The St. Ambrose School for Girls(110)

I would have the knife hidden at my thigh and I’d keep it out of sight. I would let her broaden her verbiage from an insult or two into a full-blown slam session against me, and the rant would release much of the tension she feels, given the bind she is in…

All around us, I hear the river gurgling softly and I smell the damp earth. I see her face in the moonlight, the tasteful makeup, the glow of her blond hair, the brightness of her red cashmere coat, one that is the same hue as the red cashmere sweater Nick Hollis has worn. I think to myself that, like the Guns N’ Roses CDs, she bought this particular piece of outerwear because of him.

She’s so into herself, so riding her wave of derision, that she doesn’t notice me switching my grip on the knife’s handle or bringing it forward. I time things perfectly, because unlike my conscious mind, my illness knows exactly what to say and when to say it:

How many times did you fuck Nick in that Porsche, anyway?

Greta stops her rant and stares at me, clearly wondering whether she’s heard me right. It is in this moment of her confusion that I stab her for the first time. Right in the front of the throat.

So she can’t scream.

And then I overpower her. She stumbles back off her flats—blowing out of her left shoe, which was why her foot was bare when I saw the body—and my illness uses my weight to keep her down as I mount her like I am straddling a chair. I stab her again. And again.

I smell blood and I hear a different gurgling than the river’s flow over its rock bed, the sounds of death rising up through the knife wound that opened her larynx like a can of tomatoes.

I leave her a little bit alive. I sit back on her pelvis and I watch her mouth gape for air, like a guppy’s. Her face is speckled with blood, and some of it is coming out of her mouth. It looks black against her pale white skin in the ambient glow of the night. The spots on her clothes are getting bigger and bigger, stains looking for more legroom.

Just before her heart stops, I take my thumb and smudge the red plasma on her lips. Like it is L’Oréal’s best. Because she’s worth it.

And what do you know, I really am her mortician.

Then she is dead.

I am let down at this point, especially as I wave my free hand over her open, sightless eyes.

This has been fun, I think.

And now, I have a problem.

Dismounting her, I back up to consider the scene, comparing it with things I’ve seen in the movies or murders that have been covered by my mom’s magazines. I imagine a grainy black-and-white reproduction of what I’m looking at on the front page of the Greensboro Gazette. I hope they get the scoop. The killing happened in their town, after all, so if there’s going to be a jump on this gruesome mess, they should have it over the national news outlets.

While I’m marshaling my plausible deniability options, I kneel down, put the knife aside on the dirt, and rinse my hands in the rushing water. I check out my black clothes and am relieved that they’re not that badly marked up with blood. With any luck, I can get upstairs without running into anybody—

Shit. My face. I’ll bet I have some blood on it. I got really close out of necessity, and also because I wanted to feel the pain I was inflicting. This is personal, this killing. It is about Greta.

Strots was right about that.

I fish around in the pockets of my coat and take out a washcloth that I suddenly remember putting in there. I planned this really well. I get the small square of terry cloth wet and I scrub my face and neck. Then I rinse and repeat until there is no more pink on the towel. I wring it out and I put the thing back in my pocket though it is damp.

I keep the knife. I put it in my other pocket.

It is my trophy. It is my blue ribbon prize. I’ve never had an earned award before so you can bet your ass I’m not leaving it out here. Besides, it has my fingerprints all over the handle.

I look a little ways upstream, to a bottleneck in the river flow that has been formed by an impaction of branches, muck, and leaves. I make my way over there and brace myself on a knobby rock above the tangle. Kicking at Mother Nature’s dam, I do not care that I am splashed. Kick. Kick. Kick—

The tangle breaks apart and water courses through, a relative tsunami that swamps my boots.

The surge is strong enough to ride up and over the surface of the big rock Greta is lying on, the rush washing under her body. I scramble out of the way, but make sure I’m still in the river itself so my treads leave no trace. I watch over the cleansing, my hands on my hips, ready to scold the water if it doesn’t work hard enough to get rid of pesky evidence like any foot-or handprints I may have left.

The stream performs its duty well. The big boulder is washed free of blood and dirt, and yet the body doesn’t move. The hair does, though. It’s as if Greta is standing in a breeze, her long blond locks flowing for the last time.

It is upon this image that my awareness gradually retracts from the past and grounds me in the present.

I am still in the boiler room, behind the furnace, pills in my hand, soda at the ready, tears rolling down my face.

Even if my illness was in charge, my hand gripped that knife. My arm did the stabbing. I am guilty, complicit in a way a court is going to need Dr. Warten to explain to a jury.

“I’m sorry, Greta,” I choked out. “Oh, God… Mom, I’m sorry.”

There is a temptation to fall into hysteria, but I must resist while I have autonomy. If my illness has become self-aware, the singularity has to be intercepted. Suicide has never been more of an imperative, and I curl my hand around the pills, ready to bring them to my mouth—