Everything started with Andrea Yates. You hear about that woman from Texas who killed her own kids? someone said in class. Drowned them all in the bathtub. Thought she was saving them from the devil.
Cameron had looked it up on the family computer. He printed everything he could find: news articles, blog forums, family photos. He simply wanted to know how such a love had been chronicled, to possess it somehow, if only to feel sad for the dead kids and sad for the husband and even sad for Andrea Yates. Even though it made him nauseous, looking at all the terrible things this woman had done, he wanted every detail. He wanted to know what the kids ate for breakfast that day, what they were wearing, and how the husband felt when he found all their tiny bodies laid out on the king-sized bed. If the kids had shampoo in their mouths, if it bubbled between their baby teeth, if they tried to scream but only gurgled. If Andrea Yates did something so awful for love. If you could count a love like that—five gangly bodies, soaked in murky water that leaked through to the mattress. One was an infant, he read. He wondered how a love like that drowned. Or worse, how it dried.
So the Collection of People Who Did Terrible Things began with Andrea Yates, and once he started looking at all that, the rest of the collection came quickly and with the same burning curiosity. Next was the sorority-house murderer from the South. Then, Jack the Ripper. And in the back of the folder, Dad.
With the Collection of People Who Did Terrible Things spread out on the floor, Cameron started to feel Tangled. He pulled the eraser from his pocket and kneaded it against his palm until it was pancake flat. His thoughts were like cartoon hummingbirds, making circles around his head, pecking at his earlobes, nudging his shoulders. They wouldn’t leave him be. Usually, he was thankful for their company, but Lucinda’s diary was in his closet, and she was dead, and here Cameron was, sitting on the floor with Dad and Andrea Yates.
Cameron popped the screen out of his bedroom window and let the February air lick his cheeks.
The neighborhood was dim with shock. Snow, mostly gone. Lucinda died last night, and shadows seemed longer. Headlights were blinding. Cameron observed from his invisible places.
The Hansens were watching television. Their faces sagged, blue light flickering against their gooey skin.
Mr. Thornton sat alone in the living-room armchair, baby Ollie’s toys scattered across the rug. Usually he would walk the dog around this time of night, pulling the bright-blue retractable leash from a hook by the door. When Mr. Thornton clipped the leash onto the dog’s collar, Cameron always started walking home; he did not like to share the shadowed street’s refuge. But tonight, the dog was sleeping by Mr. Thornton’s feet. He’d left one light on—the stained-glass lamp in the far corner of the living room. It threw his details into silhouette: the ridge of his suit jacket, still pressed. The folds of his ironed shirt. The tie, hanging around his neck like an abandoned noose.
Once, the school counselor asked Cameron if he was happier on his own than with other people. This was a dumb question. Other people were not trying desperately to stay Untangled, they were not thinking about their Collections and the complexities of the bodies within, or about Lucinda Hayes and the individual strands of her hair with little glands at the tips, secreting waxy oil. They were not picturing Rayna Rae’s hipbones in the centerfold, or the flat space between those hipbones, like the clean inside of a marble sink. Even when Cameron was with other people, he was alone, and this made him feel both cosmically lucky and useless to the world.
Lucinda was dead, and the fact settled over the houses like last night’s snow. It fell gently at first, and soon it would melt carelessly into the way of things. But not for Cameron: Lucinda was dead, and the reminder slapped him constantly, freezing ocean waves against his thighs. He could only wade deeper. Deeper, until the truth bubbled into his mouth, salty, miserable. Deeper, until it was pointless to search for shorelines because he knew Lucinda would not be standing on them.
Day
Two
THURSDAY
FEBRUARY 17, 2005
Jade
Cameron pulls an apple out of a paper bag. Bites into it, tentative. Even from the courtyard, I recognize that familiar self-consciousness as he sits alone at a table by the window.
People have been whispering about it all day: the cops are just looking for evidence now. He was obsessed with Lucinda. Her stalker.
I don’t think it was like that, with Cameron and Lucinda. They were friends. Really. And those people don’t know how he looked, standing pathetic on her back lawn every night. Melted gazes. Adoring.
Once, I heard Beth shrieking some ridiculous taunt about Cameron—she and Lucinda were walking arm in arm down the science hallway when Cameron passed with his head down. “Psychopath,” Beth hissed, loud enough for him to hear. Cameron camouflaged himself easily, disappearing nimbly into the swarm of students.
Lucinda stopped walking, wriggled her arm free, and pulled her notebook protectively to her chest; it had a printout of a Degas painting plastered to the front. A ballerina perched on a bench, tying silky ribbons, with a tutu sprouting from her fairy waist.
“You don’t even know that kid,” Lucinda told Beth. “Leave him alone. He’s not crazy.”
WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY BUT CAN’T WITHOUT BEING A DICK
A Screenplay by Jade Dixon-Burns
INT. JEFFERSON HIGH SCHOOL—CAFETERIA—NOON
Celly approaches FRIEND (15, social pariah) at a cafeteria table. He looks up at the mass of her, doe-eyed.
FRIEND
(startled)
Uh. Hi.
CELLY
We met yesterday. In the principal’s office.
FRIEND
I-I know.
CELLY
Can I sit?
Friend stuffs his half-eaten apple into its paper bag, blushing as Celly sits across from him.
CELLY (CONT’D)
I’m not going to tell on you. For what I saw the other night.
FRIEND
(stammering)
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
CELLY
The night Lucinda died. I saw you on her lawn. I always see you there.
FRIEND
I don’t—
CELLY
It’s okay. You didn’t kill her.
Friend looks around, then into his lap.
FRIEND
You don’t even know me.
CELLY
I’ve got this theory, you know. Every person is just a conglomeration of observations and insights. You can’t ever know someone, not really. Anyway, I don’t think you would hurt Lucinda.
Friend swallows, hard.
CELLY (CONT’D)
I’ve observed. You’re not the only one capable of watching people.
Friend stands up quickly, crumpling his paper bag into a ball. He looks back at Celly.
FRIEND
Thanks, I think.
Friend rushes away, leaving Celly alone. She laughs, shaking her head.
CELLY
God help me if I’ve turned into an optimist.