His face changed. He went from smug to grumpy. And I knew then that he was not a man who appreciated being corrected. Especially by a suspected murderer. I worried for a moment that I had made a misstep. But then I thought, he already has it out for me. I might as well antagonize him since I can’t possibly make it any worse.
Detective Jackson thrust his hanky back into his pocket and then pushed the photograph of the mugshot closer to me. I pretended to glance at it again, but really looked at a corner edge. Then another. Around and around like a four-cornered clock. Because if I actually looked at it for too long, I was sure I would smell its putrescence and gag. The detective said, “You got pulled over driving his car. Remember? And lo and behold, then he’s dead within six hours.”
I looked away from the four corners, and up to the sweaty detective. Richard Vale was dead within one hour. But I wasn’t about to make this correction.
It was past midnight when I pulled up to Hannah’s house, where we all planned on spending the night. I tried to be quiet while getting the hammered Hannah and Erika out of the car, but as I got out myself and opened the rear door, I noticed a mini bag of peanut M&M’s on the floor. It must have fallen out of my little pink purse when I pulled out my license to show it to the cop. And this was seriously bad. Hannah was so allergic to peanuts that even with the bag closed I worried about it being so close to her. Last time she came into contact with peanuts, her throat closed up and she was rushed to the ER just in time. I knew she kept an EpiPen on her, but still. Better to avoid the situation altogether.
I gave up on being quiet and quickly pulled her out, away from the candy, and helped her into the house and up to her bedroom. I flopped her onto the bed, and she started giggling again. I went back down for Erika, but she had managed to walk inside the house all on her own. I nudged her up the stairs and onto Hannah’s bed as well, and I removed all their flamingo accoutrements. I left them happily slumped on each other. Hannah’s cheery bright yellow smiley-faced bedspread looked extra ironic beneath the passed-out girls who would be deeply regretting so many shots in the morning. I noticed how good Hannah’s eye makeup looked, all smudged from sweating and puking. The kind of smoky smudge you can never get just right when you try.
I then went back down to the car to remove the dangerous bag of peanut M&M’s, and as I walked into the dark house, I hit a wall of flesh. I looked up to see Hannah’s father looming directly in front of me. Richard was wearing only sweatpants, and I could smell whiskey coming from his every pore.
I felt I had done something wrong, and immediately said, “Sorry.” Sorry for being too loud. Sorry for waking him up. Sorry for taking the car. Sorry, sorry, sorry. He assured me, nothing to be sorry about. He never minded being woken up by a hot young thing. Fight-or-flight adrenaline began pumping through my glands. Or was I just being overly dramatic, as teen girls are so often accused of being?
I tried to step around him, to race up the stairs and into the safety of Hannah’s room, but he grabbed my arms and said, “Why don’t you stay down here for a while. Just you and me.”
“No offense, but I don’t want to.”
I could see, even in the darkness of the foyer, that his eyes sparked with a drunken anger and that he was in fact offended.
I thought about screaming, but before a sound could come out, he grabbed me and kissed me. His wet hot mouth sliding onto mine. Making my skin crawl. And my body freeze. As he continued to grope me, my mind raced. What kind of victim was I? One who, like a mouse, goes limp in the snake’s grasp? One who tries to survive by turning inward and tuning out and playing possum? Or one who fights with everything she has? Teeth and nails and strength and lungs and fury? I picked fury.
The car keys were still in my hand, and I managed to swing my arm up toward his face. A turret of the sandcastle keychain caught his eyebrow and made a deep gash. Blood dripped down his cheek. He shook his head, like a wet dog, and tiny drops of his blood spattered on the walls, on the floor, and again he pressed his mouth against mine. He grabbed my thrashing hands and held them behind my back, with minimal effort. It registered that trying to fight him off with strength and fury was useless. He was bigger and stronger. I needed to use his own weakness against him. I needed to be a victim who was smarter than her attacker. And use cunning and logic.
As he pressed himself against my pink leotard, I remembered the peanut M&M’s. Hannah once told me her father was also deathly allergic to peanuts, and it was possible her growing up in a peanut-free home helped create her own extreme allergy. And the mini bag was still clenched in my hand, which was pinned behind my back. Using the same discipline it took to calmly hold my breath under the turbulent ocean waters, I relaxed my body against Richard’s. I leaned into him a little. He sensed a shift and liked it. I shyly whispered that I was a virgin, and if he was going to be my first, I at least wanted to smell pretty. So would it be all right if I popped a mint into my mouth? He grinned, and I saw the glint of his slimy wet teeth. “A virgin?” That was a prize he hadn’t expected. I knew he thought all of Hannah’s friends were sluts, just like he thought she was.
Once he released my arms, I tore through the mini bag with a hot-pink-painted fingernail, turned my head slightly, and shoved several primary-colored peanut M&M’s into my mouth. I chomped down quickly, breaking up the candy coating, exposing and freeing as many peanuts from their hard-shell prison as possible. Then I leaned my face up toward Richard Vale, and this time I put my lips on his. As his vile tongue met mine, I pushed the poisoned cud deep into his mouth.
It took him a moment to comprehend that his taste buds were registering something chocolaty. He didn’t want to pull his hands away from my tits, my thighs, my tight young ass, but he was now wheezing. He had no choice but to stop molesting me and to stumble back. His throat began to close up; his face started to swell. He knew what had happened. He fell to his knees and started crawling toward the kitchen, reaching for a cabinet way too high for him to touch from his position on the floor. I knew what he wanted. EpiPens and Benadryl. And for him, as the seconds passed, the cabinet seemed increasingly out of reach. He looked at me, beseeching. And I looked back and calmly counted down from ten in my head. Just like I had done in the ocean.
Why should I save this rapist? This man who often called his own daughter a slut? If I let him live, I was sure he would attack some other teenage girl if given the chance. If I let him die, I was avenging all the girls he might have already violated. Richard looked at me, and as the life was draining out of him, he chose to use his last gasp of breath to push out two words, “You bitch.” And then it was over. And I felt good about my decision. This man was Duncan Reese all grown up.
I ate the rest of the peanut M&M’s and put the empty wrapper into my purse. I noticed some blood oozing its way down the sandcastle charm on the keychain, so I unhooked it and put the charm inside my purse. I was certain there would be so many things for the rest of the Vale family to worry about in the coming months that no one would ever notice a missing keychain charm. I then stepped over Richard Vale’s body to hang the spare car key back on the little hook.