My best friend Melissa is getting married, and of the 100 people she invited, I’m the only one who’s going. The other 99? Total crickets. Not one single yes OR no after the invites went out. At first we thought they might have gotten lost in the mail or she used the wrong stamps. But when she texted everyone to ask if they received the invites and to remind them to RSVP, they ignored her completely.
And then two weeks before the wedding, Melissa told me her fiance Seth was missing.
So here’s the thing: I had never met Seth. In fact I had only known Melissa for a few months. We met when her car broke down in front of my house, and I offered her my front porch to sit on while she waited for the tow truck. Melissa told me her fiance Seth was on a business trip and that he would be back the week before the wedding.
And why wouldn’t I believe her?
Melissa and I were instant best friends. I could not wait to meet Seth at the wedding. She talked about him so much that I felt as if I knew him already, and I can honestly say I looked forward to the wedding as much as she did.
Or maybe, even more.
Because I loved her very much. I wanted her to be happy. And I could see that wedding planning was stressing her out so bad that she was losing sleep. Even before she broke down in tears and told me nobody was coming, even before Seth went missing, I could see that she was slowly losing her mind.
*
Melissa told me she filed a police report but wasn’t expecting much from that end given that Seth was an adult male. I thought sadly that she was probably right. She said she was talking with a private detective and he was looking into it for her.
A week before the wedding, Melissa came to my house in the middle of the night to tell me she knew where Seth was but we had to move fast. Next thing I knew we were speeding down the highway going out of town.
I kept asking her what was going on and she kept saying she’ll explain when we get there. We drove for hours, stopping once to pee and another time to get gas. It was before sunrise when we started and we were still going when the sun went down.
Now, I’m not good with maps and wouldn’t be able to find my way out of a paper bag, but I can read signs. And even I could tell we were going in circles.
She first drove across state lines, and then five hours later, she drove back across the same state lines. I remembered the same rest stop we passed in the morning because of a red car that was parked there.
“Melissa, what is going on?” I said, but she wouldn’t answer me.
She drove faster and faster. We sped past every other car on the road, and people rage honked at us screaming obscenities. We were going 75 and then 80 and then 90. The car was shaking like a toy and Melissa seemed to be in a trance. She was mentally somewhere else and I was numb, paralyzed with fear. I did not know what to do. I prepared myself to die and then it occurred to me.
Maybe Seth was dead, maybe she had received news of his body being found and she had gone crazy.
She swerved in front a truck and I knew it was all over, I felt it in my bones. I wasn’t even scared.
But she hadn’t crashed us, only took an exit ramp. And then we were driving slowly down a residential street. She stopped the car in front of a house where a girl was smoking on the porch.
Melissa turned to me and said, “They have Seth in that house. His life is in danger. We have to get him out.”
“That girl?” I said, incredulous.
She looked about ninety pounds soaking wet. I could probably take her down myself.
“There’s a whole gang in there,” said Melissa, “and she’s one of them.”
And because I was tired and hungry and frightened and confused, I believed her.
*
It was way past midnight when we got back to town. Melissa stopped in front of the all night diner and we went in to get some food. My legs were shaking but she seemed perfectly normal. I tried to act normal too, trying to forget what she had done.
What we had done, a small voice said at the back of my head.
The events of the previous hours were a blur. Things had happened so fast that it was as if they had happened to somebody else. I still didn’t understand and I had a feeling I was never going to. The whole day was like a bad dream.
I felt faint as we sat down and I pretended to peruse the menu. Even though I loved food more than anything in the world, and I hadn’t eaten in the last 20 hours, I had no appetite whatsoever.
The server gave us a look and then whispered something to another server who got somebody from the back who looked like a manager. The three of them looked at us and seemed to be discussing something. Were the police looking for us? Already?
The manager came up to our table and said, “Hey Melissa, long time no see.”
Melissa said, “Oh hey, I didn’t know you were working tonight.”
The guy laughed and said, “I work every night. Who’s your lovely friend?”
A real charmer.
Melissa introduced me and then she asked him outright if he was coming to the wedding. A shiver went down my back. Her fiance was missing. What wedding was she talking about? He glared at her and then he looked at me and said, “Want a drink? You look like you could use one.” And then he scurried off like he couldn’t get away fast enough.
