Almost Number Seven - Part One

Hello dear readers, and Happy New Year!

It’s been a minute since I’ve published something new here. Substack has taken a bit of a backseat as I’ve focused on other creative outlets. If you’ve been with me for a while, you know I’m always working on a writing project and have recently joined a band. Stay tuned, there will be more about my music journey in a future post! And of course, more about writing as well.

For now, I’d like to kick off the new year with a fictional short story. That’s what I did last year with One Week Ago, so maybe I’ll make this an annual thing. New year, new short story.

This story, titled Almost Number Seven, is a break from the types of stories I usually write. I don’t know exactly how I’d classify it. It’s not spooky enough to be horror, but it does have the elements of a thriller. A quiet thriller, perhaps?

Alternating between the past and the present, Almost Never Seven unravels the events that led up to Katie’s deepest, darkest secret. The one she’s been carrying for four years, when she left her tumultuous home life behind and found herself entangled with a charming, beautiful, and intoxicating girl.

I hope you enjoy it!

PRESENT DAY

I turned on the news to see one of the biggest secrets of my life playing out before my eyes. It takes me back to college, which was supposed to be my clean break. I was so excited to escape the small town I’d grown up in. So excited to start fresh where no one knew anything about me.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I hadn’t had time to plan it out, but the idea was solid: The syringe goes in, she goes down. I didn’t want to do it, but it had to be done. It was harder to cover up my actions, but nothing was too challenging for me. It was all under control, or so I thought. The headline flashed in bold letters: SERIAL KILLER’S BODY RECOVERED IN MISSISSIPPI RIVER

“If anyone has any information, please call the police and report it.” The reporter’s voice filled the air. I clutched my chest, ran to the bathroom, and heaved into the toilet.

FOUR YEARS AGO

“Katie, can I borrow this? It’s not your color anyway. It washes you out.” I nodded demurely even though I was seething inside as I watched her shimmy into the garment. Lara always had a way of making me feel terrible about myself. She had it all: she was rich, blonde, skinny. Social. She was so damn social it was nearly impossible not to like her. That’s why everyone did. They didn’t just like her, they loved her. I loved her once too. Before she ruined my life with her syrupy sweet smile and piercing green eyes. The eyes should have been the tip-off. Normally, I was good at reading the tea leaves. I always had the upper hand. But not this time. Lara had seen me coming from a mile away. And she was ready.

PRESENT DAY

“The body belongs to a 22-year old female. The report connects her to the six girls, most of which she met freshman year.” The reporter was speaking into the camera. His hairline was receding and he looked like the kind of guy who was unhappily married with more kids than he’d planned on having. He probably snuck out at night to sleep with the woman next door who was too young for him but loved the thrill. It was always the bland ones, the ones you’d suspect the least, who were capable of the most. I’m sure people have thought that about me.

Lara had a way of cutting me down while simultaneously making me feel so special to be chosen as her confidante, her friend. “I’m sorry, Katie, but that haircut is fugly. Here, let me help you.” She had said to me once, before dragging me to her overpriced salon that she knew i couldn’t afford. The words played across my mind like subtitles on a foreign film.

Objectively, people probably wouldn’t say I’m ugly, I thought to myself as I looked into the dirty mirror. My hair hung long and thick down my back. It was dark, like my eyes, and the thoughts that lurked behind them. Looking at my face though, I didn’t see anything pretty. I saw the scared child my step dad had used and thrown away like trash. He sure as hell didn’t think I was pretty, he had said as much after all. After I’d taken the fixed blade keychain knife I always kept with me and dug it deep into his forearm the last time he dared to touch me. He’d gotten what he needed, and I crouched on the ground sobbing, waiting for retaliation. His injured arm was limp at his side and his snarl leaked venom. “You pathetic, ugly thing.” He spat. “No one will love you now.”

Those words had broken something inside me. Something that was already cracked, that had come out of the womb that way. I had tried. Really, I had tried to erase who I used to be and replace her with someone shiny and new. It was when I first met Lara. She was radiant. A bright light everywhere she went. People’s heads turned on the street as she walked past. And she had chosen me as her friend. Her partner in crime. Her accomplice. Never had I ever been chosen like that. Not in a good way, not for a prize as great as her attention. I had deemed myself worthless long ago, and Lara’s attention felt like a lifeline. It pulled me out of the depths of depression spawned from the years when my mother pawned me off on the men she lured in, strung out on drugs, and left me to fend for myself. They hadn’t chosen me so much as I had been thrust upon them (in exchange for a fix). Lara had seen something lovable in me. The word was as foreign to me as a Japanese Kanji character. What did I know of love? Cigarettes and obscenities and eviction notices. None of that starry eyed crap they try to sell you in romance movies.

