The knife slides across the Camry’s passenger seat, and I grab it just before it falls in the space between the seat and the door. I’m lucky it doesn’t cut me, I guess. The tires thump against the curb and I pull the wheel, weaving the car back onto the road.
My hand is back on the wheel like they taught in driver’s ed, a white-knuckle grip at 10, a half-grip on a knife and the wheel at 2. Light from passing streetlights flashes off the knife and there’s no hiding it, even in the dark of night. Doesn’t matter, soon everyone will see it, anyways.
With the radio off the car engine is louder than a jet, but I’m a little edgy tonight and it’s made my hearing more sensitive than normal. The car, the knife, would draw attention if there were anyone around. The streets are typical sleepy midwestern suburbs, a ghost town past 9 p.m. It’s almost like something wants me to do this, like the opportunity was created just for me. I don’t want to do it, but in some perverse way, the plan is all I have left.
I set the knife down, laid tip first in the cup holder. It wasn’t the biggest knife in our kitchen, but it was the sharpest. I knew from experience.
The Camry rounds the corner and makes another pass down South Mountain Drive. His house appears and my heart pumps furiously, my face reddens. I’ve been here dozens of times tonight; my reaction never changes. This time though, her car sits out front where mine used to, and I park behind it. I check my phone with my left hand, take the knife again with my right.
ugly slut
stupid bitch u think ur to good to msg back fuck u worthless cunt
kill y-
I swipe them away and flip on ‘do not disturb’. It’s mostly the keyboard warrior fucks from school anyways. They wouldn’t get off on it so much if they knew it didn’t get to me like it used to. Last summer taught me new numbers, new socials, blocking, none of it really stops anything. They always find me, so I stopped fighting back, their static in my ear like a catchy song I can’t get rid of. The phone slips back into my pocket.
My eyes trace his house, playing connect-the-dots with the darkened windows, from the upstairs down to his room in the half-basement. His room light is off, the walls lit by the glow of his computer screen, but the curtains are open and the window’s cracked open just enough. I know he’s snuck out with her, same way he did with me.
A monster of a memory slides in for a moment – a blended form of a dozen summer nights in the Camry, watching him climb from the darkened window, smiling at me as we climbed into the backseat to make out. I force it out of my head, drag it out like a dog after its pissed on the carpet, but it leaves a stain in me.
I get out of the Camry and walk to her car, knife in hand, peering into the back windows, but there’s no one in there. He’s taken her to his special spot.
The knife slides into my hoodie pocket and I follow the sidewalk to the spot where it ends. Lumpy clumps of grass grow at the base of a Sidewalk Closed sign that’s been there since we were together. Past the sidewalk’s end the suburb dissipates, opens to a field where the back soccer pitch of a Christian grade school lies, and there in the pitch the moon reveals dark figures on a blanket.
Getting closer now, the past year streaming through my mind, each memory melting into the next. Anger and sadness and terror build in me.
That video, that fucking video, follows me everywhere.
It made my life what it is now. After he spread that, everyone thought they knew exactly what I was, and they glorified him for it. Who would believe I was still a virgin – that I shoved him off me in that dirty field – and he used the photos and videos from our year together to create that awful, awful video with some AI generative bullshit.
High schoolers don’t want truth, they want rumors and gossip and lies, they eat that shit up. They want to find out about you – real or not, doesn’t matter – to keep the spotlight off themselves.
Well, the spotlight’s been on me for too long now, probably be there for the rest of my life. I’ll gladly share it with him, with her too, even. The knife will make sure of that.
Author’s Note: This flash fiction was inspired by Molly Parden’s excellent cover of Found Out About You (originally by the Gin Blossoms). I strongly recommend listening to her live version – either during your read or after. Listen here: