too. How he always comes to bed after me. How he always starts off sleeping on his back, but then turns to one side after a while. How he gets up to piss and smoke at around 4am every night. How he snores just a little bit. Sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, afraid that there’s a murderer crouched over me in the dark, but it’s just Hendrix’s soft snoring beside me.
We zone out on our phones for a while as my hair dries. I check my messages, seeing that I have about seven unopened Snapchats and a few texts. Nothing out of the ordinary. Not one asking where I am, though.
And one missed call from my dad. No voicemail.
Hendrix suddenly sits up, hunched over his phone. “My dad just texted me.”
“Oh,” I say. I’m not jealous. This is the first time one of Hendrix’s parents has contacted him. “What does it say?”
“‘Where are you? I’m sorry.’”
I click my tongue. “Sounds desperate,” I say. Spite runs bitter through me, and I hate that it does. I can’t help but think, damn, even Hendrix’s asshole of a father can manage an apology. Mine didn’t even leave a voicemail.
“Sounds pathetic, you mean,” Hendrix sneers.
I bark out a laugh before I can think about it.
“What’s so funny?” Hendrix says. He turns around and stands, a dark figure against the stained wallpaper. I can tell he’s angry, and the moonlight from the floor reflects in his wet eyes.
“Nothing,” I shrug. Shit, I can feel it happening again. I’m freezing up. This is not how I expected this interaction to go. I’m being a bitch; I know I am, but I can’t seem to stop it. It’s like a fixed action pattern, something hard-wired into my DNA.
‘Socha’— the hidden vulnerability of others
The words Sarah planted in me only seem to blossom, to fractal out further and further until they make too much sense. I don’t really know how to react to Hendrix, the text, any of it. Well, I know how I want to react. I want to throw my phone into the tube television. I want to tell Hendrix he should be grateful that his dad is reaching out. I want to call my parents up and demand why they haven’t texted or called more, or even left a goddamn voicemail. Why they haven’t noticed I left.
I want them to notice I left.
But that would be hypocritical, so I do nothing.
“What’s so fucking funny?” Hendrix almost shouts, his voice pressing against the ceiling.
“Nothing,” I say. Defensively. Fear sends a spike up my diaphragm and through my heart. Now Hendrix is the one raising his voice and being a bitch.
He fumes at me for a second more, and then says, “I need to smoke.”
I’m still frozen as Hendrix slams the door behind him. And then I scream into my pillow. It smells offensively of laundry detergent.
why am i like this?
Sometimes I think I asked Hendrix to come on this trip with me just so I could have someone to lash out at. I can’t say that I haven’t done something like this before. But that’s not the whole truth. I want to connect with him. With each interaction, I can tell there’s something there. Some magnetism pulling us together like polar opposites.
I bury my face in the pillow again, groaning. Does everyone feel as terrified as I do? Why do I crave authenticity and intimacy so intensely, only to freeze up when opportunities present themselves? If I want intimacy so bad, why do I always fuck it up? I am a walking contradiction, and I hate myself for it.
But I realize—the defence mechanism I used with Hendrix was useless. It not only hurt him, but it hurt me. Are we just like the people Billy Joel sings about in “Piano Man”? Just people floating by, plagued by the regret, loneliness, and pain that mars our lives?
Something painful clicks together in my heart, like popping a joint back into place. It makes me tense up, the sensation rolling through my body. I think of Hendrix, of Sarah and Elliot. I think of my dad and Max. Their faces pass me by like silhouettes, and I feel the magnetism, the flow back and forth that keeps us connected and alive. Maybe the separation I feel is only in my own head. Maybe we’re all cut from the same cloth.
Sighing and rubbing my eyes, I stand up and look out the window, hoping to see Hendrix there. He is, but he’s looking right back up at me. I gasp and turn back around, tucking the curtain closed. My heart pounds and I begin to cry, tears rolling down my cheeks.
When I close my eyes, I swear I can hear “Piano Man” playing on a loop, crackly and coming in through the speakers of the SUV. Almost like a ghost, like how you can never truly get the smell of smoke out from a place until you rip the guts bare and expose all of the hidden places.
Only then can you begin to rebuild.
‘Socha’— the hidden vulnerability of others
15 Hendrix
Wednesday, May 23rd
My parents were never the type to take their kid to the doctor because of “behavioral problems”. They just thought it was because they didn’t beat me enough when I was little. Since specialists and psychiatrists were out of the question, I had nowhere else to turn to but the internet.
The thing about the internet is that the most desperate corners draw the most desperate kinds of people. As soon as I had access at home, I was just the kind of person who would crawl those dark corners, looking for some semblance of validation.
Not all of it was deplorable, though. A lot of it was research at 3am, trying to find a name for the sticky, numb feeling that invaded my body in times of stress. Trying to find out if anyone else craved violence and bloodshed the same way I did. Trying to find out if anyone else had the same darkness living in their head like a parasite. Trying to find a language for the unique and twisted sort of pain that has plagued my every moment.
