The Noose Ance

When I was 12 years old, I bullied a girl into sucking face with me. It was after school on a Tuesday when I saw her walking near the bike racks. While trying to untangle her distinguished pink Schwinn from the sea of black and blue ones, she cut her hand open.

"Can I help you?" I said.

"No, thanks." "I'm good," she replied.

"You're bleeding. That can't be good. Here let me take your hand." And I cupped her hand in mine and I felt her blood seeping into the fissures of my palms. It was cold and wet and relentless. But there was something comforting about all of this.

"You're hurting me," she said.

I was daydreaming. Here was this beautiful girl and she was holding hand while we walked toward the infirmary. After all, this is the closest I had ever come to a girl.

"You're hurting me!" she yelled. And I snapped out of it.

"I'm sorry. I didn't realize--"

She pulled away from me and as she turned to walk away, a wave of confidence came over me and I grabbed her hand back and pulled her into me--kissing her long and hard--until she took her good hand and poked my eye out.

So then I took pocket knife and cut my own hand open. And I took her hand and made her push it into mine. I pushed it and pushed it until our blood was enmeshed and I had broken two of her fingers. She sat in the field behind the school and cried. And that is the moment I decided I hated her.

So I dragged her by her long blonde hair to the back end of the field and I strung her up in the tree. I watched her take her final breath, and I watched her lips turn blue, and suddenly, just as she shut her eyes for the last time, she held her palms up--and they were sheet white with nothing to show for it.