Dead: Ongoing Fiction About Malvina

 

He's dead, dead, dead, dead as a turd.

I poked him in the eye, dumped water over his head, kicked him in the balls, slapped him in the face, tried CPR. But no, he's as dead as Einstein, as dead as Franklin and Emerson and Hemingway and Edison and Plato. He was a genius, but now he is dead.

Maybe he wasn't such a genius when he came to do drugs. Or maybe, he just wasn't such a genius period.

I never stopped him. Maybe I wanted him dead. It was subliminal. It was his fault, true, but it was just as much my fault.

It was my fault?

It was my fault!

Oh, God, oh, crap, oh, Lordy-Lord, it was my fault.

What am I going to tell his mother?

That it was my fault?

I'm a transparent, honest person, so I have to tell her it was my fault.

She isn't going to take it well. She'll probably kill me.

Is my honesty worth dying for?

I'll think about that later. Right now, I need to get away and never see her again, or she'll kill me.

What am I going to tell his friend Aryn?

Tell her the truth, you nut.

Okay, then she'll be mad at me.

You don't need to tell her that you wanted him dead.

Yes you do! You're a transparent person!

Did you even want him dead?

Okay. I'm starting to calm down now. Maybe I didn't really want him dead. But I didn't want him alive and well either.

He manipulated me. He abused me. Not physically, but psychologically. Now maybe he's reaping the rewards.

No. Abusers who don't try and kill don't deserve death. They deserve to be corrected. Punished, even. But death?

He's reaping the rewards of his drug and alcohol addiction, then. It wasn't my fault.

At least this is what I have to tell myself to calm down so that I can grab my shit and get out of here.

I grab survival stuff.

My passport and cash. Not his phone or his Kindle or his iPad or his tablet. Not even his bank card; I don't know the PIN. I leave his big gold Buddha too; I am not into stealing. It's tempting, and that haunts me. But I won't be even worse and do it.

I leave his rings on his fingers though together they're worth a thousand dollars. He has no cash on him, and I can't believe I check. Why check, unless I plan to take it?

I'm not a thief.

Just a killer.

First I check his email. He left it open again. I forward all the stuff that incriminates him, emails where he abuses me to his friends, to my and my friend's email accounts. I then search his email using keywords like “kill” and “dead”. If I can find plans to kill me, then I can live with killing him.

But I just find mundane stuff, like “It kills me that I'm gaining so much weight” and “My phone is dead so you'll have to email me.”

It was an innocent man I killed.

You didn't kill him.

Yes you did. You poisoned him. You meant to knock him out so you could go through his emails. But you gave him too much Klonopin, and now he is dead.

He took that much Klonopin anyway!

But not tonight. He said he wanted to stay up and talk to me all night. So he said he'd take ten milligrams instead of his usual thirteen. (He was an addict trying to gradually get back down to a normal dose, which is like one or two milligrams.) He then asked me to go get us some wine. And I saw my chance. I put five two-milligram tablets of Klonopin in his wine. I didn't drink mine, just took one sip and pretended to be drinking it real slow. Just in case I accidentally took his glass. But he had the right glass. He drank it down, then had another drink and another, then took his ten milligrams of Klonopin not realizing he'd already taken some, then fell asleep and died.

But maybe it wasn't my fault. Maybe he took something else that I'm not aware of.

I'm going to be in so much trouble. It makes my stomach squirm.

I need a Klonopin.

I pour the wine and the beer down the sink. I pour all his fifty or so bottles of pills into the toilet and then flush them. It's too tempting when I'm this nervous, and I don't want to dull my judgment along with my senses.

I have a head start. Nobody knows. Nobody has to know. I'm innocent. I didn't do anything. He just took his pills and drank his wine and died. He was an addict.

I have to tell myself this because if I don't believe it, nobody will believe it when I tell it to them. I'm a lousy liar.

I'm not acting innocent. My ex is dead, and I'm on my way out the door to go to Utah. I chose Utah because it's full of polygamists and in that area I plan to be in, the cops don't really like it. So they don't go there much. They know people are breaking the law, but they don't go there.

Maybe I'll even become friends with some girl or girls who want to escape from the plig cults. Maybe we can run away somewhere together. Maybe they'll know of someplace we can go.

I doubt it though. I'll probably just be living there in a tent.

A tent? Come on. Get real. If you want to live in a tent, go to the tent city where other homeless people live, don't go to the woods in the middle of nowhere!

Funny how I'm already calling myself homeless. And with no surprise at all.

It's like I planned this.

Alright. The tent city in Lubbock it is. I just hope they don't find me there. They probably will. I need another place to go to if I see or hear of any cops there.

The guy that told me about the tent city, Jamie, was a mental health peer support worker. He also told me I could eat and shower at his center.

Jamie's center! Of course!

I need to get to Jamie. And his center.

I'll tell him the truth. He might protect me.

It's taking a chance, but it's the only chance I have.

Nobody knows I know Jamie. They won't find me there.

Look normal. Look bored. Look relaxed. Too relaxed. Try to look too relaxed. Overcompensating is okay, undercompensating isn't. You probably won't overcompensate though, because you're really nervous.

I hated his guts. My ex's, that is. He told me I never analyzed situations, and believed it, because he told me ridiculous lies that I knew were lies because they didn't add up, and I just let him do it and think I was stupid. I was too embarrassed, too ashamed even in front of just myself, to admit what was happening, let alone say to him “Look, I'm not stupid, cut it out.”

Now I've got to analyze everything.

Am I up to it?

Yes, you are. He just brainwashed you into thinking you were dumb as a dumpster.

If I don't start believing in myself, along will come another man perhaps even worse than my ex.

So I got my ticket, and I'm on the Greyhound bus now. I just left the body where it lay, took my passport and my birth certificate and some cash and my high school transcripts and some clothes and toiletries and his keys, locked the door and left. I got a ride out of town with Bill. I said I needed to go shopping at Aldy's and that my ex, Dorien, had taken the truck to the garage. Bill left me there, on his way to where he was going, and I got a cab to the Greyhound station from there.

