Girl on Point

by Cheryl Guerriero

  I feel as if I’m going to vomit. I take a moment before I read my account of what happened. I remember when they took it I was in a state of shock. I was covered in Jenny’s blood.

  Alexandra Campbell. Age: 17. Could not identify make or model of automobile. No identification of driver. No determination of male or female. No determination of number of occupants in car.

  I remember trying. It was all a blur of darkness. I had no idea. I wasn’t paying attention. I hate myself for it. I hate myself for not getting my own fucking soda!

  The phone next to me rings. It’s a plastic Wonder Woman phone. The receiver is cradled in her gold lasso. It’s connected to our house landline. It was a gift from my parents when I turned thirteen. In Jenny’s room is a Princess phone. She got it when she turned eleven. Wonder Woman rings a second and third time then goes silent.

  When I finally emerge from my cave and head to the bathroom, my mother paces back and forth in front of her bed as my father tries to calm her down. Apparently, she’s drunk and is going off about the police being overworked and understaffed and incompetent and that our governor is going to hear from her. But I can tell something else is bothering her.

  She catches my eye.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “Nothing.” My father clearly does not want to get me involved.

  “Detective Thoms thinks you stole the case folder.” My mother holds my stare. “That was him on the phone.”

  I feel my face grow red and think for sure my mother knows it’s true. Duke wanders into the hall, and I stop him from walking past and pet his head. The truth is, I’ve stolen a lot of things. And my mother knows this. It started out innocently enough. When I was in fifth grade, we were shopping in Target, and I picked out a pair of earrings that I liked. I shoved them in my pocket only because I was too lazy to carry them. When we got to the checkout counter, I totally forgot to give them to my mother. Later, she found them in my jeans. “I could’ve been arrested,” she said. “Next time, give them to me to hold.”

  Later, when I got into middle school, my mother would sometimes find bottles of nail polish and brand-new lipsticks hidden in my room. She knew neither she nor I had paid for them, and I’d get grounded for a week. Sometimes, though, I’d feel so guilty on my own, I’d return the items to the store within a day. It was more for sport anyway. I never even used the nail polish. I gave those bottles to Jenny.

  It was when I stole the soccer ball that Jenny caught on to my little klepto habit. It was stupidity, really. It had another girl’s name written on it. I hadn’t planned on keeping the ball. I simply wanted to borrow it for the long holiday weekend, but my mother found it and made me return the ball without ever saying I took it. My father, of course, wanted me to return it with an apology. But my mother overruled him. “What’ll the girl’s parents think of us?”

  From that day on, every new item that came into my possession was thoroughly questioned and scrutinized. If I had to think about it, I’d say my stealing was the only time my mother paid any attention to me.

  But this time, for whatever reason, my mother doesn’t accuse me of stealing. Maybe it’s because she so desperately wants to put the blame on Detective Thoms for failing to arrest those girls. Or perhaps it’s just her level of denial. Whatever the reason, my mother doesn’t wait for a response from me. She threatens to sue Detective Thoms and the rest of those “fucking assholes!”

  My mother never used to curse.

  “He’s an idiot,” I chime in, kicking at a piece of dust circling the hardwood floor.

  My father watches me, and I wonder if he suspects it’s true. He puts a hand on my shoulder and tells me to get some sleep. When I return to my bedroom with Duke, I hide the case folder between my mattress and box spring.

  That night, not unlike many other nights since Jenny’s death, I’m unable to sleep. Around three in the morning, I hear my mother visit Jenny’s bedroom.

  Why did Jenny have to die? And why do I have to be here without her?

  Chapter 6

  Before Jenny’s death, I never understood suicide or why people attempted it. It’s the pain. The reason for the pain doesn’t really matter. You just want the pain to end so badly that you’re willing to die.

  I meet with Dr. Evans once a week. I truly love Dr. Evans, and the only relief I ever feel is when I’m sitting in his office. He’s the most popular counselor and one of only three black people in our high school. It was recommended I go to a grievance group after Jenny’s death. I refused. So here I am, sitting with Dr. Evans. The first couple of times I visited with him, I said nothing. So he told me stories about himself.

