Page 30 of A Love Most Fatal
Willa stands from where she was just folding herself in half and reaches a hand down. “Fight with me?” she asks, and I let her pull me up to fight until I’m not thinking about marriage or math teachers anymore.
10
NATE
Nine days have passedsince what I have been not-so fondly referring to as The Incident. I don’t know who to talk to about this, so I have been writing in my journal.
Journaling is a practice I usually only turn to about once per quarter, and even then just a few paragraphs here and there, waxing poetic until I get bored. This week alone I’ve filled more than two dozen pages in my free time after school and during my prep periods.
I’ve been journaling about whatever comes to mind, but what has come to mind most recently, is in depth explorations of the lives those menmighthave lived if they hadn’t attacked us. If Vanessa hadn’t murdered them right in front of me before spitting on and kicking their still-warm corpses.
This usually turns into me thinking about how my life would’ve been different too, if I didn’t see any of that.
Other times, I just write song lyrics or practice my cursive. Keeps the mind active.
I’ve been keeping the book with me because not only am I stressed, I’m also paranoid. I am certain that my apartment isn’t safe, my dog isn’t safe, and while we are at it, I am in fact not safe.
I have no security.
I’m thinking about moving, but I moved in nine years ago and my contract says the landlord can only raise the rent up to fifty dollars a year, and the first couple years they didn’t even think about it. Thus, my rent is ludicrously cheap and I would be remiss to let that go.
I’d have to sell half of my belongings to move, and my belongings really aren’t worth much to begin with.
Jenna has been hounding me about the date, saying that I wasn’t texting her very much which either meant I was too distracted having hot sex with my wedding date, or I was spiraling into a deep depression. I told her it was a secret third thing that I could not talk about and she shouldn’t ask, and because Jenna respects boundaries more than I think a best friend ought, shedidn’task.
Well, she didn’t until I missed the kickboxing-dance fusion class we go to and now she knows something is really wrong and she’s come directly to the source. She doesn’t even knock after I buzz her up, just uses the spare key she keeps and walks right in.
She drops her gym bag on my kitchen table and stares wide-eyed around my room: the cave-like atmosphere with my blinds and curtains shut tight, the jigsaw puzzle to which I have been giving a half-hearted attempt. Then she spots the journal and snatches it before I can grab it.
“Oh, my god, you’re journaling.” Jenna holds the book in one hand while strong-arming me away from her with the other. “If you don’t tell me what happened, I will call your mother.”
And I know that she will, so I stop fighting her and let my shoulders droop.
“You cannot laugh,” I warn. “This is very serious.”
Jenna mimes an oath.
I’m not positive that Jenna will not be in danger by learning this, and in fact, I am pretty sure that shewillbe, but the journalis a soulless receptacle for my anxieties, and Jenna is my closest friend and greatest confidant.
“I think Vanessa is in the mafia,” I say, because this is the conclusion I’ve come to after days of googling and rewatchingThe Godfather(1 and 2) andThe Sopranos.
Jenna, bless her, doesn’t laugh.
“Tell me more about this,” she says.
So I do. I tell her about walking home and about the things Vanessa said about family and taking over her father’s company, things that I didn’t think were weird at the time, but now think were suspicious. I tell her about the make-out (she screams, high-fives me, asks for details which I do not give because there are more important things about this story), and then I tell her about the men, the one who knocked me on my ass who I watched die, how I watched him die, and the way Vanessa quickly handled the other man as if he wasn’t four times her size.
Other than saying, “No fucking way” every sixteen seconds, she doesn’t stop me.
“And then she. . . spit on him?” Jenna says.
“Stop looking impressed, that is not impressive, Jenna. She’s probably a sociopath.”
“Yeah, no, sure, you’re right, go on.”
I tell her about the efficient clean-up like they’d done it a million times before, the team of tattooed and scary men that reported to her and were there minutes after she called, and the conversation afterward.
“What did they do with the bodies?” Jenna asks, not nearly alarmed enough about the fact that there were any dead bodies to begin with.