The autopsy people are going to find out that Dorien was dead since last night, and that the truck was in the parking lot outside our low-rise apartment the whole time.

Or maybe they won't find him until he's rotting and the neighbors smell something. By then, will they be able to tell exactly to the day how long he's been laying there?

Probably not.

So now I'm on the bus headed for Lubbock. Dear God, please love me. Dear God, please forgive me. Dear God, please help me get to where I'm going without being stopped.

“Wait… you did what?”

I made it.

Now it's out of my hands. It's in Jamie's hands, and by the looks of it, it's going to blow up in my face.

I should have probably just said “My ex had an overdose and died”. It would be easier for him to just play along with that even though he might suspect the truth, than for me to dump “I killed my ex, whom you met last month and liked” on him. Why did I have to dump on him! I just ruined everything!

I explain. He doesn't call the cops. He doesn't even pick up the phone. He doesn't even go near the phone. He looks a bit scared, though, and I don't want him to be.

“Yes, you can stay here,” he says. “But only for two days. I'll look for another place for you. You can sit right here and listen to me calling places. Or you can call them yourself. Here's the phone.”

I feel like I did in high school with my social anxiety… like I just made a new friend, but that our friendship, being new, is really fragile.

I'd better behave myself while here, and stay out of the way, and help out when I can, and be quiet, and be neat and tidy, and not say anything controversial, and look innocent, and look normal, and…

Shut it, anxiety! I know what to do! You don't need to tell me!

I'm in the dining room sitting next to a young guy and a young girl. Both look to be in their late teens or early twenties. I'm in my late twenties, so I feel ancient.

The food looks really good, but I'm too nervous to taste it, or even care that it's good. It's an inner nervousness, nothing that shows. It's a dread. It's beyond “Ooooh, I don't wanna show my face because they'll think I'm awkward.” Outwardly I can't show nerves or I'll attract attention. So it's turned itself inward. Turned itself into dread. It had to manifest somehow, I guess., and dread was the easiest way it could think of.

“What's your name?” asks the boy, who's part white and part Asian and seems quite shy.

“Malvina,” I reply truthfully. “What's your name?”

“Ian.”

“I'm Larissa,” the girl says with a wide smile. She's less shy or cagey than he looks. She looks more friendly now that she's smiled. She might even work here; she has that kind of smile and voice.

“I need my damn pills! I hope they just get them for me here; I don't wanna go to the frickin' hospital,” Ian says. “I was already in River Crest in San Angelo for a week. The food was really good, but I just wanted to get out of there in the end.”

I nod. “I was in the hospital in Houston,” I volunteer. “Harris County.”

“The jail?”

“The hospital. Not the jail. The Harris County Psychiatric Center.”

“I know the HCPC,” Larissa says. “I worked there as an intern. Before that I volunteered there.”

“Do you work here?”

“Yes, ma'am. I'm a peer support worker.”

“Like Jamie?” I say, nodding.

She nods. “What brings you here today?”

“I was seeing Jamie,” I say, stalling for time. “My ex kind of died and I had nowhere to go. He committed suicide,” I fib. “At least I think so. He overdosed and I just ran. Maybe it was an accident. But I didn't want to face his family and have them all blaming me.”

“Are you sure they would have blamed you?”

“They've blamed me for shit in the past. Stuff like leaving the bathroom light on at their place one night, and it was him that did that, not me.” This, at least, is true.

One day, the truth will set me free. But for now, I need to be safe.

The third floor of this little building has two old two-tier bunk beds in it. Two other girls are staying here and just my luck, the only bed available for me is a top bunk. How am I supposed to keep a low profile here when I'll probably be tossing and turning in my sleep and annoying the shit out of the girl below me?

I'm allowed to take a shower and they give me some clothes to wear… men's clothes, and a bit baggy, but at least it's different clothes than what I was wearing when I was last seen.

I fall asleep surprisingly quickly for a guilty conscience. Anxiety is exhausting, I suppose.

I wake up and it's dark. I think it's the middle of the night until the bathroom door opens and one of the other girls comes in, grabs her sweater, and leaves out the door leading to the stairwell. I can see in the light from the bathroom that the other two bunks are empty. I climb down carefully and head downstairs. I look around for Jamie, who's nowhere to be found.

“Hi, Malvina.” It's Ian again, sitting at the table reading his Bible over his finished breakfast plate.

“So I see breakfast is ready,” I say, trying to act cheerful. A clear conscience is a cheerful conscience, so I'd better act cheerful.

“Yes, come and get it,” the woman behind the counter says, and she gives me a generous portion of eggs, bacon, and waffles. “Syrup and butter and coffee and milk are over there.”

At first I avoid the coffee. I'm too nervous as it is. But anxiety is exhausting, and I need to think of a solution to my problem, not sleep, so I end up drinking some coffee in the end, after I eat.

Larissa is nowhere to be found, but one of the girls from my room upstairs sits across from me eating.

Then I hear barking.

Is that a police dog?

No, silly. It's a regular dog.

It's a therapy dog. It says right on this thing he's wearing that he's a therapy dog. A smiling older lady is bringing him through the dining room. “Hello,” I say.

The woman smiles at me and continues through the kitchen, out the door at the other end, to the lounge-like room. For something to do, and because life goes on, I guess, I get up, wash my plate and cup and put them on the counter, then go to the door of the lounge and look in. The other two girls from my room are in there, and so is an older man and the woman with the dog, and a guy that works here.

“I think we're all here-- no, we're missing Ian and Zelda. Ian, Zelda, it's group meeting time,” the guy who works here said.

Larissa and, much to my relief, Jamie, suddenly appear.

In the meeting they just go over the rules again with us... tell us to clean up after ourselves, all that.

Then Jamie says “I want to talk to you later, but I'm busy right now.”

What does he want to talk to me about? Is he kicking me out? Is he going to call the police on me? Has he already called the police on me? He is awful serious and somber since I told him I killed Dorien.

