Like She Was Never There

I will never stop wondering why I saw what happened that night. Beth was pretty, she was popular, she was gone. There was speculation that she had run off to Hollywood to be an actress. Some say New York to model. Still others claimed she had run off to Canada to meet a lover she met on the internet. Everyone but me assumed she had run away. I knew better.

I was sitting in my little sail boat. It was around sunset, my feet were propped up, I was drinking the beer I had bought with my fake i.d. at the little liquor store just outside of town. I looked 21 and they didn't ask questions. I was thinking. Trying to figure out how I was going to escape my life. My mother was always high or gone. One loser after another. I never knew my father. He'd been gone before the sperm had connected with the egg. I didn't know where I was going, but I knew I wanted to be gone.

I was lost deep in planning when I heard giggling. I sighed loudly and scowled at the interruption of my peaceful evening. I stayed still, laying in the bottom of my boat, hoping they wouldn't see me and would go away. I could see the larger vessel. I knew if they paid any attention at all they would see me. I decided not to care and waited for the revelers moving on. After a listening to the giggling and the subdued conversation for a while the voices turned angry and got louder. I was just about to sit up and try moving on, to find another piece of silent ocean, when I heard a familiar voice. It was Beth Watson. I sat up enough to see if it was really her. She was yelling at a tall man with dark hair on the front of the boat. Her bikini was tiny and her hair was waving fiercely in the wind.

I still couldn't really understand what they were arguing about. I caught the words 'wife' and 'baby' so it wasn't hard to glean what was going on. I was mildly shocked. Beth with a married man. Probably pregnant. I never would've seen that coming. She was such a prissy little goody two shoes. Capitan of the 'Purity Club' and ring leader of the school's Christian Coalition.

I watched the two arguing, it was kind of like a train wreck. I couldn't look away. She was lucky it was just me in the boat. I was a social out cast. I didn't speak to people unless I was forced to, didn't really have any friends. Didn't want any. I was leaving this town as fast as I could arrange it, I wanted no ties to this town.

When he grabbed her and started shaking her I was shocked and I froze. Should I do something? Should I help her? I sat like a statue as the shock locked my body into place. I couldn't even scream. I saw her slap him and he returned the favor. I think she was mostly unconcious at that point. When he pushed her overboard I clearly saw her head slam hard against the railing as she fell. A few seconds later, I mean just a few heartbeats, and I heard the boat start up and take off. I tried to get to where I thought she had fallen. I was finally able to move and I tried. Only I couldn't find her, her body was just gone. So far down in the murky depths I could not even see any blood where she had fallen. I didn't know what to do. Had the man seen me? His boat was still visible as he circled around and headed back toward the shore. I followed giving wide berth to his boat, hoping against hope that he wouldn't see me, that he wouldn't recognize me. I had been far enough away that I didn't think I could even identify him.

I admit, I am an awful person. I didn't report what I had seen. I kept my mouth shut as the rumors spread like wild fire. Oddly, her parents hadn't reported her missing. I heard that they told the cops that they believed that she had run away from home. I don't think they looked very hard after that. Just another teenage run away. Her face was put up on the missing person's board at Walmart and the post office. I tried to ignore it and wait for it to blow over. Surely if I didn't say anything the guy would have no reason to ever look for me. I finally started to believe that he had not seen me or maybe hadn't recognized me or my boat? I hadn't recognized his, him, or seen his boat since the incident. It was about a month later that I discovered I was wrong.

I was saving money hard. I worked two jobs and saved every penny, banking it like it was my religion. I would get out of this town if it was the last thing I ever did. Now I was even more motivated to see it in my rearview. I was depositing my check and checking my balance. I knew I had saved a couple of thousand dollars. Only my bank account now sat at just over 150,000. How in the hell? I checked the deposit record on the app on my phone. Surely there had been a mistake? There was a deposit. One. Hundred. Fifty. Thousand. Dollars! The memo said, Keep Silent. No record of an account, no name. I guess the man had tracked me down after all. About 10 seconds after graduation I loaded my little Kia Soul, the only luxury I had allowed myself from the blood money, and left town in a cloud of dust. Beth was gone and there was nothing I could do about that. They never found her body. They never found any proof that she was anything but a runaway. She became a myth, an urban legend, and a blight on my memory that would probably send me to hell. I decided that I was okay with that. I had finally gotten out, put the hell of my life behind me. Surely Beth could understand that? Right?