Haterz Read Free Page B

back at me, revolted.
    “Rice crackers?”
    I nodded. She just stared at me, bafflingly furious. The music was blaring, someone was singing, the bar was hot and loud and she was just across from me, so angry.
    “You stupid shit,” she screamed at me.
    “What?”
    “I’m allergic to peanuts,” she yelled.
    Well, I knew that. Everyone knew about Danielle’s allergy. There’d been a bowl of peanuts at the bar I’d quite fancied the look of, but I’d avoided those. I just helped myself to the bowl of slightly less exciting rice crackers. And I’d scrupulously avoided the peanutty ones. The ones with the flavour.
    I tried explaining this to her, sensibly and rationally, but she was having none of it. She was just screaming words at me, fingers snapping. I tried saying how I’d just gone for dull crackers, and not the nice nuts, and how, surely, if they were wrapped in a shell, then that was like they were sealed and...
    Yes, okay, I had been babbling at her. I think saying “nice nuts” may have been the giveaway.
    She was staring at the little dirt worms I’d scraped from my fingers. They lay on the table and she looked like she was trying to edge away from them with disgust.
    “How could you be so thoughtless?” she screamed. I believed I’d just demonstrated that I’d been quite thoughtful. But no. Noise and words. I’d touched something that had been made in a factory that contained nuts. I’d not thought about it. I could have killed her.
    The words went on and on. It was like a wall. When you see on the news five protesters with guitars and a party streamer facing up against armed guards with bulldozers and tear gas? That kind of onslaught.
    I realised that what had excited Danielle so much was that she’d realised she had an advantage. She’d spotted a flaw and she was slicing through it. Diamond-cutting.
    “What were you thinking?” She pushed the glass further away from her, nudging it with the tip of her phone. Shove. Shove. Shove. “I can’t drink this! You’ve touched it, you’ve touched it with your hands!” She was screaming at me with fury. Loud enough, her voice raised, her fingers snapping, just enough to ensure that she was getting attention over the mingling, the conversation, the spontaneous karaoke and the Coldplay. Danielle was it.
    “You knew, you knew I’m allergic and you still touched peanuts—you stupid freak!” She tried to make the last word hang there, but, let’s be frank, any sentence that contains ‘peanuts’ in the middle of it, the concentration is going to hang there a little, isn’t it? It’s such a silly little word. It’s hard to get around.
    She fished out wet wipes and started scrubbing at her hands with them. A scouring like Lady Macbeth until the air reeked of clean baby-bum. “I’m really sorry. I was so thoughtless,” I stood up. “I’ll get you another drink.”
    She flung a wet wipe at me like a gauntlet. “Wash your hands first,” she hissed. “They’re disgusting.”
     
     
    N OW, WHEN PEOPLE talk about getting angry, they talk about the red mist. Their jaw sets. There’s a singing in their ears as though someone has twanged a wire and it’s all happening and they’re not in control and it’s a rush of marvellous wonder. Somewhere lost in there, there’s a regrettable action. Something wrong. But for that moment, when their system is full of amazing chemicals, they are off and away doing something splendid.
    I’m not like that. I walked to the bar. I bought Danielle another drink. I decided to kill her.
     
     
    I T JUST HAPPENED along the way. I don’t want you to think that I’m a psychopath. To be honest, I don’t know what the word means. I’ve not looked it up on Wikipedia. That’d be like using the internet to self-diagnose. I just knew, as I walked to the bar, that the easiest way out of this situation had presented itself. It didn’t even seem like murder. Just the easiest thing to do.
     
     
    I T WAS ALL really