I go to the bathroom because I'm ready to throw up and/or shit on myself with anticipation. I try to throw up, and luckily, I don't, because someone might hear and then all attention would be on me. I drink some water from the bathroom sink and take a few deep breaths. I try to do some Cognitive Behavioral Therapy like I was taught. I try to ask myself questions like “What is the evidence for this thought?” and “How do you think this will affect your life a week, a month or a year from now?” But the evidence points to me TOTALLY killing Dorien, and it WILL affect my life a week from now, in big ways. I can't imagine a month or even a year from now. CBT just makes me more anxious. That's because it didn't work, because my anxiety isn't a cognitive distortion like CBT is designed to cure… it's a real reaction to committing a real crime. There is no way out of that.

This is Texas. Texas has the death penalty.

Evidence for that thought? 100% evidence. It's true.

“How do you feel?” Jamie asks in his office.

I can't tell whether he's “playing the game”, or whether this is a serious question about my crime.

“I feel anxious and like shit,” I say honestly. I decide to play the game and act like it's my chemicals acting of their own accord… pure mental illness.

“I've arranged for you to go to the hospital and get prescribed new medication.”

“The hospital?” I hear myself shriek. “They'll find me there!”

Oh, shit, no, no, no, no! I blurted something out.

“Don't worry. I won't tell them anything, and you'll only be there for five to seven days.”

Now we're no longer playing the game.

“They could find me in five to seven days,” I mutter.

“Do they know you were at his house?” Jamie asks. “You're Canadian, and how many friends did he have? How many people knew you were there?”

“Just Bill,” I mutter. “He drove me out of town. I mean, he doesn't know, at least not yet. He just drove me to the grocery store and I got a bus here. Dorien doesn't have friends, really. Just people online he hasn't met in real life in years, and Bill, and me. I had to hide in the house besides. People in that housing project aren't allowed to have people over longer than two nights. We were already caught doing it once before.”

Actually, that fucker Dorien called the cops on me for stealing one of his rings, then he realized he'd stuck it in a pill bottle among his stash. Then the concierge found out and kicked me out. I tell Jamie that too.

“I see.” Jamie's voice is a little bit warmer. Maybe it's something I said, maybe he's just getting used to me and the situation. Finally, he says “I wouldn't worry. I might have done the same thing. I'm not judging anyone. Not you or Dorien. But I think you're safe here. Do you feel safe here?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Where am I safe?”

“The hospital would be a safer place than here. Did you leave any papers from us behind in your apartment?”

Oh, shit. I did.

“Very well,” he says, reading my mind. “The zoo it is. They'll feed you and house you and give you something to make you feel better. Bipolar disorder's a tricky thing. And if you're having all those feelings… shame, guilt, feeling that you did something… I think it's the place for you to be right now.”

I nod.

We're “playing the game” again.

He drives me himself to the state hospital. But they're full.

They send me to the “Crisis Respite Unit” instead of a hospital.

I feel a bit safer, because they probably won't find me here; it isn't even a hospital.

And my talk with Jamie made me feel better… he said the cops will only question immediate neighbors when they find Dorien, and Bill isn't an immediate neighbor… he lives in the building around the corner, though it's part of the same complex.

There are fun people there and I even open up to some of them about problems with Dorien, though I have to tell them I think he committed suicide.

Jessie is in here for depression, Meredith for anxiety, Junie for agoraphobia, Milton and Jed for bipolar, and Ronald and Kris and Peggy for schizophrenia. We brag about our problems and the world seems lighter thanks to their sense of humor about serious shit.

The food is too good; fried chicken for lunch and fried fish for dinner.

When I go to bed, I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off me and that has given me time to do some positive thinking, and now I feel like God will be with me no matter what.

It's only when I'm sleeping that it hits me… they could find out where I am through the state hosptial. I have a sobering dream where I'm on death row.

“I could kill my daughter's dad!” Peggy exclaims over breakfast.

And as if that's not bad enough…

“No, don't do that! You don't want to end up on death row,” Kris says.

I start shaking. Nobody notices thankfully except me. I say “Oh, I forgot to call my friend!” and get up and go to my and Peggy's room. I hope Peggy doesn't keep talking to me all night tonight about how she wants to kill; that might trigger me and I might act in a way that causes me to give myself away! Last night-- or rather, from two to four this morning, when we finally went to bed-- Peggy was gabbing for two hours in bed about her family. Thankfully it wasn't about her ex, but it might be tonight. I'd better pretend to be asleep.

Death row. So I could end up on death row.

I was protecting myself from that thought, but I can't any more.

I start shaking, then I start gasping for air. I think I'm having a heart attack too.

Calm down! You're just having a panic attack! Take a breath and let it out slowly!

I manage to hold one of the gasping breaths I take. I let it out slowly.

I have to keep doing this for another hour to avoid further panic.

I have another panic attack at lunch, when Peggy sure enough brings up her ex again, and sure enough brings up killing him again, and Kris sure enough brings up death row again. This is told to the doctor and the next day, when I see the doctor (me and Kris and Ronald and Milton and Jed are taken to a building offsite where we're weighed and measured and then talk to the doctor using a webcam-- I can see him on a big screen on the wall), he brings it up and thankfully instead of asking why, is one of those know-it-alls that decides why himself, and diagnoses me with panic disorder.

So I get new pills… Klonopin. Two milligrams. What I used to end my ex's life. If it weren't for the nature of the pills, I'd be triggered like the guilty person I am whenever I had to take one, but as it is, what the pills do is stop me from being triggered.

The pills calm me down enough where I can relax enough to think ahead, but not so much I don't even think ahead.

So I need a place to stay. Maybe I can move in with one of the girls from here. Most of them don't have a place. Even Peggy would be good. Maybe Peggy would even be desirable. She wants to kill her ex. She might be sympathetic to my situation. I might even be able to tell her what I did after a year of knowing her.

So what do I know about Peggy? She loves to talk. She's got no place. I don't know why. She has a daughter who's with her ex. Her family are all crazier than her. Some are religious fanatics, some are fanatically rebellious. Maybe I would get along with the fanatically rebellious ones. She only hangs around with one of them, though, because only one of them lives in this state. Aldous is his name. She says she doesn't want to live with him because he plays music too loud, but she loves him otherwise. Maybe she won't mind moving in with him so much.

