by Lana Hartley
It tastes fucking awful, but the more I drink the less I mind. It’s chilled and has a little kick after every drink. I walk towards the water, pulling off my shoes and tossing them near where everyone else has theirs. I watch the water and listen to all the sounds around me fade out to nothing.
I’ve just graduated high school. I’m starting college in the fall. I should be excited. But after the sounds creep back into my consciousness, I just feel annoyed all over again. I wonder for a second what it would be like to not feel so displeased.
Laurel laughs, sputtering out some of her beer when Perry lifts up her towel and shows everyone Jonie’s hairy legs. “Jonie, please, who are you kidding with not shaving your legs? No one thinks that’s empowered, that’s your first visible step in giving up on yourself!”
“Shaving is a huge waste of time,” Jonie says, her eyes cast downward. She tries to snatch her towel back from Perry.
Jonie is mousy and has a surprisingly squeaky voice. Two things that already didn’t help her fit in at Westwick Prep, and she wanted to fit in. It’s made her time at school painful to witness. Laurel and her crew invite her to everything, bully her, and then treat her like their personal whipping girl. I used to feel bad for Jonie until she took personal advantage of her rung on the ladder being a few steps up from the bottom. She took every opportunity to pick on Tabitha until she transferred schools.
I despise being around these putrid people. I realize now that I’m clenching the can of beer that I’ve totally finished, and I have to pee.
Laurel’s father’s beach house is open, so I traipse up there to pee. I can’t believe how quickly one beer went through me, and how I’m already starting to feel a little sloppy on my feet. I’m careful to swerve past the line of sight of my fellow graduates, easier now that the sun has gone down and the bonfire isn’t getting all that well tended to. Everyone else has had way more than a single can, I’d wager. Yet they aren’t going to be pee… at least I’ll get to be away from everyone for a moment.
I start to feel much soberer after I empty my bladder. It was only the slightest buzz, anyway. But something is different. I’m not sure what I’m seeing until I get closer to the fire.
Bodies.
Bleeding, lifeless bodies across the shore. Panic should set in now, but I just feel a cold need to know if they’re dead now…or will be. Where does this eerie harshness come from? I reach down and press my ear to the hearts of one of the bodies before me. No heartbeat. No breath. I look at my dress and see blood on the white fabric.
I hear one screaming voice, someone still alive.
I recognize them.
Laurel.
And I feel…I don’t know what that pang in my stomach is, but I look in the direction I hear Laurel’s voice coming from. It’s getting closer to me. I look down at the blood crossing through the water. I think I forget to breathe.
Why do I know it’s him?
I step closer. Jeremy is dragging Laurel’s body across the beach. I see him stab her. Drop her.
Come towards me.
I pick up my phone and start calling 911. I am barely listening to the dispatcher, though. I alternate between looking at my toes in the bloody sand, wave lapping over it and mixing everything in the moonlight and the dying firelight, and toward Jeremy. He is walking toward me now, Laurel discarded. I keep up with answering the dispatcher’s questions but I’m barely paying attention.
I look right in Jeremy’s piercing green eyes and lie on the phone. No, I didn’t see anyone.
Why would I lie?
Why do I want to touch him?
Jeremy
“So much blood,” Carrie says, her voice nearly drowned out by ocean and the wind.
Darkness cloaks us both, the fire flickering down to almost nothing. The teenagers hadn’t been tending to that fire as well as their booze. I barely needed the mask I wore tonight. I’ve cut them all down but Laurel, and of course, Carrie.
Laurel screams. I barely hear her cry out, her voice seeming distant even though she’s in my grasp. Hers is the final body strewn along the beach tonight. I sink my blade into Laurel’s side several more times, cutting and twisting her insides, but my eyes are on Carrie.
I watch her pick up her phone.
She’s called 911, like a good little girl.
The logical thing to do would be to finish off Laurel and leave. Instead, I toss the shivering shell of Laurel, quickly losing blood, into the water and walk towards Carrie. Her white gown is covered in blood, water, sand. Her bare feet I see, just barely against the moonlight, sinking into the sand, mixing with the blood on the shore that the waves keep lapping up.