  When Dr. Evans was eighteen years old, he was driving back from a Bruce Springsteen concert at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, the home of the New York Giants. He said he was with a group of friends, and his younger brother was in the backseat. His brother had wanted to get home an hour earlier, but Dr. Evans had stopped to chat up a girl in the parking lot. He said it took him thirty minutes before the girl finally wrote her phone number on a piece of paper and gave it to him.

  “Back then we didn’t have cell phones.”

  He said they were a mile from their house when a drunk driver slammed into his car. His brother was killed instantly. Dr. Evans told me he wished he had gone straight home after the concert. He shared his guilt and the hatred he had for himself and for the drunk driver. He said every day he plotted to kill the guy and probably would have if the court had released him from jail. It was his fourth DUI in a year. Eventually, the man was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to twenty years in prison.

  Dr. Evans said when he returned to school, a teacher had told him, “Things happen for a reason.” He told me he punched the teacher in the face and had to be pulled off him. For months after, he said, he was filled with hate and rage. He wanted to kill everyone, including himself.

  That was how Dr. Evans got me to open up. We talk about my recent visit to the police station, minus my stealing the case folder. I voice my guilt, and Dr. Evans tells me, as he has a million times before, “It wasn’t your fault, Alex.”

  I say nothing. I can’t stop thinking that if I had not asked Jenny to go to the store, she’d still be alive.

  “How would you treat Duke if he had sent Jenny into that store?”

  “My dog?”

  “Yup. It’s Duke, right?”

  I nod.

  “Would you not feed him for weeks? Never give him water? Yell at him every day? Beat him with a leash?”

  I know exactly where Dr. Evans is heading with this. “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do. I want you to think about this as if it were Duke who sent Jenny into that store to grab him… say, Milk-Bones.”

  I crack a smile. This is ridiculous.

  Dr. Evans stares at me hard, waiting for me to answer. “I’m not letting you out of this, Campbell. I want an answer. Would you hug him? Love him? Forgive him? Or would you regularly beat the shit out of him? Because that’s what you’re doing to yourself.”

  I sigh. “It’s easy to love Duke. He’s sweet.”

  “You’re sweet.”

  “No, I’m not. Ask my mom.”

  “I’m not asking your mom. I’m asking you. You gotta put down that bat, slugger. Be kind. Be loving. I want you to treat you, Alex Campbell, just how you would treat Duke. Can you do that for me?”

  I exhale a long breath. “I’ll try.”

  “Pretend it’s a sport, and the goal is to not beat yourself up every day. Okay?”

  I nod my head. “Yeah.”

  We move on from my guilt, and Dr. Evans asks me if I’ll be attending the University of Virginia in the fall. A few months before Jenny’s death, I got an acceptance letter in the mail with a partial athletic scholarship. I was planning to attend, but I changed my mind. Dr. Evans hoped I’d reconsider. I
haven’t.

  “Your dad thought maybe you’d still go to basketball camp this summer.” Dr. Evans speaks to my dad regularly. Dad’s worried about me. He’s got one daughter dead and me, who’s alive but no longer living. “What do you think?”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can’t, or you won’t?”

  “Both.”

  “So how are you sleeping?”

  “Fine.”

  “Yeah? Why don’t you tell me how you’re really sleeping?”

  I’ve been having nightmares ever since Jenny’s death. Most of my nightmares are filled with blood, and I wake up screaming. But this most recent dream was much different. It happened the night after our last visit to the police station. I dreamt I was at the convenience store in Cantor, looking in through a cracked glass window. I saw a group of girls taunting the store clerk. I couldn’t make out their faces, but they wore knit caps, jeans, and big winter coats. I entered the store, and when I looked down at my hand, I was holding a gun. The next thing I remember from my dream is waking up next to a ringing phone. I heard my mother’s voice as she answered the line from her bedroom. It was Detective Thoms calling to apologize. He said he wouldn’t be able to arrest the girls on some other charge. He said they had been murdered.

