Diary of a Teenage Serial Killer

by Jem Fox

  He smiled a little. His flunky was standing right behind me, a little to the left.

  “I think you know a couple of friends of mine.”

  “I don’t think so.” I spoke flat. My tone and my posture were meant to convey, Let’s just get this over with.

  His tone was soft and friendly. He set off my radar. Liar. Thief. Rapist. Con Man. Bad Person. “Robby and Ramón.”

  Of course. “They’re not friends of mine.”

  His eyebrows went up a bit. “Really? They speak so highly of you.”

  “I bet.”

  He did that thing that guys do and looked me up and down from the part in my hair to my shoes and back again. Finally he looked me in the face and smiled that “So sorry, love” smile.

  “When Robby and Ramón stopped by to visit you last night, they lost something that belongs to me.”

  I shrugged. “Good help is hard to find.”

  He smiled. “So true. Times are tough.” Then he pushed off the wall and leaned toward me. I couldn’t back up due to Flunky standing behind me. He tucked his mouth up by my ear and spoke soft. “I thought you might know where it went.”

  “I don’t.”

  He leaned back again, looked at me thoughtfully. “Are you sure? Maybe some other friends of yours got into Ramón’s car while they were upstairs with you.”

  “I don’t…” I started to say I don’t have friends, but it wouldn’t do to let this guy know that no one had my back. I corrected myself. “I don’t think so.”

  His eyes narrowed just a touch. He was like a dog that wags its tail but only wants to lure you close enough to sink its teeth into your hand.

  “I’m no Sherlock Holmes, Darla, but Robby and Ramón went to your place with my item and when they left, the item was gone. So I think you either know where it went or have an idea of who does.”

  I shook my head and stole a glance down the hallway. I was losing the audience that was keeping the conversation borderline civilized. “It doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

  He had a menacing smile. “It does now.”

  I shrugged again. “I don’t have your stuff and I don’t know who does. Robby and Ramón are probably lying.”

  He grinned wider and I saw for the first time that he had little black spaces between his teeth. The good-looking thing went out the window when you saw those little headstone teeth.

  “People don’t steal from me, Darla, and they don’t lie to me. Unless they don’t know me. So maybe you need to get to know me a little better.”

  That was my exit line.

  I looked him up and down the same way he’d given me the once-over. I stopped on his face. “I don’t want to know you at all.”

  That was Flunky’s cue to deal out a little punishment for sassing the boss, but I knew it was coming, so when he grabbed for me, I dodged his big, meaty hand and slipped around him. I bolted for the stairs where there were still some people. By the time Flunky pounded over, I was already dodging and weaving my way down. A skinny girl in a crowd functions much like a motorcycle on a city street — she can go where the big guys can’t.

  I got to a side door and slipped out and ran flat out. I didn’t know if they had guys set outside to wait for me if I tried to escape. They probably hadn’t planned on me getting away. I didn’t see anyone, and I flew across the lawn, hurdled a couple of sorority girls soaking up the sun, and kept going as they yelled after me. I didn’t stop until I jumped on a bus three blocks over.

  The bus took me in the wrong direction, but that was fine. I sank down in my seat by the window and kept a lookout.

  My situation keeps getting more complicated, the opposite of what I want. Things aren’t going to fade away if Robby and Ramón told their boss I have whatever it is they lost. Or maybe they sold it and then said I took it.

  The longer I rode, the calmer my mind was. Robby and Ramón lost something. Or sold it. Or it was stolen. That meant someone else had it. If it was something valuable enough to send their boss over to threaten me, then it would resurface again. Someone else will pop up with it, sell it, or pass it along, and they’ll realize they’re on the wrong track with me. They’ll forget about me. The information just has to bubble up to the surface. If I can keep my head down for a few days, the situation should resolve itself.

  I know my father would be fading into the dusk right now, calling this town a loss and moving on. But I don’t want to move on. The whole point of letting them keep me locked up for six months and putting up with the crap apartment and the crap job is so I can finish school. I’ve already given up most of what makes life a little less mean in order to just get this done. I’m not willing to toss it and walk just because someone else has stirred up trouble.

