Harmless (8 page)
Thomas suggested I get
some rest. I asked how that would be possible. He answered with a shoulder
shrug and told me to call him in the morning, then left.
The paramedics wheeled
Kerry’s body away.
I cried.
I know you don’t
believe me, but I did. Huge, fat tears. Is it too—I don’t know—too
grandiose
,
too much of a stretch to say that each drop splashed at my feet like water
balloons dropped from a third-story window?
Pendragons don’t cry.
Usually. I’m not ashamed to admit that this one did. The loss of Kerry
warranted it. Although, the fact won’t be included in my annual Christmas
newsletter.
The Year of Steve
is reserved for listing accomplishments,
not moments of weakness.
I went inside to read
her diary, to have one last private moment, to delay the end of what had never
begun between us.
When I tell you what it
contained, promise me that you won’t judge her, okay?
I pulled the diary from
underneath my bed and examined it. Thick, weighty, with hundreds of sheets of
paper. Hardback binding. It was white, decorated with faded, pinkish,
used-to-be red roses around the perimeter, and a hand-drawn unicorn on the
cover. An excellent drawing, to say the least, and I felt closer to the Kerry
of the past with the knowledge that she’d been a great artist. I held it up to
my nose, expecting perfume, and came away with the disappointing scent of a
book that hasn’t been removed from a library’s shelf in years.
I hesitated to open it,
torn between the excitement of what else I might learn about her and, well, the
fear
of what else I might learn about her. Which, in a way, was
slightly prophetic.
I didn’t want the
bubble to burst.
But I opened it anyway.
As you may have
guessed, I have trouble with
not knowing
. If I could take it all in, if
my brain could manage to possess the full extent of information contained in
both the known and unknown universe, I’d gladly accept it. If that were
possible, rest assured that you would definitely enjoy living on Planet
Pendragon. Now, is that something a
wretch
would say? You decide.
Seemingly unanswerable
questions arose from the first page:
THE DIARY
OF:
January
Nicole Oliver
At first, I thought it
might’ve been a mistake. Who was January Nicole Oliver? Why did Kerry have a
diary that belonged to someone else?
Given my mental state
that night, it should come as no surprise that it took a couple of minutes to
make the connection. As I mentioned earlier, the first time I met Kerry, she
said her name was Jan and then offered a quick retraction. It had gone like
this:
“I’m Jan—no, I
mean—sorry, I was thinking of a friend. What’s yours?”
Note that she didn’t
tell me what her name actually was, and that she had successfully distracted me
by asking mine. I’m fond of the way my full name rolls off one’s tongue, so I
didn’t hesitate to tell her.
The memory of our
meeting sparked another: “Oh, hey, you’re Jan’s neighbor.”
Clarence, in the
grocery store.
I squeezed the diary
hard between my fingers. Clarence, and his stupid existence—likely the only
person who
would not
enjoy living on Planet Pendragon—apparently knew
the real Kerry better than I did. For once, I felt belittled. It doesn’t
happen often.
Or ever.
And if Jan was her real
name, he hadn’t been thoughtful enough to keep her secret hidden by calling her
Kerry.
I made up my mind that if
I ever saw him again, I would “Be the victor” and chastise him for not
respecting her wishes.
I flipped to the next
page. In girlish, flowery scrawl with hearts over the i's and under the
exclamation points, I read:
January
(that’s me!) 1
st
, 1995
She would’ve been in
her early teens at the time.
This is my first diary
entry! I’m so excited! Such a cool Christmas present, but we’ve been so busy
visiting with Grandma Margie (I love St. Louis!) that I haven’t had time to
write anything yet. We just got back today and I’m bummed. Like, really
bummed. School starts in another three days and I’m SO not ready to go back
yet. But tomorrow I’m hanging out with Dakota and she’s promised to tell me
all about how she kissed Parker Halson. Jealous! He’s so hot. I love that
he’s a skater. They’re SO yummy. She better give me all the details, because
that’s what BFFs do. That’s what they’re SUPPOSED to do. That makes me feel
bad, because I still haven’t told her about kissing Sam Donnelly. She thinks
he’s gross.
Okay, I can’t think of
anything else to write about.
Billy, if I ever catch
you reading this, YOU ARE TOAST!
Don’t be shocked, but
know that I felt a pang of envy toward the 1995 version of thirteen-year-old
Sam Donnelly.
Yes, I searched for him
on Facebook. No, I didn’t contact him, because there were too many results.
Even I have limitations.
As much as I would like
to tell you about the pages and pages of musings from the mind of a teenage
girl, most of it was unimportant. She hated her braces, hated her parents,
loved her parents, hated her parents. Billy was the worst brother in the
world. Always. She lost her virginity on her sixteenth birthday and it wasn’t
a pleasant experience.
Typical, I would
imagine. Backseat of a Honda Civic, high school football game. She bled on
the cloth seats. Patrick Henningsen—Trick, she called him—was a good lad and
lied to his parents, telling them that a friend had cut his hand. Trick
Henningsen
is
available on Facebook and responds to random friend
requests, if you’re curious. He works for Honda—the circle of life.
The dated entries
became fewer and fewer beyond her seventeenth birthday, and stopped altogether
during her second semester at Florida State University. Too much partying, too
many cute boys, too many professors that didn’t understand what she was going
through being so far away from home.
Portland, Maine to
Tallahassee, Florida? Roughly fourteen hundred miles. I don’t blame her.
She dropped out, moved
to New York City with her friend Carla—I briefly wondered if she had ever met
Brian Williams while there—and got a job in the Goldman Sachs mailroom.
Fin
.
The end.
There was nothing
within those tumultuous teen years to give me a clue as to who might’ve wanted
her dead.
I thought it ended
there.
