One Bloody Thing After Another Read Free

the word Welcome burned into it. The curtains look like lace in the small half circle window at the top. This would be easier if Mrs. Hubert didn’t look so scared. She’s yelling something that Jackie can’t hear. Police, police, police. Something like that. She has a phone in her hand.
    Jackie looks like the bad guy here. Mrs. Hubert is crying and Jackie is all covered with violence and broken glass. But Jackie isn’t the bad guy. The tree was cut down. Jackie’s first-kiss tree. And so Jackie is angry. But she didn’t start smashing things right away. She went over to the house. She rang the doorbell. She was a nice young lady with some questions about that old tree in the backyard.
    â€œPardon me, ma’am,” Jackie had said.
    â€œOh hello, dear,” Mrs. Hubert said.
    Jackie is just as surprised as anybody. She didn’t come out here to break windows. She came out here to visit her tree. When she got off the bus, there was no blood in her mouth at all. She was quiet, thinking about her friend Ann. Visiting her trees always helps Jackie think. But now her thoughts are thinking themselves for her. Her body knows what to do. She lifts up the second big rock. She’s confused by how heavy it is. She almost can’t handle it. It’s been a long time since she lifted anything this heavy.
    She aches. She stumbles a bit. How many trees get cut down every day? What if every one of those trees had someone who cared? Someone to avenge it? Jackie is just a good girl, doing her part for the environment. Smash!
    Now there are two big rocks in the shiny, gray car. She leans her head in through the window of Mrs. Hubert’s car and brushes the glass off the passenger seat rock. She pulls the seat belt across and fastens it securely. She tugs to make sure it doesn’t come undone.
    The rock looks so handsome with the black seat belt around it. So does the first rock. This is nice. It paints a pretty picture. Out for a Sunday drive with the windows down.
    Mister and Missus Rock.
    Lovely.
    â€œI’m calling the police!” yells Mrs. Hubert from inside. She has the window open a crack. She doesn’t sound angry; she should sound angry, she should get righteous about her car windows. She’s supposed to be the bad guy, not the victim. But she has her lines all wrong. She sounds scared. “Please stop,” she says.
    And Jackie’s not a monster. She hears the fear in Mrs. Hubert’s voice and suddenly she can see what this looks like from the other side.
    Mrs. Hubert cut down a tree. Everyone cuts down trees. She didn’t even do it herself. This was just a bit of yard work, one of a dozen chores her son helps her with. She called him and he came out in the morning with a coffee in one hand and a chainsaw in his trunk and he cut down a tree and poor Mrs. Hubert had no way of knowing about Jackie’s first kiss underneath that tree.
    She had no way of knowing that Jackie had spent all last night going over and over in her head what she would say to Ann. It is not an easy thing for a girl to ask her best friend on a date. Oh god.
    But Mrs. Hubert couldn’t have known any of this.
    The tree is in pieces on the ground. Cut down. Jackie needed to see it today. She needed to sit underneath it, but she can’t. When Jackie saw Ann at school today, down at the other end of the hallway, she waved. She waved and Ann closed her locker and walked away, like she didn’t see. Maybe she didn’t see.
    It was just a chore to Mrs. Hubert. It was a bit of yard work, and then she answered her door and said, “Oh hello, dear,” and then violence. Jackie knows that Mrs. Hubert isn’t the bad guy.
    But what can Jackie do? Run? There’s already glass everywhere, and if she doesn’t look over and see Mrs. Hubert’s face, this feels right. On this side of the door there are no tear-stained faces. Just tree branches on the ground, and justice.