  Nice of Robby and Ramón to throw the blame on me. Not only did they come over to rough me up and God knows what else, but then they threw me under the bus when they lost their boss’s goods. Drugs, probably.

  I climbed off the bus at the end of the line and slumped down on a bench to wait for one going back the other way.

  I enrolled in college at 16. I had my GED and I had excused myself from institutional care. The state takes responsibility for you until you’re 18, whether you want them to or not. But when I entered the system, I cheated. I told them I was two years older than I was. They didn’t have any actual papers on me, and I couldn’t help them out. I didn’t know what county I’d been born in, what state, or what woman’s name had appeared on the line labeled “Mother.” So I said I was 17 and they looked at me and maybe they saw a hardness there. Or maybe they thought I’d failed to grow due to malnutrition. Anyway, they didn’t argue. I passed the tests that proved I could do the schoolwork, and they stamped my file and put me in the system.

  If you want to look younger than you are, and you’re female, just don’t wear makeup. Wash your hair and comb it straight down. And smile. Smile and you look happy, therefore you look younger. Teenagers don’t stand around grinning while they’re waiting to get on a bus or see a movie. Smile and you look dopey. People say, “Are you traveling with your mother?” They say, “Are you here with somebody?” And you smile and nod and say yes, yes, my mom is in the bathroom. And you pay half-fare and move on with your life.

  Only the innocents smile, and the innocents in this world are getting younger every year.

  If you want to look older, wear makeup, dress like a whore, and look sullen. There are women on the covers of fashion magazines that are really little girls, but they sure don’t look it.

  Honestly, I think my father made me old before my time and that’s why they bought it when I said my birthday was January 21st and I was 17. I wasn’t stupid enough to say 18. “I’m eighteen — I’ll just be going now.” I let them snare me, I played dumb, and I set my freedom a comfortable half-year away. No one would make up a January birthday. Who wants a January birthday?

  I try to forget Daddy’s lessons, but they’re there, overlaying everything I can see like some futuristic techno-screen. Perv. Thief. Weasel. Liar. The waitress who spits in your food, the apartment super who drills a peephole in your bathroom wall. I see Daddy’s dotted, glowing lines superimposed over all of them, bullseyes centered over their faces. I hear his raspy voice saying he only kills the ones who need killing. I look around and think, if I killed everyone who needed killing, I’d be buried under bodies six feet deep.

  Back on campus as the sun was slipping over the horizon, I stopped at the drugstore and bought a cheap knit hat. It’s a little too warm for it, even at night, but I need the slight change in appearance.

  My backpack is black and my clothes are nothing worth noticing. With any luck, I can blend in with the student crowd and avoid meeting any more of Robby’s colleagues.

  I walked to the English building. Plenty of students out on the sidewalks. I was very aware of everyone around me, and I didn’t sense any unusual attention.

  Inside, I walked past the atrium where students were studying on beat-up sofas and sp
read out at tables with their laptops. You can get a soda out of one machine, a coffee out of another, and a sandwich or a snack out of a third. There’s no reason to ever leave the building.

  Upstairs, there were a few evening classes going on and study sessions meeting. I walked on up to the third floor.

  It was quiet, and the hallway was dimly lit. There was a light on down in the mailroom at the end of the hall. The offices were all locked, and the pebbled glass in the doors was dark.

  I found the door with number 321 in flaking black paint, checked up and down the hall, then slipped the professor’s key stamped 321 out of my pocket.

  In goes the key, turn, slip inside, and quickly re-lock. I was in my hotel room for the night.

  I couldn’t turn on a light. I had a keychain flashlight to check my new digs. Hard linoleum floor. Wooden desk and chair. Bookshelves to the ceiling stuffed with books every which way and leaking papers.

  I felt more comfortable putting the desk between me and the door. I’m sure there’s no night watchman or anything, but someone might call security if they see something strange. Students stay in the building late and janitors come in early. Still, no reason to take any extra risk.

