Karin Slaughter - Like A Charm

He barely looked up.

'What happened?'

He shrugged.

'Are you in trouble?'

He started moving funny, his whole body kind of shaking. I took that as a yes.

'What did you do?'

'They didn't tell you?'

'Who?'

'The police.'

'They just asked if we were friends.'

He nodded.

'Did you kill Benjamin?'

He threw a few blades of grass into the air. 'I killed Anthony.'

I had leaned my arms over the fence and had been rocking the whole thing back and forth. Now I stopped. 'Anthony?'

'Yup.'

'Why?'

He tore a handful of grass into tiny pieces, then scattered them, his arms beating like wings. 'I don't know.'

'What do you mean, you don't know?'

'I mean, I don't know.'

'Was it an accident?'

'No.'

'Did he fall down and hit his head -'

'No.'

'- on a rock or something?'

'I pushed a piece of wire into his neck.'

I imagined it, the sharp end of an old broken wire hanger going into the soft part of Anthony's neck. 'And then what happened?' Involuntarily, I touched my own neck.

'He started to bleed.' Lamar turned to look at me. 'Really fast. It was like all the blood in his body came out at once.'

Oh, man.

'Where was it?' I said. 'I mean, exactly.'

'By the dumpsters,' he answered. 'Right between them.'

It was late afternoon, and there was an almost imperceptible coolness in the air. Autumn was weeks away, but I could feel its approach, like an aeroplane about to land.

'Are you going to go to jail?'

He thought for a minute. 'First I'm going to go stay with my grandmother, and then there's going to be court.' Lamar threw some grass into the air. 'And then they'll send me to jail, I guess.' Then he looked up at me. 'Where's Benjamin?'

I shrugged. 'I haven't been hanging out with Benjamin.'

'Why not?'

'Why Anthony?' I pictured that kid, his fat stomach, the way his eyebrows looked like two caterpillars crawling across his face. 'Why didn't you kill Benjamin?' I said, and then more softly, 'Or me?'

Lamar started shaking his head back and forth, not like he was saying no, more like he was getting ready for something, like he was about to break into a run. 'I wouldn't kill you guys,' he said. 'You and Benjamin… you guys are my best friends.'

Then autumn came just like I knew it would, and then the winter, and the next spring, and so on. There was a trial. At first there was a subpoena for me to go and tell them about what Anthony had said that day on the god-rock, about Lamar threatening to kill Benjamin, but then they said I didn't have to, after all. I never really hung out with Benjamin much after that. We kind of went in different directions. Lamar's family stayed just as they were, only Lamar wasn't there anymore. He went to live with his grandmother, and then was put into a state facility for young people who've committed dangerous crimes. I finished junior high, and then high school, and then, if you can believe it, I was accepted to college on a partial swimming scholarship. After the whole thing with Lamar, my parents tried to get me into sports, thinking it would keep me out of trouble, and swimming was the only physical activity I could stand. I spent my whole first semester of college swimming and reading. I had a talent for the butterfly, it turned out. I was no superstar, believe me, but I placed third in the 500 metres a couple of times. And sometimes when I was swimming I would start to think of Lamar and how he thought we were his friends and I would stop, and I would have to get out of the pool and tell the coach I had a cramp.

Anyway, when I came back for that first winter break my parents picked me up at the airport and drove me home. I saw him there, standing in the window. Lamar. Jesus. He was a lot older now, and taller. But he was still skinny. He was still the same old Lamar. He had his chest out and his fingers were kind of moving around in front of him, the way he had stood there when he was a kid and we were all playing in the yard, and he was watching. He had that faraway look. I couldn't tell if he saw me, because his eyes didn't move.

I went upstairs and when I was unpacking I came across that charm bracelet, the one I had stolen from him when we were just kids. It was just sitting there in the back of a drawer. I hadn't looked at it in so long, and I noticed the little charms it had: the little train engine, the tiger, the sax, ballet slippers, monkey. One of the charms was an angel, one of those angels down on its knees with its hands pressed together in prayer. For some reason I thought of Lamar sitting that way that day in the backyard, tossing handfuls of grass in the air and telling me so matter-of-fact how he had killed Anthony.

I threw the charm bracelet out the window.

I remembered the feeling of my fist hitting Lamar's arm, knuckles in his flesh, and I remembered one particular Saturday morning – we must have been around nine or ten – when Lamar just lay down.

'Go ahead,' he said. 'I don't care anymore. I don't care what you do to me.'

Benjamin stood over him with his angry black hair and his mean freckles and his hands on his hips. 'What do you mean?' he said. 'Aren't you going to dance around like a scared little John Travolta?'

'Why should I?' Lamar said smiling. 'You'll just catch me.'

Fat Anthony chuckled, his stomach jiggling.

Benjamin was confused, grabbing a handful of his own hair. 'Where do you want me to hit you?'

'It doesn't matter.' Lamar was defiant. He presented his bruised arm to Benjamin like a prize.

'I've been punching his arm,' I told Benjamin helpfully.

'Yeah,' Anthony said, 'hit his arm.'

'I don't know.' Benjamin tossed it off like he was turning down a dessert: 'I don't think I want to punch Lamar right now.'

Still on the ground, Lamar rolled his eyes. 'Just get it over with.'

'Yeah,' I said. 'Punch him.'

Benjamin started to walk away, and Lamar rose to his feet, lifting himself up with that sideways smile on his face, the same smile he would wear a couple of years later when he gave me that ant farm.

'Benjamin,' I said, 'what are you-'

Suddenly Benjamin turned round. 'I'll tell you,' he said, hitting Lamar to the rhythm of his words, 'when' – punch – 'I will beat' – punch – 'the crap' – punch – 'out of you' – punch, punch. And he wailed on Lamar, fists like pistons, his face full of hate, punching his message home, and my own hate was in there with each and every punch – worse, because I was standing beside Benjamin, me and fat Anthony, standing there smiling idiotically, laughing and grinning and enjoying every second of it.

And goddamn it if Lamar – it still kills me to think of this – if Lamar wasn't smiling, too.

Man, the things we did to that kid.

'Fix Mommy a drink, Megan.'

My mom. She works so hard. She gets stressed. I looked at the kitchen clock. Four p.m. 'Do you want to wait a little?'

'I'm dying here, pumpkin. Be a good girl.' My mom put her keyring down on the counter, the keys sounding all jangly upset.

Our house has just been redone, by a quality architect, my mom says, but I'm still getting used to it. I tugged hard on the vacuum-seal of the built-in refrigerator to open the door. Arctic-Circle-type air rushed out as I grabbed a bottle of Diet Coke.

'That's good,' she said. 'Why is your hair in your face?'

I got out a crystal glass, tall and delicate, the kind Mom likes, and filled it with cubes. The Diet Coke splashed in, stopping at about three-quarters full.

I looked up and noticed my mother's lipstick was smudged almost completely off.