Real Bad Things(3)
Her suitcase kept rolling into her shoes, which made her arms hurt from bracing for impact. Her toenails banged against the hard toes of her Converse. A blister raged on her right heel, and her back cried out for rest.
While waiting to exit the plane, she’d texted Jason I’m baaaaaaack!, thinking maybe he’d offer a haha or even a grimace emoji in return. But she should have known better. He never answered the phone and barely texted. The silence remained an open wound. She’d been his first friend, the one who understood him better than anyone. She was maybe—probably—on her way to prison. The least he could do was say hello.
Back in elementary school, when the tornado sirens went off, they’d lie in the tub for hours, after the sirens had quieted down, long before Diane would come home from wherever the night had taken her. Jason drowsy beside Jane, his limbs crammed among the blankets she’d thrown in to soften the plastic surround shell. Jane’s head near remnants of generic bar soap that masked the smells of other transient families who had used the shower they were sleeping in, had splattered cheap vegetable oil onto the wall behind the stove, had stained the floor inside the closets with the soles of their shoes, bringing the whole world into the apartment with them.
Jason, just a nugget then, cuddled against her and asked her to tell him stories about his father. Jane didn’t even know her own, so she told him nice things she’d heard about fathers from books and TV—never the Jerry Springer reality, which was that his father could be any number of Asian men who had settled in or roamed through Maud in the nine months before he was born. Maybe he’d come through Fort Chaffee during the Indochinese resettlement program back in the ’70s, or maybe he’d come from California or New York. Maybe he’d been born in Maud and still lived there. Maybe he was dead. There was no way to know. But they were blood, she’d always reminded him. She was his sister, and he was her brother. No matter what people said.
Thoughts of Jason nagged her, no matter where she walked or how far she’d moved from this town.
As she continued walking, she turned her thoughts to shows that dramatized small-town crimes on the “investigation” channel. All the best shows focused on the victims and their lives—before, after, or interrupted. She changed the channel when they focused on the criminals or court proceedings. Too close. As she walked, she was reminded of those old rumors. Back in the ’80s and ’90s, a bunch of men had gone missing and were never found. Jane had always assumed that they had wisely left town or had wandered drunk into the river and drowned. But even then, Maud loved the smell of a scandal. Some folks had stood outside the Safeway with clipboards and a public petition to get Unsolved Mysteries to investigate. Nothing had come of it. The men must have stopped going missing because when she confessed, the town was eager to focus on her.
Out of nowhere, a truck came up behind her. The driver inched past. Then he stopped in front of where she was walking. Her pulse ratcheted up. No emergency blinkers, just taillights and a stuttering motor. She veered into the safety of the weeds, thoughts of that fabled killer fresh in her mind.
Sometimes, as a kid, she had thought, Think something, and it’ll come true. On those occasions when it did, the result felt magical. Like when she imagined really hard about TV dinners, the kind with the gooey fudge brownie that never quite cooked all the way, and then sometimes they’d be in the freezer. Diane would even offer a semismile at her and Jason’s delight. Those moments made it hard to hate her all the way through.
Sometimes, she thought, I wish you were dead.
At the time, she had believed she’d manifested Warren’s death. Except if that were true, Diane would have been dead a thousand times over. Now, she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d nearly manifested her own. Maybe this guy thought she was a man? No women she could remember had ever gone missing. Only men. Maud was the one town where women were safer than men. She laughed at the absurdity.
She didn’t want to become the latest tragedy dramatized for TV. Bad enough that everyone in Maud knew her name. But then again, she hadn’t become a household name on account of her “crime,” nor would she become a national tragedy if she were murdered on the side of the road. A queer, androgynous woman over forty? Being white, she had a leg up. Still, her untimely demise would only nab her a ten-minute segment on KMSM’s five o’clock news. There was something romantic and tragic about dying at night by pickup truck in Arkansas. It’d make a great Lifetime movie.
She crossed to the other side of the road, away from the truck. Don’t let him see you panic, she told herself. No one fucks with you, Jane. No one. The universe, however, seemed particularly up to fucking with her of late. Part of her wanted to ignore the murderer in the truck and keep going, but another part of her rallied. Don’t look away. Let him know that you know he’s not going to slaughter you. Not today. Perhaps tomorrow. After he’d tortured her for twenty-four hours. She curled back her instinct to run.
But he took off. Oblivious of her presence. Irritated by her own foolish fear, she stood in the middle of the road, in the drizzle, both hands up, giving him double birds, hoping he would see her in the rearview mirror.
God, she hated this fucking town.
Deep breaths. Georgia Lee’s words came back to her. Jane had thought of her often over the years. Impossible not to. Their fates were tied thanks to one dumb night when they were teenagers.