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Story: Always Murder

Chapter 1
Nobody was listening to Millie.
Which, if you know Millie, might sound impossible.But it was happening.Right in front of my eyes.And it was the kind of epically willful ignoring that only family is capable of.
“What about stabbed?”Millie’s mom, Christine, had her attention fixed on me.Like Millie, she was blond and petite.And like Millie, she loved to, er, communicate.And she’d been communicating with me so much this evening that I was starting to understand what those poor trapped animals felt when they finally decided to chew their own legs off.Gesturing with her knife, she leaned over the table.“Have you ever been stabbed?”
“KEME’S never been stabbed,” Millie said.Loudly.“Have you, Keme?”
Keme didn’t answer.That didn’t seem fair;Ihad to answer all the questions that were launched my way, even (for example) when, as soon as we got to Millie’s house, Christine asked me, quote,Oh, sweetie, did you just wake up?
It also wasn’t fair that somehow, Keme had avoided the theme of the night—ugly holiday sweaters.I was wearing a hideous getup Millie had provided that had a plastic garland glued to it, with tiny ornaments that jingled every time I moved.And Bobby’s sweater looked like a Christmas tree, with triangular flaps of cloth hanging off the arms to look, well, like a Christmas tree.Everybody was wearing an ugly sweater.Everyone except Keme.He was dressed as he always was—tonight’s outfit was board shorts plus a long-sleeved hoodie with a hole in the cuff.He sat there, poking at the lima beans on his plate and looking like he was thinking about doing some stabbing himself.
Not that I blamed him.A holiday dinner with Millie’s family was already a lot, and there were too many people crowded around the dining room table.Millie and Keme, of course.Millie’s mom, Christine, and her dad, Matthew, who gave off the air that he had made it this far in life only through the grace of television and what Christine calledhis man cave.Then Millie’s brothers, Paul and Ryan.Paul was older and taller.Ryan was younger and shorter—by an inch or two.They were both blond, both wiry, both in their twenties.Their notable achievement in life was that they’d been publicly spanked—I’m talking bare-bottom in a parking lot—when they were children.For fighting in a Burger King.(I’m serious: people in Hastings Rock still talked about it.)
So far, so good.
Then there were Millie’s sisters, Kassandra and Angeline.
They shared the family look: fair coloring, slender, attractive.That’s where the resemblance stopped.Paul and Ryan were the kind of guys who argued about video games (I mean, I’m not pointing any fingers—sometimes Keme cheats, and I have to yell at him) and who got themselves thrown out of laser tag matches with shocking frequency.And Millie was like this vibrating ball of pure energy.Kassandra and Angeline, on the other hand, looked—and talked—like the girls in those makeup tutorials that sometimes popped up in my TikTok feed.(I watched one drag queen video, and now my algorithm is doomed.) The first time I met them, I had the terrifying suspicion that they wanted to date me.Fortunately (for everyone, probably), I turned out to be gay.One time, totally unintentionally, I’d blocked Kassandra with my shopping cart at the Keel Haul General Store.She’d asked me to move it.That had been all.And Angeline had been standing right next to her, smiling.But I swear to God, I caught a glimpse of something in their eyes, and it made me think of those maniacs who accelerate when a cat darts in front of their car.
Even worse, tonight was boyfriend night, so along with me and Bobby and Christine and Matthew and Millie and Keme and Kassandra and Angeline, there were two strangers at the table.David was ghostly pale, with dark hair in a massive shag, kind of like one of those kids fromStranger Things.Elliott was a lawyer, as he’d already told us three times, and he was wearing wraparound sunglasses on the back of his head.On the Oregon Coast.In December.At night.Inside.
Christine was still waiting for an answer.
“Uh, no,” I said.I kept a wary eye on her knife hand.“Never been stabbed.”
“Dash has never been stabbed,” Christine announced to the table.
“I knew a guy who got stabbed once,” David said in a hauntingly spectral voice.(I’m a writer; I’m allowed to say things like that.) “It was at this club in Portland.You’ve probably never heard of it.”
“Keme LOVES clubs,” Millie said.“Right, Keme?”
I had my doubts about Keme loving clubs, but then I also had my doubts about any of us surviving the night.
“Bobby’s been stabbed,” I said.
“No,” Bobby said, giving me a look.“I haven’t.”
But Christine didn’t take the bait.“Dash, tell them about the time you stopped Vivienne from murdering everyone in their sleep.”For David and Elliott’s benefit, she added, “Dash is a celebrity in Hastings Rock.Speaking of which—” She turned a gaze on me like one of those big herons about to spear a fish.“We’dloveto have you in our Nativity pageant.We do it every year.”
“I’m going to be MARY,” Millie announced.
“We’ll see.Dash, I think you might be theperfectJoseph.”
“What do you mean,we’ll see?You always said I couldn’t be Mary because Mary had to have a boyfriend.And I DOhave a boyfriend.I have KEME!”
Angeline wiggled forward in her seat.“I thoughtIwas going to be Mary.”
“Gracie Sterling always gets to be Mary,” Millie said.From the tone, I thought Gracie Sterling might be wise not to frequent any dark alleys or abandoned parking garages in the near future.“It’s MY turn.”
“Desperate much?”Kassandra said.
Angeline stared at Millie, the look full of venom.“At least Mary’s boyfriend could talk.What’shegoing to do?Stand up there?”
Keme didn’t react.Bobby, on the other hand, put down his fork and knife and pressed his hands flat on the table.
“For heaven’s sake, Millicent,” Christine said, “noteverythingis about you.Oh, Dash, youhaveto come to the Christmas tree farm with us tomorrow.”She brightened, as though something had just occurred to her.“I can give you your lines for the pageant.”