“Yes, I’m at Zala Point Beach, my name is Carrie Winters,” Carrie says to the emergency responder on the other line. I step closer, mesmerized at the blood and water washing over her toes. She’s looking at it, too, through slivers of moonlight. I don’t bother being stealthy as I move closer.
Carrie’s eyes look right up into mine.
Her hand goes over the phone’s receiver. “Hello?” she asks quietly, and I move from the tiki torches and awnings that were hiding me and into her line of vision.
Shouldn’t she be afraid?
How am I supposed to think logically and leave when Carrie seems to be totally unafraid? I know her life is fairly depressing, but I don’t think that she has a death wish.
Her hand moves from the receiver and she looks right into my eyes. Mask or not, darkness or not, I know that she recognizes me. “No,” she says, and I almost shake at the sound in this moment, so close to each other. “I didn’t see anyone.”
It’s unmistakable. Carrie is looking right at me, and lying. Does she think I’m not real, that she’s imagining me?
The sight of her in a wet white dress, the wind whipping against her, the blood on her dress, her skin, it makes my chest tight and I ache for her.
I am real, Carrie.
“We’re sending a unit now,” I hear from the phone.
Carrie just hangs up.
I still have the blade in my hand, but I point it toward me. I touch the side of Carrie’s face with my hand.
Her mouth forms a little ‘o’ and she reaches out and puts her palm flat against my chest. The touch is like a defibrillator, the electric current so strong. The crashing waves around us sound louder. The salt taste in the air stings more. I hate to leave now, and I want to swoop her up and hide her away, mine forever. I watch her close her eyes and drop her hand. I want to kiss her, but instead I tear my hand away from her cheek and leave, disappearing as quickly as I appeared, into the night.
I feel the weight of her hand on my chest still, like I’m some demon and she’s an angel burning her touch into my skin. My hand itches to feel her silky skin again, but I head back home.
I didn’t fuck anyone after I killed Lorenzo Sirvio. I’m not fucking anyone after I killed Carrie’s classmates. My cock is so painfully hard I almost worry that I won’t be able to drive, but I find my composure.
I can’t explain it, but when I saw Carrie, I knew she was mine. No more than I can explain how Carrie seems to recognize me in some primal way when she’s seen me.
Carrie
“Don’t ask my baby anymore questions.” Mother bellows the request so loudly in front of the police officer that I wonder if there are cameras around recording this grieving mother act.
Everything just…happened. Those bodies…
There can’t be reporters around yet, are there? And in the hospital? The staff must keep them away from patients.
That’s what I am, a patient. I look down at my white dress, sandy, wet, and covered in the smudges of blood I got when I checked some of the bodies.
Bodies. I keep saying that word in my head.
“Ma’am,” the officer says to my mom. His tentative breaths add to the nervous energy all around us. I know he doesn’t want to overstep his bounds, but my mother could test Ghandi’s patience. “She is the only survivor that we can talk with.
The only other victim with a pulse is unconscious in the ICU, and your daughter seems to have sustained no injuries—”
“Carrie is likely in shock,” a nurse says, handing me a hospital gown. “You change in there and we’re going to check you out, baby girl, make sure you’re okay.” The nurse pats my arm. I should feel upset about what happened. Comforted by the nice touch. I smile quickly and let my face fall as soon as I turn from her.
I enter the room where I’m supposed to change and hear my father’s voice; he’s on the phone. When he spots me, he walks from the room, voice exasperated as he attempts to be both pushy and quiet. “Okay, but I should be able to sue the school for the pain in suffering my daughter was exposed to, or the beach, Parks and Rec, who is responsible here, Larry?” My father is talking to the family lawyer.
Pain and suffering sounds like what I should legitimately be faced with now, but mostly I’m just tired. I want to be home, curling up next to Jeremy’s coat.
