Lou

A story told in retrospect, a woman remembers the tragic events of her youth and the young girl who held unusual power over everyone.

I write this now as an adult, looking back on a childhood I am just beginning to see clearly. Nothing is perfect. Growing up is terrible no matter your social status, creed, color, or gender. From the time you are born you are a human being, complete and almost mystical in your existence. You are from birth, a miraculous anomaly of evolutionary theory. As your bones grow, your skin stretches and your soul works to fit the empty spaces. Sometimes, the soul goes missing or is replaced with something darker, a deeper emptiness inside the empty spaces. It is the cancer of aging; a misfiring of destiny, an accidental misplacement of what you were meant to be and instead you end up, not from any conscious decision on your part, a disease. Some children grow up wrong.

The first time I ever met her I was four years old and entering pre-school. I don’t remember the details of that first day or how I behaved when my mother dropped me off in the classroom or even what I was like back then, but I have been told. Children so often forget their pasts, as I did, perhaps because the breaking of soul to fit the growing body is too painful, too consequential to carry into adulthood. Time, in any case, has a way of replacing the pain of the past with remedial lies. And yet, swimming beneath every un-remembered memory there is a feeling of what was, what it was like, a kind of scent or after-flavor of the moment which decides how you forever after feel. The scent beneath this memory feels…like a beginning, having two possible endings.

My mother used to tell me how confident I was back then, how sure and driven and fearless I used to be. This is always said with a definite air of disappointment. A stinging in her eyes makes her look at me with a frowning mouth; her wrinkles deepen considerably. I know what that means; it means I make her regret getting older. It means she regrets me getting older, and changing. If only she knew how much I had changed, I think, not quite knowing why it comes directly to mind. When I think about that day and the half remembered goodbye, my pushing her away to run towards the dark girl with the beautiful brown eyes, the one who would become my friend and break my heart, I remember that regret and feel it myself.  

Her name was Louisa, and I called her Lou for short, feeling important enough to give her a name no one else could use. Of course everyone else did use it, but in my mind it was my name which was all that mattered. She was dark skinned but not brown, with slick black hair that hung thickly down to her shoulders and equally dark brown eyes which could shatter your heart where you stood, or embrace you as an equal atop the pinnacle of her self-made hierarchy. It took all of one’s strength to say no to her. She was immediately named the power-center of our small class and would remain so the rest of our days. I remember, will always remember, the importance I felt at simply being her right hand, a feat I earned through no other reason than my immediate and utter devotion.

My father would tell me repeatedly to stay away from her. For some reason he was the only one who recognized the danger in her, even before things turned. “She’s all drama,” he’d say and I’d shrug, not really caring to ask what drama meant. “She’s like a roller coaster, always violent ups and downs, and she will never be pleased.” I remember that conversation, even though I was only five, and wonder now how he knew.

For some reason I think that I believed being so close to Lou would make me popular. And now, as an adult, physically mature in a way I never could have been as a child, simper and feel shame at the foolishness of the child that I was. You should have known better, I tell myself, refusing to look into the mirror for fear that I should see those stupid, blue eyes so full of hope. Or even still, the bitterness of afterward. I have changed so much, even my eyes changed color �" because of what happened, I think.

We went to a small school in a small town surrounded by other small towns surrounded by crops. All we knew, any of us children, was the compact social pyramid we created in that place. It was as if nothing existed outside of that, our world stopped at the edge of the corn, our decisions went as far as Lou’s tolerance, going no farther than the smirk that killed you or made you one of hers.

I fear, now, that I am putting too much emphasis on Lou’s importance. I fear that you, whoever you may be, might get the wrong idea about our circle. When I say that Lou was the pinnacle of our small group of twenty-seven children in a grain-fed town in the Midwest, I mean she was an exotic beauty with a biting tongue and the ultimate power to make or break your heart. Even as a child, as only children can recognize the un-real within the real, we recognized her as the witch that she was and gave her the power she ultimately used to destroy us.

