And So I Shot Her

I come up here to be alone. A lot.

But today there was some guy sitting on the dock looking out toward the lake. More like a pond than a lake I guess. Green water. Cat tails growing all around, you know, those plants that look like a hot-dog on a stick. Little frogs chirping, thousands of them.

I didn't like this guy sitting there, cross-legged, slumped over. Fat guy. Odd Hitler hair cut, shaved up the back and one side, flopping long on the other side. Bright pinkish-red.

The weird thing is that suddenly I felt like I was trespassing. Which I was. But I'd been doing it for so long that I should have squatter's rights to this place don't you think? The dock, the lake, the little cabin. I was the only person in the world who cared about these things.

But now there was this guy.

I tell you I almost turned around and went back home. I started feeling hard to breathe. Panicky. I thought about all that batshit crazy going on at home with Mom and Dad. Couldn't go back there. But I couldn't be here either, not with that big lump sitting on the dock.

Nowhere to be. Caught between two things I couldn't deal with. Squeezed. I had to do something or I'd....I don't know. I'd pop. Burst my guts all over the ground. Nah, I knew that couldn't happen but really it almost felt like my only option.

So I decided I'd try and talk to him. Not confront him. Just talk. He was bigger than me. So it couldn't be more than just a talk.

I tried to make my legs move. They didn't want to move. But I put one foot in front of the other until I was pretty close to the dock.

And I noticed something strange about the guy. Like maybe he wasn't a guy after all. Something about all the ear-piercings. Something about the side of his face that was almost pretty. Girly.

He was fumbling with something in his lap. Cell phone I guessed. Big beefy arms oozing out of a jean jacket that he wore over a black t-shirt, arms of both ripped off. Quite a collection of leather bands, watches and rubber O-rings on both wrists.

God. It wasn't a guy.

It was Andrea Phillips. Andrea. She was a girl I knew way back at Manzanita School. I hated her. Everybody hated her. She was a big loud bully. She wore thrift shop dresses or maybe they were home-made. Pushed everybody around. But the teachers always sided with her for some reason. And then one day she was gone.

After Manzanita I used to see her around every once in a while. But not much. I think she hung out with the vapers behind the Auto Zone near the high school.

"Hey," I said. I tried to say it somewhere between hostile and friendly.

Andrea didn't even look up. Was she ignoring me? No earbuds. She just kept flipping that cell phone. And as I got closer I could see that it wasn't a cell phone she was playing with.

It was a gun.

Ugly little gun. Black gun with the hand grip wrapped in silver tape.

I didn't know whether to stop in my tracks or to run. So I just said "hey" again.

She shrugged, didn't say anything.

"Looks like you came up here to do some fishing," I said. Trying to make a joke. You know, about the gun. Fumbling over the words as they came out.

"I came up here to shoot myself," she said.

Christ. What do you say to that?

"Ok, well I'll be up at the cabin," I said like a complete idiot. "Nice seeing you."