And she seems to like me a lot. She's always spilling her secrets to me when she's with me alone. Other than with me, she's always talking to the group. This could be a good sign.

What does she know about me? She knows I'm Canadian. She knows I was here visiting my ex because we briefly got back together, but she still thinks my ex committed suicide.

She doesn't have to know he didn't.

I can still not want to deal with his family's crap, so I have a perfectly legit reason not to want to go back there.

I ask her at lunch. “Peggy, I've got a question.”

She turns to me, delighted. “Ooooh, what?”

“Do you wanna try and get a place together? Might be cheaper.”

“Love to! Cummon, come here!” she says excitedly. “Do you have a job? Do you have welfare? I'm on SSI, are you? Oh no, you're Canadian. Well, my cousin could get you a job mowing lawns! That's what he does. Under the table, aside from his SSI.”

I throw my arms around her. “Yes, yes, I'm so excited! A new life!”

Now I'm starting to get nervous again. I can't wait to get out of here and get rid of the damn risk of getting caught.

Peggy gives me her cousin Aldous's address and phone number.

We squeal and grin and jump around in our room. Then we go to tell our friends the good news. Maybe some of them will want to come with us?

It turns out loud music wasn't the real reason Peggy at first didn't want to move in with Aldous… it was that Aldous likes coming onto people. But Peggy and I assured each other we'd look after each other, so now that's a moot point.

Milton, Jed and Ronald are going to a shelter together. That's great news; I'm happy for them. They give us the name and number of the shelter and we write it down.

Aldous doesn't have a car. Neither does Peggy. One kind staff member here offers to drive us there, but I make up an excuse telling them I need to go food shopping and so they drop us off at a grocery store instead, though one that's near enough to walk to Aldous' s house.

I buy some food, then we walk to Aldous's.

Aldous answers the door. He smells like cigarettes and looks like the typical layabout with a messy beard, messy hair and messy clothes, and even a messy complexion. The house is messy too. I clean it up while talking to him and Peggy. I feel a bit safer here.

Then I realize something. Peggy needs her medication, and she's getting it from the same center that we just got out of. Back up: I'm getting my meds from there too, now. They know where we live.

I need to tell Peggy the truth, so that we can arrange a place for me to hide!

Oh, and of course so that she isn't shocked if the cops knock on her door looking for me.

I don't know why I thought Peggy would be disgusted. She was never the disgusted type. Besides, she's said herself she's angry enough to kill her ex. She understands.

But I don't.

Why did I do it?

He was telling my doctor in Montreal how crazy I was, when I wasn't. That was true. And they were all believing him. And true, he called the cops on me so that I'd be taken to the hospital in Montreal and the court forced me to continue dealing with that institution. And true, there wasn't any other doctor that wanted to take me on there.

He told my family how “crazy” I was too and they all believed him.

He had the potential, the intelligence and the skill, to ruin my life. No doubt when I got a job, he would have told my employer, as soon as he found out who it was, that I was crazy.

Bill told me of the nasty shit he told him about me but Bill was smart; he didn't believe him.

But the world is full of Dr. Stantons, not Bills. Bills are a rarity. So are Peggys, for that matter.

So I tell Peggy.

She doesn't bat an eyelash. She squeals in excitement, but she always does that.

Aldous isn't there when I tell her; I don't trust him yet.

Peggy says: “You know, there's this dirt road in Saskatchewan where you can just go over the border into Canada. It's really out of the way, but...”

I look at Peggy. She grins at me.

“What's the point? Where will I go in Canada? I'd get caught and extradited. I might as well stay here; there's free health care here too, for illegals.”

“Don't you have anyone you want to get in contact with? Any friends? Family?” Peggy asks. “I mean, if you don't have a family that's cool… you can be part of mine!”

“My parents died in a car crash. Not to be too cliché. My sister doesn't really like me but she's no better than me. My other relatives either got old and died, or don't like my immediate family.”

I'm telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

“Don't you have any friends? I mean, I'm just curious. If you left, I'd visit you. I might even come with you because my life is boring.”

“I have Janice and Marita, but Janice is in the mental hospital long-term and Marita is too goody-two-shoes to ever want me back now that I killed someone.”

Let's see… who else?

Nobody. “Roberta and Franny are dead. I lost touch with Chessa; I guess she got tired of me.”

“Well, they're going to catch you eventually here.”

“I know. Let's go then.”

“I don't have a car, but Aldous does.”

“I don't feel comfortable telling him. What if he tells?”

“He won't. He broke someone's legs before and his friend ratted him out and he never forgave his friend. And did I tell you of the time I dumped hydrochloric acid over my enemy's head in high school? He never told anyone he knew I did it, though he was the only one there besides me and my enemy.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah. Anyway, what choice do you have but to take a chance on us?”

“Okay,” I say. I don't totally trust them, but that's only because I don't totally trust anyone.

“Look,” Peggy says. “Let me show you something. Come.”

Is she going to kill me or hurt me???

But she leads me into what looks like Aldous's room. She leads me to the closet. She opens it.

A dead body falls out.

“I wasn't supposed to tell anyone,” she says sheepishly.

It's a man. He's old. He has a fringe of hair around a bald spot on top of his head, and on top of his bald head is a fairly fresh gash. There's blood all over his clothes too.

“Aldous is gone to see his lawyer,” Peggy says.

Should I stay or should I go?

If I go, what are my chances? I WILL get the lethal injections, and within half a year, because I can't afford a lawyer.

“Look, this--” I gesture at the dead man-- “This doesn't necessarily mean I can trust you guys. As a matter of fact,” I say, hurrying for the door, “You might do the same to me!”

She doesn't lunge after me. She says,

“Good luck! Come back if you need to!”

Then: “I trust you!”

Oh, God.

I can't leave.

Besides… lethal injection, remember?

I sit down.

“Aldous, I told her.”

Aldous stops short.

“She killed someone too. She's on the run.”

Aldous relaxes a bit. I'm relieved for some reason to see he's quite nerdy.