Lou wore it as a badge of honor that people thought she was a witch, a conjurer, a manipulator. She was able to get people to do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, and took no responsibility in the consequences. It couldn’t be expected of her.

Old people in that small town looked at her sideways, or down the bridge of their noses, slyly casting furrowed brows and narrowed eyes at her strange and dark beauty. They who had lived and seen and knew, who made even our teachers and parents seem as children, could not consciously define her, confine her. They only recognized, from the opposite side of age, that emptiness of soul that refused to mature. She was only twelve by that time but many things had happened in that small parochial community which could only be her doing. Her hands were already red.

And still I followed her. You fool, I think to myself. You insufferable, naïve fool for not seeing how you were used. How you were led on with no possibility of being accepted, of being wanted, of being loved. All I wanted was to be loved by her. It was all that I craved, all that I desired. I had not, as of yet, grown a conscience, or an independent mind, which was why it pains me so much in remembering. I know now, when it cannot do any earthly good to know, why I was so painfully unhappy as a child and why I grew up diseased, in the end.

I suppose it evened out, eventually. My pain, and hers.

We were twelve when our whole deranged friendship began to sour. Long had I called her my best friend, a title reserved for only the most worthy and one that was meant for life, in the shortsighted mind of a pre-teen at least. And long had I waited to hear her say the same; but I waited still, in pleased submission to stand by her side.

So here’s to the breathless devotion of youthful friendships, may you always doubt their best intentions, may you always sleep with one eye open.

Lou soon began to get bored by everyone, and with herself I suppose, which only meant that worse things were coming. She looked first to the ones furthest from her throne. Daniel Mack, whose father was a pig farmer on the edge of town, who always came to school smelling of hogs and sty-stew, who so obviously worshipped Lou from the depths of malodorous hopelessness, was the first to suffer. I never knew what she told him to do exactly, but it wouldn’t have taken much to get him to commit murder for her, and what happened wasn’t far off. He was found one brisk near winter night, almost trampled to death in one of his family’s pig stys. Some said he fell, his father, heartbroken and confused, said his son knew better. Daniel never came back to school.

But Lou was only getting started. At first, no one ever suspected her. The teachers loved her almost as much as us kids. She was a straight A student from a wealthy family and a strange beauty for such a small town. They almost felt lucky they got to teach her, a rare gem. And certainly Daniel wouldn’t (couldn’t) say anything against her. What had happened to Daniel was, in everyone’s mind but one, a complete and tragic accident.

Next was Paris Thomason, who was the only one with any hope of becoming Lou’s competition in both beauty and influence. She was, at birth I believe, among other lovely features, a full-tail diva and a sore loser. I suppose Lou would have seen her as a challenge to persuade, certainly she would have been more difficult than the rest, but that only made it more amusing, more distracting from the awful empty boredom.

I remember thinking more than once that Lou belonged in a large city. Perhaps things would have turned out better if she hadn’t lived where the silence had a sound and the hollowness of the world seemed all consuming. Even the endless corn seemed to surround her house with half-heard whispers in the wind, mocking her captivity. She certainly wasn’t meant for emptiness, for she was one to try and fill a void with whatever she could find even if that thing were wicked, especially then. Truly, the only thing to mock the empty with is emptiness.

Again, I do not know what was said between the two. I only remember standing back, trying to look indifferent and important, waiting for Lou to say we could leave after she had finished speaking with Paris. I played with my jagged, bitten fingernails, scratching my cuticles as I was told not to, and trying not to seem obvious at watching my friend talk to her enemy, as I saw Paris then. Looking back, I think she might have felt so hollow, as many of us were then, looking to fill the spaces in between with sophistication and power and beauty, however she could. Paris was one who craved the praise of others, and when she didn’t get it, she felt that emptiness most grotesquely. I understand now, and feel sorry.    

I wonder now if the ones who felt most empty were in the most danger of becoming diseased, of losing their souls to the death of childhood.

What happened to Paris was somehow worse than Daniel, because Paris was ultimately doing it for herself, to prove herself, and Daniel was doing it for Lou.