But the only thing all that internet-searching did was make me afraid. Afraid of myself.
Outside, the night is still and frozen. Not cold, just frozen. Like someone hit pause. As I look across the two story motel from the entrance, nearly every light is off, except for the hanging lamps outside the small lobby. In the darkness, the garishly-decorated motel looks sepia-toned—even the rusty red metal railings with chipping paint. I light a cigarette, and the smoke curls toward the sky with no wind to disrupt its path.
I fight against the numbness as it detaches my soul from my body. I’m shaking, but I doubt that Arden can see it from our motel window. The adrenaline, the white-hot anger, has got my veins racing like fire. I kick my leg back into the pole I’ve been leaning on, the pain burying into my bones. Flakes of paint fall to the cracked asphalt.
This is a big fucking mess. I’ve had countless opportunities to kill her, to end this, and I’ve taken exactly zero of them. I pull out my phone again, the text still unopened. I stare at it until the cigarette starts to burn my fingers.
“Shit!” I fling the butt out of my hand. Reaching for more, I realize the box is empty. I start walking across the nearly empty parking lot, but turn around right before I leave the motel property. Arden ducks out of the window, the curtain falling back into place.
She was watching me. I wanted Arden to be afraid of me. Why isn’t she afraid of me?
For some reason, this pisses me off. This bitch goes and tries to make everything about her when my dad texts me. I bristle with anger.
Scuffling down the sidewalk, I open my phone again. The text haunts me, sticking around like a bad cold.
Where are you? I’m sorry.
I can barely imagine him saying those words. It’s not like he’s never apologized, but they never meant anything. He never changed.
I’m reminded of how Arden reacted when her dad called. She nearly threw her phone out of the window. I understand that I probably should empathize with her. She’s probably going through her own shit. Too bad I don’t care. It gets in the way of my own.
I speed up my pace when I see a gas station a few blocks down. Looks like the only place that’s open this late. Its bright logo and sign advertising prices glow like a neon moon in the dark, mountain settlement.
I wander in, gazing at the wall of cigarette packs behind the middle-aged man at the counter.
“I’d like a pack of Marlboros,” I say, slapping a wad of ones on the sticky counter.
“ID,” the cashier says, reaching behind him.
Even though I’m eighteen, I take out one of my fake ones. Better not have this asshole knowing my name and address just in case this is the night I decide to off Arden. He hands me the pack, and I tell him to keep the change. On the counter is a display of patterned lighters. I could use a new one. Holding one up to the light, I toss it up and catch it in my fist.
And then I walk out.
I can hear the man hollering at me, struggling to get out from behind the counter from where he parked his fat ass. Slamming the door behind me, I light my fresh cigarette as he runs toward me.
As if in slow motion, I bend down and pick up a rock—a sharp and jagged lump of broken asphalt and throw it straight through the front window. The alarm screams against the night, and the crash of glass is like ice. A sickening cocktail of anxiety and adrenaline ripples through me, but I can’t help but smirk. And then I run, because the devil really is chasing me now.
I let the adrenaline take me back to the motel, my skin cold and alive. My old habits, they’ve followed me here. Of course they would. I toss the end of my cigarette to my left, and it lands right at the base of the tires on Arden’s car.
Arden.
I glance back to see if the cashier from the gas station or the police are after me, but the street is quiet again. Serene, as if I wasn’t even there. After catching my breath, the fake good-feelings dissipate and all that’s left is the empty. A crushing sense of visceral loneliness —the eternal feeling of being alone in my skin. The nothing—painful, unforgiving, and so incredibly dark. It buries itself into all the hollow places, and believe me, there’s a lot of places for that darkness to go.
As I sit down on the gravel, my back against the tire, pieces of our previous interaction flash through my mind. Her defensiveness. My anger. The knife at my side bites into my flesh.
Taking out my phone, I finally open the text from my dad. That’s all it says: where are you? I’m sorry.
The words make my stomach twist. I slam it down on the concrete, half-hoping that I break the damn thing. The truth impales me, unwilling to be ignored. My father is the only person I can’t manipulate. Around him, I am out of control. Powerless. Worthless.
I guess the text took me off guard, because in that moment, if Arden had wanted to scream at me, beat me, take away everything I had, she damn well could have. In that moment, it felt like I was back home, and there was nothing I could do to stop the destruction that would have inevitably followed.
I look back over to our motel window, the curtain still and dark. The anger rises up in me again because it’s becoming harder and harder to manipulate Arden. She makes me feel so torn open, so dissected, so out of control. She makes me feel. How long can we string along these lies, delaying the end of this game? How long until whatever we’re running from catches up to us?