“Malvina's going to stay with us, and help us.”

I don't know what I'm going to do to help, but I say nothing. They might want to dispose of me if they realize I'm useless.

“I can trust you, then, I guess,” Aldous says in his almost-pubescent nerd-voice. “We use you, you use us, I guess.”

Then the three of us are grinning.

And planning shit.

We're going to Canada, together. They need to get away too.

“My lawyer will go to court for me. I'll be in hiding,” Aldous says over a pizza we ordered.

“Why did you kill that man?” I blurt out. Then-- “Oh, sorry, it's none of my business.” No sense telling them that it's everyone's business when an innocent person is murdered. I can't afford to be honest. It's funny, but at the same time, didn't my mom teach me that one lie leads to another? Or at least that when you commit one crime, you then have to commit another to cover it up, and keep committing crimes to cover up those crimes, and just for survival?

Is it worth it?

Yes, it is. My life is worth it. He would have died in vain if I turned myself in.

But I didn't have to kill him.

“...my dad,” Aldous is saying.

“Sorry… what?”

Just a moment there. My blood runs cold.

Did he say that dead guy was his dad?

“I said, he killed my dad,” Aldous said.

“Oh. Whew.”

“You thought he said he was our dad,” Peggy says, giggling.

“Were you in the Crisis Respite Unit because you were traumatized by what you did?” I ask. “And why did he kill your dad? That's horrible,” I add.

“Yeah, I was,” Peggy says. “And you?”

I nod. Then I tell my whole story.

“That's some story,” Peggy says.

“My turn!” Aldous says. And he starts talking about how wonderful his dad was. I know what he's doing immediately… justifying the murder of the man they killed.

But he seems to have deserved it.

Their dad was a great man according to them. He took them to ball games, to movies, to water slides, pulled them out of school to take them camping. He always hugged and kissed them and called them every day he or they were away. The three of them had deep philosophical conversations too.

Then along came Paul.

Paul was on drugs. Paul was always asking their dad, Sacha, for money. And Sacha one day stopped giving him money, and instead handed him a basket of food. He knocked Sacha out with the basket of food and beat the crap out of him until he was unconscious. Sacha suffered an epidural hematoma and died.

Then Paul took the groceries Sacha had given him and took off in his car.

The day after the next, after the funeral, an intoxicated Paul was back at their house demanding money.

“Alright, come on in, and don't take anything,” Aldous had said. Paul took the bait and went in.

Peggy then shot him with Sacha's gun.

“We need to get out of the United States for sure. And you need me,” I said. “ And I need you too. We'll need each other to survive up in Canada; maybe one of us will be able to find a job under the table while the other two can't. I'll get you over the border if we're stopped, though we probably won't even be seen because we'll be taking that out-of-the-way road. You're visiting me. I came down here to visit you and you are returning to visit me. Got it?”

“Got it,” they both say.

“Let's go,” Aldous says, finishing the last of his pizza.

We bury the body in the backyard and pack clothes, but mostly food, toiletries and money. Peggy packs their first aid kit and camping stuff like flashlights, matches, batteries, and a can opener.

Now comes the interesting bit… their sentimental stuff. Aldous takes some sci-fi books and Archie comics from when he was a kid, and old computer games on DVD like Mech Warriors and Tomb Raider and Duke Nukem and Quake and Wolfenstein and Doom and Myst. Peggy takes a mahogany jewelry box, an antique figurine of a woman in a bustle, a Bible, and a Barbie doll with a Southern-belle type of dress on.

We don't take the gun. We know we might get caught, and if we have a gun we might be detained.

We'll ditch the car as soon as we get over the border. We're going to be driving for about two days straight, but we can do this.

Peggy calls her relatives on the house phone and tells them she and Aldous will be taking some time away, at their father's cottage in Vermont. That should buy us some time before the relatives start calling the cops to report them missing.

“We just want to sit there in the cottage and cry and remember him,” Peggy sobs over the phone.

When she hangs up she tells me and Aldous that she had to think of her dead hamster to make herself cry, because her tears for their dad were all dried up at this moment, though she might cry over him again later.

Then we're out the door. Aldous, much to my relief, turns out to be a good driver. I never learned to drive. I was too busy trying not to fail in school and trying to figure out the meaning of life, then later I had an attention deficit issue preventing me from concentrating, but now I'm medicated for it.

Our meds!

Well, we have enough for the trip, at least.

I don't remember much of the trip. I'm high on Ativan for most of it, having taken three pills at a time when I was supposed to just take one. I have the most beautiful conversations with my new friends while high on the Ativan, but I barely remember them after. We make it over the border, and sleep in the car on the side of a dirt road, and I can't sleep because I'm too anxious because I've run out of Ativan. And of course, because I killed a man and I'm with two other murderers, so I look guilty as hell.

I fall into a fitful sleep at about five in the morning, when we start moving again. When I wake up, we're in Edmonton, Alberta.

“Why Edmonton?” I ask. “Weren't we supposed to be going the other way?”

“Not Montreal, if that's what you're thinking,” Aldous says. “You live there. They'll look there, duh.” He grins.

The only part of Edmonton I've been to is the airport, on a layover between Montreal and Vancouver. This could be exciting.

The tent city is not very big, but to me it looks intimidating. I guess because I'm used to having my own room, with solid walls and a lock on the door. A gay couple comes over to us and welcomes us to the tent city. We just park our car here; we have no tent.

The gay couple, Todd the American and Jan the Norwegian, are really nice, so nice I even strike up a conversation with them about discrimination and what it means to us all. I talk about high school and work and even discrimination at certain mental health places. He talks about how he was discrminated against as a Norwegian even in the gay village in Montreal. I say I'm from Montreal. He asks what brings me here.

I tell him I'm having an existential crisis. It's not a lie.

He wants to know what kind of existential crisis. He understands if I don't want to tell him.

