Page 13 of My Girl

What the fuck is wrong with me?

“I’ll be watching you, little girl,” he says.

Watching you,my brain repeats.

Suddenly, I’m back in my body, present in my own skin, aware that I’m in an abandoned house with my legs spread, my underwear and skirt disheveled, with two corpses in the basement, and a masked murderer standing in front of me.

I run.

I run so fast that my sides cramp. And once I’m in my car, I drive. I drive so recklessly that I pass my new apartment. I don’t care. I don’t stop. I can’t. If I do, that murderer will be right behind me with those meshed eyes, and I don’t know what I’ll do.

Twenty minutes pass.

Eventually, my heart rate slows. I pull over on the side of the highway and get out of the car. In the distance, Las Vegas glows like a giant sun coming over the horizon, and in the other direction, Pahrump is fuzzy, but there. My new home is waiting for me to return.

The masked man is there, waiting for me too.

I suck in the night air, grounding myself. The shadows of cacti. Sand and small rocks under my feet. Rocky hills. The glow of city lights. Millions of stars.

I’m alone.

I lean against my car, then open my phone. It’s still recording. I end the recording, then click to the dial pad.

I should call the cops.

Two people died, and I saw it happen. I didn’t see the murderer’s face, but the police will be able to do something with the video on my phone. I could even try to edit it before I give it to them.

What if the police can hear the murderer say that I’m wet?

I bite my lip, then look back at the dim lights of Pahrump. My arousal doesn’t matter. What matters is putting a murderer behind bars so that it doesn’t happen again. It’s the right thing to do.

I open the video file of the house, scrubbing through the footage until the lens focuses on the dark basement stairs. I turn up the volume.

It’s static.

Would the cops want something like this? Or would they laugh in my face?

Should I go back and get pictures of the bodies?

“I’m going to call the cops,” I say out loud.

But I can’t make my fingers move.

It’s another choice. Another choice where I’m letting my mother and society’s righteousness dictate what I’m supposed to do when there’s a desire inside of me that wants more.

I play with the limited editing software until the footage turns into scraggly figures, like shadows shimmering on a bank of water. That’s all the murderer is right now: a shadow.

What can I get out of this footage? Because right now, I’ve got nothing.

Chapter5

Rae

The next morning,I stare at my phone’s screen again. The police department’s phone number is already punched in, the green digits glowing. All I have to do is press theCallbutton.

I should report the murders I saw in the Galloway House. I should also accept that there’s no mystery or hidden meaning behind my father’s death: he was a murderer, just like the masked killer. End of story.

I don’t do anything.