31
He looked . . . normal. Except that didn’t make sense. That couldn’t make sense. How could the person I remembered, the thing with bared teeth and fingers that crushed be . . . just a guy? It seemed like a sick joke. It seemed like an insult.
But it was true.
I think that was the moment I really, truly realized it.
In my mind, I’d transformed Kyle into something grandiose. A devil, red-faced with bulging veins and bloody hands. But that was a lie. What was worse was that, deep down, I’d always known it.
The disconnect I’d felt when I saw Ginger’s wedding photo faded. The unmoored sucking sensation I’d felt when I heard him speak to Krissy that day in the park began to peel away. The image I’d had of him in my mind vanished, and a newer, more wretched picture formed.
Kyle wasn’t a monster. He was a fuckup. A nice guy with nice teeth and something very not nice behind his eyes.
A person who could’ve been anything, anything at all, and became a murderer.
If I put him in a petri dish, his blood would be red and his DNA human, just like everyone else’s.
If I peeled back his skull, his brain would be gray and gross and wriggling with electricity, the same electricity that all living things shared.
He wasn’t anything except a guy . . . which meant there was nothing inevitable about what had happened.
He’d chosen to hurt. He’d chosen to harm. He’d chosen to kill.
And he’d gotten away with it. He’d killed me, he’d hurt Nicola, he’d hurt Ginger, Sandy Brown, and who knew how many others. But why?
That word felt like a chord struck on an electric guitar, vibrating through my porcelain head, my metal joints, deep into the shivering darkness still clinging to me at my core.
Why did Kyle do that to me?
Why couldn’t I stop him?
What’s going to happen now?