Twelve Stories

Brenna York

My brother murdered a girl. She was fourteen. It happened the night of my eighth grade graduation. My brother wore a teal tie. He didn’t look like someone who would kill a girl. He was 17. The girl’s name was Colleen. Her name sounds like the name a murdered girl would have. It’s a name like Cathleen or Maureen.

My brother doesn’t have a murderer’s name. His name is Jacob. I never called him Jake the Snake except for once and he dangled my cat over the garbage disposal. His lawyer said when they evaluated him they showed him terrible pictures. Like ones of burnt-up babies. He didn’t react.

Someone’s dad found them behind the gymnasium, where the school’s furnace pumps out hot air that smells like the chemicals from our pool. He was on top of her, strangling her with her red sweater. I have nightmares. I see the skin on Colleen’s face turn maraschino cherry. Her eyes grow stems.

In the courtroom, Jake didn’t fidget. He was still. I wanted him to look over. They showed us pictures. The prosecutor used a laser pointer to circle Colleen’s wrists, twisted like branches of a petrified tree. Her face looked like a half-deflated balloon.

I asked if we were moving. My mother slapped me. Her nails curled inwards, and tore a crescent into my temple. We stayed in our house. At night my parents turned off the telephone.

A woman with patchy hair came to my house to interview me. She was writing a book about Colleen’s murder. She wanted to know if my brother ever stole my panties. She said she would pay me. I just wanted to talk about Jake like he was someone who could speak for himself.

When the book came out, a friend of my mother’s gave her a copy. My mother stopped setting out a plate for me at dinner. My father asked, How much? I wanted to go to college in Oregon, but my mother said, When will you visit your brother?

So I went to college locally but lived in the dorms. I only went out with my boyfriend because he told me a story about how his ex-girlfriend had wanted him to choke her during sex and he refused. He said, I just don’t like blue girls.

At a bar one night, a friend of Colleen’s was sitting on the floor of the bathroom. I kept my face down as I washed my hands. I was scared she’d tell me something I didn’t need to know. Like what she told us in court. She was just trying to be cute. She bit his nipple and he flipped out. I ran. He said he would have sex with us so we wouldn’t have to go to high school as virgins.

I try to think of Jake as he was before. But he doesn’t exist in memory as something that doesn’t singe. How he would make me play Monster with him. He would get in my closet and tell me to fall asleep. He waited much longer in there than I could. I would make loud screeches or howl his name. He would press himself against the door and jiggle the handle, not saying anything.

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Brenna York lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan. She is in her junior year and studies both Creative Writing and Classical Studies at Eastern Michigan University.