I twist around and stab the tire behind me with my knife. The air wheezes out, and my chest heaves along with it. I’m just so sick of it. I’m sick of Arden playing with me. I’m sick of not being in control. I’m sick of road tripping. I’m sick of feeling.
I need to take matters into my own hands.
Lit aflame like bone-dry cotton, I stand and dig my knife into Arden’s front tire, sawing at the black rubber. Then the third one. I leave one tire inflated, just to fuck with her.
When I sneak back into the motel room, the first thing I’m struck by is how it smells faintly of chlorine and perfumy soap, the kind they use to make old, dingy carpets smell like flowers. I’m hoping that Arden’s asleep when I come back into the motel room, but the second I walk in, she jumps up to face me.
“What?” I say.
“I just wanted to apologize, again. I’m sorry for reacting that way. Sometimes I have a hard time with that, but I just wanted you to know that it’s a bad habit that I’m trying to break. So, uh, I’m sorry if I hurt you. And, um, I understand, if getting that text was hard for you. Having my dad call was hard for me.”
Firecrackers explode inside my gut. I glance over at the patterned curtains, fluttering softly as the air conditioning unit runs. Like vomiting razor blades, I push the words out. “I forgive you.” Lies.
Arden swallows, and then steps forward and hugs me. I hug her back, knowing full well I just fucked both of us with the number I did on her tires.
Guilt, cold and slimy, grows like a cancer inside me. I’m afraid it’s too late now.
16 Arden
Thursday, May 24th
‘Kenopsia’— the eeriness of places left behind
Can you ever really love someone you don’t truly know? By that logic, maybe none of us ever know each other. There’s something so incredibly lonely about that.
What makes it even more lonely is that we get so good at thinking we know people. I thought I knew Sarah; I thought I knew Elliot. The heartbreaking thing is that they probably thought they knew me, too.
Sometimes what happens, I think, is that we delude ourselves into thinking we know everything about someone. That they could never pull a 180 on you. As if the ideals we have painted over other people won’t come running off once the rain comes.
Hockey season was winding up that winter. Things were going well, although I knew he was going to be significantly busier now. We were graduating soon and coming up on our one year anniversary. Things were good.
On Saturday, the last hockey game before winter break, I sat alone in the stands of the rink, waiting for Elliot to come out so we could go to his house. His mom was making matoke stew—my favorite of her authentic cooking. She was as sharp as a tack and loved me. She always shared embarrassing childhood photos of Elliot with me on Facebook, except she never could figure out how to send them in a private message so all of the photos would end up on my timeline.
That night, however, the rink felt especially empty. The ashy ice made my breaths sound hollow, the distant clanks of metal and boys roughhousing in the locker rooms from another world. Only minutes ago, this rink had been full of screaming, celebrating fans, families. I heard the rustle of a worker picking up empty popcorn bags and neon pamphlets. It felt empty. Soon, neither Elliot nor I would be here anymore. Some other high school kids would play on this rink. Some other girl would sit here, waiting for her boyfriend to come so they could half watch a movie, half talk about the stars and kiss under them.
These places . . . they’re haunted.
When Elliot and his teammates finally came out of the locker room, he threw a wave my way. It was casual, friendly, but when it hit me, it struck hollow. He usually came up, threw his sweaty arm around me, kissed me, told everyone I was his girl.
He texted me. I’ll meet you in your car .
My 2003 Oldsmobile Alero. As red as a Solo cup. I had kissed in that car. I had sobbed in that car. I’d smoked in it, and I had hated and loved in it. It was a portable safe place—more of a home than my own room was.
In that damned vehicle, I turned over the engine and blasted the heat. Montana winters were brutal. The cold would cut down to your bones and bury there, and the snow has been known to cancel school for a week. I turned the radio on, down low until it was just a warm murmur.
As Elliot got in, we leaned over to kiss as we did out of habit. But to me it still felt like it meant something, even after all these months, all these nights.
Elliot pulled away early, our faces hanging in the air between us. I leaned in, just a touch. But he cleared his throat and leaned back, cleverly avoiding another kiss. He turned off the radio, and silence clicked into place.
“What?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” he said.
“Is your mom not making food tonight? Are we going to have to get takeout again?”
“No,” he said.
“No to your mom cooking or no to takeout, because-”
“I’m breaking up with you, Michelle.”
In elementary school PE, everyone’s favorite day was the obstacle course. Every kid got so excited when they saw the hoola hoops and the trampolines and the jumping mats set up all across the gymnasium. But one day in second grade, while I was trying to do the monkey bars, I made a mistake. I didn’t get a good enough grip on the bar, and I slipped.
And I fell flat on my back. Sometimes I can still hear the smack and feel the sting across my skin. It was like someone attached a vacuum tube to my gut. For a full three seconds, my ribs were stuck to the floor and my heart pounded, my lungs like deflated, overused balloons.