I tell him of a problem I had years ago but got over. A problem where I realized I wasn't any smarter than other smart people. As a matter of fact, I was dumber, because I had thought I was so smart I didn't have to go to school and that my God theory was unique and I'd get famous and rich from it. I was actually dumber than most because others already knew God and I had just figured Him out then, not years before, and because most people also figured out by nineteen (which I was when I had this problem) that as smart as they were, they were normal enough to still need an education. This caused a horrible depression in me. I felt so stupid, so embarrassed, so useless. I felt so much dread for my future. I felt like all those people who had called me stupid or lazy were right.

Maybe they were.

But I'm having another existential crisis right now, an “Am I a moral person?” crisis, a “What does it mean to be moral?” crisis. A “Will I go to heaven when I die, or will I have to suffer something horrible for years before I can even get into heaven?” crisis. At least I know we all go to heaven in the end (I used to be a Unitarian Universalist and still hold some of their beliefs), but that's not enough for me. Another rule of nature is this: “What you think, feel, say and do will find its way right back to you.” I learned it from my grandmother when she was alive, but I never believed it until now.

“What's wrong?”

I'm sitting at a table at the Mustard Seed Church. We're waiting for dinner. And Todd the American is asking me what's wrong.

“Same old,” I say, doing a “Whatever, I'm gonna let it go” type of head and hand movement.

I eat because I have to eat or I'll throw up from not eating for days. I'm hungry but I'm not hungry.

It's ninety degrees Farenheit out, which is about forty-five degrees Celsius. But inside, I'm very, very cold. So cold I start to shake.

“Let's go to the West Edmonton Mall!”

Peggy has been talking excitedly to the woman who takes crack. Now she's talking excitedly to me, telling me what the crack whore told her.

“There's water slides there, and a whole Europe street thing there, and all kinds of--”

“How can you go to the water slides? You killed your friend!”

“You killed your friend too.”

“But I'm not--”

“Stay home then,” Aldous says.

“Don't let them have died in vain!” Peggy whisper-shouts. “And by the sound of it, your friend was an asshole just like mine was. Don't let him guilt you from beyond the grave. Let's go!”

Feeling like a weight has been lifted off me, I go with them.

The crack whore is talking to the fat lady, who then goes over and talks to the black man, who is standing with the older man. They both crack up at something… whatever the fat lady is telling them. The three of them then go back to the crack whore, who's talking to the Spaniard, and the five of them are soon laughing at something.

“They're laughing at me,” Peggy said. “At my accent.”

“Take your meds, Peggy,” Aldous says.

“I ran out,” Peggy says.

“Get some more.”

“I can't! I'm American.”

“Just let them send you a bill. Give a fake address.”

“They'll catch me! I'm a fugitive!”

Aldous lowers his voice to a whisper. “They'll never find that body. It's buried deep in the backyard, in the rose garden. You're just a missing girl, Peg. It's Malvina who's gotta worry. You need to go, Peg, for Malvina. You need to pretend to have what she's got so you can get her meds for her.”

Peggy gasps in anger. “You said you told your lawyer!”

“Okay, I lied. I wasn't really seeing any lawyer. I was just at the park. I can't afford a lawyer. You were just panicking so I had to tell you because I tried to tell you we'd bury the body, but you were just getting stable on your meds, so you were paranoid and didn't believe we'd succeed, even though nobody knows Paul, and they know he was a homeless deadbeat anyway, asking everyone for money, and nobody will even ask any of our family any questions let alone look under the rose garden--”

A homeless deadbeat just like what we're turning into, I think.

“You treat me like a crazy person!” Peggy stormed. “You're crazy, and a nerd! And a geek and a dork!”

“Geeks and nerds are all a bit crazy, but you're off the charts, Peg!” Aldous yells. “Was I in the hospital? No, you were!”

“I wasn't in the hospital! I was in a crisis center, voluntarily! She knows!” She nods at me.

“And before that you were in the hospital!” Aldous shouts.

“Please! We need each other! We need to stick together!” I say.

“I'm DONE!” Peggy says. She opens the car door and runs off.

“Are you going after her, or somewhere else? Or are you staying?” Aldous says to me.

“We've got to get her back!” I say.

Peggy is over at the entrance to one of the tents, screaming at a girl there (who just stops what she's doing and stands there listening) and gesturing in our direction. Then two big men come out of the tent.

She nods in our direction.

Aldous locks the car doors, rolls up the windows and turns on the engine.

One of the two guys looks drunk and they're both holding Budweiser bottles. They follow us. The drunk man throws a bottle and it crashes through the back window of the car, barely falling short of Aldous's head.

Aldous gasps in horror and speeds away.

“Stop speeding!” I shout. He stops, surprisingly still mindful of me, or maybe he just doesn't want to seem “crazy” like Peggy.

We drive onto Jasper Avenue and park somewhere, then abandon the car. It draws too much attention to us, and we can't afford to get it fixed.

“I can't go back there. She told them I abused her,” Aldous said. Then he looks remorseful. “And I did.”

I have nothing nice to say, so I say nothing.

“Stay here,” I say. “Right here. I'll be back. I'm going to go ask around about places to stay.”

“Those people are homeless. They don't know any places we can stay either,” Aldous says. “Except shelters, and they’ll find us there.”

“The priest at the Mustard Seed might,” I say. “Hell, we might even be able to stay in the church.”

“And what story will we give them?”

“Do we have to give a story?”

“If we're staying with him, we'll eventually have to tell them something about ourselves. It's expected.”

“We could bribe him.”

“We can't even afford to get the lousy car window fixed, let alone bribe a priest!” Aldous exclaims.

“We could bribe him by doing work for him.”

“He's a priest. Can't we bribe someone else?”

“It would be short-term, of course,” I say. “We'd find a job through him mowing lawns or raking leaves or something. Then we could move to a real apartment before he starts asking questions.”

An apartment. I'm getting excited. Me and Aldous and Peggy are going to have a big apartment, all to ourselves.

So I go back to the tent city, where Peggy has calmed down and sits alone against the chain-link fence, looking dismal.

“I ruined everything!” she sobs.

“No,” I say. “We all three of us ruined everything. We just keep ruining minor things now, that's all. Let's just remember that… don't ever think it's the end of everything.”

