Free Revenge of a Not-So-Pretty Girl by Carolita Blythe

won’t see anything there on the floor. I’m hoping that the old lady has just been absentminded andforgotten to lock her door. I’m hoping she might be out running errands and buying some support panty hose and Geritol.
    I push the door open and slowly step inside. Once again, I find myself standing on the shiny wooden floor of the old lady’s hallway. Her shopping bag and all the stuff that was in it are still scattered about, and she’s still lying there on the kitchen floor, just as she was when we left her a day and a half ago. Only thing is, she’s not on her back anymore. She’s leaned up against her side, the legs of the table holding her in that position. So I guess she wasn’t dead then, but I’m sure she is now. I mean, what old person can survive on a hard kitchen floor like that? Then I get a thought. If she moved, then I didn’t really kill her. Maybe she tried to get up, but the blow to her head made her dizzy and she fell and hit her head again and that second blow was the one that did her in.
    I close the door behind me and take a couple of steps forward. Where I’m standing in the hall is dark, but the ceiling light is still on in the kitchen. And it’s making a little buzzing sound. I never noticed that when we were in there before, but it wasn’t as quiet then, what with Caroline huffing and puffing, and Gillian babbling to herself like an insane person, and my heart beating as loud as it was.
    The dishes Caroline threw down are still broken and spread across the floor. I’m kind of trying to avoid looking at the old lady, so I just stand there closing and opening my eyes. Maybe if I do it often enough, one time when I open them she won’t be there anymore. I’ll open them andI won’t be standing in the warm hallway listening to the steam coming up out of the radiator. Maybe I’ll be standing outside her front door and the knob won’t turn. I’ll hear a television blaring, and I can just head off to school, where my main worries will be that crazy religious studies Nazi, pretty and perfect Charlene Simpson flirting with yummy Curvy Miller, and me unveiling my new, unflattering hairdon’t.
    I try to take a few more steps forward, but it’s as if I’ve landed in quicksand and I’m being sucked under. The thing is, I realize I don’t really know if this old lady is dead. I mean, I think she is. She looks like she is. Her face is all ashy-looking and her eyes are closed and she’s just not moving. But it’s not like I have much experience with dead people. The only real dead person I’ve ever seen was my grandfather. They had an open casket and it creeped me out for an entire year. He didn’t even look like my granddad. He looked all waxy and fake, like the plastic fruit some people keep in a bowl on their dining room table.
    The old lady doesn’t look waxy from where I’m standing, so maybe she isn’t dead. I drop my book bag down on the floor and force my legs to move. I step on this one floorboard and it squeaks something awful. I don’t remember it making any noise the last time I was in here, but maybe we all managed not to step on it. Maybe we did step on it, but we were so caught up in our criminal caper we didn’t even notice. Anyway, I pass the bathroom and keep going. But I feel all hot and bothered, because if she is dead, I did it. I mean, even if she did try to get up and fell down again andhit her head a second time, technically, I’d still be responsible because I put her in the position to fall again in the first place.
    I never meant to kill anybody. I truly believe that taking some old person’s money isn’t the most horrible thing in the world, especially if they’ve got a lot of it. I mean, they probably won’t live long enough to use it all anyway, so why let it go to waste? But killing somebody, even if they are old, that’s horrible. And I know I cut Mass all the time, sitting in the stairwell of my building eating apple Now and Laters and flipping