My brain wraps around the idea that Jeremy did this. I saw him. I should tell the police, but I know I’m not going to.
This is the first time in my life that I’ve actually considered that I might not be a good person.
The nurse walks in. “Sweetie, if you’d like to take a shower, the officers just need to take a few samples and we can clean all this blood of you,” the nurse says. She speaks softly, like I’m fragile.
I don’t feel like I’m going to break. I don’t feel anything more than tired. “There’s blood on my hands,” I say, stretching my fingers out before me.
For a moment I think about running to the shower and washing off any proof that Jeremy was there. I want to protect him, but something tells me that he doesn’t need my protection. Why did Jeremy kill all those people? Why didn’t he kill me? More importantly, why don’t I just tell them? I did nothing wrong. They think I’m in shock. Maybe I am.
“Bring the officers in, and then I’ll wash this off after they get their samples,” I answer. I look at her without smiling. Maybe the smiling is just too inappropriate for the moment. I’m used to smiling because I think that’s what people want to see.
The police officer that my mother is hounding walks in, my mom in tow like a Chihuahua ready to bite his ankles. Mother is sobbing profusely, giant crocodile tears all over her cheeks, mascara running like a murky black river beneath her eyes. “Hasn’t she been through enough?” she wails.
“They need samples and a statement,” I say.
“Yes, Ms. Winters,” the police officer says slowly. “If you could just tell us what happened, then we could let you rest.” He pulls a curtain and in that brief privacy I’m a specimen they need samples from.
“Okay.” I hold my hands out while they swab and scrape everything they need, take every picture, tag everything, it is all happening in slow motion and very far away from me, at least in my head. When their evidence bags are full, I sit on the bed and the curtain is tugged back.
There’s another cop in the room. I see Mother look at him and adjust her cleavage. That’s a new level of low for her, I think when she walks over to him and starts flirting.
My father reenters in the room, and he doesn’t pay attention to us, just sits in a chair. My mother doesn’t stop flirting. The officer pulls out his notepad, looks at our little family unit, and sighs.
“I remember that I went to the bathroom. Everything was fine when I left, and a few minutes later when I came back, there were bodies everywhere. I checked some to see if they were breathing or had heartbeats. There was a man, he had a mask, I just forgot in the shock,” I offer up because that’s true and it means nothing. I don’t want to say anything about those green eyes, about recognizing him, about him touching me.
About how I saw Laurel’s body.
“I heard Laurel screaming and I went back to her—” I pause before I say, “body.” She’s the only other girl who’s still alive. Not because she’s supposed to be, I figure. When Jeremy saw me, he tossed her aside like garbage. I still remember how the handle of his blade whispered over my skin when he touched me. How I felt his racing heart beneath my palm. “I heard her screaming…I…I didn’t see anything else.” I take a deep breath. “Can I see Laurel now?”
“Yeah, sweetie, let’s take you to her in ICU after you get cleaned up, we’ll get you washed off and then you can see your friend.” I hear sadness in the nurse’s voice. I want to tell her that I’m not upset about Laurel. That Laurel is not my friend. I want to see her because I need to understand why I’m not upset, why I’m not scared, why all I care about it seeing Jeremy again.
I want to understand. Understand my strange reaction, or lack of any real reaction. I want to understand why Jeremy did what he did. I want to understand why I have this attraction to him, and what it means.
The nurse turns. “Give Carrie some privacy,” she insists. My parents look confused for a second, and I think my father actually forgets I’m in the room with him again. My mother shakes her head and stomps out, clacking her heels and tucking her arm around the cop she’s targeting.
When the nurse takes me to the bathroom, I ask to be alone.
Standing in the shower there, I watch the blood drip down the drain, swirling with the water. I touch my face where Jeremy touched me and remember seeing the blood and ocean water on my sandy toes. I clean all the grit off me, but I feel marked. The water, the blood, none of it can wash away Jeremy.
Carrie
I put on my pajamas and turn the news back on, attempting to drown out my parents at this point.