It was already deep into winter by this time and the snows had come heavily, forcing school to close for a whole week. While most of us kids were throwing snow balls into each other’s faces and making snow forts for hours, braving frostbite for the hope of a never-ending break from school, Paris was raped. Technically it was consensual, even though I didn’t know the difference back then, but it was prosecuted as statutory rape. Paris was only twelve; the man was thirty-five, with a wife and four children. I don’t know how she felt, or how Lou felt even though I saw her trademark smirk, carefully subdued, when the teacher told us what had happened (in greatly closeted terms), but I know that somewhere deep in my mind I caught the scent of something disgusting happening, something worse than the shock of both Daniel and Paris, something I was unable to recognize.

Around this time I began to distance myself from Lou, perhaps unconsciously at first. I began to grow a mind, of all things, and to see, even without wanting to, the dots connecting Paris and Daniel. My soul had started to stretch and began meeting the boundaries which were once empty. Reading became my favorite hobby, and instead of going to Lou’s house after school I would walk down to the park and read science fiction and fantasy novels, swinging softly by myself. I didn’t quite mind the quiet for the voices that filled my head had characters inside the novels; they existed even more to me than most other people. They were more real than unreal. They didn’t cheat at life, or at least they didn’t cheat me.

I was interrupted one afternoon whilst swinging, my head too fully immersed in the voices to hear her coming close. It had been days since we had last spent any time together and I suppose Lou had begun to feel ignored. By the time I saw her she had already slapped the book out of my hands and my head was rudely jerked out of another, nicer, world.

“What was that for?” I said more curtly than I had probably ever spoken to her before.

She arched a dark brow. I noticed that she had started plucking her eyebrows and felt a firefly of jealousy; my mom had recently told me I wasn’t old enough for that yet, even though mine seemed to grow out of control. Then Lou smiled.

“It was only in good fun, little bug.” Lou shrugged and leaned arms crossed against the swing set. “What do you want to read that stuff for anyway? You know that stuff is poison for your mind. It isn’t good for you.”

My mouth twisted to the side and I looked away so that I wouldn’t have to look at her. Poison that could ruin you didn’t come from books; it came from people like her. But I didn’t say that or anything at all. At that moment I was experiencing something completely new and altogether hard to scrutinize, sitting there with her staring at me and my beloved book in the dirt. I think it must have been hatred, my first taste, and even then I didn’t quite like it but there is sat in the center of my chest like a squat, warty, ugly toad. There was no dissolving it for it was necessary, and surprisingly, it completed an empty space in my chest which had longed for a name, and even then it only made it black. That black toad stayed.

Still she stood with her eyebrow raised (I think she wanted me to notice it) and smirking as if she knew she was the most wonderfully fascinating person in the world, as if she could do anything like make me hate her and still go along with whatever she said.  

I wanted to hate her, wanted to so badly that my skin shook. But the truth was that, despite everything, I loved her without knowing why. And I knew I meant nothing to her �" I was just a ragdoll, a toy she would use and toss away because it amused her and she knew I would come back. I always came back, sometimes in tears. I knew she hated me as I longed to hate her and that made it all the more difficult to leave.  

“You should come over tonight.” She said at last. “You haven’t come over for a while and I miss you, little bug.” She used that name again and I frowned. She knew I didn’t like it.

I didn’t say anything for a while and when I did I tried to use my mom as an excuse.

“Oh, let me ask your mom. She loves me. I bet she’ll let you come if I ask.” Lou winked and grabbed my hand, pulling me up from the seat. She pulled me away from my book on the ground, refusing to let me retrieve it. “Just leave it, you shouldn’t be reading it anyway,” she said. I pulled my hand from her grasp anyway, silently, and went back to get it. She waited with a surprised look on her face which melted into pleasure. So that’s how it is, is it? that look said. It’s about time. Still, I went to her house all the same, and that’s when my childhood became irreparably diseased.

