You (You, #1)

by Caroline Kepnes

“Stop imagining things, Beck.” I would be a great zookeeper.

I love you, my little piggy.

I think I have memorized the treacherous e-mails between you and Dr. Nicky. I had to know them because I had to prepare an exam for you.

You look like hell, you poor thing. Your hair is a wreck and you’ve been crying. “What are you trying to do to me, Joe?” “I’m here, it’s okay.” You look at the computer I set up and you shriek again and clap your hands over your ears. I don’t understand because Pitch Perfect is your favorite but I fucked up and forgot to hit PLAY. The intro screen has been repeating since you woke up, which appears to have been a long time ago.

I just spat

“There now. How’s that, Beck?” Alicious1027.

You’re the one who went into my wall. I had no choice but to go into yours.

you talk about your problems like you’re talking about a movie you watched in the middle of the night.

“This will sound sick, but when I found out Peach was dead, I was more angry for myself than I was sad for her. She was the best friend in the world because I was the world to her. She was obsessed with me and I couldn’t even remember the exact date of her birthday.”

I belong in your mouth,

Barf

you are an animal—kick, kick—and a handicapped monster.

As always, your anger eventually cools. Your muscles relax and you are my new doll: Sad Beck. You don’t talk. You just cry. You don’t fight me and there is hope.

I killed for you. I deserve you.

“I just loved that she loved me.”

I look at your feet, the toes that Peach molested in Little Compton.

You failed and you do not get a gold star and I squeeze your neck to make the wrong answers go away.

They fester in your bulging eyes and they turn your cheeks Nantucket red

You are a fucking idiot for thinking I want you out of my life, after all I’ve done for you and this is not Reality Bites and you don’t want me over the other douche bags in your life and I was wrong about you. You gasp. “Joe.” I will not be fooled. “No, Beck.” You whisper, “Help.” And I am helping because you need an exorcism, a rebirth. You have sinned and you did manipulate Nicky and you did lead Peach on and you did stalk Benji. You are a monster, deathly, solipsistic to the bone and you’re blasphemous because all you want is You.

Oh snap

I pick up your Da Vinci Code. I am stunned because some of the pages have never been turned; I know my way around a book. I think you skipped entire passages, you brainless phony. When you asked me where I was in the book, you were cheating. The most romantic time of my life was a hoax

My mother’s Nirvana T-shirt that I was wearing the day you stalked me to my house, the one I’ve held on to my whole life, it’s a mess of cum and vanilla. You have torn it beyond repair, you bitch.

Brutal

You are as flawed as all the books in the store;

No. I want to throw myself in front of engine engine number nine.

I never made you pancakes. What the fuck is wrong with me?

It was tough going in the Buick, with you in the trunk with your green pillow, silent as Little Compton in the winter.

The pillow?!

I wonder what our wedding song would have been and I ask you but you don’t answer. You are dead.

Chet and Rose are surrounded by friends and family but I, alone, lift your petite body and maketh you to lie down in green pastures. It would be nice to have a moment of silence; Chet and Rose are rude to be so loud.

BRO

I kneel on the ground and recite the 23rd Psalm. I memorized it for this occasion. You are dead.

I walk in the woods and look at the world with inhuman night vision and see all that man was not built to see.

Oh bro is TRIPPIN

I don’t open the shop the next day. I can’t. You are dead.

Sloppy

—I was only flipping through months gone by, inventing anniversaries for our life that’s gone.

I have to decide between steak and fish and I am genuinely torn about the decision and I have to make this decision within the next forty-one days, according to the rules on the reply card.

??? Obviously steak

I genuinely believed that reshaping the shelves would make it easier to live in the world without you,

I buy violets for Amy. Not roses. Roses are for people who did something wrong.