Page 11 of Haven't Killed in Years
I never should have told my father about Cody. If I had kept my mouth shut, he never would have gone to their house. Cody had almost survived. My father was inconsolable, manic, unrecognizable to me. He kept going to the hospital to finish it, my mother begging him not to—trying to convince him that it was too risky. It was seventy-two hours of hell—my father punishing her for questioning him, ignoring her, but ultimately failing to get into the boy’s guarded hospital room.
It was my fault. That was when I got theX’s. He said the demons had gotten to me—led me to corrupt our whole family, forced him to kill when he shouldn’t have. He held me down, carving into my side, convincing me that it would fix everything. He had hit mebefore, dislocated my shoulder once, made me touch the stove a couple of times, but it was nothing like when I got theX’s. It was the worst thing he ever did to me, but I deserved it.
Cody Abbington suffered a fatal seizure when doctors tried to wake him up a second time, but it was already too late for us. Cody had come to long enough the first time to give the cops the lead they needed. Five days after my father entered their home and two days after the cops stormed ours, Cody finally died.
If I hadn’t told my dad about Cody, he never would have gone over there, and maybe he never would have been caught. My parents wouldn’t have gone to prison and I wouldn’t have become Gwen Tanner. It was a lot to deal with.
Sitting in traffic on the Massachusetts Turnpike for two hours wasn’t a very climactic ending to the tour. Dominic and Porter went back and forth, gushing about Abel like he was a character and not a real person. I stayed silent for the most part and took it all in. I liked listening to them. I rarely let myself think of my father in the light that I really wanted to. He was crazy. He was brilliant. He was evil. He terrified me. He was the only person I had ever really connected with and his absence was something I felt every day.
We passed the remnants of an accident after the I-95 exit, and traffic finally started to move again. Dominic perked up in his seat. “This is maybe too forward, but do you guys want to come to a party?”
“Yes,” Porter answered immediately.
Dominic looked at me in the rearview mirror. I didn’t answer at first, prompting Porter to flip around in his seat and beg me with his face, ready to cash in on every time I’d rejected one of his invitations.
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
Eight
I followed behind Dominic andPorter toward a brick apartment building, wondering what I was doing. I was a little high from the walk down memory lane. My life now was structured, and I was coming to realize how much I was missing the rush. I’d gotten a taste of the rush when the arms arrived, and it intensified when I saw my father in prison. It was the rush I felt when we parked in front of my childhood home and it was the very same rush that I judged my mother for choosing over me.
The street echoed with muffled music from a handful of parties on that block alone—nothing says college neighborhood like parties on a Sunday night—and I wondered if Dominic might be a lot younger than I had assumed.
Once we entered the building, the others faded away and only the sounds of our party remained. We climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, the bass from the stereo beckoning us closer. My feet were heavy, but Porter was gliding up the stairs. Making new friends still seemed so attainable at his age.
Dominic turned back to me. “I have to warn you. This party might be a little weird.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, staring up at him.
“We shall see.” He smiled as he turned back and hustled up the stairs after Porter.
That was nice and ominous, but it was too late to back out now, even if I wanted to pretend that I wasn’t suddenly very curious.
Dominic pounded on the door to apartment 7. It opened and the music poured out. A guy somewhere closer to my age than Porter’s answered the door. He had one of those haircuts where the hair on top was long and I could see it was shaved underneath—thick, black, and slicked back in place. It was the exact opposite of Dominic’s active hair, which was sticking out and positioned wherever he had last tugged it.
Dominic and our host exchanged a handshake-hug hybrid. “What’s up, man?” the new guy asked. “I’m so glad you made it.”
“I brought some friends. Hope that’s okay.”
“Of course, yeah…” He paused to look at us, like maybe theof coursewasn’t so unqualified. A smile slipped out for Porter, easily approved. For me he stared a bit longer, assessing how much of a square I appeared to be—not a great day for me to be wearing a peach cardigan and fake pearl earrings. “Please, come in,” he finally said after a beat that probably felt longer to me than it actually was.
“This is Gwen…and Porter,” said Dominic.
“I’m Jake. Dominic’s stepbrother.”
The guy seemed too cool for formal handshakes, and Porter and I both did awkward little waves as we stepped inside.
Thick curtains covered all the windows and the limited light came from a few shadeless lamps. The whole apartment had cheap laminate floors, scuffed to shit from a million different tenants. Jakeled us toward an opening into the kitchen, where I could see a few people milling around the bar area.
“Help yourself.” Jake nodded toward the alcohol. “I stole it all from work anyway.”
Porter followed him into the kitchen, but I hovered at Dominic’s side in the living room, where he surveyed the space for anyone worth talking to. I would describe the interior design as…posters? There were a lot of posters, some taped, some tacked to the wall. Posters of movies likeScarfaceandFight Club, posters of mug shots like Charles Manson’s and Ted Bundy’s. There was no poster of Abel Haggerty, thankfully. My father had never really ascended to the commercial masses; he had more of a cult following—true freaks only, please. I blamed it on his branding, or lack thereof.
There were several doors off the living room and it was really anyone’s guess how many people lived there. Three big couches with sheets thrown over them filled the space and it looked like a college flop house except there was a real thirties look to a lot of the faces in the room. No one noticed us walk in. One guy was flipping a switchblade open and shut, another yanked on a girl’s ponytail until he could reach her lips, licking them—not kissing; licking like a dog. Not to be judgmental, but this was beginning to feel like a mistake. I counted the people to calm down. There were twelve people in the living room, plus the three in the kitchen, plus the stepbrother, plus Porter, plus Dominic. Eighteen people. The bathroom door opened—number nineteen stepped out.
It was another woman. We were the super-minority. There were only four of us out of nineteen. She had long, straight strawberry blonde hair and thick black eyeliner that said,Don’t talk to me. I watched her, wondering which clique she would rejoin. She walked past the three couches to the window, pulling back the curtain and slipping out onto the fire escape. A minimalist tattoo of shrinkingdiamonds started at her neck and trailed down behind the swooping collar of her shirt. The curtain fell behind her and she was gone.
“Do you want a drink?” Dominic asked, and I stopped staring at the window.