Melissa told me that was her cousin.
When we were done eating, the manager cousin guy came by and said his shift was over and he’ll drop us off on his way home. Melissa said she had her car and he was like, “You shouldn’t be driving.” They stared at each other so hard I thought there was going to be words between them. But he said nothing and left the restaurant.
Melissa and I had a few more drinks, and then went outside to the parking lot and got in her car. She started the car and the car … didn’t move.
The engine was going but the car wasn’t. We got out to investigate and found one of the tires was flat as a pancake even though it was fine when we drove in. And then the manager guy her cousin was somehow right there behind us, scared the shit out of me. He looked me straight in the eye and said with a smirk, “Looks like you’ll need a ride after all.”
*
He dropped Melissa off first. I followed after her because I didn’t want to be alone with her creepy cousin, but Melissa went inside her apartment and slammed the door behind her as if she had forgotten I was there.
I was so surprised I just stood staring at the closed door wanting to kick it down and make her tell me what the hell was going on. Her cousin tried to lead me back to the car but I was like I’ll walk.
“It isn’t safe, it’s midnight, get in the car,” he said, or more like, commanded.
He was a big guy and I knew I wouldn’t have a chance if he tried anything funny. So I pretended to get in the car but when he went around to the driver side, I ran away down an alley. I could hear him shouting after me, but I hid in a dumpster until he gave up and left.
*
On the day of the wedding, or the day the wedding was supposed to be, Melissa showed up at my place as if nothing had happened. She said her family was having a BBQ get-together and asked me if I wanted to come.
Everything in my head screamed no. I no longer trusted her after what she did that night, and I never wanted to see her again. Looking at her made me feel sick. She had told me the girl knew where Seth was. She had told me the girl was in on it and Seth’s life was in danger. She had told me there was a whole gang.
But there was no Seth and no “gang,” just a girl in an empty house. And then the blood, so much blood…
As the days went by, I had began to wonder and then to suspect what exactly I had helped Melissa do. Her entire story had more holes than a cheesecloth. The fact was I barely knew her. She was a mystery to me, and it had been that way from the beginning.
I hated her and was beginning to be legitimately afraid of her. But something in my heart still belonged to her.
Anyway, I was wildly curious to meet her family.
*
Melissa’s creepy cousin was there at the BBQ. In broad daylight, surrounded by adoring nieces and nephews, he didn’t seem so bad, but I reminded myself neither did Ted Bundy.
Everything was going fine until Melissa started talking about Seth and how the police hadn’t done jack shit. To be honest, I was surprised nobody had mentioned it until then. Melissa was working herself up into a real rage and everybody was like they didn’t know where to look. Some stared at their phones, a few others left, and her creepy cousin looked pissed. It was a weird scene.
It was only Melissa’s Mom who reacted in a way that made any sense at all. She put her arms around Melissa and told her it was alright. But this was apparently the wrong thing to do because Melissa started screaming for them to leave her alone and ran out of the house. Her mom was like oh my God and started going after her, but the creepy cousin stopped her and said, “Let her get it out of her system.”
“What if she gets in the car,” Melissa’s mom said.
“I have the key,” the cousin said, showing her the key.
“Thank God,” said her mom.
*
“It’s the wedding day,” Melissa’s mom said, “it’s like this every year.”
“Every year?” I said.
Last three years, her cousin said.
Her mom said, “It happened three years ago. We thought she would get better, come around.”
“So Seth’s been missing for three years?” I said.
Her mom stared at me while the others looked embarrassed and fidgety. “He’s not missing,” she said quietly.
Her cousin said, “Melissa was driving, there was an accident, and he died on impact.”
*
“They’re lying,” Melissa said. “They think I’m crazy, but they’re the crazy ones, and now you too.”
I had mentally prepared myself to ignore her stupid shit and I did. I asked her to take me to the police station so I can see the missing person report she said she had filed, and of course she refused. She said I had no right to ask her (which was true), and that she had thought I was different (appealing to my vanity), but actually I’m just like the rest of them (since vanity didn’t work let’s try guilt tripping).
I didn’t know what to think.
Or rather, I knew. For in my obsession with her, I had allowed myself to do evil.
And then as if she had read my mind, she said: “You better not tell anybody.”
