7
Day of My Death
It’s twelve fifteen in the morning. I’ll be dead in a few hours, four at the most. I’m not looking for pity. It’s just how things are.
I’m wearing lug-soled boots and canvas work pants, lying on top of my bed, a hard-sprung twin pressed against a wall. Something rattles and bangs outside. It’s nothing, just the wind knocking over a rake. My mom and little sister are asleep in their rooms. I suppose Mom could be awake with the racket, but I doubt it, not after her long day. And I’d know if Nells was. If you took out a wall, our beds would be touching. They’ll figure out later that I said good-bye to them a few hours back.
It’s been ten days since I met Red. The first time she looked at me, all I could think was, Now, that girl’s eyes can slice a guy wide open. There was this crazy relief in being seen like that, in believing that Red knew me. Later, when her lips touched my cheek, in front of Daniel no less, it burned so much that spot had to be glowing like some holy tattoo.
You couldn’t touch that girl without feeling your skin had disappeared, that you’d turned to water and flowed into a warm ocean. I’d give anything to touch Red one last time, to place a fingertip at the pulse of her throat, feel her life there, right there, hot and beating and contained. She’s alive, that girl. So much she still believes is possible.
That’s why I’m using these last few hours to figure things out. For her. She needs to know she’s not to blame. I’ve only got my thoughts now, and I’m hoping that somehow they’ll make their way to her. Not that I could begin to tell you in what world that would really happen, but it’s pretty hard not to believe in unknown realms when that’s exactly where you’re heading.
I’VE COME UP WITH A THEORY OR TWO. About myself, why I am the way I am. Like how I’m fine with a certain kind of evil. The pure kind. The Jokers and Doctor Dooms of the world. Been fine with it since I was ten, the year Daniel and I spent sprawled in his room reading comic books, a little in love with the villains. I saw then how the world needs vice. Good is always searching for evil to crush, right? And doesn’t that make evil at least a little bit good, the way it lets good prove itself?
I’m not saying this because I’m a killer now. But I am noticing things in new ways, like how everyone’s dying for a righteous hatred, a pious fury to unleash in the world. And what better target than evil? What better place to direct the hate that’s been in you all along?
But to be truly gratifying, the evil you decide to hate better be grade-A, unadulterated wickedness. If even a smidgen of love gets mixed in—on either end, in the judger or the judged—there’s only misery.
Here’s a basic example: Say you’re eleven years old and a drunk, doughy-looking guy (most definitely not your dad) punches a woman in the face (most definitely not your mother) in a grocery parking lot—smacks her hard right in front of you, knocks her to her knees, blood spraying from her mouth, splattering your only decent pair of sneakers. You’d feel sorry for the lady, sure, be mad about the shoes and all, but there’d be satisfaction, maybe even a thrill, in knowing evil when you see it, in being certain about that.
But let’s say the man is your father, and let’s say you love him a little. Doesn’t have to be much. All the other eyes staring at him, which naturally include an old teacher and the sister of a friend (because you can’t seem to get away from people who know you in this town), they see pure evil. They see a comic-book villain. But you, because of that tiny bit of love in you, you don’t know what you’re seeing.
That’s what messes you up. The love. You can’t see right with that in your heart. Or maybe you’re the only one who can see anything at all.
Either way, you’re fucked. Either way, you’re never going to enjoy comic books again.
I’M GETTING THEORETICAL. Trying not to feel, I guess. And when it comes to Red, not feeling takes all kinds of concentration, because the girl I met in the park—the one who never had a real name or home she’d admit to—breathed some kind of glorious hell into me. That girl filled me with a miraculous pain.
You can’t find truth with all kinds of noise in your head. You can’t discover when your heart fell ill, when a hole opened up and evil wormed in. Bottom line, it’s not like God is letting you know what’s up minute by minute, not flashing neon signs: Yes. No. Good. Bad.
Mr. Balch says your only hope is to listen to your soul. But best I can make out, your soul is kind of a wuss, whispering so quietly you have to have silence to hear it. It does work, though. Going still. I learned that in those Quaker meetings with him. I wish I’d kept going these last months. None of this would have happened if I had. All that quiet calmed me, opened things up inside. I didn’t feel so small anymore. If only I hadn’t gotten spooked that last meeting, hadn’t worried that Friends had seen me shaking, my hands lifting to the sky.
But on this last morning of my life, it doesn’t matter what anyone made of me that day. I’m giving it one more shot, this silent listening, hoping that what I need to know—what Red needs to know—will soon appear.
