Page 102 of Haven't Killed in Years
“Just shut up!” he yelled.
“I’m sorry, not what you were planning?” I said. “Not getting the closure you need?”
“Don’t you feel anything? Don’t you feel bad for what you did?”
“Do you?” I asked.
“It’s your fault what I did to those people, and they deserved it.” He paced in front of me.
“Cody—”
He lunged forward, pinning me against the swing set with his forearm across my chest, breathing heavily, searching for somethingto say that would upset me, some inkling that I was capable of feeling anything.
“Don’t you see?” I said, staring at him, refusing to blink. It was critical I sold this. “One of us is pretending to be like Abel Haggerty and one of us was born and raised exactly like him. You couldn’t even control Natalie,” I scoffed. “Not like I could.” Then I grinned through the lie. “You can kill them, all three of them, right in front of me and I won’t even blink. I’ll even help if you want. Would that be easier for you? I know it will probably be hard for you to kill your sister.”
My insides were churning. I could haveExorcist-vomited, but I remained stoic. It was all I could do to take away his momentum. I had to lean into the character that I had always been afraid was genuine. The bile creeping up my throat served as further validation that it wasn’t true. Unfortunately, this was not the moment to reflect on the revelation that I was nothing like my father; it was time for me to be Daddy’s little girl.
“Come on,” I said. “Undo the cuffs. Let’s go kill her together.”
“You bitch!” he screamed, jerking his arm off my chest and grabbing my throat.
I panicked. I could feel his thumbs pressing down on my larynx. I couldn’t breathe. It was like an out-of-body experience, but not out of my own body. More like my life flashing before my eyes, but not really that either. They were spotty memories, memories of the people my father had strangled, the ones I had watched. I could see them, their eyes, but now I could feel it too.
Through their eyes, I saw my father’s—a piercing gaze, one eye slightly askew. He might as well have been the one with his hands around my throat.
I blinked feverishly, trying to make it go away.1-2-3-4times I blinked until it was only Cody’s eyes I could see. They were red,teary, the skin around them wrinkled—they were nothing like my father’s.
Cody had had the best chance out of all of us. He’d been sent to a loving home with no memories of what had happened. Elyse and I should have been the crazy ones. We didn’t stand a chance given the hands we were dealt. We’d lived with these memories our whole lives and somehow we’d managed.
I closed my eyes; it was getting foggy. I hadn’t taken a breath in close to a minute and his grip was only intensifying. It was my time, I supposed. A paradoxical ending—being killed in the same spot by the boy I had supposedly killed, only I hadn’t, and now it was his turn. If I somehow survived, would I wait twenty years and then start stalking him? I liked to think I would have better things to do.
All of this boiled down to a moment in time between two kids playing in the backyard. What if I had just kissed him that day? What if he hadn’t been an asshole to me at school and he had been nice and when he’d tried to kiss me I’d let him? What a ridiculous thing to think about as I really started to fade away. It couldn’t hurt, I thought, to mess with him one last time. I opened my eyes, made sure he saw me, not sure where else I thought he would possibly be looking, then I puckered up.Is this what you wanted?
His hands loosened, not so much to stop choking me, but a reaction to what he was seeing. It must have been as disturbing an image as I thought it might be. What a true psycho I would have to be to try to kiss him in that moment.
I didn’t want to kiss him; I wanted to disrupt him, and when he relaxed his grip, even though it was slight, I knew I had. I reared my head back and slammed it forward. Our heads collided and his hands left my throat. I gasped for air as I watched him stumble back and drop to one knee. It gave me enough space to really kick him, straight up under the chin, in the soft spot in the center of his jaw.
He landed on his side in the tall grass, close enough for my foot to reach the side of his head. He was still, but I stomped my foot down anyway,1-2-3times on his temple with my heel, as hard as I could, given my restricted leverage. I wanted to keep going, to keep kicking until his skull collapsed. Then kick him again. But I stopped.
I reached down and grabbed the crossbar under my cuffed hands. It was abrasive and I accepted the fact that I was probably about to get tetanus. I yanked on the bar, ecstatic to feel the swing set budge. I released the crossbar and stretched my arms out behind me, lifting them as high as I could. I pressed myself back against the diagonal pole, my arms reaching the opposite side of the A-frame. Then I took a deep breath and sprinted forward two whole steps before the chain between my wrists crashed into the other pole and I threw my weight forward.
I seized as I sensed the swing set tipping over behind me until I remembered that was exactly what I was hoping for. I fell with it, nothing in front to catch me except Cody. I landed across his stomach. Then the pole I was attached to hit my back.
I wriggled myself out from underneath, hands still attached to each other through the enclosed triangle top of the A-frame. I inched down until my fingers were level with Cody’s pockets and I pulled out the key to the handcuffs. I unlocked one and freed myself, rolling off Cody and onto the grass. It was so soft, no needles, and I lay for a second catching my breath.
I looked over at Cody. I could barely recognize him in Jake’s face. He didn’t have the thing like Elyse did, the recognizable ridge above her nose. Puberty had changed him more, taking the chubby kid and stretching him out into this guy. I reached over to his throat to feel for a pulse. The beat tapped my fingers and I glanced down to see he was breathing. Maybe I had kicked him right again, undone the damage I had done with the original rock against his skull.
I freed myself from the other cuff and used them to lock his hands through the A-frame. Then I slid the knife out from his jacket and threw it across the lawn. I could lie in the grass having deep thoughts about his unconscious body, but I had to be smart about it.
I finally sat up. He was helpless now. I could slit his throat. I could put my hands around his neck. I could stuff my socks down his throat. I climbed to my feet, gave one last thought to stomping on his face, then I walked away.
Fifty-Nine
Jake Calloway, aka CodyAbbington, aka Wesley, was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of attempted murder. He pleaded guilty. Detective Ellison told me he had spewed a long, rambling confession as soon as they sat him down in the interrogation room. He explained how I was the one who’d attacked him, not my father—justification for his righteous revenge.
Cody Abbington hadn’t died. I hadn’t killed him. Aggravated assault by a nine-year-old didn’t have the same ring to it, and in the midst of so many actual murders, my greatest secret disintegrated into irrelevance. A fact that I had shaped my entire life around—gone. Knowing everything could have been different for me, I wasn’t sure what that made me now. I was completely lost.
Jake spoke at his arraignment, another speech, this time aimed at the cameras. He wanted to be infamous, like Abel, admired for the lives he had taken, how he had reclaimed the narrative after his tragedy. He wanted it framed like a master plan he’d concocted that had been executed flawlessly, the pinnacle of tragic manipulation. Hevery much refused to acknowledge that he had been foiled in the end by a kissy face and a woman with a hard skull.