I flipped through the
remainder of the lined pages, hoping for more. It wasn’t enough. I needed to
learn about Kerry (sorry,
Jan
) from nineteen to thirty-two. Where had
she been? Who was she? What’d happened during those thirteen years? Who
could’ve killed her?
I got more than I
expected.
Near the end of the
diary, I found another entry. From the first, immediate glance, it was written
in the same, flowery, looping handwriting of the teenage girl at the beginning,
without the hearts, with a touch of harried, hurried adulthood. I could feel
the age difference just by looking at the words.
I trailed my eyes up
the page and almost dropped the thing when I read:
Step-Hen,
(Did that surprise you
as much as it surprised me?)
Step-Hen,
No names, you know who
you are. That’s probably the worst joke I’ve ever heard in my life, by the
way. You might want to consider leaving that one alone. My father laughed
when I told him, so there’s that.
Anyway, you’re probably
questioning why I’m writing you. Believe me, I am, too. You’re weird. You’re
really weird. I’m sorry, but I had to say it.
Let me butt in here, I
don’t know which caught me more off guard; the fact that she had written a note
to me
, or the fact that my step-hen joke didn’t go over as well as I
thought. Also, I’m not weird. Eccentric, maybe, but not weird.
But I get the feeling
that you’re a nice guy with a good heart. You’ve mentioned (and mentioned and
mentioned) that people call you a wretch, and at times I can’t say I disagree,
but deep down somewhere, yes, you have good intentions. And you seem to have a
thing for me—while it’s cute in a puppy dog sort of way, I’ve been creeped out
more than once. That’s also why I’m writing this to
you
, because I figure if anything ever happens to
me, you’ll be the first one through the door.
I need help. Well, I
should say I needed help, especially if you’re reading this. I thought about
asking you a number of times, but I wasn’t sure that I actually
did
need help and I didn’t want to give you any
reason to get involved until I was sure. You seem like you might have a
tendency to jump the gun, so I had to be certain first.
And I can’t go to the
cops. I’ll get to that in a minute.
I’m writing this, in
part, as sort of a catharsis. Somebody needs to know, and I’m fully aware that
it may never get into the proper hands. I’m also aware that you may not find
this, so it could very well be a message from beyond the grave for whomever is
reading it. If it’s the police, you’re too late…and look inside your own
ranks. If it’s you, Dad, stay strong, okay? I love you. If it’s you,
Harry…go die in a fire.
Now, Step-Hen, if you’ve
found this, you probably found some of your things in my closet. Let me
apologize first for that. And don’t worry, your cat received lots of love and
affection. (Sparkle? Really? I called him Tugboat. He liked it much
better.) I took your stuff while you were at work a few weeks ago. You
shouldn’t leave your back door unlocked. It’s dangerous.
Why? It’s going to sound
strange, and if you haven’t figured this out yet, I’m in hiding. If I’m dead,
it’s okay to say that I changed my name to Kerry Parker. By now, you’ll have
learned that I’m really January Oliver and you probably read the rest of my
diary. Obviously I can’t call you a creep for that since this is where I’m
leaving this message. Just know that I’m embarrassed by some of the things
that went through my head. I was young. Sue me.
Anywho, back to your
stuff. I was having trouble letting go of my former life and somehow, it
seemed like it would make a difference in my transition if I had male things in
my closet. You were so into me that I knew you wouldn’t mind. I’m sorry
about that.
Apology accepted.
I left behind a boyfriend
of six years. It wasn’t easy. Oh, also, do you remember those divorce papers
that you “accidentally” opened? Totally fake. I had my friend Cheryl draw
them up. Have you met her? I thought something like that might help with this
fake identity I was trying to create. You know, like, in case anyone ever
asked.
What else? The
pictures! I went through your phone out of curiosity (password protection is a
good idea) and your photos of the little ones reminded me of my niece and
nephew. Cute kids. Are they yours?
The magazines?
Entertainment Weekly
is my favorite. I took those
on a last-second whim, actually.
You know what’s funny?
Here I am calling you weird and a creep when I’m the one sneaking into YOUR
house, stealing things. My therapist said I had a breakthrough last week. Yay
me. Whatever. It’s just that I hadn’t had a chance to return your stuff yet.
Oh, I should mention the
picture of that angry woman. Is that your wife…or ex-wife, maybe? I printed
that one because she looked familiar and I was trying to remember where I’d
seen her before. Now that I think about it, I swear I saw her in front of the
house one day. She was probably coming to visit you. Never mind.
She skipped a line and
the handwriting that followed appeared to be even more agitated, more rushed.
It’s been two days since
I started my note to you. I read back over what I’d written and man, am I
rambling. I should get all of this out before he finds me.
I never feel safe. Do
you understand what that’s like? I keep expecting to hear a knock on my door
one day and see him standing there.
Who, you ask? Or is it
whom? I can never figure that out.
Ready for this? I stole
two million dollars from a broker at Goldman named Harry DeShazo.
Don’t believe me? Look
under the garden out back. I buried two black duffle bags. If I’m dead, and
if they’re still there, the money’s yours. I won’t need it. Put your kids
through college, whatever. That seems so morbid, but I’ve accepted the fact
that dying is inevitable, whether it happens fifty years from now on a beach in
Maui or he slits my throat in my living room tomorrow.
Why? That’s a long
story. The short version is—we had an affair. I found out there were many,
many others, so I stole the money and meant to share it with his wife.
Payback, right? But he found out before I could, almost killed me, and I ran.
So here I am.
I should be hiding in
some country in South America, to tell you the truth. I’d be pounding
margaritas if it weren’t for my dad. He’s had a rough time since Mom died.
Breast cancer. Tell your mother or your wife to get checked, even if she’s
your ex-wife. I mean it! It’s horrible to watch someone go like that when
they could’ve prevented it with a little due diligence.