Smog - Baggage of Enternal Night Read Free

Wilson had been somebody’s daughter and probably somebody’s sister and
somebody’s best friend, and she certainly didn’t deserve what had happened to
her. Nobody did.
    The news report ended by noting
that police were “still investigating,” which I knew meant they had no
suspects. Whoever had done this to Mary Ann was still loose.
    There was a killer in our
neighborhood.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter 4
     
     
     
    The next day, Debbie’s mom, Marge,
took us to a matinee: The Sound of Music . I think she was trying to
cheer me up, but I hated musicals, and I don’t think Debbie was nuts about
them, either. Marge left the theater singing, though, so I guess she was happy.
    I was still thinking about the
murder victim—Mary Ann Wilson. I couldn’t get the image of her torn, exposed
body out of my mind, no matter how much Julie Andrews sang and pranced about.
Marge offered to take us out for ice cream after the movie, but I lied and said
I wasn’t feeling well, when I really just couldn’t stand the thought of being
around Marge while she kept humming those songs. I liked Marge okay most of the
time—she was a small, chipper woman who smoked too many cigarettes and had bad
teeth as a result—but today I just wasn’t up to her perpetual cheerfulness. I
wanted to be in my bed with a pile of comic books.
    When I got home, I made myself
a glass of chocolate milk and was on my way to my room when I heard strange
sounds coming from behind CJ’s closed door. I paused to listen, and instantly
knew this was something I wasn’t supposed to hear: He had his girlfriend Vicki
in there, and they were both kind of moaning and gasping. I could also hear an
odd, rhythmic creaking sound, which it took me a minute to place as bedsprings.
     A jolt of disbelief shot
through me as I put it all together: CJ was having sex. With Vicki. In his
room. Right now.
    I had only the faintest idea of
what was involved with sex. For one thing, I was a little behind the other
girls my age—Debbie, for example, had already been having periods for a year (I
knew this because one day at school a sanitary napkin had fallen out of her
book bag), and she even had actual breasts . Her breasts were big enough
that the boys at school paid a lot of attention to her, and I sort of envied
that. Even though Mom had bought me a training bra, I was still as flat as a
pancake and didn’t wear it most days.
    Mom had explained a few basics
to me, so I knew that men had parts women didn’t have, and that sex started
with kissing and ended with babies, but I was still kind of uncertain about
what happened in between. That’s why it took me a few seconds to place the
sounds coming from behind CJ’s door.
    I stood in the hallway, the
glass of chocolate milk forgotten in my hand, and listened, feeling both guilty
and excited. I was confused, too, though—it sounded like they were hurting each
other. The sounds continued for maybe another minute—their cries sharper, the
creaking faster—and then it died away.
    Next they giggled, and then I
heard CJ saying something about going out to the kitchen. That was my cue to
make like a banana and split. I started to run for my room, but then I had a
better idea, and headed out to the kitchen, where I plopped myself down at the
dining table just before CJ walked in.
    He was shirtless and his hair
stuck up in a zillion different directions, but at least he’d pulled some pants
on. He literally froze for a second when he saw me. “Oh…I didn’t know you were
here,” he said, as he tried to pretend to casually amble over to the
refrigerator. “I thought you’d be out all day with Debbie and her mom.”
    “No, I got home about twenty
minutes ago.”
    He tensed at that but got two
cans of Coke out of the fridge. He elbowed the refrigerator door shut, then
leaned against it, eyeing me warily. “So, you…uh…”
    I started to moan, doing what I
thought was a pretty good impression of Vicki.
    It must have been a great