Lara had seen something she needed in me. Whatever it was that called to her, it did its job well, because she sunk her claws in deep, pointy nails puncturing my flesh. It was the only time I had ever thought I could be different. Crawl out of the miserable black hole that was my life.

What did Lara see in me? Darkness, I think. She was attracted to the broken parts of my soul, pieced together with a gossamer thread and barely holding on. She was drawn to it because it was a mirror into her own soul, though that fact was something I would find out later on. After she had woven me so thoroughly into her web of deception. Lara was a praying mantis, and she was looking to feast.

FOUR YEARS AGO

Freshman orientation was the definition of my worst nightmare. New faces, new environment, new everything. I didn’t do well with change. Some people who grow up in the sheer chaos I did learn to thrive on it, but I needed careful routine and structure. I glanced at the piece of paper in my hands, crumpling where my fingers pressed into it with excessive force.

“Hi, I’m Lara.” A petite blonde girl stared back at me. I wasn’t usually swayed by a pretty facade, but even I was struck by her beauty. Those green eyes had already broken some hearts, I was sure of it.

“Katie.” I said quietly. What did this girl want with me? I wondered. We were two different specimens entirely. Her, with her warm smile and perfectly white sneakers. Classic popular girl. I, on the other hand, was wearing Black Doc Martens, loose black jeans that hung low on my hips, and an oversized, worn out zip-up over a tank top. I hadn’t had a normal meal in days, and my protruding clavicles bore the evidence for everyone to see. Lara’s eyes swept over me. Up and down, languidly, not bothering to hide her assessment of me. I stood a little straighter.

“Katie, let’s eat lunch together.” Before I could say anything, she linked her arm through mine, and led me toward an empty table. She opened a package of peanut butter cups. “Want some?”

“I can’t. I’m allergic.”

She eyed me curiously. “What happens if you have a reaction?”

“I have an EpiPen.” She nodded and shrugged, moving on. “The other girls are so…meh. All they care about are boys and cars.” She leveled me with that unsettling gaze again.

“You, though, seem like you might actually be interesting.”

PRESENT DAY

So stupid. I was so stupid, to ever think a girl like Lara wanted anything to do with a girl like me. My lip curled up the way a canine raises its hackles as I thought about those early days. I picked at my nails, bitten down to the quick. Lara was a leech who attached herself to each target and sucked as much of the blood as she could before moving onto the next. It was a shame, really, that she had chosen me as her last victim. That was something we had in common: Neither of us had known what the other was capable of.

FOUR YEARS AGO

“Lara, I don’t know about this.” I hedged, biting my nails. She shooed my hand away from my mouth and rolled her eyes.

“Stop being a scaredy cat, Katie. I’d think, with what you’ve told me about your childhood, that this was a piece of cake for you.” Consternation curled in my gut. Followed by anger.

“I told you those things in confidence, Lara. I did what I had to do to survive, not settle a petty score. And it’s not about what we’re doing. It’s about the disappearances.” She snorted. “You actually think there’s a serial killer on campus? She turned back to her binoculars. We were spying on Abby, a girl in Lara’s sorority who had pissed her off. I didn’t know the full extent of the betrayal, but I knew it involved a frat party, a senior hockey player, and stolen exam answers. To add insult to injury, Abby generally excelled at everything and it drove Lara nuts.

“Only two girls have disappeared, and the reports confirmed they had mixed drugs and alcohol. Correlation is not causation, Katie.” I didn’t mention that they had also been strangled. Every movement in the dark ratcheted up my heart rate, but I stayed quiet, and remained by Lara’s side.

In the end, we hadn’t gotten whatever information Lara had been seeking. We trudged back to the dorms, curled up on my roommate’s futon, and watched an episode of Black Mirror. I fell asleep and woke up to Lara gone. She had draped a blanket over my sleeping frame.

