Different Perspectives

April 13th

I haven’t been able to sleep since the homicide two days ago. My mother told me journaling may help so I took her advice and started to journal. I guess I just want to get my thoughts out. I want to escape from these bad times and remember the good times. I miss feeling happy. I miss seeing Corey’s face. Hearing him laugh. Feeling him put his arm around me. Tasting his mouth on mine. Smelling him right after he got out of the shower. My hearts hurts to see him again and I miss him so much. If I could just spend one more minute with him, I would tell him how much he means to me. I would tell him that I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I would tell him how much I wish he was by my side. I would tell him how, whenever I’m walking somewhere, I glimpse him out of the corner of my eye. Whenever I talk to someone I can't put the expression, that he used to love, into my voice or my eyes. I can’t smile, I can’t laugh, some days I can’t even get out of bed. I wish that I could tell him all of those things. Let him know how much I just want to touch him again. I know that I can’t do that but I wish everyday that I could. 

I remember one day Corey and I were sitting on a log in the woods. Just sitting in silence, appreciating the nature and each other. He took my hand in his and said, “Sadie, if you ever died, I don’t know what I’d do. I think my body would just shut down. I’d stop being able to breathe, to function, to live. You’re my everything and without you I’d be completely and utterly lost. I wouldn’t have any purpose in my life.”

I responded with, “Well, good thing that I’m fifteen and it doesn’t look like I’m going anywhere.” With a small laugh I added, “It’s you we need to look out for seeing as how you’re turning seventeen in a couple weeks. I mean, you’re getting pretty old.” He smiled and his eyes crinkled at the edges like they always did when he was showing a true smile.

That was before I knew that he would never live to see his seventeenth birthday. Before I started to experience all of the things he described to me on that day. He once told me, that if he ever died, I would need to move on with my life. Find someone new. Create a life with them. Start a family. Find joy again. The thing is, I don’t want to. I can’t ever imagine finding someone like Corey. Someone as sweet, funny, and loving as him. No one can compare and I don’t know why he would ever think that they could. I also don’t know why someone would ever think to murder him. But that happened and I never saw the warning signs.

April 17th

During lunch today, a junior named Rebecca came and sat down next to me. She said, “Hey, I’m Rebecca. Can I sit here?” After I nodded she continued, “I’m sorry for your loss; my father died when I was thirteen. He was a hard-time alcoholic because of the war he was in.” 

I nodded and we just ate in silence for almost the rest of the lunch period until I said, “Hey, do you wanna come over tomorrow after school?” She told me that she would love to and I wrote my address on a piece of paper.

I keep having this reoccurring nightmare about what happened the night Corey died. I imagine him screaming in terror and writhing around, wondering what he did wrong. The part that scares me more than that is the person holding the gun to his head. It's someone that I know but I can’t place them exactly. A girl, I think, but I don't know the person. I strive to know who would want to kill Corey; he never did anything to anyone. I want to know why they wanted vengeance, why they thought it was even okay to rip him out of my life. I need him and I just want him back. I have no idea who would be as cruel as to murder an innocent human like Corey but I want to know. The police are doing an investigation and soon, if they find a worthy candidate, there will be a trial. I hope and pray with all of my heart that someone is found guilty. I don’t want Corey’s life to be in vain; I want people to remember how he would help babysit their kids with me. How he worked for the 4-H foundation. How he always saw the good in life, even if his mom was passed out drunk. Even if his father had not seen him in years.

April 26th

Rebecca has became my closest friend. I tell her all of my doubts and fears. She knows every scene of every nightmare. She tells me, “I wish I had known the Corey you did.” She says that they went to elementary and middle school together but hadn’t ever been really close. I don’t have any friends besides Rebecca; everyone is too scared to say anything for fear that I’ll burst into tears. Which, to be honest, is actually really likely to happen. 

Even as time goes by, I still miss the feeling of him. I still see him in my peripheral vision and I still hear him whisper soft things into my ears. The police think they’ve finally found a lead on this case. When they first found Corey, his body was riddled with bullet holes, one clear through the center of his head. An autopsy report showed the bullet in his skull was the last shot to be fired and there were signs of a struggle; bruises on his arms and neck. I sleep only during the day, when it’s light out. I’m too scared, that if I fall asleep, I’ll see Corey begging me to help him as his eyes dim and his blood covers the ground. The police had no fingerprints on the gun; there were burnt latex gloves a few feet away from where Corey laid. Whoever the culprit is, they went to great lengths to kill him and get away with it. The one thing they missed though was a stray hair, laying on the scene of the crime. After all this time, one detective has found this lead. Many reporters have been to my house; they still come even after fifteen days. Detective Oslow, the one who found the lead, has asked me question, after question, after question. Only once did I break down and it was at the mention of if I knew anyone willing to hurt Corey. I cried because that’s the thing, I don’t know anyone willing to hurt Corey; anyone wanting to hurt him. Detective Oslow assures me that they are trying their hardest to “dig deep and find the honest truth.” I thought that was redundant but didn’t say anything because I know that he was trying to be kind.

