What Happened At Laura's

For weeks the house at 4 Oak Drive had been the recipient of strange occurrences that its three occupants were too busy to notice. Cold drafts, electronic malfunctions, and continuous bouquets of flowers on its doorstep. Flowers like the ones you send your mom for mother’s day when you’re away at college. Flowers with no return address. They all came with cards- the forget-me-nots and lilies and hyacinths. The cards all said For Laura. The Friday that this story takes place Laura already had a perfected routine before heading off to meet the bus at the corner of her manicured street with Adalene, her French exchange student. She reached into the bouquet for the note, instantly crushing it in her small fist. The flowers then met their end as she threw them into the green bin standing at the corner of her driveway. No fanfare. No curiosity. Laura had more important things to worry about with her teen brain.

 

The day proceeded with nothing indicative of the excitement that would ensue that night. Laura went to class. Laura ate. Laura had a quick orgasm in the back of her boyfriend’s car before he drove her home. Laura dutifully made a quick snack for herself and Adalene. Nothing out of the ordinary. That is, until she saw that she had mistakenly taken her boyfriend’s phone into her bag instead of her own. She had just gotten into the phone to text herself (their password was, after all, their anniversary as any loving boyfriend’s password should be) and found herself intrigued by a separate message thread. It’s important to note here that Laura was by no means the jealous type. All of her best friends were guys so she knew the annoyance of constantly being hounded by prodding questions. Sandra was the name of the girl responsible for sending Phillipo continuous strings of hearts. No matter, Laura thought, girls have a tendency to overuse emojis. Still she scrolled. The naked picture she found higher up on the thread left less to the imagination. Smug half-smile and hair over tits.

 

The next part of this story does not need to be said in explicit terms. Girl calls boy. Girl and boy argue with words and animal screams. Girl paces around her room. Lamp falls to the ground leaving glass carnage. Girl and boy are no longer a We.

 

Laura never considered herself ‘like other girls’ until she started reading feminist magazines and realized that this term was derogatory towards women. She then started using actual adjectives to describe herself: independent, loud, creative, realist. Sappy and romantic did not make it unto the list. That’s why, despite her break up, she decided to tie her hair up, wipe the remnants of angry tears out of her eyes ,and do her homework. She was, however, interrupted by Adalene. Adalene did not as of yet know any English so, in broken half-French, Laura had to explain to her what her (now ex-) boyfriend had done. It ended with her showing this Sandra girl to Adalene who involved her in a bony hug. After a few minutes of this embrace Adalene left Laura’s room with a Tout ira bien bientot ma amie. Laura was grateful to be alone. She sat down in front of her laptop, determined to get her homework done before her mom decided to come home and make her and Adalene watch bad T.V. She considered this helping Adalene learn about ‘American Culture.’ Laura thought this could only be contributing to the French’s already dismal opinion of Americans.

 

By six pm she’d finished the majority of her work. The only thing she had left to do was write a report about the Kalahari desert for her World Culture class. She diligently opened her textbook and began typing. Darkness had already plastered its presence across the outside of her window. The lamp she had helped her mom set up in the backyard the previous weekend wasn’t turning on. She decided to go check out the problem when she was done with her godforsaken paper.

 

She couldn’t focus and Adalene wasn’t helping by playing Kanye in the next room. The hours went by, though, with her mother nowhere in sight. Sometime after nine Laura received a brief message,
“late night. blunt object wedged deep into intestine. horrible clean up.” It needs to be said that Laura’s mom was a coroner. Just as well. Laura dragged herself out of the semi-slouched position she had assumed in her chair and sauntered downstairs, aiming to de-freeze one of the pizzas her mom bought for occasions such as this. However, just as she was taking the pie out of its place on the top shelf of the freezer a moment of motion caught Laura’s eye. It was coming from outside. If only the damn light she’d installed had work, she would have been able to see what was going on.

 

Laura took a flashlight out of a drawer. It was properly those damn raccoons again, getting ready to invade their flowerbed, digging up the plants that Laura and her mother planted the previous summer. No light to scare them off. She turned on the flashlight just as she stepped out the backdoor, scanning her yard for any sign of the creatures. There was only a faint beam of light coming out of the end of the flashlight so when Laura saw something unusual she had to walk closer in order to discern what it was.

Phillipo’s body. It was Phillipo’s body on her tire swing. Her now broken tire swinging, hanging limply from one chain as the other one snaked across the ground. Phillipo’s body was draped across the rubber. What Laura had seen were the souls of his feet. Moving closer (as a coroner’s daughter it goes without saying that Laura wasn’t squeamish) she could see Phillipo’s bloodless face, eyes open like two blue marbles. Oddly glassy. Next to him, written in what Laura could only assume was his blood, was a single sentence: He was not good enough for you. There was also a rose, lying underneath the words as if to underline them. It was already starting to lose its petals.