And then she smiled.
And that was how I knew she was not crazy: she was evil.
“You did it on purpose,” I said.
“He was dead asleep when I put him in the car. It was too easy,” she said. “Even if they suspected anything, there wasn’t enough left of him to autopsy.”
“And the girl -“ I couldn’t continue.
But I already knew, and it was as if I had known all along.
“I told her to stay away from him,” Melissa said, “ Seth was mine. But she didn’t listen. You know how they say revenge is best served chilled? Do you think three years was a long enough time?”
She cackled, and then she came towards me. We were in her apartment. It was midnight and not a single soul knew I was there.
I said very casually I had no idea what she talking about, and that it was late and I was going home. She shoved me against the wall and slammed my head against it hard. She was so much stronger than she looked.
“You’re the only one who knows,” she said. “Don’t you see how that can be awkward for me?”
I thought of the girl that night, the look in her eyes when she saw Melissa, as if what she had feared all her life had come true at last. And in the end, she had seemed almost relieved. I now knew how that poor girl felt. It was exhausting being afraid all the time, looking over your shoulder, waiting for it to happen.
When Melissa hit me again, I didn’t resist and let myself slump against the wall. I knew what she was going to do to me. She had practically told me. I would have gotten into the car myself if only she had asked me, but she wasn’t the asking type. She just took. A life here, a life there, it was all the same to her. And the weird thing was, I still couldn’t hate her.
When she pushed the needle into my arm, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace. I was so tired after everything. The last thing I remember thinking about was my cat Ernie I had when I was a kid. Ernie died of renal failure at 18. He died in my arms, and had made biscuits on my sweater up until the end when the vet came to our home to do the euthanasia. My mom wanted to delay it another day because he seemed so content, but Ernie had lost so much weight my father said it wasn’t fair to him and the vet agreed with him. I remembered how peaceful Ernie looked afterwards, as if he was sleeping.
And now, I thought, I will go to be with him.
“It won’t hurt at all,” a woman’s voice said. “You won’t feel a thing.”
*
“She gave you just enough to make you sleep,” Melissa’s cousin told me.
“And you saved me,” I said, “again. How did you know what she was going to do?”
“I had been keeping an eye on her every night ever since you guys showed up at the diner, so it wasn’t so much luck as perseverance,” he said. “I knew she was planning something, I could tell.”
“So you suspected her?”
“All along. She killed my dog when we were kids, and I guess I saw through her unlike most people.”
He told me he had been inside her apartment that night, and had used his phone to record her admitting she killed Seth. He hadn’t expected her to try to kill me. But when she pushed the needle into my arm, he panicked and realized just as I did that she was fixing to do to me what she had done to Seth. He fought her to the ground and told her he would tell the police who killed Seth, and then he took me to the ER to make sure I was okay. When he went back to Melissa’s apartment to confront her again, the police were everywhere. Apparently, she had driven her car into the wall of the parking garage and had died on impact.
“What about me?” I said. “What I did?”
His face became blank and stupid looking. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Melissa’s gone, what more can justice ask for?”
“You saw through her, it’s funny you don’t see through me too,” I said.
“I see that she lied to you and you fell for her shit just like all the others like I’ve been seeing my whole life. She was my dog’s favorite human and she killed her for nothing.”
“But if I told you…”
But he didn’t want to hear it.
*
We’ve been married now for ten years and he still refuses to talk about it. I can feel him look at me sometimes, as if he was doubting his own eyes. One night he told me I looked like Melissa.
“You were in love with her weren’t you,” he said, just a little accusing.
“She was my best friend,” I said.
“No, I don’t mean in that way. I mean, you really loved her. Like a lesbian thing,” he said.
I laughed. “Did you just say ‘like a lesbian thing’? What’re you, fourteen years old?”
*
“Maybe,” I said, “you were a little in love with her yourself. You know, like an incest thing.”
He didn’t deny it.
“I mean, why else would you help her kill her fiance,” I said.
See, ten years is a long time, long enough for me to have finally figured out some things.
“And she was the only one who knew so you killed her,” I went on. “I bet if there had been anything left of her to do an autopsy on, they would have found some pretty interesting stuff.”
He didn’t say anything and neither did I.
And so we were even.