You Owe Me a Murder(54)

Betty was nice, and despite looking like an innocent old lady, she swore like a sailor. My summer job was being her “companion,” which was a much nicer term than babysitter. I enjoyed hanging out with her; it didn’t feel like work. I drove her to appointments and to the grocery store. I did a bit of cleaning, but not even that much because she had a maid service come once a week. Mostly I sat around with her and let her tell me stories about when she was younger, and we watched a lot of Judge Judy. The only downside to the job was that she lived way out in Deep Cove. I had to turn off the main parkway and follow a bunch of back roads that twisted into the hills to get to her place.

I’d been driving home one day after work thinking about what I was going to do that night when I saw a blur at the side of the road and then there was a sickening thunk bump. I hit the brakes and looked in the rearview mirror, but I didn’t see anything.

The car door squeaked as I opened it and I stepped out carefully. It was like a scene from a horror film: a deserted road lined with tall pine trees, dark, complete with stupid teen girl wandering around. That’s when I saw the bunny.

It lay on its side. It wasn’t dead, but it was clear it was never going to be okay. The bunny’s light gray fur was soaked with blood, and parts of its insides—?pink twisty things—?lay outside, ripped from the stomach. One back leg was thumping madly as if the bunny wanted to run away, but the other back leg had a jut of bone poking up like a spear.

It was looking at me with a frantic, panicked eye.

I ran back to the car and then back to the bunny. I was crying, big fat tears and snot smeared together under my nose. Hot dread was in my stomach. I’d been going too fast. It was my fault. But I was also mad at the bunny. Why did it have to run out into my lane just as I was going past?

I looked up and down the road, hoping someone else would come by. Someone who would know how to handle this situation. I didn’t have a box in the car, and I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to scoop up the bunny. Its insides were on the outside, and I was certain there wasn’t anything a vet would be able to do, even if I drove like a madwoman to the emergency veterinary clinic in Burnaby.

I considered driving away, but I hated the idea of just leaving the bunny there. It was clearly in agony. It was panting, and the eye that faced up kept darting around. And the leg. God, the leg didn’t stop. It kept running and running in place. I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see it. Then opened them again because I had to look—?this was all my fault.

“Please die,” I whispered.

The bunny kept staring at me as though it wanted me to take some kind of action. I crouched next to it. I wondered if it would bite me if I tried to pet it. I didn’t even know if petting it would make the bunny feel better. It wasn’t someone’s dog—?it was a wild animal. Being stroked by a human wasn’t going to make its final moments any easier.

Then I knew what I had to do. I got back into the car and turned around on the narrow road, being careful not to get too far over and drop a tire into one of the ditches. I could see the bunny in my headlights. I prayed that it would be still, but I could see the leg moving. I lined up the car and then I ran over the bunny again. There was another thunk bump as the car passed over the bunny’s body. I might have been screaming. I can’t really remember.

I got out, shaking. If that hadn’t killed it, I was certain I would lose my mind. I didn’t think I had it in me to drive over it again.

The bunny was dead.

I threw up, heaving repeatedly until the only thing I could bring up was a foamy yellow bile. I went to the side of the road and found a large stick. I used it to sort of push and poke the bunny off to the side. I didn’t want anyone else to hit the body. I found some large rocks and piled them on top. I almost felt as if I should say something, like a eulogy, but my brain was blank. My mom was always the one who was better at finding the right words for things.

“Sorry,” I said eventually, and then got back into the car. I told my parents about it when I got home, but I couldn’t express just how awful it had been.

If that had upset me so much, how would I ever manage to kill a person? There would be no way I could run over a person. I didn’t have a car here, for starters, and hadn’t a clue how to drive on the other side of the road. Not to mention I’d also have to find a deserted road, and I hadn’t seen any place in London that wasn’t crawling with people, double-decker buses, or cars. There would be no way for me to escape. I wouldn’t make it a block before someone would catch me.

I flopped onto my other side in my dorm bed, punching my pillow to fluff it up. Not that I was considering doing it. What Nicki wanted. I wasn’t a murderer. I didn’t have it in me. I would never be able to go through with it . . . but at the same time, ever since I’d met with Nicki, my brain couldn’t stop turning over my options.

I blew my hair off my face. Maybe, and it was a big stretch, maybe I could shoot someone. Especially if I could do it from a distance, like a sniper. But first off, there was no way for me to get a gun. England wasn’t like the United States, where you could pick up a rifle at Walmart while also grabbing nail polish and a family-size bag of Cheetos. Even if, and it was a big if, I figured out a way to get a weapon illegally, I didn’t know the first thing about how to fire a gun. Watching the occasional war movie with my dad on Sunday afternoons didn’t make me a crack shot.