When I was in high school, I hung out with a rough crowd.
I never got too deep into the really bad aspects. Some of my former high school friends have gone through treatment, been in prison, been homeless, and a few are dead. I thought I belonged with them for a while, until I realized that they were trying to avoid their problems in a super bad, self-damaging, unhealthy way, and I wanted no part of that.
Anyway, while I was hanging out with those people, I met a young couple. The girl was fourteen, and the boy was sixteen. They had been dating for over a year and were trying to get pregnant. They figured that if she got pregnant, her parents would have to accept him, because they didn’t approve of him and had been trying to force her to stop seeing him pretty much the entire time they’d been dating. I didn’t like him much either, but he was part of the crowd I was hanging out with, so there he was. He seemed mostly harmless, if a little dopey and annoying.
But one day I wound up talking to him about something or other, and I brought up the likelihood of none of us dating the people we were with after high school. He said, no, Beth and I are together forever. And I said, but you guys are so young, how can you know that? And he said, with the straightest face I’ve ever seen, “If she ever broke up with me I would kill her.”
Here’s the thing: I was fifteen. I was young and awkward and stupid. I was troubled and struggling, and in with this bad crowd. But when he said that to me, I absolutely down in my soul believed him and knew he meant it with everything he was. He wasn’t angry about it, he wasn’t menacing, he wasn’t angsty or melodramatic, he was just so, so calm and serious. It scared the piss out of me.
When I tried to talk to his girlfriend about it, she laughed me off, and said he didn’t literally mean it, it was just his way of expressing his devotion and it didn’t mean anything. I pressed, and she got defensive, and I dropped it. What the hell else could I do? I knew damn well that bringing an adult into it would only make major drama and trouble, and I mistrusted adults with a depth that was hard to explain. So I dropped it, and just started distancing myself first from that couple, then from that crowd.
They did end up having a baby the following year. I ran into her out shopping and got to see the baby and get an update on how things were going. A few years later, they got married and had another baby. I ran into a former high school friend who was invited to the wedding and updated me on how they were doing. I had written most of that group off entirely and didn’t care much how any of them were doing, but the former friend saw me and got all excited and I was trying to be polite.
A few years later, the wife filed for divorce.
And he killed her.
And himself.
He tied her up and set the house on fire while the kids were at their grandparent’s house. He didn’t leave the house as it burned and died with her.
I heard about the house fire from several friends and co-workers, it was big news in our little town, especially the apparent murder-suicide aspect of it. I didn’t worry too much about it. No one I knew had been involved, right? Sad but fucked up story in the paper, moving on.
A random customer where I was working brought it up. I was just being sympathetic, she was telling me some of her life and how her favorite co-worker had been killed in that big fire, and now the cops were saying her husband did it and she loved and missed Beth so much. I didn’t say anything to the customer, but I thought, “Beth? Beth who?” When I got a chance, I looked the story up and noted the names.
Yep. Beth. Same girl. Same girl who blew me off when I tried to tell her that her boyfriend really meant it when he said he’d kill her if she ever left. Same girl who married that guy. And then tried to divorce him.
I feel really weird about it.
Not responsible. I tried to warn her. If I had gotten adults involved, he might have just killed her and himself sooner. I did what I could, and that was all I could do. Hell, if she’d believed me and tried to get out when I said something, he probably would have killed her then. How much more fucked up would I feel?
The worst is remembering him saying it and knowing in my soul that he was really going to do it. That it wasn’t melodrama or teen angst. And knowing that from now on, when people really bare their soul to me, I will be able to see it.
Part of me is glad. I’ve gotten away from some creepy people before anything terrible happened to me because of that ability to glimpse when true blackness is peeking out.
Part of me wishes I’d had no part of it. But I also know that our experiences make us who we are, and that there was nothing I could really have done to not have that experience. I only learned not to hang around people like that because I did at one time. I only learned how to see real danger in people because I really saw it, and sad to say, I saw people make empty threats and quickly picked up the difference.
In the end, I guess it’s just one of those things we don’t get to choose. We just have to deal with it.
I don’t think about it that often, if this sounds like I’m really hung up on the whole thing. Mostly just when I avoid someone creepy because I remember what an honest-to-god death threat looks like. And then I get all conflicted about the whole thing, remember that the past is what it is, and that I really couldn’t have done more, and it goes to sleep again.
Life is weird sometimes, and definitely not always comfortable.
