Cunt with a Rifle

short story

The thousand calorie ice cream tub is melting in the passenger seat, and I glance at the grocery bag it’s in noting its condensation collection as I slowly drive into my best friend’s neighborhood in north Tustin. I enter the block and along the curb are 5 or so cop cars, parked. Quiet. I see no cops. My friends are inside said best friend’s house already, this I know.

Immediately pulling against the curb across the street from her house, just after passing the police cars, I put the car in park and there’s a stillness as I wonder what’s wrong here. It’s already dark, it was around 7 p.m in April. I looked at the sky and it wasn't yet black but light blue fading into purple, stars and blackness increasing the further you angled your head upwards. The light coming down on the neighborhood was soft and subtle, mixing evenly with the yellow-tinted streetlight ambience. The only thing on the curb other than cop cars were trash cans. The cop cars combined with the silence made me uneasy.

Before a minute passes, my phone rings. It’s Jennifer or Angelica, the thin, curly-haired brunette anorexic or the heavier and blonde failure of an anorexic, which girl it was that was calling I can’t remember. Both were beautiful. Despite our closeness they have the same dismissive, annoyed disposition about each other that blends them together in my mind when recalling memories like phone calls. Only their faces differentiate them in my mind. I pick up, say, “I’m here,” and immediately either from Jennifer’s or her own phone, Angelica’s perpetually sarcastic, fried, smitten, disgustingly seductive teenage girl voice is yelling from my speaker phone, “Come inside! Come inside!”

“What’s happening?” I plea, displaying all feelings of panic that were building up inside of me in the car.

“Oh my god, just come inside, we’ll tell you when you get in here.”

“Why can’t you tell me now?”

“Just get inside.”

“Okay,” I said.

I hang up, shove my phone in my pocket, grab the handles of the grocery bag with the ice cream, open the door of my car and scamper across the asphalt to the front of her house. The neighborhood is an eerie haven of silence in the busy, dirty yet clean, poor yet rich city of Tustin. I open the white archway gate, walk up the dusty brick steps, and open the door. As I step through the door and close it behind me, the two girls are running down the stairs.

“What type of ice cream did you get?”

“Oreo. Why are there cop cars outside?”

With the grocery bag still in hand, I follow them back up the stairs of the fairly large mid-century modern house and into the bedroom of Jennifer’s older brother, Will. He wasn’t there that night, he was skinny and gay and lean and had black hair. His room was plain, minus a large painting with bright orange and blue graphics of figures and shapes, a tennis racket on the wall, and a local sports magazine he made the cover of through his tennis playing. He looked good in the picture, mid-swing, legs crossed like a newborn gazelle trying to walk.

I always had had the hots for Will, ever since I met Jennifer’s family, but he was a junior or senior in high school and I was 13, in seventh grade, when I met him. I was 15 this night, and at the time he wasn’t home because he was probably out at a bar or a party. I never would’ve even thought twice about that actually happening. I think he found me annoying, anyway. Both of Jennifer’s brothers did, Sid more so. I’m beautiful, but skinny and white and acne-prone, and her brothers always saw me in my pajamas and t-shirts and ratty jeans. The oldest brother Sid called me a crackhead once behind my back. I did the least drugs out of the three of us girls. Funny how things work that way. I don’t think Jennifer ever defended me to them.

Will’s window had a perfect view of the street outside. The blinds were halfway down, angled so we could see through them, the lights were off. Jennifer and Angelica sat me down in the darkness and began recounting their understanding of the cop car situation. It was actually really boring.

As they put it, they were sat on the concrete hanging out in between the driveway and the sidewalk while it was a bit lighter out before I arrived, and a lady cop walked up to them and asked them if they could go inside. The neighborhood was on a very temporary Marshall law because an investigation was going on two or three houses down the street from Jennifer’s. Drugs, murder, robbery, whatever it was I can’t remember to this day. Nothing came of it.

As they tried to re-enter the house after being told to go inside, Jennifer’s older brother Sid who was inside had already gotten word of what was going on and locked them out. He locked his younger sister and her best friend out of the house. She told me that when they came back in through the backyard gate, they went upstairs to see what he was doing and he had locked himself in his room with his rifle. His real rifle. Like an ak-47 or something. I remember thinking that was so unbelievably fucked up. I expressed my shock and moved on, after all they were fine.

I went downstairs to grab spoons and came back up so we could pig out on the soft ice cream. Jennifer didn’t eat any. Angelica and I attacked it like savages. We couldn’t scrounge up any alcohol that night, so we just sat with our ice cream in front of Will’s window, watching the street.

“You know, I think I’m going to stop buying flavored lipgloss. It’s not good for you.” Angelica announced.

“Why?” Jennifer asked.

“When it tastes good, I lick it off of my lips too much.”

At some point or other a K-9 and its police officer surveyed the house of interest with flashlights, and didn't come back out for about an hour. Their partners searched outside in the front, continued on to the back. We couldn't put our finger on what they were looking for. The owners of the house and its inhabitants were gone.

Sid sucks. I hate Sid.