Killing Kate Read Free

braided and
pulled to one side, which is different from how she showed up at my door. 
She’s also wearing jeans and a red halter top, and her lips are a dark blood
red and look wet.  Her large brown eyes are perfectly made up, and she appears
to be ready to go someplace.
    “Get dressed,” she says, reading my
mind.  “Tonight we are going to go out and eat and get drunk, and then tomorrow
we will go to Jake’s funeral and see Devin.”
    “I have to work tomorrow night,” I
tell her.  She shrugs.
    “You can do both.”
    “Getting drunk outside of my apartment
costs money,” I point out.
    She scowls.  “You have no air
conditioning.”  I doubt that actually bothers her.
    “Suffer,” I tell her.
    “You need to mentally prepare
yourself for Jack’s funeral with alcohol and some potential casual sex,” she
says.  “Devin needs you there.”  I nod.  I didn’t feel bad when I hung up the
phone but I suddenly feel horrible now.  I accept that I am a bad daughter and
have no tears for a man who didn’t deserve to be a part of my life but Devin
has never hurt me.
    Kate found her way into my world
when I was a kid living with Devin in Jack’s house.  She would hold me at night
while I cried myself to sleep.  She would continue to come to my rescue all the
way up until Jack went to jail for possession of narcotics and I had to go live
with my mother and my stepfather, Frank.  As far as stepfathers went, Frank was
actually okay, despite the shit show he married into.  When he met my mom, she
was “unattached”, so to speak, which is a nice way of saying that she walked
out on her husband and two young kids that she didn’t want in the first place. 
Kate was gone for a few years while things were good and Frank was alive, but
when Frank died from a heart attack and it was just my mom, Kate eventually
came back to me.  Jack was a shitty dad, but our mom wasn’t much better.  She
would pretend to care but checked out after Frank died.  He really was the love
of her life and held her together.  Some people can’t survive without another
person in this world and Frank was that person to my mom, just as Kate seems to
be with me.  Like everyone else in our family, my mom took to drinking away her
life while collecting her welfare check from the state.  Devin checked out at
that point too, shooting up heroin and not spending much time helping me get through
school.  He found a girlfriend and spent most of his time between her, his
junkie friends and his artwork.  Instead of being alone, I had Kate to keep me
company.  Devin and I are close now.  We weren’t always.  As kids we were
forced to be close, mostly for survival.  Devin hit a point where he couldn’t
spend all of his time devoted to taking care of me, and as much as that hurt
me, I think it hurt him more.  Along came Kate to the rescue.  Kate and I
shared everything, from a room to our clothes to friends and even a boy or
two.  She took my tests for me in the subjects I didn’t like and she went on
dates for me with boys that I wasn’t interested in.  Where I was shy and would
rather be someplace else, Kate was in the backseat of a car in the mall parking
lot at three am, letting some horny kid put their fingers in her panties.  She
tended to take the douchebags and assholes and I saved one or two nice boys for
myself.  Every now and then we’d share, though never at the same time.  When I
moved out of my mom’s house, she came with for a while, and then after I got my
act together and got a job, an apartment, some clothes, some furniture, and
started getting groceries somewhat regularly for me, she eventually left.  I
never ask where she’s been.  I don’t want to know.
    “Call Devin,” she tells me,
breaking my trance.  “Ask him to meet us.  Then we’ll get you showered and
dressed.”  Before I can object, she shoots me a look.  “He does need you, you
know.”   I do know, but I’m afraid to see how