“You're right,” Peggy said. “It isn't. Gwendolyn offered me a job.”

“Gwendolyn? Job?” I ask stupidly.

“Gwendolyn's the blonde girl,” Peggy says.

“What kind of a job?” I ask suspiciously.

“Landscaping.”

Maybe things will be alright.

“Tasha told me they wait at six in the morning at the YMCA, out front,” Peggy says. “And they come in a car and take them landscaping. New people can just show up.”

Now we just need a place to stay.

The YMCA in question is a somewhat bleak-looking gray stone building on 102A Avenue, with a red YMCA sign down the front, a smaller sign that says DON WHEATON FAMILY YMCA, and this triangle diagram thing with “mind”, “body” and “spirit” written on it, carved into the stone.

Just inside the door, about fifteen people are sitting on the steps.

“Excuse me, do you live here?” a woman with a scar on her face says.

I want to slap the bitch.

Then: “Do you want to live here? You can have my room. I'm moving out.”

I immediately feel sorry for wanting to slap her.

“Are you waiting for someone?” she says.

“The landscaping people,” Peggy says. “We're waiting for them.”

“They only take ten people a day. Do you need a place to stay?” the woman says.

“We can't stay here. We don't have any ID. It burned in a fire.”

“Well, they won't turn you away. Every shelter in town is full, I hear, so they'll take you here without ID for just one night.”

Her name is Gerda. She takes us upstairs when the staff aren't looking.

“The elevator's always breaking down, so we'd better take the stairs,” she says, as Aldous and Peggy and me hurry after her. She opens the door to the fourth floor and we find ourselves in a room with vending machines and a few chairs and tables. Then she opens another door, a glass door, with a key. In we go, into a hallway. Around the corner is her room, 409. It's small by normal standards, but to me it looks extremely promising. We put our stuff down.

Aldous goes down the hall to take a shower.

“The door to the women's bathroom is locked,” Gerda explains. She opens it for us; she needs a key. We shower and change, then head back to Gerda's room.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

“Gerda, it's Fulvia,” a woman says.

She has two men with her. She's wearing a business suit, but the two men are wearing YMCA staff t-shirts.

Well, it could be worse. It could have been the police.

They tell us we have to sign in downstairs. Defeated, we sign in with our full, real names. We tell Gerda, when back in her room, that we do have ID, but just didn't want to give our real names to strangers for their records. She seems to buy it.

“We need to get out of here,” I whisper to the other two, as we sit alone together in the room with the swimming pool. It was the only private place we could find. You never know who might be lurking in the river valley, even.

“I agree,” Peggy says, as Aldous says “Yes.”

“We need to go now before the money we have runs out, because we can't get a job under the table with those landscaping people here after that lady looked at us suspiciously,” I continue.

“Where to?” Aldous says.

“My internet friend in Gaspe. From the website I met Dorien on.”

“Why didn't you tell us you had a friend? We'd have gone there in the first place.”

“We used to be close, but now we only talk occasionally. But when we do talk, we really spill our guts. I think he'll take us in. He always moans about having no excitement in his life and we've made some pretty crazy plans together. He'll be on board.”

“Call him first,” Peggy says. “Make sure.”

“That's not a good idea,” Aldous says. “Calling him.”

“Can't,” I say. “What if he says yes and then sells us out? It has to be a surprise and we have to get into his heart and mind and really make him want to keep us.”

“And if he's there in person, we can kill him if he tries to--” Peggy starts.

“Peggy!” Aldous says.

“We can't hold him hostage in his own home. That's not right,” I say. “We'll just have to take the chance.”

“But if we get caught we get the fuckin' death penalty!” Peggy says.

“Not if you two get asylum here. It might be possible,” I tell her. “You might be locked up up here but the Canadian government won't send you back to a country that’ll--”

“We don't have diplomatic passports! They have extradition treaties that say they have to hand us over!” Aldous says.

“Well, if we stay here we WILL get caught,” I say. “At least with my friend, we have a chance. And I really do trust him. He'll be on board with this. And the good thing is, it's in the country, on a farm, so we can earn our keep. And go outside without a disguise, and no one will notice us.”

I hate how I get so nervous I need Aldous's help to think straight. Mind you, Aldous and Peggy are also very nervous, and need my help to think straight too.

Nobody notices us on our trip across the country to Gaspe. I'm so glad Aldous and Peggy (especially Aldous, because he's the driver-- and we got the car fixed after all by a small business) don't drink or do drugs aside from their meds. Well, Peggy isn't on her meds any more. But my friend Cyrus is on a shitload, and they keep changing his meds, so he can give Peggy his old ones.

Cyrus's house is at the end of a really long driveway on Chemin Bougainville. He inherited the house from his parents, who both died of cancer. He's all alone with their four cats. They grow vegetables in the garden and fruit in the orchard. They have a little barn with two cows, I guess to keep each other company, and they drink organic milk from the cows. There's also a coop with chickens. They eat eggs from the chickens. It's just what we need.

“Who are you? You look like a friend of mine from… oh my God, Mala! It's you!”

It takes some getting used to us being here. But we say “Well, you wanted excitement.”

“Excitement is one thing… but holy fuck, holy fuck, what am I going to do with you.”

“You'll keep us here or we'll kill you,” Peggy says.

“She's off her meds,” Aldous says, pointing to Peggy.

Great. Now I'm gonna have to worry about one of my friends killing another.

If Cyrus dies, it will be my fault.

So I have to make sure he doesn't.

“Get a lock for your door, Cyrus,” I say. “Actually, get a new door.”

Peggy shoots me a furious, hate-filled look that I've never seen on her when she was looking at me. It's the look she had when she was telling people Aldous was abusive, only somehow much worse.

I think I'm going to need my own room with a lockable stainless steel door too.

Come to think of it, Aldous needs one too. She almost got Aldous arrested, and if Aldous had been arrested, he would have been extradited and gotten the death penalty. What is Peggy capable of? Murder, it seems. I mean, I knew she was capable of murder. But I mean now that she may also be capable of murdering her own friends.