Lou’s family lived in a large custom built home further out in the country between the sunflowers and the soy beans. Needless to say, she hated it without ever saying so. One could see it in her face when she looked at the barren fields which ended with the sun, a look in her eyes that I was only just beginning to see and nearly pitied. We would go straight through the beautifully furnished house that I had been a guest in since I was in pre-school, straight to her large bedroom in the back or to the basement. Usually we started with the bedroom where I would sit with my legs curled under me on the loveseat (she was the only kid I knew whose bedroom had living room furniture) and she would talk, telling me stories about people she knew but I didn’t. That particular day started out to be no different, though I sat rigidly on the couch, still angry with her and distantly angry at my mother for being so easily persuaded by Lou’s affected charm.

“Here, read this, little bug,” she tossed me a plain, blue notebook and swanned over to sit on her canopy bed, looking pleased.

I opened it, not quite sure what I was going to see, but not expecting what I found. Inside were names and dates. Some had entries longer than others, some were blank but for strange symbols that I didn’t understand. I looked up at Lou with a frown, but she only grinned. Her eyes were manic, dark and glassy. One of the entries, I saw quickly, had Daniel’s name written in bold letters. Beneath that she detailed what she had wanted him to do and what had happened to him, even including the way he looked when the pigs hoofed his throat, the strangled sounds he managed to croak and the dark new color he made mixing his blood with pig refuse. She had watched from the fence until she became bored and then left him there, cursing whatever small measure of life remained for him.

My face must have contorted into some new shape of disgust, fear, and loathing because she started to laugh, clapping her hands with deranged glee.

What was this? Was this some kind of grotesque joke twisted out of boredom and insanity? Or could this possibly be her disease?

How was it that her parents didn’t know what she wrote about? What she had done? This was the first time, as I read that devil’s book, that I began to see the world separate from Lou and I wanted no part of her. She had spoken of the poison of books but this was the only book I had ever read that ever damaged my soul, as long as I have lived. 

I couldn’t help but read on. It wasn’t in me, though, to read the many, looping lines under the name Paris. There were others, so many others that I felt the bitter, burning bile rise to the level of my throat and threaten to spill. Some had foreign names I had never heard before, some went to our school, others were adults who I had thought untouchable. One, I remember, ended with a family’s divorce, and included a particularly brutal description of the husband’s appetites; another was based on the blackmailing of one of their own teachers who, apparently, had done awful things to his son. There was no end to the notebook, no end to her plans, to what she had done, what now only I knew.

It was some kind of fairy tale, the kind where the kids’ stepmothers try and murder them in their sleep or the wicked witch burns a fire to cook the little brats while they scream. This notebook, these evils, would be my fire; she was the witch, setting me up to burn. But it wasn’t a fairy tale, these stories, the ones in the notebook had come true, and the wicked witch was cackling from her expensive, lace-canopied bed.

In pain and fury I tore pages from the book, wanting to rip the paper to shreds until not a single word could be rescued. I was crying, sobbing red-faced, and kneeling in a pile of confetti. I felt like the biggest failure, the dumbest and blindest soul that ever lived, for having ever loved her. Not only had I failed at making her a true friend, I realized in that moment that I had failed at being a good person, for not stopping her. In those few eternal moments I had grown so much older, I had learned forbidden knowledge which blackened my heart without my understanding.

Lou stopped me after a few pages, trying to feign displeasure. In truth, she was ecstatic that I had reacted so strongly. It was what she wanted all along, to show me how wrong I was about her, to see the look on my face when I finally realized what a complete fool I had been. Yet I could still see that she expected me to follow her in her twisted quest for happiness, or power. But there was no happiness in her; there never could be. She must have grown badly all her life, accumulating darkness until the empty in her chest consumed whatever soul she might have salvaged as an adult. As a toddler, she was a nightmare; as a young child, a witch; and at thirteen, the devil incarnate.

Lou held me by the arms with fingers of iron that felt as if they would burn through my shirt and clamp onto the very bone, never letting go. Still she chuckled, giggling as I struggled. I wouldn’t fight back, she knew, and why would I? In her mind she had won long ago, won a game only she played because only she knew the rules. She expected me to do the only thing I had ever done: submit.

