Four Found Dead

by Natalie D. Richards

Maybe the last time is always different.

Maybe it’s a rule that movie theater carpet has to look like a fever dream after a high school geometry test.

But usually, he stops at menacing. Tonight, he’s still walking toward us. Tonight, glaring isn’t enough. My palms prickle with sweat because this isn’t how this game goes. Clayton bitches, flexes, and struts around but keeps his distance. Lexi says his bark is worse than his bite, and she’s always been right. Is she still right? Are we in big trouble? It’s almost like I can feel Cara’s frantic whisper against my neck again. I go very still like I did that day all those years ago, watching and waiting for whatever this is to pass.

But then my eyes catch on the back of Clayton’s Riverview Theaters polo. There is something underneath his shirt.

But it’s not any other night or any other tantrum. This time, Clayton has a gun.

But I’ve known for a long time that you only get to play the hand you’re dealt, and these are my cards today.

The whole world is a set of dominoes—everything we say and do touches another domino, and they all tumble this way or that. Your choices might ripple out to someone who cures cancer. Maybe my recent choices opened a window of opportunity for a killer.

I know you know what happened that night, but there are things I should tell you. I had a secret I never shared. And I knew someone else’s secret too—the secret that set this whole thing in motion.

The secret I knew is about the two of them. I had seen them a few weeks earlier in the locker room. They moved apart quickly, trying to hide what they were doing, but I knew. When you’re quiet, you see lots of things people try to keep hidden.

I didn’t tell because I was angry. And I was angry because my secret is that I was in love. I can’t believe you didn’t see the look all over my face. I saw how bright and interesting she was every day, but I never told her. What I saw didn’t change how I felt; it only made me sure my feelings didn’t matter. So I held back and kept quiet, and now she’s dead and I’ll always have to live with wondering if I could have stopped it.

I’m awed by every piece of this moment, by the sheer simple wonder of being alive.