I keep searching for moments of truth, proof that you aren’t sick but twisted. Because let’s be honest, proving you’re innocent is more than an uphill climb. I was thinking recently about that time you, Maria, and me were being aimless around town. I was doing my protector thing, pretending I wanted to hang out, but really I was keeping an eye on you. And things got pretty weird. You were Penny that day, quiet and shy. You had something on your mind, don’t know what, but it annoyed Maria, that much was obvious. She kept needling you.
“Where is Eve?”
“You’re boring me, Penny.”
“Come on, let’s have some fun.”
“Fun” for Maria usually involved some kind of fire, and we ended up behind CVS, where there was a trash can half filled with garbage. Maria took out a lighter.
“No cameras here,” she said. I got the sense she’d led us to that location knowing that fact ahead of time.
“Let’s burn it.” Her eyes glowed in the flickering flame of the Bic lighter she’d produced from a pocket.
As Penny, you were having none of that.
“No,” you said.
“Come on,” Maria urged. “It’ll be fun. You’re so lame. You won’t do anything cool. I wish Eve were here. I don’t think I like you. You’re boring, Penny. Dull. Dull. Dull.”
“Stop it, Maria,” I said angrily.
I was about to pull you away, take you home, when I saw the switch happen. There are movies that sensationalized multiple personality disorder, portraying it as a transformation from one person into another, like a lycanthrope going from man to wolf, but switching doesn’t happen that way. It’s not dramatic. Not like a seizure. A lot of times it takes careful study to tell when a switch has happened, but this time, I could see it clearly. The way you carried yourself with a more confident stance, a dark gleam in your eyes, that trademark tilt to your mouth—it was all there in a snap.
What happened next was snaplike, too.
You snatched the lighter from Maria’s hand, flicked on the flame, and put it to some paper in the trash can. I watched it happen, I’m ashamed to admit, just like with the cat—I sort of let it go on because maybe part of me, that dumb teen part, a brain not fully formed, wanted to see the burn. And up it went in no time. Flames spreading quickly, fire catching paper, all in a great chain reaction that soon had the trash can fully engulfed.
You and Maria danced around the fire like two spirits of the night trying to conjure a demon. Then we heard sirens, and that’s when we ran, you two laughing manically and me thinking what the hell did I just let you do?
Later, when I had time to reflect, another thought occurred: I realized how easily Maria had manipulated you into setting the blaze. A couple taunts, and you were part of the burn.
After your arrest, I got to thinking about those murder plans you two secretly shared, and wondered if she’d encouraged you the same way she got you to set that fire.
I’ve read all your secret correspondences with Maria, and all I can say is: What the hell, Penny? The hit list Maria sent in error to the wrong girl （big mistake there） had a lot of names on it, but the standouts were your brother Ryan, and your birth mother, Rachel Boyd.
But that wasn’t even the most chilling part. Maria was very clear in her writings about how she’d commit murder:
Don’t move the body. Leave it where it died. We should kill random people, too, because most of the time the victim is someone the killer knows. We don’t want to leave any trail back to us. If we off a stranger, it will be harder for the police to identify a suspect. And we shouldn’t do it in Swampscott. We need to pick a different town, a place that doesn’t get a lot of traffic. I hope we do it, too, because I want to know what it feels like to kill someone. It must be the most incredible feeling of power.
But it wasn’t just Maria doing the planning. You played along, too.
We’ll buy anything we need a month before we need it, you wrote back. We need ropes, gloves, buckets, and sponges. After we do it we have to live our lives like NOTHING ever happened. We’ll ride our bikes because that makes it easier to get off the road so we can avoid the police.
You two went back and forth with your planning, talking dismemberment, pulling teeth, burning off fingerprints, burying body parts, eliminating DNA, and eventually you wrote what is maybe the most incriminating piece of evidence against you:
How about we do in my birth mother? We’d have to track her down, but that would be some weird juicy shit for a Lifetime movie or something.