Page 27 of Caution Tape

“You killed my friend,” she states. “Myonlyfriend.”

“I did. And I enjoyed it. And I’m going to do it again… and again… and again…”

I lower my voice with each syllable, the jovial face of Nolan dropping and my true face appearing. Her eyes flick to my lips, and her façade begins to crack.

“Who do you think you are,Nolan?“ she says, and I feel a wild thrill at my name leaving her mouth. “You think you’re this dangerous, cold monster?” Her hand comes up and jabs me in the chest. “You’re just a murderer. That’s it. There’s nothing special about you.”

I laugh, turn away and get in my car. She’s standing there, incredulous. I start it up and roll down the window, sticking my head out.

“You talk tough,” I taunt, “but we both know you’re getting in my car.”

There’s anger on her face—there’s always anger on her face, Jesus Christ—but her mouth twitches, teasing at a smile. She stomps over and gets in, and for the first time in my life, I have a passenger for one of my night drives.

Chapter Twelve

Cora

We race down darkened roads, the headlights barely keeping up with us, taking curves at speed, the tires kissing the dirt shoulder as we leave the glow of fast-food restaurants and gas stations entering never-ending darkness. Trees and tangled woods press on all sides as the houses get fewer and fewer in between. It feels like we’re escaping, civilization melting into the background.

He says nothing. He just drives, one wrist draped loosely over the steering wheel. He glances at me every so often, until eventually he breaks the silence.

“What does it feel like for you?”

I play dumb, because letting him in would be a big mistake. I already know this doesn’t end well.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

He taps the center of his forehead. “For me, everything feels like paper.Thin. Like I can punch through it. It’s not that nothing matters, it’s that everything feels loose and inconsequential. Nothing attaches, really. I have to pretend, go through the motions and construct this image of a functioning person.”

There’s a knife in my boot. I can feel it against my ankle every time the car jostles. For the last few days, I’ve been obsessing over all the different ways I could kill him. Ways I could find the same high I had gotten when I chased that Tinder guy around my apartment with my knife. Now, I have the perfect opportunity. I’m going to stab him and leave him in the woods, take his car and disappear.

I’m gripping the armrest, waiting for him to say more. There’s a strange feeling twisting in my chest, something beyond the normal rage that bubbles there. I struggle to comprehend what I’m hearing. There’s a sense of relief in knowing that someone else is caught in this chaotic in-between of knowing you’re disconnected and a borderline psychopath, but also being aware enough that you are not normal. That you are an aberration. That an entire society is built around these ideas of attachment and empathy that you simply do not possess.

Michael has tried to convince me that I can change, that it’s not okay for me to feel this way. That I’m all alone in this world and that nobody else would ever understand.

It’s another animal entirely hearing it come out of the mouth of someone else, another human gliding through life like it’s a boring dream and they’re just waiting for it to be over.

My therapist really fucking sucks at his job.

“What about your girlfriend?” I question, already knowing the answer. If Nolan is anything like me, I know the answer.

“She’s like a plant,” Nolan replies, shrugging. “Or a pet. I think people like pets more, but—“

My mind flickers to when I was a kid, looking down at the dead family dog, wondering how I was supposed to react.

“She’s not my girlfriend, by the way,” he tells me. “We broke up.”

My eyes widen with amusement. “How did that happen?”

He shifts in his seat, appearing to consider it. “I thought that I wanted to camouflage a part of myself. Hide in this idea of a loving relationship, a stable life. But the more I dig into it the more I want to tear it apart.” He pauses. “It’s like I’m hungry, and I keep eating, but nothing satisfies the hunger.”

Nolan is waiting for me to respond. He has offered up a piece of himself and wants to see if I will echo the vulnerability. Everything is a test. Everything is leverage. I try to talk, but the words are tough to get out.

“I’ve never killed anyone,” I tell him. “I want to. It’s all I think about lately. Sometimes I think about hurting people and they’re the clearest, purest thoughts I have.” I become silent for a moment, unsure of how to continue. “Most of all, though… I’ve always wondered how it would feel to be in someone’s skin.”

He presses down on the accelerator, and we go a little faster. His sharp jaw is clenched for a long time and when he finally speaks, I can tell he’s disguising his thoughts in a joke, wrapping a feeling he doesn’t understand into something that can be dismissed.

“Cora,” he says, grinning slightly, “we might be mutual monsters.”

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