Page 21 of Caution Tape

He was actually in her English composition class but there’s no reason to tell her that.

“It doesn’t say much, just that his family hasn’t heard from him in a while and has reported him missing. ‘Anyone with any information is encouraged to contact the police…’” She frowns, folding her paper up. We’re sitting at her too-small breakfast counter, pantomiming a married couple.

And I don’t mind.

She mentions a yard sale walk, some event at the college, and it is so easy to smile and nod. I feel a kinship with her in this moment; we were talking about a dead man a moment ago, and now we have easily moved on to a zombie movie screening put on by the film club.

Jerri begged for his life in a high-pitched voice, but sure babe, we can go get tacos after the yard sales. Yeah, I’d love to go out with you and your friends for your birthday next month. By the way, Jerri’s blood was stickier than I thought it would be, like old fruit juice that’s started to congeal.

We split off—she headed to work and I to class. A youthful, new-age Ozzie and Harriet. We are paragons of making it work. We are well-adapted young adults, tailor-made for a future filled to the brim with modern, suburbanite crispness. Our life will be aesthetic. Filtered. Any rough edges will be sliced off. We’ll look so good in photos people will hate us but not be able to pinpoint exactly why. We will be sociopaths of the finest kind; monsters of living well. Living better than you.

There’s a chunk of Jerri’s jawbone in my pocket, polished clean. I run my thumb along the ridges, marveling at how I’d yanked and twisted it out.

God, I feel good.

I’m walking across campus, wondering what to have for lunch, when I spot the girl from Target making furious strides toward me. She cuts across the sidewalk, nearly knocking over a group of art students holding a bunch of posters until she is parallel with me, keeping stride. I smile at her. She’s wearing yellow flannel and hideous purple jeans, but she looks good, smelling like some sort of licorice perfume.

“I know you,” I say cheerfully.

“I saw what you did,” she says in a tight, firm voice, low enough that only I can hear.

We cut across the large sweeping lawn toward the north building, our feet crushing leaves underneath us.

“What did I do?”

“I saw you at the Halloween party,” she accuses. “With Jerri.”

My hands are in my pockets, and I squeeze the jawbone. If there’s a flicker of panic in my eyes, Cora doesn’t see it.

“Oh, was he at that party?” I ask. “I didn’t notice. I was with Natalie, so—“

We reach the door and I open it for her. Now we’re in the stairwell, slowly climbing upwards. My class is on the second floor. I wonder if Cora the super-sleuth is going to follow me the whole time.

“You came back,” she says. “You left the party with her. Then you came back and took Jerri.”

I glance quickly at her. She doesn’t speak with the standard hesitations and hitches that normal people do. There’s no stutter, no intonations or… well, any emotion.

Interesting.

I stop on the landing of the second floor, and she freezes in front of me, not letting me get by her to the door.

“Where is he?” she demands. We’re now face to face, and I can’t help looking at her lips. There’s a small scar on the bottom lip that the lipstick doesn’t quite cover entirely. I wonder how it would feel pressed against my skin.

“I don’t know,” I reply. “I don’t know what you believe you saw, but you’re mistaken.”

I try to brush past her, but she plants a hand on my chest. I smirk, and start to shove her away when a small, glittering knife appears out of nowhere and is suddenly pressed to my throat, digging in just under my Adam’s apple. She pushes me against the wall, our backpacks thumping to the ground in a heap.

The door opens and the same group of students with their posters barge in, laughing with each other.

Cora lowers the knife slightly and presses her body against mine. Suddenly her lips are on my neck, kissing me just under the jaw, managing to block the knife from view. The art students grin at us and giggle before they disappear up the stairs.

She turns her head slightly to see if they’re gone, and that’s when I grab her wrist. Easily knocking the knife away, I spin her around and force her face first against the wall. Placing my hand on the back of her head, I press her cheek against the building roughly. Her arms flail helplessly until I gather them up and pin them behind her back.

“Let go of me, asshole,” she growls.

“Nope.”

We’re both panting, and I have a feeling similar to when I was hunting Jerri. An excitement. This isfun. Finally, there are stakes, there’s a threat, and there’s something to defeat. An opponent.

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