You watch movies where someone kills another person for the first time, and if it’s a girl like me, they get hysterical. They scream and cry and say “Oh my God, what have I done?” again and again until some man has to slap her across the face.
Aurora Grace, it wasn’t like that for me.
I could hear Gabriel saying, “Oh my God, babe, oh my God.” And he sounded like a baby, like someone who needed taking care of. It made me want to slap him across the face. Or better yet shoot him. I might have done it too, if he didn’t know where Jenny was.
I didn’t say a word, didn’t feel a thing, until we got closer to the cop, and I saw his face. His eyes were big and still, the eyelids unblinking. His mouth was open, like he was about to say something but had forgotten what. That’s when it all became real for me—what I had done. The Timex watch. The wedding ring.
I hadn’t done God’s bidding. I hadn’t saved us from a monster. I had killed a man. I looked into his still, staring eyes and without saying a word, I told him I was sorry. I told his wife I was sorry. His kids, if he had them. I hope he didn’t have them. I put my hand over his eyelids, and I closed them so he could sleep.
Gabriel told me to cut it out. He warned me about fingerprints and went for Officer Nelligan’s gun, his handcuffs, and his wallet. I hope that shows you how different we are—that I’m not really like him. I think that spending all this time with Gabriel has made me turn a little, like when you leave a glass of milk out in the sun.
I think about that day in the future when you are born—when Jenny will be in my life and Gabriel won’t be, and I will be free and safe. In that future time, I will go to church every day. I will pray for Officer Nelligan and Papa Pete too, who when you think about it, wouldn’t have been killed if I hadn’t used him as an excuse to break up with Gabriel. I will even pray for Ed Hart. Every day, I will do something good for a person or an animal. I won’t go to sleep until I’ve made someone’s life better. And all those good deeds will turn me back.
For now, though, I just have to live through this. I have to be what I have become.
Love,
April
Twenty-Four
Robin
“I’M SO SORRY,”Renee said again, and it felt as though that momentary outburst had been a passing cloud, a few drops of rain, nothing more.
Robin smiled. She took her hand. “It was probably just the drugs,” she said.
“No,” she said. “It’s your father.”
“Mom?”
“Him being gone, I mean. He’s been a part of me for all these years. He’s known me longer than anybody and I feel like...” Tears streamed down her face. “He was my anchor. He kept me in place.” Her eyes fluttered and closed. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to me with him gone. I don’t know where I’m going to go...”
Robin kissed her cheek, took her hand in hers. “You still have me,” she said.
“Yes,” her mother said as she drifted off to sleep. “Yes, Robbie. And the truth is, you’re all I’ve ever really wanted.”
Robin backed away from her mother’s bed and headed toward the elevators, taking one downstairs to the cafeteria. On her way down, she thought about the weather, about upcoming summer action movies and this week’s column and what she planned on wearing tomorrow or the next day, when she finally returned to work. She thought about nothing important, nothing worth remembering because sometimes, not remembering was best.
Twenty-Five
June 17, 1976
11:30P.M.
Dear Aurora Grace,
We’re at prom now. Well, not prom. We’re at Pullman Park, where everybody goes after prom. Gabriel and I have kept up with our plan to come here together, but for different reasons now. We are here to get a new car.
After Officer Nelligan, we found a gas station and parked our car behind it. We took turns, Gabriel and I, cleaning up in the restrooms, changing into our prom clothes in order to fit in. We are here now. “Just two prom kids in love, looking for a place to park.” Gabriel says this over and over, trying to hypnotize us both into believing it, as if the two ofusbelieving that we’re “just two prom kids in love” is the important thing. Gabriel is wearing a burgundy sports coat he swiped from JCPenney over a checked plaid shirt and jeans. His bleached blond hair makes him think he can pass for a surfer boy, and maybe he can from a distance, but up close he looks deranged. I am wearing the dress I shoplifted, and I’ve pinned my jagged orange hair behind my ears. I’m wearing mascara and blush and so much Bonne Bell Lip Smacker,the whole car smells of strawberry. But every time I catch a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror, I don’t see a prom girl. I see a murderer.
The area of the parking lot where we are right now is packed, couples drinking and smoking in the cars or leaning back and looking up at the sky from the seats of open convertibles. Other kids are roaming around the area on foot, laughing and shouting, jumping up onto hoods and leaning into windows. In the distance, I can see a group on the baseball diamond, a guy in a pale blue tux rounding the bases. Everyone is wasted and happy. Not a grown-up in sight.
Music blasts out of car radios. All of them are turned to the same station—the AM Top 40 station I used to listen to at home. “Oh, what a night,” Frankie Valli sings, and he isn’t kidding. The air outside is warm and smells of pot smoke and beer and I wish I could escape into it. I wish I could turn my body to powder and float away forever.
Gabriel is muttering to himself very quietly. I almost feel like I can hear his brain working as we reach a more secluded area, the make-out area, where cars are parked far apart from each other and the windows are steamed white. Gabriel drives slowly behind the parked cars, eyeing each one—a shiny vintage Mustang, a green VW beetle, a long black Cadillac that has to belong to someone’s dad. I can’t take my eyes off one car, though. It’s a powder blue Honda Accord, and I know it belongs to Brian Griggs because I’ve memorized his license plate. If I squint hard enough, I swear I can see through the fogged-up window—his silhouette in the front seat, his rich, mean, beautiful girlfriend, Carrie Masters, leaning into him. They kiss and he holds her face in both his hands as though it’s precious and delicate.Something tightens in my chest, a dull pain in my heart. Carrie Masters called me a dumb whore once. I passed the two of them in the hallway and said hi. I normally don’t say hi to Brian when Carrie is around, but I said it that time. He said “Hi,” back. And Carrie said, “Why would you say hi to that dumb whore?” She didn’t even bother to whisper it. She didn’t care if I heard.
Gabriel is watching me now. I expect him to ask me what I’m writing, but instead, he asks me who I’m looking at. How do I answer without upsetting him? “Nothing,” I say. “No one.” But the pain is still there and I’m sure Gabriel can feel it radiating off me.
