But when asked to name the bird, I went blank. All my precociousness and creativity seeped out of me at an alarming rate because I was using up my energy fighting so hard to hold in my tears. After a beat of searching all the corners of my brain, all I could think to say was, “Mr. Bird.” My mother looked at me, surprised. Was I being ironic? Benita, not knowing anything about my above-average background, thought this was a totally acceptable name choice from a small child. “Wonderful. We will take very good care of Mr. Bird.”
And over time I did visit Mr. Bird. Eventually, once her wing healed, she was released back into the wild, but year after year I bonded with the birds that were forever residents, those who would never survive without human care. And I made that bird sanctuary my own sanctuary. A place to volunteer, to breathe, to take in nature. And also a place to hide one of my dark secrets deep in the trees. Detective Keith Jackson would never find it there. I was sure of it. Especially not now, all these years later.
I relaxed my jaw, to be sure not to show any signs of tension. I picked up the photo of Duncan, held it respectfully, and let out a resigned sigh. I looked at Detective Jackson, making direct eye contact but blinking enough to seem natural. I said, “I knew him. He drowned when we were really little. It was so terrible. Tragic. My whole school was totally freaked out.” I put the photo back, right where it had been on the table. And waited for what the clever detective would say next.
CHAPTER 4
CHILDHOOD
In the weeks after Duncan’s death, I listened in as the teachers whispered at school. “Such a tragedy.” “He will be missed.” “Sure, he was a handful, but what a wonderful little boy.” “He was so special that God wanted him up there in heaven.”
If I had believed in any of that religion stuff, it would have been hell for Duncan Reese. Not heaven. And these were the same teachers who had cringed when they saw him barrel into their classrooms. The same teachers who gave a quiet sigh of relief when he was out sick. The same teachers who gossiped about Duncan’s parents and how they were raising a terror. And now that he was dead, he was considered a beloved child taken from this earth way too soon. I was confused.
I asked my mother if there was a word for when people think one thing and say another. Or say one thing but do another. She opened our giant dictionary, forest green and leather-bound, with gold inlay title letters, weighing in at twenty-nine pounds, regally perched on its very own hand-carved wooden podium throne in our dining room. My family usually had debates about words over dinner, so it made sense to house it there.
She turned to the H section. She flipped a few pages and pointed to the word hypocrisy. I read the definition. “A pretense of having a virtuous character that one does not really possess.” My mother helped me sound out the bigger words, and I then needed to look up pretense and virtuous. But once I got my facts straight, everything crystallized. People are hypocrites!
Maybe not all of them. But a lot of them. Acting one way but expecting others to act a different way. Doling out rules they themselves pretend to follow but don’t. At first it seemed the amount of adult-on-child hypocrisy was alarming, until I paid attention to the nuance and realized adult-on-adult hypocrisy ran just as rampant. Hypocrisy is not an ageist disorder.
After Duncan’s watery demise, I learned about a common subset of hypocrisy. An agreed-upon artifice that once someone is dead, they magically become perfect in the eyes of the living. Dead children and dead adults alike. They take on a new form. Like in the right light, an oil slick in the ugliest of public parking lots turns into a magical mini rainbow. “Don’t speak ill of the dead,” people say. But why? It’s as good a time as any to be honest. Maybe even the best time.
There was an assembly at the elementary school to talk about grief. A funeral. A makeshift memorial strewn with toys and flowers set up at the beach. The positive state of my mental health was exhibited in that once Duncan was gone, I had no need for continued hate. I didn’t ruminate on his past vile deeds. The dangerous feeling of malice didn’t linger in my blood, poisoning me; instead it dispersed into the salty sea foam with his gasps.
The other thing I noticed after his death was that no one, aside from members of my own immediate family, used the word dead. They used softer words and phrases like passed away, passed on, left us, went to heaven, met his maker, in a better place now, crossed over, perished, resting in peace, departed, returned home, and, close but still padded with sensitivity, deceased. I asked my mother about this too. “Duncan is dead. He died. But no one will say the dead word but us. Why?”
She turned to the E section of the wise and heavy dictionary and showed me the definition of euphemism. Then she quoted Voltaire: “?‘One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.’?” She explained that people are afraid of death, so they keep themselves safe by hiding the actual word. But that’s so dumb, I thought. So immature. The word doesn’t cause the thing to happen. Cancer and overdoses and airplane crashes cause the thing to happen. People like me cause the thing to happen.
We looked up denial next. And after learning all these words, instead of feeling life was even more out of control and unpredictable, I felt it was within my grasp. I was calmed. There was no word voodoo. There was action and reaction. And I would be the one to act. I made a vow then to never live in denial, to know what I’ve done. I might lie to others, but I would never lie to myself.
What I told Detective Jackson was a half-truth. The whole school was freaked out, but only briefly. And then, after a few weeks, things returned to normal. Kids started swimming in the ocean again. Teachers started gossiping about other events. The ocean-side memorial disappeared. Ellie’s joyful bounce returned, and her night terrors ended. I waited for mine to begin and for the horror of what I’d done to haunt me. But instead I slept soundly, dreaming of flying high over cities, above the clouds, drinking in icy air. Feeling weightless and centered all at once. I learned that guilt is like food poisoning. If you don’t feel a pang of sickness and a sour dread fill your core within twenty-four hours, you are safe. Your body will successfully destroy the undercooked chicken, or unspeakable act.
I was not the only one who felt elated in the months after Duncan died. The entire school soon seemed lighter. A curse had been lifted. And the kids who were a few steps shy of being as mean as Duncan didn’t take his place as top sadist. Instead they all became kinder, almost understanding an unseen pattern in the world. Hedging their bets that Duncan’s death was a karmic trap they certainly did not want to fall into.
And so I grew up. As normal as one can in a city as insane as Miami, in an era as schizophrenic as the 1990s, with parents as emotionally invested as landlords. I had killed one boy, one time. It wasn’t like I was an out-of-control homicidal maniac.
CHAPTER 5
COCAINE
When I was fifteen, my braces came off, my breasts settled into a C-cup, and my awkward early teenage phase was over. I landed in a place most would call a “seven.” Pretty, nice shape, clear skin, not going to be a model or a movie star.