Boring Girls by Sara Taylor
For Lance Webber, my friend —
and the blue sky over Griffith Park
It seems like everyone I talk to wants to know two things. One is whether I’m a serial killer or a mass murderer. The way I understand it, a serial killer kills people over a length of time and doesn’t get caught for a while. A mass murderer does it all in one go and gets caught in the act. I’m going to have to leave it up to them to decide, because Fern and I did both, and I’m really not an expert.
People like to label things. The news people need to know what to call us in the headlines. They need to figure out which names to list us beside when they’re categorizing killers. I’ve even heard the word “massacre” used to describe everything that happened at the end. We wanted it to be dramatic, but not because we wanted to make a big scene. It had to be dramatic so that no one would figure out what was happening until we were finished with it. We needed to have time. And we had definitely been thinking about it for ages, so I guess you could call it “premeditated.”
The other thing they want to figure out is why. And I keep telling them and telling them. I’m always telling them the same thing. But they don’t believe me. My answer isn’t good enough. They want more. They want to be able to blame something else, and other people, and have a long, complicated chain of events that add up to who Fern and I ended up being so that they can reassure themselves it can’t happen to just anyone.
Not just anyone can become a killer. That’s what they want to think. It takes special circumstances. Two young ladies from good homes cannot commit a massacre without something very evil and unusual happening, the fates aligning to produce this sort of thing.
Well, they’re right, but it has nothing to do with my family. They keep asking me about my parents. Did my father hit me? Did my mother verbally abuse me? Did I have a creepy uncle who touched me? Did my father and mother touch me? No, I tell them. Over and over. And I’ll tell you now: my parents raised me well. I love them very much. And even though they aren’t too interested in talking to me right now, which I understand, I will always love them. They were always good to me and my sister. I had a nice childhood. And from what I know of Fern, she did too. And I keep telling them that, and they act like I didn’t answer the question. They always ask again.
What about the music I listened to? The music I played? Hasn’t it always been easy to point the finger at that sort of thing? The music, the video games? Setting young people out of their minds onto killing rampages? The parents wringing their hands and blaming the vicious rock stars for warping the innocent? Running through their schools with semi-automatic weapons, gunning down nice people who listened to nice music?