Page 97 of It's Not Her
“Don’t be dumb,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You know what that means.”
“You’re lying.”
“Am not.”
“Then why was she always ragging on me if she liked me?”
She gave a little snort. “Are you really that dense?”
Over and over again, I relived that day in my mind. I still do, trying to change the outcome every time. I remember watching from my bedroom window as Abby and her friend left our house, riding away on their bikes. I got in my car, thinking I’d follow them, maybe try to scare them or something, to teach them a lesson. I didn’t get far when I saw Abby pedaling back, alone. I could’ve turned around. I should’ve turned around andgone back home. But for whatever reason, I didn’t; I kept going. I found Kylie not much further up ahead. I remember that I honked and she looked back over her shoulder and smiled. I kept swerving the car, pretending I was going to hit her, and then swerving back. She was laughing at first. She thought it was funny, until I cut too close once and she got scared, calling me an idiot through my open window, shouting about how I was so dumb and how I was so stupid.
I did it again, to scare her, cutting even closer this time.
I didn’t mean to hit her. It just happened. I clipped the back bike tire with my car. She fell off and into the street just ahead of me. I couldn’t hit the brakes in time. To this day, I still feel what it felt like to run her over with my car. It nags at me. It haunts my dreams.
It was all adrenaline then. I didn’t think. I reacted, lifting her from the street and setting her in my trunk. I hid the bike and then I drove back home and crept into my family’s shed for a shovel when no one was looking, and then I drove out to the cemetery.
I just didn’t know that someone else was there, that someone was watching. Ms. Dahl.
Tomorrow morning, I’ll pick Daniel up. Daniel and I haven’t been friends in years, not since I cut things off. He thought I believed I was better than him. It wasn’t that. It’s that I wanted to be different, I wanted to change. I wanted to make up for what I did, to atone. Daniel broke into my house and stole my things. I caught him in the act. I was a cop by then. I could have shot him or, at the very least, brought him in, but I didn’t because we were friends once and I owed him that. Instead, I told him to get his shit together and do something productive with his life, but he chose to do neither.
He had his chance. I don’t owe him anything anymore.
Justice will be getting Daniel off the streets. He’s done enoughbad things already—stealing from people, chasing after young, pretty girls and then hurting them—even if he didn’t lay a hand on Kylie Matthews.
Tomorrow I’ll take him in and ask him what happened that night. I’ll tell him what Ms. Dahl saw, how she identified him digging that hole in the cemetery. There will be no way to prove it was me because, even if they exhume Kylie’s body, any forensic evidence will be gone by now. If Daniel tries to make the argument that there are four of us walking around town with the same tattoo, no one will believe him because he’s done nothing with his life, while I’m a detective. I protect people.
I’m one of the good guys.
It’s a mantra I repeat to myself before I fall asleep at night, as I lie there in bed seeing Kylie’s face in my head, in the trunk of my car, her pale, unmoving body beside jumper cables and a lug wrench, her knees bent, her eyes glassy. I say it over and over again until one day, I might actually believe it.
I’m one of the good guys.
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