Cyrus orders the doors on the internet and says he knows how to install them. There are three bedrooms on the main floor, and there's the basement, so each of us gets our own room with a lockable door. I get the basement. It has the washer and dryer in it, so I'm going to be doing everyone's laundry, but it's bigger than the bedrooms upstairs. Cyrus gets the bedroom that has the powder room in it. He says he can order toilets and showers for all our rooms if we want. Now, at least, he seems to be getting into the swing of things. For now, at least the door to the bathroom (the one that isn't in Cyrus's room) is heavy enough, and locks.

We go outside. I'm nervous, and I can only imagine poor Cyrus.

I give Cyrus a hug. “Thanks,” I say.

He squeezes me back. “I guess I got what I asked for, so I deserve it. They say be careful what you wish for.”

“Sorry,” I say.

“Don't be sorry. You're here now.”

I can sense some irritability, some stigma, some hostility in his voice. I suddenly feel like I'm going to shit a huge brick.

So I turn to God. He's the only friend I have left.

Aldous sits on the back deck reading his high school history book while I turn the soil to grow more food for us all. I think I'm going to grow corn. We already have apples, oranges, grapefruits, strawberries, blackberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, beets, carrots, and some spices.

Peggy sits on the side deck, pouting, her red face in her hands.

I hope I can do enough work to redeem the three of us. Aldous and Peggy don't seem to want to work.

Let me tell you a bit about Cyrus. He was in the military and has PTSD, though just from being stationed at Guantanamo and seeing torture there. He has Asperger's Syndrome. He's really into cats and farming and socializing online, and takes antidepressants and mood stabilizers for the PTSD and depression. He's overweight lately; he's discovered eating. He loves coffee and tea, so we stay up and talk late into the night, because with my anxiety I can't sleep. I pray that he'll want to be my friend again. I try to be as fun as possible, but I don't try too hard.

“I'm going to a convention,” Cyrus says.

The three of us look at him.

“Can I come?” Peggy asks.

“No,” Aldous says sternly, as though scolding a three-year-old and also as though exasperated with a demanding person.

“Shut up. You're abusive,” Peggy says to Aldous.

“We can't go right now. We need to bring fun to us right now,” I say.

“And how do you plan to do that?” Cyrus says. “All I know is I'd be able to bring real fun-- the friends I'm going to meet at the convention-- to me if you three hadn't shown up.”

“You're not going anywhere,” Peggy says. “You need to stay with us.”

Now I see what she's getting at. Maybe she's scared that if he goes somewhere without one of us chaperoning him with a concealed carry, he'll tell on us.

Or maybe he just won't come back, and we won't have anyone to drive into town and buy soap and toilet paper, and pay the electric bill.

“We'd better all go,” I say. I didn't want to admit before even to myself that we may have to use force to get my friend to help us. And that he didn't ask for us to show up at his door. That that wasn't what he meant when he had said he wanted excitement.

We are going to a rooming house, to meet people from the website me, him and Dorien met on.

The plans are all laid out on the website. The “base”-- where everyone sleeps-- will be at the rooming house in Brockville, Ontario, which was just bought by a woman named Fawn who is the mother of one of the guys, Lorne. Six guys, Lorne and Vlad and Simon and Craig and Leicester and Alvin, will sleep in all the rooms in that house. So we'll have almost the whole house to ourselves. It's a small rooming house. There's a shared bathroom with a toilet, sink and shower; plus a shared powder room, with just a toilet and sink.

We plan to go to the historical sites in Brockville. Why Brockville? Because of the rooming house that can house many people, and for free, because the owner is Lorne's mother. Lorne goes to high school at Thousand Islands Secondary School there, and there's talk among them of going there together and kicking his bullies' asses. I hope not. I need a low profile, not more trouble.

Going to this convention is such a bad idea.

But there's just one problem. Cyrus threatened us all with a gun and said he'd kill us if we didn't let him go. And we talked it over, and we even convinced Peggy that if we killed him, we wouldn't have any way to get toiletries, electricity and cleaning supplies. And food in the winter. Summer is almost over, and Cyrus doesn't have enough preserves for all four of us. And we have nowhere to go if we leave Cyrus, even if he didn't call the cops on us.

But do I want Cyrus to live in fear for the rest of his life?

I guess I'd better make it up to him somehow, but how? And is it even possible? It depends on him. I'll have to ask him some questions.

So we're off in Cyrus's car to Brockville.

Cyrus has his concealed carry on him; he said he'd be taking it. But we're all four of us living in fear. He could kill one of us-- between the three of us we just have one gun, which Aldous has.

I want to ditch them, but Aldous would kill me. Like Cyrus, I know too much to be let out of Aldous's sight. And I don't stand a chance without them.

We're sitting in a circle on folding chairs and milk crates, in the largest bedroom at the rooming house, introducing ourselves.

Another girl is here too; she came unannounced at the last minute. She's also from the site and her name is Angelina. She loves fashion and pop stars and basketball and anything high school culture.

Lorne's obsession is anything not high school culture, and he says “You look like one of those girls at school that picks on me.”

This, thankfully for him, goes over Angelina's head and she just says “Which ones? I love stories about people picking on each other!”

“You're a loser,” Lorne says.

“You're an emo nerd and a geek and a dork,” Angelina says.

“What's wrong with that?” his friend Vlad says.

“Nerd and geek aren't really insults; those people are just people who are so into learning they don't do anything else,” Alvin says, “but a dork is someone who has no excuse for being socially awkward.”

“So then I can't be a nerd and a geek and a dork,” Lorne says, sticking out his tongue at Angelina.

Soon the conversation gets better. We talk about our own experiences being bullied. Even Angelina drops her cool high school girl act and talks about real shit, like the time bullies put crazy glue in a hat and stuck it on her head and pounded it into her head. She was so concerned about her appearance that a normal wig wasn't enough (as all her hair had to be cut off)… she “needed” a seven hundred dollar wig.

“You're just like them though,” Lorne says. “That should have taught you not to be like them.”

Cyrus talks about being bullied in the military.

Then there's a bang.

Aldous slides to the floor.

He's just been shot in the head.