13
When I woke Saturday morning, Cormac sent me a sweet text message, hoping we could catch up when I returned from my parents’ place. I smile, and nerves dance in my chest as I imagine that kiss. His taste lingers on my lips, and a belt of warmth is wrapped around my waist as if his hands were there only a few minutes ago.
After taking a hot shower in my cramped bathroom, I slip on some blue jeans and my Smells Like Team Spirit T-shirt and prepare to handle the handgun. Did Blake say it was already loaded? I can’t remember, but this thought makes me as I open the bottom drawer and carefully take out the hard, cold article. It’s lighter in weight than I imagined, and I keep the rag over it to fool myself into thinking it”s less dangerous.
Wrapping my hand around the handle but over the rag, I raise the gun up and then down so my hand becomes accustomed to it. Again, I have no idea if it’s loaded, but I lift the rag slightly to examine its shape and am confused about where exactly I load the bullets.
Footsteps outside my door pull my attention away from the weapon, and I watch the crack under the door for movement. My apartment is at the end of the hall, and the only people who come down this far live in the apartment opposite or when the elevator is broken. Residents are forced to use the emergency exit right outside my door.
The footsteps stop outside my door and shift their weight from one foot to the other. It’s just after 10 a.m., and the only non-family member who knows where I live is Z. There’s no way in hell Z would come over this early on a weekend. Besides, this person’s footsteps are heavier than hers.
Quietly, I step to the door to peer through the peephole, but they walk away just as I reach it. Even though I’m relieved he’s gone, it still doesn’t sit right with me. I wait a few seconds before carefully opening my door, a crack, and poking my head out. Just the elevator pings down the corridor, and a figure of a man disappears from my view into the elevator. Without thinking, I race down the hall to see if I can catch them before they disappear inside, but I’m too late. The doors are closed, and the elevator is going down.
Standing alone down the corridor of closed doors, I can hear babies crying and people laughing, the usual sounds of Saturday morning topped off with the ten-year-old boy playing his trombone. It’s strange how lonely I feel right now, surrounded by people and the sounds of life on the day I visit my family for the first time in months. My stomach bears a scouring sense of emptiness that nothing seems to fill.
Then I look down at my hand and realize I’m still holding my handgun, and the rag has fallen off, and it hits me in cold reality what this is. It”s a weapon designed to kill, and I need to respect it. I smirk at my foolishness just as an apartment door squeaks open nearby, and I run back to my secluded pit and slam the door.
As usual, when visiting my parents, I procrastinate and dither in my reluctance to go. The dinner starts at 1 PM, and I’ll arrive late deliberately to shorten the time spent there. However, Mom will ask me to stay over, and I’ll break her heart by saying no.
I’m a horrible daughter who pushes people who love me away. I can’t help it, but I have hope that one day I’ll change, and the restlessness that invades me whenever in their presence will still. One day.
Returning the handgun, wrapped in the rag, to the bottom drawer of my dresser, I grabbed my car keys and Dad’s Scottish Whiskey in my bag, wallet, and phone and headed out the door with a heavy heart. I filled the car with gas yesterday, so I had enough to get me to my destination, but I’ll have to fill her up on the way back.
While alone in the elevator, I checked my wallet for cash that I’d need to pay for gas, and thanks to Smiler, there were still two hundred dollars there. What would I do without Smiler? Not that I’d ever want to meet the man. Z always jokingly said, ‘The day you meet Smiler is the day your life is no more.’ In other words, he’ll only encounter you if he wants to kill you. Such is life.
I chuckle to myself, imagining my mom asking how my job is going, and I’ll answer, “It seems the hitman business is quite profitable. Who would’ve thought?” Oh, but she doesn’t mean that job because I’ll never, in a million years, tell her or another soul about that job. She’ll mean the garden maintenance job.
The elevator doors open in the ground-floor foyer, and an elderly couple steps in, holding hands. We exchange smiles, and I wonder how long they’ve been married.
“I’m going down,” I tell them, “To the parking garage.”
“Oh, do be careful,” the woman says. “A young girl was attacked down there only last week.”
“Really? I didn’t know. That’s terrible,” I exclaim. “I hope she’s okay.”
