Little Threats

by Emily Schultz

  “For leg pain?” Kennedy had been skeptical and thought her mother was looking for attention. Before she’d left, she’d said she didn’t want to ruin their Fourth of July plans and not to worry about her—but her tone had a tremor in it, as if she were hoping one of the girls would disagree. Their dad was out golfing and having beers with other lawyers.

  After Carter had hung up Kennedy asked her if she was feeling it yet.

  “Feeling what?”

  “The beginning. The acid.”

  The sisters, along with Haley and Berk, had dropped LSD and timed it to peak with the July Fourth fireworks show downtown. Two hours, they figured.

  When Carter and Kennedy’s mother had called they were sitting in Kennedy’s room listening to My Bloody Valentine, as if the layered guitars and drifting voices could summon the effects of the drug quicker. Berk lay across Kennedy’s lap on the bed and she played with his hair, silky. Twenty-one, Berk had chin-length gold hair and a scar in the middle of one of his thick eyebrows, some childhood game that turned to injury. Aside from the white stitch in his forehead, he had a rich boy’s face: flawless and pale, with a broad cleft chin. He’d grown up in the West End, neighbor to most of the card shop customers Kennedy served, though he now had an apartment downtown. His feet lay across Haley’s bare legs. He was only this physically open when high, and half the time Kennedy dropped or smoked it was only to see him like this.

  He had talked often about the day he would be intimate with her—intimate, that was his word for it—but it hadn’t happened. He’d said he wanted it to be ideal, that they themselves would be oneness. But when the opportunity finally arose at his Memorial Day weekend party, it was anything but romantic. Kennedy hadn’t taken him up on it. She was scared, though she told herself it was because she was celibate, like Morrissey claimed he was in interviews. She knew Berk and Haley had started talking on the phone even more after. Ever since, she’d harbored some resentment toward him and Haley both. She thought of Berk as her boyfriend, even though the possessiveness of the term seemed so preppy. Berk once said that they were meant to be, maybe in this life or the next—the fact that they’d been at the same Lollapalooza and had both seen Bram Stoker’s Dracula in the same theater on opening night seemed like folded notes from the universe saying they’d been supposed to meet. Other times he said he only wanted to be an “influence” in her life, show her music and things she hadn’t explored yet.

  Carter was sitting on the floor, her knees pulled up. She looked tense and Kennedy knew she shouldn’t have confided in her about Haley and Berk.

  “I should go be with Mom. She sounded scared,” Carter said.

  “At the hospital?” Kennedy asked, the drug already making words sound rubbery.

  “Yeah.”

  “You dropped acid. You don’t want to be there. That’s the worst place to trip.”

  “I only took half.”

  “Why?”

  “Someone had to drive tonight.”

  Kennedy looked down at Berk. “Guess you’re driving us downtown.”

  “If I have to drive I ain’t going to the fireworks to listen to Garth fucking Brooks. That’s twelve-year-old stuff, y’all know what I mean?”

  Carter snapped, “Oh, is twelve too young for you?”

  The dis flew over Berk’s head, but Kennedy stared down at her. “Maybe you should go. Be with Mom.”

  Carter, who had never liked Berk, left the three of them there alone.

  Berk looked over at Haley, who was stroking the hairs on his leg. Haley was a natural redhead; her skin was pebbled with freckles, but she wore her makeup thick to hide them. Sometimes Kennedy flattered her by telling her she looked like Tori Amos. She did a little. “What if we go trip in the woods?” Haley asked. “Be around nature.”

  * * *

  —

  Kennedy had walked a mile along the woods and come to the next bus stop. She paused to wait again, but her sister’s Honda pulled up before there was any sign of a bus.

  “Get in,” Carter commanded, and Kennedy leaned down, shoving the glass orb from the garden that she’d brought with her into the backseat before climbing into the front. “Where are we going?” Carter asked.

  “To see Mom’s grave.”

  Carter nodded and accelerated. “Why are you wearing the same clothes as yesterday?”