  I tucked his chair all the way under and lay down on the cold floor pressed between the desk and the radiator. Stuffed my backpack under my head. It doesn’t make a bad pillow, what with holding my extra clothes.

  The floor’s hard and cold, but I’ve slept in places way less comfortable than this. At least I’m safe behind a locked door where no one can find me.

  I closed my eyes and don’t remember thinking two consecutive thoughts before I was out.

  My eyes flew open to see morning light leaking through the old metal blinds. There were noises in the hallway. It felt early. Probably just after sunrise.

  I sat up, stretched, and picked up my backpack. I was still wearing my new hat.

  I listened at the door and heard something on wheels rattle down the hall, a door open, humming, then the muffled bang of a metal trashcan.

  I walked out like it was perfectly natural, like I was a T.A. dropping something off for my boss. But there was no one there to grade my performance.

  I went downstairs and had a vending machine breakfast. While I ate, I realized that during the night my brain had turned my situation over a few times and come up with a new set of answers. I ate slower and slower as I reviewed its findings. End result: Game over. I have to move on.

  What was it that Robby and Ramón lost? Drugs? Money? I don’t know. They lost it or they didn’t lose it; either way, they’re lying and involving me. Whatever happened, I don’t have it and I don’t have any way to find it.

  When I chucked that can at Robby I didn’t know what I was starting. Now I can see that the sand I stepped in is actually quicksand and no matter which way I move, I just keep sinking in a little bit further.

  Sometimes you have only a few seconds to make a call, and you guess wrong. It comes back to haunt you later. But what can you do? I live by a different set of rules than my father. I don’t kill people just because they cross me. I don’t kill where I can get the same result — their absence — by throwing a can of soup.

  It makes me angry, having to leave when I’ve put in so much time toward an identity, an education, and the chance for a real job. But I can hear Daddy’s rules reciting in the back of my brain like a whisper getting louder. This place is burnt. The longer I stay, the more chance something is going to happen that will put me at odds with law enforcement. My picket fence and a paycheck plan does not mesh with jail time and a record.

  Daddy’s rule: Leave as soon as something happens. We were so good at leaving, it was like we were never there in the first place. He could smell a no-trace living situation from a mile away. Cash to rent that trailer in the woods. Sleep in that boarded-up house in exchange for clearing out the broken glass and trash. Stay in the old lady’s basement and do her odd jobs until her son gets out of jail in the spring. And so on. Small, nothing-looking man and a scrawny, nothing-looking girl. They live over there yonder and then one day you notice they’re not there anymore. Or more likely you never notice and they slide right off the back of your memory. Absolutely nothing about them strikes you as worth remembering.

  We drifted in like smoke, left no sign, and drifted back out again. We never left a trail.

  Now here I was breaking Daddy’s rules all over the place and leaving a trail any halfwit could find, which includes Robby and Ramón. Maybe working in tandem, but still.

  I’m not smoke anymore. I have a job, an apartment. People know my name. They know what I look like. I have professors and a boss and a really bad counselor.

  I committed to this when I let them snare me and bring me into the system. I purposefully let go of being smoke and said yes, my name is Darla, I’m 17 years old and my birthday is January 21st and yes I would like an education and an apartment and a crappy job in a cafeteria kitchen, thank you very much.

  But we all draw the line somewhere and my line has been preordained by genetics to be further out than most. I’m not going to accept casual abuse from people like Robby and I’m not going to trade any part of my soul to better my living situation even a smidge. I’ll do it the hard way, put in my time, not shirk any of my duties. But I’m not going to get down on my knees for anyone, anytime, ever.

  I guess I’m finding more complex layers to my rule. I won’t kill anyone unless they try to kill me. But I also won’t bend over. That’s becoming clear.

  I guess I could have played the Robby thing another way. I could have screamed and cried and somehow convinced him I wasn’t worth the trouble. My mind just doesn’t go there. He was such a nothing threat. I didn’t bother thinking about how it would play out. I just squashed him like a roach in the bathtub. Done. And halfway to being forgotten before I got out the door.

