“Well, as near as I can tell the world doesn’t know crap about crap. It seems to me that people are most comfortable when things can be put in boxes. It made people comfortable to put me in a box and say I was crazy…that the only reason I would do what I did was because I was crazy. If you ask me, I did the sanest thing in the world. It may have been wrong, but it wasn’t crazy.”
“How do you mean?” I ask.
“I got a lot of crap from people at school, you know, we lived in a small college town, interracial parents…Ben got it too, but he was always better at making friends than I was, and at some point I just started being over it…and I acted out like any jerk kid probably would,” she pauses.
“You don’t seem like a troublemaker.”
“Well, I was. And there was this one girl, Mindy Williams. The day of the accident…I mean the thing that caused the accident…I’d gotten into a fight with Mindy – a bad one – punches and hair pulling – the whole nine. And my parents had been called to the office about it. They got in the car accident on the way to the school. So, I found out they died while sitting in a stupid plastic chair next to insufferable Mindy Williams. And I blamed myself, I did, and I wanted to die for it, but I blamed her too…”
“You crashed into Mindy Williams’ house?” I say, putting it together.
“Yeah. And she wasn’t even home. But her mother and father and little brother all got really badly hurt. It was wrong, but I don’t see how it was crazy. But for most people, they have to believe I’m sick, that there’s something wrong with me, otherwise I guess they figure, the world is full of people crashing cars into people’s houses. They have to believe that they can put someone like me away and give me counseling and therapy and drugs and make me not be like that. Otherwise, how will they sleep at night? Y’know?”
She makes a lot of sense. It’s like she’s jacked into some kind of powerful truth and it just comes spilling from her mouth with no filter. I feel like I would buy anything she was selling on late night TV. I like it. I wonder if it has to do with everything she’s been through. Maybe tragedy makes the most interesting people, or, at least, the most interesting to me.
“You seem a lot older than 18,” I say.
“Well, yeah, maybe, but don’t you feel that way too? I mean, losing your parents forces you to grow up fast, don’t you think?” she pauses. “Like, if I had it my way I’d still be an inconsequential troublemaker looking forward to college and causing my parents all kinds of annoying grief.” There’s a wistfulness in her last sentence that I understand. She’s right about growing up fast when bad things happen. It’s what I’ve been feeling ever since moving to New York and trying to be a ‘grown up’ – decadently mourning a childhood I never had. I think everything on my plate has made me feel old and wise despite my reservations and concerns. I’ve been on such a conflicted path, so unable to commit to anything. First I hurt Sharon and tried to deny the power I knew I had. Then I pinned all my hopes on finding Jasper, only to realize he’d given up on me long ago. And then all I wanted to be was lost, but I found Joan and she inspired me to embrace what I really am. But when I tried to fulfill my destiny as a superhero I was kind of a massive failure. And then I fell in love and became a selfish happy jerk. Now I live in some kind of insane limbo, in love and in denial, dancing between the two. Does that make me flighty? Or just constantly evolving? I’m not sure, but I hope it’s the latter.
I decide to let myself evolve once more.
“You’re right,” I say to Liesel evenly, locking eyes with her. “People should be honest with each other, so I should probably tell you…I’m a superhero.”
Liesel’s expression is blank for a moment and then with a twinkle in her eye she simply says, “I knew I was right about you.”
•
Over the next few weeks, I kill six more boys. And when I say ‘kill’ I mean try to have sex with and fail – and then end up killing them. Every time. Their names are Ed, Allen, Randall, Jim, Theo, and Darius. They all remind me of Adrian in some way or another. Ed had a soft, gentle way about him that was like Adrian; Allen’s hands were similar to Adrian’s, as was what he did with them; Randall was the exact same height and weight; Jim had the same laugh; Theo had the same charming, lopsided smile and perfect bright teeth; and Darius ate more seafood in one sitting than I would have believed possible.
I’d love to say I felt empty after killing them, that I was wracked with guilt, but honestly, the only thing I felt for sure after all of them, was hungry for more. Well, okay I also felt frustrated and confused that I still couldn’t bury my memories of Adrian, but mostly hungry. Adrian betrayed me, totally sold me out, maybe even tried to kill me, and yet still he plagues me. Mostly because I miss him. I loved him and trusted him and he was my only friend, and that’s harder to replace than it looks, I guess. These little boys I’ve been killing certainly don’t come close.