Put Me Back Together(78)

I felt the tears building behind my eyes, threatening to fall, but it was way too early to start crying. There was so much more to go. I sucked in a shuddering breath and felt Lucas’s hand on my back, his legs pressing against mine. When I’d started the story he’d been sitting all the way on the other side of the bed, but now he was right in front of me. I wanted to lean into him, but I didn’t. I needed to hold myself up as I told this story. I needed to be strong.

“I ranted for a long time. About how much I hated Ricky, what a brat he was, how mean he was for no reason. That day he’d slammed a door and my finger had gotten caught. I was sure he’d done it on purpose. I used all the most vicious words I could think of to describe him, mostly because I thought Brandon would be impressed if I cursed. I never even mentioned Tommy. I figured Brandon wouldn’t want to hear about the sweet five year old I liked to hang out with after school. The evil one was a lot more interesting. But this omission would turn out to be the biggest mistake of my life. It meant that in Brandon’s mind I only babysat one kid. One kid I wanted dead.

“After about an hour of cursing Ricky I started to lose steam, and that was when Brandon took over. He wanted to know how I would kill him. Would I set him on fire? Hang him in the closet? Chop off his head? In retrospect the excitement in his eyes should have set off warning bells, but…I was the one who’d brought it up. I thought he was excited by my hatred, my passion. I thought he was interested in me, when really…” I bit my lip.


When really it was the kill that turned him on.

“Brandon thought sawing off his fingers one by one would be fitting, followed by his arms and legs and head. But I disagreed. I said—” I choked on the words. My head fell into my hands as the first tears begin to fall and I knew I’d never be able to stop them now. I felt Lucas trying to pull me toward him, but I pushed his arms away and turned to face him. He deserved to look me in the face when I said this. “I said I’d use a knife if I had a choice. I’d cut him right down the middle, gut him like a fish, so I could see the evil lurking inside.”

I saw the look of recognition on Luca’s face as he recalled the phrase “gutted like a fish.” The papers hadn’t spared the details for the Wesleys’ sake. That exact phrase had been used in every article about the murder as though the gruesome nature of the crime would convince the world of something, as though describing every bloody detail had some purpose beyond torturing me. Though if it did, I could never figure out what it was.

Vaguely I heard Lucas saying something about how I’d been just a kid. Kids said all kinds of horrible things. I hadn’t really meant it. But I wasn’t listening. The rest of the story tumbled out of me in a monotone, as though I were reading from the script of a horror movie in which I was the star.

“The next afternoon I was getting Tommy ready to go to the playground when Brandon showed up at the back door with the knife in his hand. It was a switchblade, still folded closed. I remember wanting to hold it because I’d never seen one before and I wanted to see how it opened. I didn’t understand what was happening yet. He told Tommy he’d push him on the swings, which was enough to make the kid fall in love with him. Then he leaned in and said in my ear, ‘Today’s the day we take care of business,’ and I knew something wasn’t quite right.

“That’s when I should have grabbed Tommy and run. I should have screamed my head off. But I just couldn’t comprehend what he meant. Take care of what business? The murdering business? Ricky wasn’t even there that day—he was sleeping over at a friend’s house. I assumed Brandon was kidding and that we’d just take Tommy to the park and watch him play. I assumed it was a joke because he was my boyfriend and that meant he knew me. He knew I didn’t really want to kill Ricky, didn’t he?

“But then, when we reached the woods, Brandon started describing to me, step by step, how he was going to do it. He kept pointing at Tommy, who had run ahead of us. Because he thought Tommy was Ricky. He thought Tommy was the bratty one, the horrible one, the one I wanted dead. He whispered his plan into my ear, and it was exactly as I’d described it the night before. He was going to do it, just like I’d said. Just like I asked. He was going to do it for me.”

Lucas’s eyes were riveted to my face now, his shock evident, though he was trying to hide it. I was rewriting a story that had been told thousands of times, unraveling the mystery that had gripped a nation. The Kindergarten Killer never had a discernible motive. His entire defense had hinged upon that fact. And all the time I’d had the answer.

His motive was me.

Just as Brandon had led Tommy and I into the woods six years before, I followed him in now. I continued to recount the story to Lucas, while in my mind I lived it: the darkness of the trees descending around us; the clearing appearing ahead, divided by the long-unused train tracks; and the sky still bright with the dying day, the sky I could not escape, the sky he died under.



Is this really happening?

The question runs through my mind on a continual loop as we walk through the trees, looking for all the world like three kids with nothing to do on a Thursday afternoon. Three kids taking a shortcut to the park through the woods. Three innocent kids.

Except Brandon is whispering bloody things in my ear. And the voice in my head is rising to a scream. And one of us might soon be dead.