  Now I can see, with a sigh, that it would have been much easier for me in the long run if Robby would have walked away from that encounter no longer interested, with his manhood and his pride intact. 20/20 hindsight, what can you do. Daddy and I never worried about hindsight, because we never looked back. Now I want to live a life that doesn’t require constant moving on. But that means if I dirty the water, I’m going to have to sit in it.

  Daddy and I stayed clean by always moving on, never setting down roots, always walking away from the mess before we got any on us. If I want to stay in one place, I have to figure out how to stay clean. Either I turn away from what I know how to do and how I was taught to live and find another way, or I’ll never be able to make a real life.

  I hated the way we lived when I was a kid — always knowing something was going to happen and we’d have to leave. I couldn’t let myself get attached to any person, place, or thing. There was no point in it. It was all going to be in the rearview mirror sooner or later.

  As hard as it was at the time, I can see now that my father’s moving on was his way of seeking peace. He always kept looking for peace. He never quit. Trouble came looking for him time and time again, and it found him every single time. But he’d set out again looking. I’ve never pegged Daddy as an optimist, but at least he kept trying.

  I can see the sense of it — putting this trouble in my rearview mirror. Trying again somewhere else. But a thought nags at the back of my head: if trouble always found Daddy, won’t it keep on finding me?

  Before I left the building, I walked back up to the prof’s office and slipped a note under his door. Sorry, I’m not going to be able to keep taking care of your dog after all. He’d be majorly pissed to get it. I kept his office key. I’d just slip it back on his ring and he’d never know I was here. He’d never know I betrayed him, other than quitting after one day. Two days. I said in the note I’d take care of the dog today and he didn’t have to pay me and I’d leave the house key on the counter. I said sorry one more time. Never hurts to apologize.

  I’m going to have to leave town without a lot of cash. I don’t have time t
o hang around and get my paycheck from Merle. The university is pitiful slow about paying students and I’m not due for another check till next week. I can’t afford to stay around that long for my puny salary.

  I have a run bag stashed in a coin locker at the bus station. Old habits. There’s some extra money in there and some clothes. It’ll get me to the next town, anyway.

  I’m mostly pissed about losing my school credit. Not to mention the time I sat in the institution biding my time to get the free ride. All wasted now. At least I’m taking what I learned with me, although that’s precious little. I’ll start over somewhere else, start school again. It’s a setback, but I’m only 16, so really I’m still ahead of schedule.

  Daddy always said don’t dwell on the dark parts of the story. Put your face into the sun.

  When you grow up with a thing, you take its normality for granted. You don’t know there’s anything different about your life until you get old enough to be around other kids your age or watch a good amount of TV. Until then, you just assume that everybody’s daddy is like yours.

  When they first put me in the institution, they made me go to group therapy. That’s where I met James. He was volunteering there, one session a week. And it was my session. How lucky is that?

  We had to go around a circle and say sad things that had happened to us in our life. With my background, I am never sure where the edge is between fairly normal and not at all normal. I looked to the others for clues on what was okay to say. When it was my turn, I said my father was an alcoholic, like Amber’s, and my uncle was too interested in holding me in his lap, like Noelle’s. James totally caught onto me, and he talked to me about it later. Carl wouldn’t have noticed. Carl thinks we’re all alike, cut from the same pathetic cloth. He would be sure my father was an Alcoholic and my uncle was a Pervert. Carl and my father have that in common — always assuming the worst about people.

  James called me on it and told me the therapy wasn’t going to do me any good if I didn’t share real stuff. I was sitting on the equivalent of Indiana Jones’s warehouse of secrets and didn’t know where to start. What, just walk over and pull a single wooden crate out and pry it open? Tell you about the time my father … never mind. It was just too big a job and I didn’t see the point of it. It was boxed up for a reason. I’d rather just draw a line and say that was his life and this is my life and I’m starting over. I had no desire to go backwards, even just in casual conversation with ten of my closest fellow inmates.