Blood on My Hands

CHAPTER 3

Sunday 12:08 A.M.

THE SIRENS HAVE stopped. By now Katherine’s body has been photographed, and the murder weapon slid carefully into a small plastic bag to be examined at the police lab. The EMTs will transport the body to the morgue for autopsy. The detectives will leave, knowing that early in the morning they will return to inspect the scene of the crime in the daylight, and then interview the witnesses.
No, wait, something else will happen first. In fact, it could be happening right now. The doorbell at my house will ring. My mother, in bed, will open her eyes and groggily fumble for the light. Dulled and foggy-headed from sleeping pills and merlot, she’ll be uncertain whether the doorbell really rang or she only dreamt it. But the bell will ring again and now alarm will begin to creep into the outer edges of her thoughts as she wonders who has awakened her at this hour. She will pull on her robe, but before she goes to see who is at the door, she will check on Dad to make sure he’s still breathing, and she will peek into my bedroom to see if I’m home.
And when she sees that my bed is empty, her alarm will leap closer to panic.
A police officer, or perhaps a detective, will be at the door. At the sight of him, Mom will struggle to retain some semblance of calm. He will want to know if I’m home, and when she says no, he will want to know if she’s heard from me tonight. Filled with foreboding, she will shake her head and ask, Why, what’s happened? I don’t know if the officer or detective will tell her about Katherine. But I do know that he will say that the police are looking for me and that my mother should be in touch with them as soon as she sees or hears from me.
Mom will ask why again. Now that I think of it, the police officer will probably tell her: there’s been a murder.
Katherine was a snob and proud of it. She was judgmental and sometimes mean and cruel. She believed in good grammar and manners and was quick to correct your mistakes. Even though she herself was sort of plain, she was contemptuous of slovenly dress. Some people disliked her and some were afraid of her, but most agreed that she was a force in our school.
At first when she took me under her wing, it was a huge relief. Suddenly I’d gone from the bleakest, lowest point ever to having something to look forward to every day. Sitting at lunch, listening to Katherine and the others gab, knowing I’d be invited to go to movies, the mall, and slumber parties. It almost seemed like a miracle.
The other thing is you can tell yourself you’re a charity case without really believing it. And then the day comes when you forget. And you think you really do belong. Because you want to so badly.
“Go slap David Sloan in the face,” Katherine told Mia Flom one day at lunch. Mia was one of the girls Katherine allowed to sit at the table, but at the far end. She was blonde and slightly chubby, and depending on how and when you saw her, sometimes she looked pretty and sometimes she didn’t. She was a reporter for the school newspaper and had a flair for writing. As far as I could tell, she was a nice girl who most people liked. She easily could have had a group of friends who accepted and enjoyed her, but instead, she seemed absolutely determined to break into Katherine’s group.
“Why?” Mia asked, clearly startled.
“Because I said so,” replied Katherine, delivering the line dramatically and with inflection, as if she were an actress. Of course, she wasn’t an actress. She would never put herself in a position where she could be judged or criticized.
The other girls had stopped talking. Within Katherine’s crowd there seemed to be two subgroups—those who were close to Katherine and those who wished they were closer. I’m not speaking of proximity alone. First came Dakota Jenkins, the daughter of Congresswoman Cynthia Jenkins. Katherine whispered to and seemed to confide in her more than anyone else. That is, if they weren’t fighting, which they did a lot. Next came Zelda McDowell, whose family was said to be the richest in town, and Jodie Peters, who you sometimes saw in ads on TV. And then came the rest, down at the other end of the table, three or four girls who, like Mia, were always trying to get Katherine’s attention and approval.
“What are you waiting for?” Katherine asked.
Mia’s eyes darted toward a group of boys standing nearby, talking and shooting occasional glances in our direction as if they knew, or hoped, that we were aware of them. David Sloan was the tallest, and probably most handsome, of the group. The previous Friday he had been Katherine’s date to a Sadie Hawkins dance, and there’d been rumors that they’d vanished together into a bedroom during a party on the following night.
Mia got up stiffly and started in David’s direction. Halfway there she shot an uncertain glance back at Katherine, who flicked her wrist as if shooing her forward.
The boys quieted as Mia approached, taking timid steps, as if she were making her way across a pond covered by thinning ice. Finally she stopped in front of David, who, with dipping eyebrows and one side of his mouth turned up, looked both skeptical and amused. The boys around them were silent. Mia reached up and “slapped” David’s face. It was barely more than a tap. Then, her face much redder than his, she scurried back toward us.
David looked in our direction, his eyes not on Mia but on Katherine. He shoved his fists in his pockets, nodded slightly, and smirked, as if he understood precisely why she had sent a minion to deliver the faux blow. Katherine nodded back, then turned to the table just as Mia sat down, still red-faced and breathing hard.
“You call that a slap?” Katherine said, then ignored Mia for the rest of lunch.
*  *  *

“How does she do it? I mean, manage to instill so much fear?”
“By being judgmental and having a wicked tongue. It’s a lethal combination.”
“Only if people care.”
“Some do; some don’t.”
“I’d so like to put her in her place.”
“Ha! See?”
“See what?”
“You wouldn’t say that if you didn’t care.”