Gillian Flynn - Dark Places

Also by Gillian Flynn

SHARP OBJECTS

TO MY DASHING HUSBAND,
BRETT NOLAN

The Days were a clan that mighta lived long
But Ben Days head got screwed on wrong
That boy craved dark Satans power
So he killed his family in one nasty hour

Little Michelle he strangled in the night
Then chopped up Debby: a bloody sight
Mother Patty he saved for last
Blew off her head with a shotgun blast

Baby Libby somehow survived
But to live through that aint much a life

SCHOOLYARD RHYME, CIRCA 1985

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it. Its the Day blood. Somethings wrong with it. I was never a good little girl, and I got worse after the murders. Little Orphan Libby grew up sullen and boneless, shuffled around a group of lesser relativessecond cousins and great-aunts and friends of friendsstuck in a series of mobile homes or rotting ranch houses all across Kansas. Me going to school in my dead sisters hand-me-downs: Shirts with mustardy armpits. Pants with baggy bottoms, comically loose, held on with a raggedy belt cinched to the farthest hole. In class photos my hair was always crookedbarrettes hanging loosely from strands, as if they were airborne objects caught in the tanglesand I always had bulging pockets under my eyes, drunk-landlady eyes. Maybe a grudging curve of the lips where a smile should be. Maybe.

I was not a lovable child, and Id grown into a deeply unlovable adult. Draw a picture of my soul, and itd be a scribble with fangs.

IT WAS MISERABLE , wet-bone March and I was lying in bed thinking about killing myself, a hobby of mine. Indulgent afternoon daydreaming: A shotgun, my mouth, a bang and my head jerking once, twice, blood on the wall. Spatter, splatter. Did she want to be buried or cremated? people would ask. Who should come to the funeral? And no one would know. The people, whoever they were, would just look at each others shoes or shoulders until the silence settled in and then someone would put on a pot of coffee, briskly and with a fair amount of clatter. Coffee goes great with sudden death.

I pushed a foot out from under my sheets, but couldnt bring myself to connect it to the floor. I am, I guess, depressed. I guess Ive been depressed for about twenty-four years. I can feel a better version of me somewhere in therehidden behind a liver or attached to a bit of spleen within my stunted, childish bodya Libby thats telling me to get up, do something, grow up, move on. But the meanness usually wins out. My brother slaughtered my family when I was seven. My mom, two sisters, gone: bang bang, chop chop, choke choke. I didnt really have to do anything after that, nothing was expected.

I inherited $321,374 when I turned eighteen, the result of all those well-wishers whod read about my sad story, do-gooders whose hearts had gone out to me. Whenever I hear that phrase, and I hear it a lot, I picture juicy doodle-hearts, complete with bird-wings, flapping toward one of my many crap-ass childhood homes, my little-girl self at the window, waving and grabbing each bright heart, green cash sprinkling down on me, thanks, thanks a ton! When I was still a kid, the donations were placed in a conservatively managed bank account, which, back in the day, saw a jump about every threefour years, when some magazine or news station ran an update on me. Little Libbys Brand New Day: The Lone Survivor of the Prairie Massacre Turns a Bittersweet 10. (Me in scruffy pigtails on the possum-pissed lawn outside my Aunt Dianes trailer. Dianes thick tree-calves, exposed by a rare skirt, planted in the yellow grass behind me.) Brave Baby Days Sweet 16! (Me, still miniature, my face aglow with birthday candles, my shirt too tight over breasts that had gone D-cup that year, comic-book sized on my tiny frame, ridiculous, porny.)

Id lived off that cash for more than thirteen years, but it was almost gone. I had a meeting that afternoon to determine exactly how gone. Once a year the man who managed the money, an unblinking, pink-cheeked banker named Jim Jeffreys, insisted on taking me to lunch, a checkup, he called it. Wed eat something in the twenty-dollar range and talk about my lifehed known me since I was this-high, after all, heheh. As for me, I knew almost nothing about Jim Jeffreys, and never asked, viewing the appointments always from the same kids-eye view: Be polite, but barely, and get it over with. Single-word answers, tired sighs. (The one thing I suspected about Jim Jeffreys was that he must be Christian, churchyhe had the patience and optimism of someone who thought Jesus was watching.) I wasnt due for a checkup for another eight or nine months, but Jim Jeffreys had nagged, leaving phone messages in a serious, hushed voice, saying hed done all he could to extend the life of the fund, but it was time to think about next steps.

And here again came the meanness: I immediately thought about that other little tabloid girl, Jamie Something, whod lost her family the same year1985. Shed had part of her face burned off in a fire her dad set that killed everyone else in her family. Any time I hit the ATM, I think of that Jamie girl, and how if she hadnt stolen my thunder, Id have twice as much money. That Jamie Whatever was out at some mall with my cash, buying fancy handbags and jewelry and buttery department-store makeup to smooth onto her shiny, scarred face. Which was a horrible thing to think, of course. I at least knew that.

Finally, finally, finally I pulled myself out of bed with a stage-effect groan and wandered to the front of my house. I rent a small brick bungalow within a loop of other small brick bungalows, all of which squat on a massive bluff overlooking the former stockyards of Kansas City. Kansas City, Missouri, not Kansas City, Kansas. Theres a difference.

My neighborhood doesnt even have a name, its so forgotten. Its called Over There That Way. A weird, subprime area, full of dead ends and dog crap. The other bungalows are packed with old people whove lived in them since they were built. The old people sit, gray and pudding-like, behind screen windows, peering out at all hours. Sometimes they walk to their cars on careful elderly tiptoes that make me feel guilty, like I should go help. But they wouldnt like that. They are not friendly old peoplethey are tight-lipped, pissed-off old people who do not appreciate me being their neighbor, this new person. The whole area hums with their disapproval. So theres the noise of their disdain and theres the skinny red dog two doors down who barks all day and howls all night, the constant background noise you dont realize is driving you crazy until it stops, just a few blessed moments, and then starts up again. The neighborhoods only cheerful sound I usually sleep through: the morning coos of toddlers. A troop of them, round-faced and multilayered, walk to some daycare hidden even farther in the rats nest of streets behind me, each clutching a section of a long piece of rope trailed by a grown-up. They march, penguin-style, past my house every morning, but I have not once seen them return. For all I know, they troddle around the entire world and return in time to pass my window again in the morning. Whatever the story, I am attached to them. There are three girls and a boy, all with a fondness for bright red jacketsand when I dont see them, when I oversleep, I actually feel blue. Bluer. Thatd be the word my mom would use, not something as dramatic as