We Were Seventeen

We were seventeen, when the world seemed dipped in liquid gold. Too old to be kids and too young to face our futures, we lived in what we had in front of us: clandestine hookups in cars, crappy alcohol in red plastic cups, muggy summer days ripe with possibility.

Fear was for suckers. We were invincible.

That was, until the killer started slashing us up.

No one knew who he was, or if he even lived in the town. All anyone knew was that one Saturday morning, the bodies of Jake Rammer and Katy Finch were found in the lake behind the abandoned school. Their throats had been slit, crimson blood clouding the previously unsullied waters.

There were many others, just as grotesque as Jake and Katy. The blood seeped into our town, into its tangled roots, marking it.

There were posters put up, offering a reward for the capture of this menace. Parents double checked their locks at night. The sheriff put a curfew in effect. We didn’t listen, because we were seventeen.

What naive fools we were.

It was away from a party, in the heart of the woods at night, that I met Madeleine Claremont, staring into the eyes of the killer. 

I knew what I had to do.

I found a jagged rock on the ground, and I held it in my pink nail polished fingers. When he pulled out his knife, I leaped out and smashed the rock into his head.

He fell like a rag doll and never got up. Madeleine turned to me, blue eyes wild with fear and face tracked with tears. We were a strange pair, the rescuer and the prey.

“He won’t hurt anyone anymore,” I whispered. Madeleine rushed forward and hugged me. Her ice cold hands wrapped around my warm body. Our bodies fit together perfectly, as if they were meant to be together this whole time.

I took it as a good omen.

“You saved me,” she cried. A bond was forged, in the silvery moonlight, with the blood of someone else.

Madeleine and I were inseparable from that day forward. We still are. Funny, how I got to know her so well because of a boy.

It’s hard to believe I’d lived a life without her.

We spent the rest of that summer together, drinking lemonade from sweating glasses, sharing copious pints of rocky road ice cream, and avoiding the woods. We grew close with each other’s families, and our beds got used to another body pressing on it, leaving an indent in the messy sheets. Everything even smelled like Madeleine; a rich honey scent.

Our heads were smashed, too, probing and exploring each other’s thoughts and memories until it formed a sparkling galaxy around us. We made lists of our favorite foods, drinks, movies, colors, anything we could think of, because we had to know as much as we could about each other. She told me how she was never going to a party again, and I told her that was alright, and that I was going to support her no matter what. 

I don’t go back on what I say.

She still has nightmares, ones where her body is a beautiful mess of blood and guts, and wildflowers grow from her decaying body. Only I can tame them. There’s something to be said about that.

We’re forever known as the girls who defeated the big, bad killer, the town’s shining spectacles. Wonderful to admire from afar, but you’d better keep your distance lest you get marred by the darkness. 

We can’t shirk it, but we can choose to embrace it. And every time we walk into a room, hands linked together like a bracelet clasp, we wear our title proud.

Blood may run deep, but our experience forged us together like elegant bones, bound to exist long after death.

***

She may be like a sister to me, and I would kill for again, but even sisters keep secrets. Sometimes those secrets are for the good of the other person.

Sometimes, a secret can destroy a person.

I knew he was going to be in the woods that night.

Nobody in our stupid, small town noticed anything. But I did. If they’d just looked a little closer, they’d have seen that he only went after seventeen year olds, no more, no less. He had a thing for blondes. He always chose nights where there was an illicit party or group hangout going on, where at least one victim wandered off by themselves. Then no one could hear their screams of pain.

That night, in Madeleine’s haze of peach schnapps and tiredness, I discreetly nudged her towards the woods. She kept thinking it would be good for her, some reprieve from the chaos that was the party. 

I promised her I was right next to her. And I was, watching my surroundings. Only when I saw his hungry eyes glimmer did I sneak away to the shadows.

He was an amateur, the way he fumbled around with his knife and couldn’t keep watch on Madeleine. It was a miracle he managed to kill all those kids and evade capture for this long. But that ended with me.

I waited as he got his bearings, until I couldn’t anymore.

His skull cracked like a delicate egg. The blood rushed out faster than I expected, so dark it seemed like the night sky was oozing from him. It made sense, because of the abundance of blood vessels in the head supplying oxygen to the brain. That’s what I learned from my anatomy textbook.

I had never actually seen someone bleed in real life, though, and it was a sight to behold. 

The last thing he ever saw was my face, watching over him like a god. I could lie and say it frightened me, forcefully ripping someone’s life away from them when I shouldn’t have that privilege. But I won’t.

It was the opposite. It exhilarated me, just like I knew it would.

I loved it, and I would do it all again.