Love in the Time of Serial Killers

by Alicia Thompson

it would’ve been the same problem with a different patina on it.

I’d been trying to convey It’s okay that you didn’t know, but now I worried that it came across more like It’s okay that he died. And that’s not what I meant at all, but also I wanted to convey I’m okay, I don’t need pity or sympathy, and in general it was exhausting, needing words to do more work than I was willing to put into them.

I was the one who should be singing “Creep” at the next karaoke night.

It was practically on our family crest—an eighth note with a giant slash through it or something.

Maybe my true crime reading had desensitized me after all, because I knew which of those made my heart speed up.

“I was going to make some comment, about how backwards it was—me opening the door all dressed up and you there with a bag of candy.”

It was enough to make me wonder if any connection we’d had was being transmitted through those cables, and now that our cars were apart again we were back to being separate, too.

THE PROBLEM WITH putting off writing was that the words didn’t just magically appear the longer you left your computer to its own devices. If anything, the blinking cursor on my open dissertation document seemed more accusatory than ever,

Did he belong to one of those families that had a group chat and wore matching shirts to family reunions?

But I resisted the urge to apologize again. For one thing, Sam didn’t look like he needed it.

Once, in sixth grade, a girl complimented the name necklace I was wearing, Phoebe in gold script on a thin gold chain. I’d told her it cost less than five dollars and snapped it in half, just to prove how cheap it was. This was the kind of shit I did when I felt backed into a corner, and compliments or kindness or attention was unfortunately what made me feel that way the most.

One mural—of a giant mouse in a space suit flying through the galaxy—was particularly disturbing given that I was pretty sure this place actually had real mice.

A four-year-old had lapped me twice and I officially left the last of my dignity back with my real shoes.

My bottom teeth were crooked, which you only noticed if I smiled too big. Luckily, that wasn’t an expression I was used to wearing too often.

In eighth grade, a (very true) rumor had started going around that I had a crush on this boy who styled his hair like Gerard Way in the “Helena” video.

Now she had a bumper sticker on her car that proclaimed her a “dog mom,” which I guess meant I still didn’t have a pet but rather two canine stepsiblings.

when you spend the night letting bad reality television wash over your eyeballs and it feels good at the time but then later it’s like, fuck, what a waste of a night.

I didn’t want to enumerate all the ways I was probably a bitch, to remind him of the few he may have already forgotten about.

“Nice is just surface politeness. Screw being nice.”

You can’t extrapolate your worldview from such a small data set.”

“I’m trying to jump something else right now,” he said, “if that’s okay by you.”

wishing there was some magic formula where I could give him as much of me as he wanted, but hold enough back to avoid being vulnerable. I had a sneaking suspicion that the formula didn’t exist; that it was an unsolvable equation.

“I think that’s where we have a disconnect,”

I’d taken her intervention phone call to my mother as the ultimate betrayal, and had allowed that one incident to poison all the years we’d had together.

Either way, I thought as I dragged the trash and recycling to the curb, that didn’t seem to be a sentiment you’d expect from a woman who was keeping a secret kidnapped family in her shed. I supposed I could cross that one off my list.

ALL THIS TIME I’d built up my father’s room as the great white whale, and it turned out that it was just . . . stuff.

“These books promise closure and justice,” I said to Lenore, scratching her under the chin. “But ultimately they reinforce the reality that so many lives are interrupted, so many dreams unfulfilled.”

“You don’t have to knock,” he said. “Just come on in.”

I hadn’t realized what a different kind of grief that was—the loss of all the potential moments that would never be, not just the past moments that already were.

But my feelings for you—that part’s not complicated.”

It’s just that I need you in my life. Which, by the way, is a sentence that would’ve literally shriveled my insides to even think about saying a few months ago. But now I feel like I’ll shrivel up if I don’t say it.

But he pulled back, rubbing his thumb along my jaw. “Ah,” he said softly. “Please don’t cry. I love you, too, Phoebe. I always will.”