No One Can Know

by Kate Alice Marshall

Twenty-three minutes later, she picks up the phone from the kitchen counter and dials. When the emergency operator answers, she speaks in a level voice. “My name is Emma Palmer. Our parents are dead. We need the police.” She looks at the clock on the stove. It is 5:13 A.M.

Few people cared as much about what other people thought as Nathan Gates. He wanted to be liked—or rather, he was desperate not to be disliked. So much that he whittled down every edge that he had, in case someone should find them distasteful.

She gritted her teeth. Talk about a thing too much, you’re obsessed. Talk about it too little, you’re hiding something. And no such thing as a middle ground. She could never get it right. That perfect balancing act of the right way to speak, to be, to look, to feel, so your innocence could be confirmed. Once you were tainted you could never get clean.

When had she decided that it was better to be miserable than to be alone, she wondered. Or had that always been the price she was paying?

“Right. You’re a good little liberal who hates guns,” Nathan said, rolling his eyes, and her carefully constructed calm cracked in half. “Yes, that’s why. It couldn’t be because my parents were murdered with a gun. That I grew up with a dad who thought it was funny to point them at us as a joke,” Emma said, cheeks hot. “Get rid of them. Sell them, have them melted down, I don’t care.”

What did she want? The same things she always had, she thought. Her sisters. A home she wasn’t afraid of. A life spent without looking over her shoulder. The boy who had never treated her like an intruder, even when she felt like one.