“Our top story tonight is the brutal killing of several students of the graduating class of Westwick Preparatory Academy, as the last injured girl died overnight in Johnson Memorial Hospital. Only one girl, Carrie Winters, survived, unharmed.” The anchorwoman turns to face the camera before her desk and dives into the story.
Mother was only quiet long enough to hear my name on the news. She does a little excited shake of her fists and turns back to me. “Ava Lang is going to be here in the morning, they wanted to do the interview from your bedroom so it is more personal.” Sitting on the bed, my mother glances around and shakes her head at my bedroom. Despite every touch she’s put into this room, I guess she figures it’ll need an upgrade to be the survivor of a mass murder bedroom she hopes to be on the news. “They don’t normally pay their guests, but we were able to get a large sum in exchange for exclusivity.” Standing now, my mother puts her hand on top of my head and pats. “So sorry about Laurel, I know you just went to her birthday party.”
I say nothing. I didn’t care about Laurel. I visited her and waited to feel something, and yet…nothing. I left. I went home from the hospital last night and she died the next day. Still, I feel nothing about it.
I don’t think I’m in shock. The most shocking part of this whole ordeal is how I can’t seem to manage to feel sorry for any of those wretched kids I went to school with.
“I think we can snag a reality show.” She pulls her hand back and points. “I didn’t take the first agents offer, and instead I let the second agent start a bidding war. We have three TV networks and five internet companies —"
“Stop, Mother, no!” I can’t listen to this anymore. “I am not going to profit from this, I’m not going to take money for interviews or do reality shows and become famous because so many people were murdered.” The words roll out of me with force. I didn’t care about those people, but I don’t feel cold enough to do what my mother is suggesting. That feels disgusting to me.
“You won’t be getting the money, no problem,” my father interjects. He grabs my arm, gripping it so tightly that I know I’m going to have bruises. “You are an ungrateful little brat. I am sick of listening to you shit on your mother’s hard work.” He pulls me up off the bed and shoves me into the wall, still holding my arm so tightly that my eyes are watering. “We pay for the best school, buy you everything so you can fit in, force everyone to include you in their social calendars. You have a car, liv
e in a gorgeous home, and you are just a little whiny bitch.” He pushes my arm back, slamming me against the wall again and then releasing me.
I grab my arm and rub where he squeezed me, feeling the ache. “I never asked for any of this.” I look to my mother, nonplussed by my father’s abuse. “Both of you get out.” My voice is shaking, and I don’t want to cry, but I can’t wait for college.
My father walks back up to me and slaps me. “You’ll do this interview, and finally be useful to this family. Or you better figure out how to pay for college!”
I nod, touching my face where he slapped me. But I don’t want to cry and let them think I’m still sad over the hit Physical abuse hardly feels like much of an escalation after the mental abuse they’ve made me endure for years. At least we all agree that I don’t belong in this family.
My father puts his arm around my mother like she’s been brutalized in some way, and they leave.
I change out of my pajamas, pack a quick bag, and grab all of the cash I have from allowances that my mother pushed on me for the past several forced social engagements my mother has sent me on. Pulling out my phone, I call a car service and I step outside. My parents are drinking and discussing the deals they want to make for telling “our story,” as I hear them refer to this ordeal. They don’t notice me slip outside.
I don’t want to drive the car they bought me. They stopped letting me use it when I quit staying at the parties they wanted to me attend, and I don’t need them to find me. I’ll pay for the car service in cash and stay in a hotel. I’m eighteen and I don’t have to stay in their house or accept anything from them anymore. I can figure it out. Right now, I just want to get away.
I begin thinking about the logistics of where I’ll get a job, where I’ll live when the cash for a hotel isn’t going to work for me anymore. I run my fingers over Jeremy Burke’s coat, one of the only things I wanted to bring with me. I like the way the fabric feels. I stop planning for a moment and imagine seeing him again. Maybe I’ll go back to that hotel bar when I have a job, when I’m free. Maybe I’ll have an apartment and ask him to come back one night.