Another year gone, another bouquet of flowers, another vigil, more remembering. Every year I do the same thing. Maybe I’m punishing myself for not being there, or maybe I’m apologizing for being alive when she’s not. I go to the big stone in the park every year on July 17, the place where they found my best friend’s body.
It’s been seven years and I’m still putting myself through this ritual. July 17 was a Friday, and we were supposed to hang out, but I’d gotten in trouble for a bad grade on a test in summer school, the place where you are supposed to make up for those other bad tests. My Mom decided I was grounded and should stay home and “think about my future.” It was tenth grade, for God’s sake.
Jenny’s parents said she decided to go get an ice cream cone. It wasn’t quite dark yet and the ice cream shop was only two blocks away. She was sixteen, so there was no reason to worry. They did start to worry when an hour had gone by, then two, with them driving around and calling all her friends, then three, when they called the police. Her body wasn’t found until the next morning as the sun rose at the big stone. Erected for some battle or other. An early jogger, such a cliché. He lost his protein shake when he saw her.
My best friend was found with her throat slit so deep it nearly cut off her head. She was gutted from throat to groin and tied to the stone with rough rope. Thick dried blood covered her everywhere, except her face, which had been scrubbed clean and garishly made up. She was naked. The police told her parents she hadn’t been raped, as if that was some sort of good news for them to concentrate on. They moved away three months later. They couldn’t stand driving by that park every day. I was stuck in place of course, because my parents didn’t see the need to move. I’m still stuck in place here and I come here every year just as the sun is going down. Not sure what I’m hoping for, I bring her flowers and I sit and talk to her for a little while, my backpack on the ground next to me filled with small things that make me think of her. I sit with the same items clenched in my fists every year, waiting. Nothing has ever happened, no ghost, no voice, and I don’t lose that pain in my stomach or the heaviness in my heart. Nothing has ever happened, until this year.
I was wiping tears from my face and saying goodbye, standing with one hand tentatively pressed to the stone, when I felt an arm reach across my neck from behind. I was quickly pulled back, losing my balance. I fell against a large body, trying to keep my feet, and I heard a man’s laugh.
“I guess you’re remembering her just like I am,” he said. “Her blood was so sweet when it spilled. I was in town, so I just couldn’t help but come back here and go over every delicious detail, and here you are… like a present.”
I didn’t say anything but made quick use of the items in my hands, the things I held tightly to every year, waiting. One, a hypodermic of tranquilizer from the veterinary office where I work. Two, a very sharp, small knife. I don’t think he expected that.
When they find him tomorrow morning tied to the big stone, sliced up and presented as my friend was, they won’t know that he was the one who killed my friend. They will think and look and connect the dots to tie this to the first. Copycat, maybe? I don’t think I will be caught. I was as careful as I knew how to be. The tranquilizer maybe, but it’s so common.
They won’t know that the man who did that to her has been caught. Her parents won’t know either, being three years in the grave themselves. Car crash. It’s enough for me that I know, and that my vigil is over. He said I was like a present, but he was the one being offered up, a gift to my dead friend. I hope somewhere she is glad and finally resting.