  “In my dream, I shot and killed those girls from Cantor.”

  “How did that make you feel?”

  “Relieved.”

  Our time expires, but I don’t want to leave. The truth is, I never want to leave Dr. Evans’s office. But I force myself to stand, and as I get to the doorway, Dr. Evans says, “Alex, you still have my number?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You ever need to talk—middle of the night, early in the morning—you use it.”

  Dr. Evans is afraid I’m going to kill myself. The truth is, I would kill myself if I knew it wouldn’t cause my parents further pain. Or destroy Duke. I would take a bottle of sleeping pills and never wake up.

  Later, I head to my Jeep with Lea. She’s frenetic, talking nonstop. She tells me her latest Amber-hating story, which has to do with Amber not paying her back for booze Lea bought. “The ho drank most of it.” Lea rolls her eyes. I half listen, and when Lea finally stops flapping her gums, I ask her why she even hangs out with Amber if Amber annoys her so much. Her response is classic Lea. “Because we’re friends. Duh.”

  We pass a group of girls, and Lea yells out to them to see if they’re going to some party that week. The girls holler back that they’ll be there. “Hell, yeah. For sure,” one of them says, her perfect white smile glaring at us. They all look the same to me. They all have long, straight hair, and they all wear tiny shorts and sleeveless tops from stores like Forever 21 and American Eagle. They’re the nonathletes Lea and I are friends with, and overall, they’re okay. Lea often dragged me out to party with them. But I’m so disconnected from everyone today. I can’t imagine ever hanging out with those girls again.

  As we walk to my Jeep, I think about where we’re going. Not only didn’t I tell Dr. Evans that I jacked the case folder, but I also didn’t tell him that I know where the Cantor girls live, and today, I’m doing a drive-by of Lori Silva’s house. I made the mistake of telling Lea, and she blackmailed me into taking her. She said if I didn’t, she’d tell my dad. I didn’t want to take the chance that she’d actually do it. So I agreed.

  We climb into my Jeep, and Lea asks me whether I think Reed likes her or not.

  “Sure, he’ll like you for a night.”

  She shoves me. “Thanks!”

  I smile, and this causes Lea to do a double take. I don’t smile much these days. We shut the doors to my Jeep, and suddenly, she’s conscious of what we’re about to do.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Lea asks.

  “I’ll take you home if you don’t want to go.”

  “No. I want to go.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. Go!”

  I hang on Lea’s last word. It reminds me of what I said to Jenny right before she left that locker room. It reminds me of what I wish I hadn’t done.

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this.” Lea stares at me as if we’re both nuts.

  Before I can chicken out or change my mind, I program the GPS on my iPhone to 22 Oak Street, Cantor.

  “Aren’t you afraid?” Lea holds onto the strap of her seat belt and shivers, despite the warmth.

  “No.” I don’t care if I live or die. I really don’t. I turn the ignition and head out of our high school’s parking lot. The female voice on the GPS directs me to the New Jersey Turnpike entrance, even though I know how to get there by heart, and in less than fifteen minutes, we are en route to Lori Silva’s house.

  Chapter 7

  Lea’s lips haven’t stopped moving the entire ride. She’s no longer scared and is now worried she’s getting fat. I refrain from commenting. Lea’s a binge eater, perhaps even bulimic. I brought it up to her once before, and she didn’t speak to me for a week. She goes on to tell me how lucky I am that I can eat anything I want, and I don’t get fat. I wish I’d never agreed to take her. She’s exhausting and self-absorbed. If I were a lucky person, my sister wouldn’t be dead.

  The female voice on the GPS is mostly silent until over an hour later when we arrive at the Cantor exit. I pay the six-dollar toll with cash, and the female voice directs me to “turn right” and then “turn left” as we journey back into this armpit of a town. Poverty, filth, and desperation linger on every corner. Lea grows nervous and promptly locks her door. I don’t think it will do much good if someone really wants into this Jeep.