  Kennedy shrugged. She watched the woods fly by outside the windows. “I was just thinking about that night. The trip.”

  “Oh god, that fucking trip. I was sure Mom or Dad would know.”

  “I thought you only did half a tab.”

  “Yeah, but the hospital was a weird place to be. Just these bleached halls and doctors that looked ten feet tall to me, and the fluorescent lights were so bright. Thank god Dad waited in the car instead of being with us for most of it. I think he came in and spoke to the doctor for like two minutes.”

  Carter stopped talking. A dark look crossed her face and she glanced over at Kennedy, then didn’t say anything more for a few minutes.

  “I never come out here. It’s too much,” Carter muttered as they pulled onto a gravel area outside the cemetery. “It’s in that back corner, I think.”

  Walking between the headstones, Kennedy carried the glass ball on its staff and was sure the look was somewhere between crazy and witchlike. She wore the tattered army jacket, too snug across the breasts to close. Carter was dressed more practically, even though she hadn’t known their destination.

  Kennedy and Carter paced up and down the aisles, the random names of the dead flashing past in thick engraved letters. Bolton, Bunting, Byrd, Fortune, Hammond, Hunter, Moore, McRae, Tate, Wordsworth, Whiting.

  “That way,” Carter said, pointing.

  Laine Randall Wynn, 1952–1994. Kennedy drove the stick into the ground. The dirt was harder than she’d accounted for, even with the rain, and she twisted it and turned it, and said shit and damn it under her breath.

  “Let me do it,” Carter said.

  “I got it!” Tears sprang to Kennedy’s eyes. She repositioned the staff and its ornament closer to the headstone, where the dirt seemed softer. She jabbed at the ground, leaned her full weight against the stake. When it didn’t go, she lifted it up and tried again.

  “You’re stabbing the ground. You’re making a mess,” Carter chastised her.

  Kennedy looked down and saw that rust from the staff had come off on her hands, left a streak too on her dress. Divots now pocked the ground, like it was a tee box on a golf course.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kennedy said. “It’s not like she’s here.”

  “Did you know what you were going to do that night?!” Carter yelled, suddenly reaching out and grabbing the staff of the ornament away from Kennedy. “Is that why you didn’t come with me to the hospital?”

  “What?! No.” Kennedy stared at her.

  “You did,” Carter said, her voice shaky.

  Kennedy saw movement down the hill. A woman with short red hair was trudging along the pebbled path. She hunched, her hands buried in her coat pockets. It was Mrs. Kimberson.

  “Jesus Christ, Kennedy! Answer me!”

  “It’s Mrs. Kim—” Kennedy whispered, but Carter had gone past listening.

  Kennedy watched as her sister grasped the stick like a baseball bat and swung the glass ornament into the tombstone. The transparent ball shattered, tiny blue and yellow fragments raining down into the matted grass.

  “No!” Kennedy yelled.

  “You did it, didn’t you?” Carter screeched.

  “No!” Kennedy said again, emphatic. Kennedy dropped to a squat, as if she could hide behind her mother’s gravestone. But the path came straight that way and Marly Kimberson would see her, whether she stood or sat. Not to mention her twin, who still stood, tears streaming down the sides of her face. To steady herself, Kennedy put one palm do
wn, against the cold dirt.

  She remembered she had called the Kimbersons the morning after. The little boy, Everett, was the one to answer the phone. He’d said he thought Haley was with her, hadn’t she stayed over? Kennedy lied and said of course and not to tell his parents she’d called. Every time they were in prelim hearings, Mrs. Kimberson had stared daggers at her. Mr. Kimberson had just stared at the floor. The prosecution had their timelines and phone records and tried to say she’d phoned after she knew, after she’d done it. There was a ninety-minute gap in between the phone call to the Kimbersons and the 911 call Carter made. And during that time, from Kennedy’s side, she had gone to look for Haley. Kennedy remembered those long afternoons in court more than she remembered the night. She wished she could say she didn’t remember anything—that would have been easier—but she recalled a hundred different stories, the things the police tried to put into her mind as the truth, the things the others said in question-and-answer format, the stories of the photographs, of the newspapers.