PRESENT DAY

I wiped a dirty cloth against the cracked glass and my reflection stared back at me: razor-straight black hair and thick eyeliner. Dark circles adorned the sensitive skin below my eyes. There was only one thing left to do before I cleaned this mess up once and for all. I needed to pay a visit to the girl who’d been there since the beginning. The girl whose life had been permanently altered. I shrugged on an emerald green long sleeve shirt. The same green as Lara’s eyes, I noticed with a start, the same green as all those peppers she used to consume. The color of jealousy and betrayal. Green like the contents of my stomach on that final night together. I tore the shirt off and chose a new one.

FOUR YEARS AGO

“Do you believe it now?” I slid my phone in front of Lara, where the campus headlines declared a third girl missing. She and I were studying at a coffee shop and every time someone walked in, their eyes inevitably found hers. It was intoxicating to be friends with someone so desirable. More than that, it was like a warm embrace to have a real, true friend. I disliked most people, but not Lara. I finally knew what friendship was, the sisterhood girls in sororities advertise.

“These girls really need to be more careful.” Was all she said. Later that night, we were sprawled on the large futon her dad had spent a pretty penny on. We were giggling over something someone said in one of our many shared classes. We had arranged our schedules to be almost identical, both majoring in journalism. I chose journalism because I was committed to finding the truth in any situation. I liked the justice-oriented nature of being a reporter. Tell the facts like they are. Lara became a journalism major because it was “something to do” she said. She had a trust fund waiting for her when she turned twenty-five, so it didn’t matter all that much what she decided to study. The luxury of financial freedom still astounded me.

“His face was so red after that.” She laughed. Her shoulders shook, jolting her wine, which sloshed over the rim of her glass and stained the very nice futon. My eyes fixated on it. She waved it away.

“I’ll ask my dad to get the cushions dry cleaned.” She brought the glass of wine up to her full lips and tipped the rest of the contents back. I copied her motions and felt the wine sting my throat on its descent. I wasn’t a big wine drinker, had never developed a taste for it, but Lara insisted it was classier to drink wine than beer.

“Beer will make you gain weight.” She had told me disdainfully when I poured myself a cup at the first college party we attended together. “Although,” She continued, pinching the sensitive skin along my ribs, “You could use some more meat on you.” Lara was perfectly skinny, but she ate like a bird and carefully monitored the caloric contents of anything she consumed. That’s why she ate so many green vegetables, her favorite being peppers, she had told me once. I often wondered why she didn’t eat peppers of other colors, but she became easily agitated when I questioned her, so I kept my thoughts to myself.

“How do you do it?” Her eyes bore into me. We were in a room full of people and yet her undivided attention had me feeling as if it was just us.

“Do what?” I asked.

“Stay so thin? I’ve seen you eat. You’re like a caveman.” I recoiled at her tone, and the lack of sensitivity, but let the brief irritation slide away like my sobriety with every sip of warm beer.

“I… I…” I struggled to find the words. Because my mother was a drug addict who could barely keep herself alive, much less anyone else. We were flat broke, so I lived off of whatever I could lift from the shelves of the corner store without the cashier noticing. I still lived with that scarcity mindset. Unlike Lara, I didn’t have daddy’s money to fall back on. The thoughts swirled around in my head but felt far away, as if I was observing them from somewhere else. I tried to pluck them out of the air but couldn’t. I wasn’t feeling good, I suddenly realized. My limbs felt heavy, my eyes were blurring, and my head began to spin.

“Lara? I don’t feel…” I fell to the ground before I could finish the sentence. Her green eyes peered down at me.

“Don’t worry, Katie. It’s going to be okay.”

Lara cared for me the way no one ever had before. She was like a sister. One who held my hair back while I threw up the contents of whatever drug had been slipped into my drink. I had no recollection of anything that happened the rest of the night.

The next night, I was startled awake by the jarring sounds of yet another AMBER alert. My stomach turned as I read the description. Oh my god.

“Lara, did you see the alert? It’s Abby.” I was breathless as I spoke into the phone. Lara’s voice was groggy on the other line.

“What are you talking about?” She yawned. There had been five other disappearances. This one was number six. Six girls, all of which were in one of my classes, had disappeared. Three had been found dead. Two were presumed dead. And now Abby. Number six.

“Abby has gone missing. Lara, there’s a serial killer on campus.”

Part 2 coming soon. Thank you for being here <3