  We stop at a traffic light, and I notice a group of teenagers hanging out on the corner. The guys wear baseball caps and low-hanging jeans. The girls are in microskirts and tops that show off their stomachs. I hear words spoken in a mixture of Spanish and English. One girl playfully pushes her friend as another guy laughs. Then they spot us, and one thing is for certain—two white girls in a blue Jeep Wrangler don’t belong in this neighborhood.

  “Baby, you lost? I think you lost,” one guy yells out with a thick accent.

  The girl who pushed her friend focuses on Lea. “What you lookin’ at, Snow White?” She laughs.

  Lea turns to me. “Alex, I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “It’s fine. It’s daylight,” I say, even though I know it doesn’t matter in this ‘hood.

  Another guy yells something at us in Spanish. I’m not quite sure what he said, but I stare at him, feeling nothing. No fear. No panic. Nothing. The light changes, and I drive off. In the rearview mirror, I see the guy face his friends. I turn off the main road and onto a less-populated street. We pass a car propped up on cinder blocks in a front yard. One more turn, and halfway down the block, the female voice says, “You’ve arrived at your destination.”

  I drive past a numberless house and park on the opposite side of the street. I keep the engine running as Lea and I stare at Lori Silva’s house.

  “Okay, we saw it. Let’s go,” Lea says, as if expecting us to be shot.

  I keep staring at the house. Tall, mangy bushes obscure the first-floor windows. Patches of shingles are missing from the roof—a few lie on the weeded front lawn—and paint peels from all sides of the house. I notice a small backyard surrounded by a chain-link fence, and leading up to a warped wooden garage door is an empty, potholed driveway. The house looks abandoned.

  It feels weird and slightly frightening to sit in front of Lori Silva’s house, knowing that she had something to do with my sister’s murder. I picture her inside, watching some crappy TV and laughing with her criminal friends. I think about Jenny being dead and her being alive, and I grow angry. I think if I owned a gun, I would walk up to that house right now. I would knock on that front door, and when Lori Silva answered, I’d kill her. I’d shoot her a hundred times over. And then I’d go to Cynthia Down’s hou
se and each one of these Black Diamond girls’ homes, and I’d kill them. Just like Charles Bronson. Just like Angelina Jolie. Just like every other vigilante in any movie I have ever seen.

  I think about all this, and for the first time in what feels like forever, I’m not sad or lonely or depressed. I have a reason to live.

  Lea’s voice wakes me from my rage-induced stupor. “Alex, can we please go home now?”

  Almost two hours later, I drop Lea off at her house. She exits, thanking God. I say goodbye, and a short time later, I pull into my driveway. My father is already home. I know this because I can see his Audi parked inside our open garage.

  I enter the house and go straight to the kitchen. Duke’s face stares at me from outside the screen door, begging to be let in the house. I pop open the door, and he heads for his water dish. I hear my mother’s shrill voice upstairs, and I know something is wrong.

  I walk up the stairs, and as I approach my sister’s bedroom, I see my mother inside. She is still in her pajamas and is manically pulling clothes from Jenny’s closet and shoving them into a large plastic garbage bag. My father stands in his suit, helplessly watching.

  The rest of Jenny’s room is exactly how she left it. Her bed is unmade. Stuffed animals are tossed all about, along with some clothes, a hairbrush, several pink ribbons, and a bra. My sister was girly, but she was also a slob. Tacked to the walls are Polaroid photographs of her friends, posters of her latest boy obsessions, and pictures of a few favorite NBA players. Her desk is cluttered with more photographs, the Polaroid camera, and a Mac computer. On a nightstand is her Princess phone.

  “Mary, let’s go downstairs,” my father pleads.

  “No! Let’s forget we had a daughter!”

  “That’s not what I meant. I just want us to try to move on with our lives.”

  “You move on with your life! Move out! That’s what you want!”

  “Mary, please—”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”