  “How do I make you believe me?” Kennedy said to Carter.

  Kennedy blinked and realized Marly Kimberson was staring straight at them. Her mouth hung open, then scrunched, as if she would howl, but she didn’t. She said nothing, though the cords in her neck rippled. Then she cut away from the path and walked in the other direction through the headstones. About a hundred yards away, she stopped and kneeled. Kennedy glanced back and could see the black stone read Kimberson.

  “Oh great!” Carter said, finally seeing Mrs. Kimberson. She let go of the empty stick she’d been holding and it dropped onto the grass in front of Laine’s grave.

  Kennedy felt her throat grow tight. She stood up and strode away, and in a few seconds she heard Carter’s quick footsteps close behind.

  When they passed through the cemetery gate, they both slowed.

  “Wait, I can’t breathe,” Carter panted. “My head’s spinning. I feel like my throat is closing up.”

  “Don’t be so fucking dramatic, Carter.”

  “We should have gone over there, expressed our remorse.”

  “Are you kidding?” Kennedy said. “That would not be a safe thing to do.” She knew what she would do to herself if she were Marly Kimberson. A mother should not have to forgive a crime against her child. And there had been a crime, Kennedy knew, even if it had been committed out of love.

  “You’re right. Let’s get out of here,” Carter said, pulling a tissue from her coat pocket and rubbing her nose with it. “I’ll drive you back to Gerry’s.”

  “No, leave me with Mrs. Kimberson. It’ll hurt less,” Kennedy said, but as upset as she was, her hand was already on the passenger handle.

  October 6, 2008

  Assignment 2:

  Write about friends.

  My high school practically made the day of my plea change a holiday. The Kimberson family had campaigned for it. If this was going to be the only moment “Dead Kennedy” was going to rise and speak, I guess her family wanted Haley’s friends in court as a sign of support for her. Ultimately the school said no, but that they wouldn’t punish any students who took the morning off.

  After months of preliminary hearings everyone, including me, thought we’d be going to trial. It was my father’s plan to fight to the end. But that spring, after my mother went into hospice, he changed. He looked ashen during meetings. He started discussing plea deals with the lawyers. No one was hopeful. The prosecutor was in the news every week saying that someone had to stand trial for Haley’s death and he wasn’t going to stop just because the accused lived in the same zip code as him.

  At my last appeal to throw out the charges my dad had lurked in the very back of the courtroom: I thought he had finally grown ashamed of me. But as the proceedings began a friend of my father’s sat down and put his arm around him. The man was a federal judge from the fourth circuit. My own judge, the Honorable Cal Rafferty, glanced at the men in the back before asking my lawyers to the bench. Later, I learned that Rafferty made it known he would hold the lack of a plea discussion against both sides, should we go to trial. “The community needs healing, not grandstanding,” he said.

  An hour later, while I was alone in the holding cell, the prosecutor informed the court an agreement had been made. Judge Rafferty scheduled the new plea hearing for April 5, 1994.

  I wondered what I could plea to, given I had no memory of the night.

  * * *

  —

  “This is such bullshit,” I muttered at the defense table, glaring back at my former classmates. The court gallery looked like a gym assembly with bored teenagers but in formal clothing—ill suited to their nose rings and unwashed, stringy hair. God, these were the nerds only a year ago, I thought. What happened to them? Reese Blair had always thought Haley was trash and called me a Salome, a Jezebel, and a Delilah during a freestyle sermon in history class, but there she was now, with pink hair and an ACT UP pin on her dress. Caitlyn Coyle? I thought we were friends. Caitlyn’s new look was an attempt at Lisa Loeb, but she came off more like Nana Mouskouri. Cole Plummer? Fuck him and his bootleg Fugazi T-shirt under his suit coat. Fugazi was too pure to do T-shirts. I remembered that Haley had known Cole since elementary school and he’d hated her ever since she told everyone that he used to jerk his dog off to impress people.