But she didn’t know this version of me, the version that was betrayed, the version that saw into the abyss and feared, oh how I feared, the monster that was staring back at me. It made me desperate. Desperation often ends in suffering.

 Memory plays tricks on the sharpest of minds when remembering tragedy. For a moment I didn’t know what had happened, and even now there are black spots in my memory, but afterwards I saw blood oozing down Lou’s nose and lip. I suppose I must have struck her. She called me black things then, horrible words that I had never heard before but held the dripping tones of hatred. My head was gripped in those iron fingers and squeezed until I thought it would burst. I am sure that I screamed and wondered distantly if anyone would come, but now I suppose that Lou had planned it so that no one would be in the house. No one was ever here. Her nails, like teeth, dug into my temples until I felt blood trickle down my cheek. My hand lashed out and connected with her throat, pinching the smooth flesh around her trachea.

Everything degenerated from the moment I walked with her, hand in hand, out of that park. It all led up to me kneeling on her chest, my eyes glazed red, and my hands attached to her slowly crumpling throat. There was no stopping. I knew that once I released her my own life would be over. It was soon to be over anyway, only in this scenario I would remain breathing.

People in movies say that they will never forget when they see the light leave a person’s eyes, that moment when they truly die. Lou never had any light to speak of, she had nothing but shadows in her veins. But no matter how many memories time erases for me, I will never forget the gentle crumpling of her expression and the slowly disappearing energy which I assume is what those television murderers called a soul. What replaced it deepened the color of her eyes to death-black; an empty, pure void. The sound that, at the very last, escaped her crumpled trachea was somehow guttural, deep and even unto the last, menacing.

For a while I sat on the floor beside her body, her husk, and simply stared at the marks that began to appear on her brown throat. My own sobbing woke me from my trance and I looked over at the half shredded notebook lying near me on the floor. At that moment I was rather glad that she had stopped me from destroying the rest. They would find out what she had done.

Oh God, oh merciful God Almighty, what had I done?

Every night of my life I had prayed for the peace and safety of those I loved most, including Lou. Then, slumped on the floor next to the corpse of the most evil person I had ever called friend, I prayed for my own immortal soul. Even in that moment, I knew that even if God forgave me and I was eternally saved, I would spend the rest of my earthly life paying for what I had done. From that moment on, the stretched and tried child’s soul which had been through growing pains and struggled to fit into the spaces of my sinful flesh, I knew that I carried the irrevocable disease.

I know not when I left her side, or left the house, or how long I stayed sobbing on the floor. As I said before, trauma often gives us the mercy of erasing memories. Someone found me on the rural county road not far away, muttering to myself about being damned on earth, and took me home. No one supposed, at first, that I had anything to do with Lou’s death, regardless of the blood on my hands and face. It wasn’t possible that a child could have killed her friend, especially one as devoted as I had been. Afterwards was different. Afterwards I was no longer a child in anyone’s eyes; but nor was Lou, which seemed to be a doubled edged sword to me. I can’t but help remember that I once loved her, and then I see those eyes dark vacant with death and revisit what happened to me that day.

We all have a different story to tell. I know that now, even if I don’t want to know it. Each child grows differently, trying to stay within the set and approved pattern but more often than we choose to recognize, those patterns go terribly awry and new ones are cut from cloth much darker than intended. Each of our stories are formed from the peculiar, particular cancerous cells of our pasts, our experiences which ruined us, bettered us, birthed us into different people than we were before. I think we are several people at once, and we have to choose who to show on a daily basis who we want to be. But sometimes, when we aren’t careful paying attention to the adult, the child with an empty soul and a diseased mass within its chest flashes its face in the mirror, smiling that hideously, beautifully innocent smile which you know is a lie. When that happens, you remember that you are empty and that that child inside your face knows who you are better than the false adult. 

Reviews

[Amanda Best]

Wow. I'm so glad I read this.

[Marissa M.]

Thanks so much!