“Well…” the elderly woman wavers, “she’s not doing too well. She lives on our floor, so that’s how we know about it because the police spoke to us. Apparently, the woman was being stalked, followed her everywhere, even up to our floor.”
“Gosh, that’s awful.” The elevator pings and slides open, and I’m relieved to have left that conversation behind me. Yet, another reason to have a gun is to keep away creepy stalker men. I forgot to ask if anyone had been arrested for the attack, but it”s only been a week, so my guess is they haven’t.
Feeling a twinge of fear from that conversation, I ran to my car three rows back and quickly unlocked it. I’m not alone here. I spotted two other people getting in and out of vehicles—perfectly lovely people, I’m sure, who have become suspects through a single change of perception.
Once out onto the road, I relax a little, weaving through traffic and stopping at several traffic lights, cruising past the crystal blue lake and then over the Severn River bridge. When I leave all the inland water behind me to head towards the coast where my parents live, we are water beings, land-stranded mermaids and mermen that must live near water, or we’ll shrivel up and die. We learned how to surf and dive as kids, and Max and I belonged to the Surf Life Saving Club, but only I went on to compete in swimming on a serious level. My parents moved us here to Torres Island from the coast when I was fifteen, specifically for swim training under the best coaches while attending one of the best high schools. The entire family was moved here for me. That’s what I find hard to get my head around. I guess that part of the guilt is that I didn’t fulfill their dreams of making it far enough to be accepted into the Olympic or World Champs teams because I quit after The Four ruined my life.
When I quit the swim team, they moved back to the coast, and my older brother joined them. After all the money spent and effort that gave me unique opportunities to succeed in swimming… I quit.
So, it was odd to live on a ranch for 18 months with my aunty, where water comes out of a well or spring, and we had to ride for an hour to get to a wild pond or lake—but returning to Torres Island and seeing my friend, the big ol’ lake’s calm blue hue. Strangely, I felt a sense of betrayal by the lake because I had changed so much inside and out, yet Great Torres Lake remained unaffected and constant. I was attacked and damaged under her watch, and it was the whispers in the short, choppy waves that told me to leave.
Return when you’re ready.
So, I did.
The sun’s ray burns the side of my face as I drive towards the Pacific Ocean, and my hair blows wildly in the breeze streaming through my open window. I wish summer would never end. Cooler and darker, the leaves falling from the trees that stand like soldiers around the lake are the first signs that Fall has arrived. But not yet. We have another month of summer bliss before the colors change and the lake grows subdued.
Lyons poisons my thoughts as I drive through a small town and consider stopping for ice cream, but my foot refuses to leave the floor, and instead, I drive right through.
My goal is to kill him by the end of summer, which gives me four weeks to learn how to fire a gun accurately and set up the scene where he will meet his fate. I always imagined shooting him in his office since that’s the location where he assaulted me several times. But that would be unwise with so many staff in the surrounding rooms. No, it makes more sense to lure him off campus to a secluded location and then…
His body.
It hadn’t occurred to me before that I’d have to hide his body, throw it onto the lake or river, and hope like hell it doesn’t rise back up again. I’m not strong enough to lift it, although I might be able to drag it a few feet, and I can’t invite a second player into this endeavor.
More plotting and scheming are needed here. I’m a complete amateur who must kill like a professional, or I’ll never get away with it. To kill like a professional, I must think like a professional, leaving no stone unturned. If I have to swallow my vomit and lay a trap by letting him believe that I want to be seduced by him, so he’ll follow a trail out to an isolated place to meet me. I’ll do it. I’m not happy about it, but I’ll do it.
Learn how to fire the gun accurately.
Find the perfect location to kill The Lion.
Lure him out there.
As I see the first sliver of the great ocean between cliff faces, I catch the sight of a small sailboat, a white dash on the horizon alone yet not lonely. I realize how much I am like that boat, seemingly adrift yet entirely in control, waiting for the right time to come ashore.
“Huh,” I grunt aloud at my sadistic humor, “Wouldn’t it be funny if someone on that boat is tossing their rapist or killer of a loved one or thief who stole their life savings overboard as we speak.”
Far away from the human gaze, one accidentally pushes their target off the side of the boat. There are no witnesses, no body of evidence, and the story is that they just slipped off the side of the boat when a large wave hit.
The perfect murder.