  And these losers who had never cared about her before were all there to see me off to jail. I regret my anger that day, but I was still a teen. It mattered that Carter and I had made Haley cool. We’d transferred that rare element to her when no one else would give her the time of day. We’d taken her by the hand and brought her into the mosh pits of freedom, and that was going to be forgotten.

  My lawyers were still explaining what an Alford plea was when I saw Charity Sauer run into the courtroom in a Sunday dress and Docs. “An Alford plea means you accept the charge without contest but assert innocence. It’s limited, but it will give an opening upon appeal.” The lawyer drew lines on his palm, as if he were laying out a football plan.

  I ignored him and watched Charity whisper something to Cole, who then started weeping. I hadn’t seen a boy cry since sixth grade. “You have to tell the judge that you believe you’re innocent but that the state has a preponderance of evidence.” My lawyer broke midsentence and looked back. All adult heads turned around as there was more whispering and more teenage crying that turned wet and ugly. The judge entered from chambers with a perturbed expression and all rose except the dozen crying teenagers.

  Judge Rafferty shouted out that the gallery must contain their emotions or they would be removed. Mrs. Kimberson shed some tears herself, thinking the display was for her daughter. I wish it were—Haley deserved better than this group of death hags. Several of the lawyers from both sides went to the kids to calm them down.

  When my lawyer returned, he tried to clarify the situation for the judge over the sound of their wails. “Your Honor, it’s not the trial that’s upsetting them. The teenagers are apparently torn up over the passing of a rock-and-roll singer.”

  “Who?” I whispered to my lawyer. He ignored me. My thoughts turned to heroin and likely candidates: Perry Farrell? Anthony Kiedis? Courtney Love? Just as quickly my concern turned to anger. The kids cared more about a celebrity than someone they’d walked past every day in the halls. I was still the dead girl’s friend.

  “In light of this disturbance we’d like a recess.”

  The prosecutor jumped up to help claim credit. “We absolutely agree, Your Honor.”

  “Court is in recess. We are closing the gallery today with access only to press and family.”

  In my holding cell, I was told by a guard that it was Kurt Cobain. I wept, just like my former friends. I wanted to go and hug them and be hugged by them, even if they were assholes. Later that afternoon I stood and accepted the charge of murder in the second degree in a quiet and cool courtroom. There were only the lawyers and the families
as the judge spoke to me.

  He leaned forward and looked down at me from the bench. “Though we may not be going to trial I know that the answer in our souls would be the same as it is today: This is a tragedy written and acted out by children. The victim will not become an adult. The accused, however, will become an adult, and the manner in which she does so is going to be affected greatly by my sentence. Under the charge of second-degree murder I have the guidelines of five to forty years to choose from. By choosing sixteen years, as I have, Kennedy Wynn will become an adult in the corrections system. But she will also have a life after, during which she can contemplate forever, as I know she will, the actions of children that night.”

  An editorial the next day said the judge used the word children so many times he made it sound as if the crime took place at a Montessori daycare. I myself wondered if my red eyes and trembling body helped my sentencing or made it worse. Were the emotions I felt for Cobain interpreted by the judge as guilt and remorse finally released? Once inside I stopped debating it when I learned that it didn’t matter: sixteen, and hopefully out much earlier, was a gift for any murderer.

  I didn’t love Kurt Cobain more than I loved Haley Kimberson. The death of the 1990s for me is the image of her in the forest more than him in that greenhouse. But sometimes you cry because you’ve been given permission by something the world understands more.

  —Kennedy Wynn

  Heron Valley Correctional Facility

  Chapter 8

  Gerry gave the twins time to start talking again, and hoped they would, but Carter didn’t come out to the house. When the next weekend passed without a phone call, he began to worry. He’d been waiting a decade and a half to get his family back. Could they really split apart in the first days?