#01052001

cal comes up with the idea, proposing it as a joke. him and andre are laying on opposite sides of cal’s twin bed; cal is playing with his butterfly knife while andre reads through a comic book.

“what would happen if i cut you?”

“don’t you do enough of that to your own hand when you’re playing around with that dumb thing?”

cal ignores the teasing and scoots toward andre. he takes the book out of the older boy’s hands and throws it across the room. the mattress dips as cal straddles andre and pulls up andre’s shirt.

“dude, what the fuck are you doing?”

cal doesn’t respond. he opens his knife and lightly traces it over andre’s abdomen in the shape of a C. andre shuts up when he realizes what cal is doing.

cal looks to andre, trying to find something in his eyes that he could take as permission to do this, but andre is staring at the knife on his stomach.

cal presses down harder, once again tracing his initial onto andre’s skin. this time he draws blood. he hears andre hiss but ultimately ignores it.

he was terrified of holding guns, let alone firing them. when he, his father, and his brother were in their shooting houses, andre would constantly plug his ears with his fingers.

of course, his brother bullied him for it. why wasn’t he being manly? why was he afraid? why was he different?

andre got his first kill in the fall of his eighth grade year. it was a buck that was almost as tall as him. he watched the blood flow out onto the dry and crunchy leaves, and he saw it twitch when he went to go collect it.

andre almost threw up, but then he remembered the words he’d heard all his life: ‘man up,’ ‘sissy,’ ‘faggot.’ he swallowed and fell in line after his father, getting closer to the deer.

older andre would say that he has always been evil, that he was just born that way, but young andre knows that everything changed the moment he made eye contact with the deer he had shot. he felt powerful. he felt strong, like a man. once his heart calmed and his stomach stilled, he was in love with his actions.

they're fifteen when it happens, lazily slouched on the gabriel family's couch. no one is home other than the two boys; cal's parents had left a while ago. they're watching some old movie on the tv.

cal is picking at his fingernails and staring at the wall, but andre is fully enamoured with the movie. when cal looks back to the screen, the two main characters are kissing.

"ew, dude," he says jokingly and glances over at andre.

andre isn't laughing. he's still transfixed on the television.

cal kicks him, cracking a sly smile, and giggles as andre jumps, clearly having forgotten that cal was there in the first place.

"have you ever wondered," andre said, "what it's like to kiss someone?"

now he's fully looking at cal, searching for something deep within his blue eyes.

cal watches him intently before responding. "i mean, sure... why do you ask?"

andre sits up fully and leans toward cal; the blond boy mirrors this action. andre doesn't respond to cal's question. he honestly doesn't feel like he needs to. he's inches away from cal's face and starts slowly moving in.

their top lips graze each other before a yell rings through the house.

"cal! andre! we're home!"

both of the boys groan. cal's parents were back from wherever they had gone. andre isn't sure if cal's upset because he doesn't want to see his parents or because he wasn't able to finish what they started.

the kriegman household is quiet. chris is sitting in their living room, and mr and mrs kriegman are silently sitting at their dinner table. no one wants to speak. all of them are staring into space, thinking thoughts no one should ever have to worry about. could i have stopped this? did i cause this? is this all my fault?

the police were around until about an hour ago, taking pictures of andre’s room and grabbing his belongings for evidence. they asked the family to come in for questioning the following day, deciding to leave them alone for the night to process everything. i mean, andre did kill 12 people, but he’s still someone’s son, cousin, and brother.

andre’s brother has called a couple times. he saw the shooting on the news and wondered if andre was okay. his parents told him the devastating news that andre died and killed so many others. he was going to come down in a couple days when he could get off of work.

the gabriel household is loud. cal’s siblings are running around, playing with dolls, and occasionally sitting in front of the tv to watch a movie. their parents had to put in a dvd because every cable channel was showing cal’s face on the tv.

cal’s parents are discussing quietly in the kitchen. they told cal’s siblings that he was just staying at andre’s place and wouldn’t be back for a while. they didn’t have the heart to tell them that he was dead. they could barely look at him. all they saw when they looked at the kids was cal’s face; they all shared the same features.