I know Joe Bob Bailey killed my cousin because her body was buried in his backyard. Lena’s purse, which contained her keys, fifteen dollars, her driver’s permit, a half-empty box of wintergreen mints, and a tube of Glam Girl glossy lipstick in Pearlescent Pink, was found under the driver’s seat of his pickup truck. He’d stuffed her lavender lace bra and matching underpants inside the glove box along with her favorite cuddly kitty key chain. Her phone, which likely logged a hundred and thirty-four of my unanswered text messages, was never recovered.
I know Joe Bob Bailey killed my cousin because he pleaded guilty. My mother refused to let me miss a week of tenth grade to attend the trial even though I wanted to see the hands that squeezed Lena’s throat. I wanted to hear the voice that spoke the last words she ever heard. I wanted to look into the eyes that witnessed Lena’s light go dark. Unfortunately, I had to settle for seeing his smug mug shot online.
I know Joe Bob Bailey killed my cousin because the murder was the subject of gossip for months. Everyone in town seemed to have an opinion about Lena’s too short skirt and too sheer shirt. They spoke of how she dated half the boys on the hockey team and murmured about her dirty dancing with a cheerleader at Homecoming. No one speculated on what Joe Bob Bailey was wearing when he killed my cousin. No one spoke about how Lena had regularly brought chocolate chunk cookies to people on hospice or scooped poop twice a week at the local no kill cat shelter. Good girls don’t smoke joints under the bleachers, they said. Good girls don’t accept rides from strangers—even when their date ditches them. Good girls don’t turn up dead.
I know Joe Bob Bailey killed my cousin because I thought of him every day of his too short sentence. I imagined him lifting weights, trading cigarettes for favors, and telling his cellmate about the sound of Lena’s screams. During the day, I imagined him walking around the prison yard, filling his lungs with dandelion-scented air. During the night, I imagined him sleeping soundly and dreaming of other girls he could hurt. Every time I showed my face in our tiny town, someone seemed to comment on my spikey, purple-streaked hair or my steel-toed boots or my cuddly kitty tattoo with Lena’s name written in red script underneath. As I graduated high school and got a job at the local diner, I came to despise a world where Joe Bob Bailey lived and girls like Lena died.
I know Joe Bob Bailey killed my cousin because he admitted it to me after I let him pick me up after dark on the dirt road by his house. He told me after I zapped him with a taser and tied him up and put my hands around his neck and squeezed. He told me after he begged for his life. Please, please, please, he said. She was so pretty and petite, he said. You look like her, he said, only harder and sadder and meaner. His face went white, then red, then blue. And instead of words, he made gurgling sounds. And then the only sounds were my panting breaths and pounding heart and shuddering sobs.
I know Joe Bob Bailey killed my cousin, because after I buried his body in the same spot as the shallow grave he’d dug for Lena, I no longer cared whether anyone thought I wore shirts too sheer or skirts too short or considered me a good girl.
~ fin ~
Born under the sun sign of Leo, Serena Jayne is naturally a cat person. Her short fiction has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Gamut Magazine, Lost Balloon, Rock and a Hard Place Magazine, Vastarien: A Literary Journal, and other publications. Her short story collection, Necessary Evils, was published by Unnerving Books. She tweets @SJ_Writer. serenajayne.com
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