I just want to figure out who hurt Corey and find out the reasoning behind their vengeance. That’s really the only thing I want in my life, the truth. Oh, and Rebecca of course.

April 28th

The hair on the ground belonged to Rebecca Corrier. I let myself get close to the girl who murdered my boyfriend.

May 2nd

When they had the arraignment, Rebecca was sentenced to no bail. Only time will tell what she is charged with but as of late, I can’t imagine her ever hurting Corey and now I want to know why. I’m not allowed to go visit her; no one is except for her lawyer. I don’t understand how she would get that close to me and be lying to my face every time I asked her who she thought killed Corey. She always said, “I don’t know, they must’ve had a reason though.” What was her reasoning behind killing the one person that I lived to see? The one person who made me roll out of bed in the morning? And why would she ever think that it was smart to get close to me at all? I just want to figure out what was coursing through her brain, what made her kill him. What was so bad about her past that she had to murder Corey Jackson, the love of my life.

June 26th

“I killed Corey Jackson, that’s the pure and simple truth. I did it for a reason though. So you know what it’s like to be tormented just once in your life? Well, take that and multiply it by years. 

“The first day of Kindergarten, there was a boy who sat in the opposite seat as me on the bus. His name was Corey. I had a rainbow lunchbox and he asked me if he could look at it. Once he took out the cream pie I had in there and then threw my rainbow lunchbox out the window. He ate the cream pie while everyone else just laughed at me. That was my very first encounter with Corey and it didn’t turn out so well as you can see.

“In sixth grade I was still labeled as the outcast because of Corey. No one wanted to associate with me for fear of becoming me. Corey made it so that I had no life, no friends, nothing to look forward to. That’s why I tried to hang myself. My mother found me just as the life was leaving my body. In the psychiatric ward I recovered but I still have the scars of where the rope broke open the skin on my neck.

“Fast forward a couple more years. I was a sophomore in high school, right about the time that he met Sadie. There was a party and by this time I had one friend, Carolyn Jordan. She invited me along and I didn’t think that it would be a good idea but I tagged along. At the party, I wasn’t drinking anything but Corey was there and he had a good amount consumed. He grabbed me and led me into the bathroom where he raped me. I was hurt and furious that he had taken my very first time in the way that he did. I told Carolyn what happened and you know what she said? She told me, “Oh, Rebecca. It’s not that big of a deal, i personally wouldn’t mind being raped by Corey Jackson.” She laughed off the thing that hurt me the most. Soon, we weren’t friends, but that’s not all. I missed my period and I took a pregnancy test eventually, to find out that I was pregnant. I had no idea what to do. I kept it a secret until one day, I almost died. I started bleeding profusely and my parents took me to the hospital to see that I was having a miscarriage. I almost died, once again because of Corey Jackson. 

“That’s why I told Corey to meet me in the woods one night. That’s why I murdered “just an innocent boy.” Because I was scared that he would eventually kill me. That’s why I befriended Sadie, to see Corey in a different light, untarnished by my memories. When I was with Sadie, I saw only the good about him and it reminded me that he was not everything that he appeared to be.”

The whole courtroom was silent, you could hear a pin drop. Judge Mardith said, “I think we need a fifteen minute recess.”

When I think about Rebecca’s story I find myself crying. Why hadn’t I known who Corey really was? Why had I never asked? I know the answer: because I had never suspected. I find myself up at night; not because my nightmares are about the Corey I knew, because my nightmares are about the Corey Rebecca knew. I see her hanging herself. I see her in the hospital, almost dead. I see her that night at the party and it leaves me devastated. 

I wonder how I ever kissed him. How I ever could have lost my virginity to a boy that I didn’t even know. How I could walk in the forest with him. Go to football games with him. Watch his little sisters with him. Eat the popcorn from the same movie bucket as him. It hurts that I fell in love with someone who showed a innocent girl what it would be like to live in a world where no one loved you. Event though I’ve heard what he did to deserve his death, I still love him. I can’t shake that feeling. I hate myself for it but I knew a completely different person than Rebecca. What scares me the most is to think where I would be if our places would have been switched. 

June 29th

Rebecca was found not guilty. That’s it. That’s how it all ends. How a new story begins for her.

June 29th, 2005

It’s been fifteen years since Corey died and Rebecca has made her stake in the world as one of the most acclaimed authors to be known. Books in every continent; known around the world.

As for me, I still wish that Corey was back. Only so that I could ask him, “Why?”