The Face of Death

forget about it?

He shakes his head.

Because you're you. You have to know. It's how you're built, how God or whoever made you.

He's right, of course. It's a truth that applies to everything: Sarah's diary, 1for-two-me, the future. It's one of the things that drives me forward, that helps me navigate through my fears: the desire to see how the story ends. Bonnie's story, the next victim's story. Whatever. What about my story?

Quantico. The second elephant in the middle of my personal room. It appears as I think of it, all sad-eyed and wise. I stroke its gray skin and realize what about it bothers me.

That it doesn't bother me enough.

Here I am, I realize, offered a plum because my face won't look right on a poster. Here I am, considering a move that would separate me from the only family I have left, that would end a new and possibility filled relationship with Tommy, that would pack away this house and all its memories for good--and all I can feel is a sense of opportunity. Considering leaving my friends and the life I've known should be tearing me apart. Instead, I am ambivalent. Why?

It's not like things haven't been getting better. Packing away Matt and Alexa's things is progress. No more nightmares is progress. Sharing even a small part of myself with a man other than Matt is progress. Why don't I seem to care more?

Enlightenment evades me for now, but I realize here, at last, is the discomfort I'd been looking for. Maybe I've been fooling myself. Maybe what I'd thought was emotional growth was simply me learning to walk in spite of my disabilities. Maybe the parts of me designed to feel most deeply have been injured beyond repair. That doesn't explain the booze now, does it?

With that it's time to shove the elephant away. He goes quietly, but stares at me with those wise, sad eyes that say, It's true, we elephants have long memories to go with our long trunks, but no tusks here, even though memories can have long teeth.

I lick my own teeth and search for contentment, but I can already tell that both it and sleep will be absent.

Contentment . . .

Wait, elephant, I cry. Come back.

He does, because he's my elephant after all. He stares at me with those patient eyes.

I just realized why. It's because for all the progress I've made . . . I'm still not happy. You know?

He touches me with his trunk. Looks at me with those wise, sad eyes. He does know.

I'm not sad or suicidal, but that doesn't mean I'm happy. Memories, yes, the elephant's wise, sad eyes say, memories can have long teeth.

Yes, I think, and the happy memories have the longest teeth of all. That's the problem: I've known true happiness. Real, fulfilling, down-to-the-bone, close-to-the-soul happiness. Feeling 'okay' doesn't cut it anymore. It's as if I was on a drug that made the world glow and now that I'm off it, now that I'm going cold turkey, it's not that the world is bad, per se--but it doesn't glow, dammit. I'm not confident that Tommy or Elaina or Callie or the J-O-B or even Bonnie will make me happy in that way again. I cherish them all, but I mistrust their ability to fill the void, to bring back the glow. Ugly and selfish but true.

That's why Quantico appeals to me. A nuclear changeup, a mushroom cloud of 'different,' perhaps that's what I really need. A raw and brutal break to shake the foundation and rattle the rafters of me. The elephant plods off without being asked. I can talk to my metaphors without shame when I swallow tequila, it seems. Elephant, I think, thy name is 'Not-Happy.' Or maybe, 'No-Glow.'

Will Quantico solve that?

Who the fuck knows? I want a cigarette.

I sigh and resign myself to wakefulness. Time to shove aside the personal and drown myself in the professional. It's an old solution, but a faithful one. It doesn't glow, exactly, but it's guaranteed to banish the elephants that ail you. I plod back upstairs and grab my notes and return to the living room. I sit on the couch and try to organize my thoughts. I take the page titled PERPETRATOR and add to it: PERPETRATOR

AKA 'THE STRANGER.'

I think about what I've read so far in the diary. I begin to write, my notes now less structured and more extemporaneous. He was caused pain = he's causing others pain. Revenge. The question remains, though: Why Sarah?

The logical suspicion would be that he's making Sarah pay for something her parents did. But he told Sam and Linda that they were not at fault. It's not your fault, but your death will be my justice. Was Sarah simply chosen at random?

I shake my head. No. There is a connection, and it's not imaginary. I feel as though some aspect of it is staring me right in the face. Something about who he was speaking to . . .

I sit up straight, suddenly energized.

If Sarah's account was accurate, The Stranger was speaking to Linda when he said, Your death will be my justice. Linda specifically.

A phrase I had heard earlier today comes back to me: The Father and the daughter . . .

Revenge isn't random and he loves his messages. That wasn't a slip of the tongue.

I write.

What if the object of revenge goes back another generation? He said to Sarah yesterday, while he was flicking blood onto her, 'The Father and the daughter and the Holy Spirit.' He told Linda Langstrom, 'It's not your fault, but your death will be my justice.' Could we be talking about Linda's father? Sarah's grandfather?

I read it back to myself and experience that flush of energy again.

I'm in my home office, faxing the pages containing my notes to James. I didn't call him; James will hear the fax and wake up. He'll be pissed and grumble about it, but he'll read them regardless. I need him to know what I know.

The grandfather.

It feels, if not certain, at least very possible. The machine beeps to let me know it's done and I go back down stairs. I check the clock. Five A.M. Time marches on. I want the morning to come, and I want it here now, dammit!

A thought comes to me.

Sarah said no one's believed her about The Stranger. Why? From what I've read so far, that makes no sense.

I glance over to the diary pages waiting on the coffee table. I glance at the clock and the hours I have left to burn.

Only one way to find out.

Sarah's Story

Part Two

24

So how do you like the story so far? Not bad for an almost-sixteen-year- old, huh? Like I said, I'm a sprinter more than a runner, and we sure sprinted through that first bit, didn't we? A summary: Happy me, bad man comes, dead Buster, dead Mommy, dead Daddy, unhappy me. Now we'll take a jump. A leap to the next starting line. First, some backstory: I was hazy and crazy after everything that happened, and somehow both Doreen and I ended up in the backyard. Doreen, poor dummy, got thirsty or hungry or both and couldn't