Page 42 of She’s a Doll

“You were the last to arrive at the party,” she muttered. “I remember that.” She wrote G’S TEA PARTY. “The last to arrive, the first to leave.”

I went home, I said.

She wrote HOME on the whiteboard again. “Why’d you leave so quickly? Did something happen?”

No. Nothing happened. I just . . . It doesn’t matter.

“It might matter.”

No. It doesn’t. You were all just so beautiful and impressive and . . . and I’d already had a bad day. I went home, and my grandma wasn’t there, but I was upset, I wanted to talk, so I phoned Krissy.

“You phoned Krissy,” Nicola repeated slowly.

Yeah. But Kyle answered and I talked to him for a bit. I know that was stupid but⁠—

“That wasn’t stupid, Lu.”

I told him Grandma was away, I continued, ignoring her. I told him that I was alone. Jesus fucking Christ. Why did I do that? I told him. I told him. I . . .

Nicola watched me, waited. “Where’d he kill you?” she asked quietly.

He came over. I didn’t invite him, but he came over anyway.

Slowly, she circled the last HOME on the whiteboard.

I hugged my bent, jumbled legs to my chest and stared at the frozen frame of The Walking Dead. I didn’t know the name of the character on the screen, but I was pretty sure he was going to be eaten by a zombie soon. He had that doomed vibe, his unresolved issues resolving, his dialogue hopeful and happy, his close-up shots drawing in extra tight.

“Maybe someone remembers something,” Nicola said after a while. “Did you scream? Perhaps the neighbors heard something. Maybe one of them can help us.”

I screamed, but not loud, and not for long. Hands crushing. Nails clawing. Throat collapsing. I don’t think the neighbors heard. They were always fighting and I . . . I wasn’t loud enough.

“That’s OK,” she said, even though I knew it wasn’t. “There must be something. We’ll find it and⁠—”

And what? I snapped. He goes to prison, becomes the next “morally gray bad boy,” gets fan mail, maybe a Netflix documentary, parole in a few years, a book deal a few years after that. I bet the title will be something like Surviving. But I don’t get to survive, I don’t get to write a memoir, so why the hell should he?

“Maybe there’re others,” she said. “Other victims. Maybe you’re not the last person he killed. We could make a list of missing persons, see if any of them have a connection to him.”

And if they do? Knowing a missing person isn’t evidence.

“There must be something we can do.”

There is something. We kill him. That’s what we can do.

“How?” she asked again, frustration eking into her voice. “Please, Lu, enlighten me.”

Drop a piano on him. Drive a steamroller over him. Fire a bazooka straight into his dick.

“Who are you? Lucy McQuinn or Wile E. Coyote?”

Fine! We get a gun and shoot him! How’s that for a plan?

“Guns are traceable.”

So?

“Hmm. Right. It sounds to me like your plan is for me to spend the rest of my life in prison while you peace out into the afterlife. Your plan is shit.”

Your plan is to do nothing.