Vandal

Kaitlynn was the most popular girl in her high school, but college hasn’t been as easy for her. Classes are hard and getting noticed is even harder. With her parents out of town, she invites a few people over and ends up getting drunk.

The next morning, she has a bad feeling that she did something horrible the night before. When she looks out the window and sees police visiting her neighbor, Jeff, she remembers what it was – she and two boys had vandalized Jeff’s Christmas display, the one he’d dedicated to the memory of his recently departed parents.

Kaitlynn is willing to do literally anything to fix the situation, and Jeff is so mad at her that the only thing of value she has to offer is her servitude.

See it on Amazon here.

Sample:

Chapter One

I woke in a panic. Something … wasn’t right. Something had happened.

Morning sun streamed through my bedroom windows, hurting my eyes. I pulled my covers over my head.

I felt like total crap. Like crap warmed over. Not only was I pretty sure that I was about to puke, I was almost positive that I already had at some point during the night, and I was parched. My head pounded.

“Oh God, Kaitlynn,” I told myself. “Never, ever drink again.”

Sage advice, but, yeah, like I’d listen to that.

I peeked at my clock. Barely nine a.m. Way too early to get up on a Sunday. But whatever dreadful thought had jolted me from my slumber had left me well and truly awake. I stumbled out of my bed and made my way to the kitchen, trying to remember exactly how I’d gotten to this state. Thanksgiving break. Parents away on vacation. I … invited friends over?

That was it.

Not friends, though. Barely acquaintances. Or an acquaintance and two friends of hers, strangers to me.

That girl from chem lab, Alyssa. And those two guys she hung around with. What were their names? Nick was one. And Dave? No, Davis.

I poured a tall glass of water and downed two ibuprofen.

A horrible thought struck me. Had I slept with one of them?

I was still dressed, though. Panties and a tank top, my standard sleeping attire. I wasn’t sore down there or anything.

No. A memory of having done something really, really bad last night tickled my brain, but it wasn’t having sex with one of those guys. In fact, I was pretty sure that I didn’t like either of them, that I definitely had no desire to even associate with either of them ever again. I was somehow positive that I’d give neither of them the time of day, much less access to my body.

I did have a bad taste in my mouth, though. I might have blown one of them. Hopefully just one of them.

Oh well, it wasn’t like I hadn’t done that on a first date before and probably would again. That didn’t rate too highly on the scale of bad behavior, though. Something else had happened.

God! It was going to bug me big time until I figured it out.

I made my way to the living room and sat on the sofa. The place wasn’t too trashed. Some beer cans and a vodka bottle – all empty, of course. Good. Clean up wouldn’t be too bad.

Wait. Clean up. That triggered a vague recollection.

It was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t quite remember.

Alyssa and the guys had gotten here around sunset, and the Christmas lights were on at Jeff’s house next door. Nick had said something insulting about the decorations. He’d seemed upset by them. Had been upset about them when he’d walked in the door. And I’d … defended Jeff?

Yeah. I’d told them about how his parents had been killed in a car crash last spring and how his dad was famous for the light displays. How I thought it was both sad and admirable that Jeff was carrying on the tradition in his dad’s memory. I think I actually got a little starry eyed.

The jerks had just laughed. I should have just kicked them out. It would have saved me the headache and throwing up.

Friends – if I could call three acquaintances whose main goal was to mooch alcohol off me that – were so hard to come by at the university, though. Living at home made a lot a financial sense, but it didn’t make it easy to connect with people on campus. And literally everyone I was tight with from high school had gone far away to college.

I’d been so desperate for company, any companionship at all, that I’d gladly offered to buy the booze if they came over.

God! Pathetic much?

It was all starting to come back to me. Really, they hadn’t been that horrible besides their derision of the lights. There’d been lots of laughing after the alcohol consumption had begun, and neither of the guys had gotten handsy or anything. In fact, they’d barely paid any attention to Alyssa and I at all.

So the taste in my mouth was probably just from the whole puking my guts up thing later. Charming.

As the evening went on, though, the boys had fixated more and more on Jeff’s house. Alyssa would go to the window and comment on how pretty the lights were. The boys would respond with snide comments. Alyssa would sit down, and we’d all drink some more. Then, eventually, someone would say something about the lights, which would spark more snide comments.

God! Even drunk, I’d found it all so tiresome. Alyssa must have felt the same because she called them losers who talked a good game but never did anything about it.

The boys decided that they’d just have to prove her wrong. They grabbed butcher knives from my kitchen.

Alyssa told them to stop. Said she’d be no part of it. She’d wasn’t going out into the cold night with some idiotic, testosterone filled creeps.

That had only gotten them madder, though, and they stormed from the house.

I followed them. To try to stop them?

Something had happened. Something bad.

My eyes widened. The lights. They’d … messed them up.

No. Not they. We. We’d messed them up. Vandalized them. Badly.

Oh God!

I rushed to the window. A cop car was parked in front of Jeff’s house, its red a blue lights flashing. Two uniformed officers were in the front yard, talking to him. Taking his statement.

The place was wrecked. Broken strings of light littered the ground. All the inflatables were visibly damaged. Some had been torn to shreds. Limbs that had literally by broken off the trees dangled from strands of green wire.

All Jeff’s hard work was destroyed.

For weeks, every time I drove into my driveway, I’d seen him out there working, either on a ladder or the roof or in a tree. I couldn’t even imagine what he must be feeling. The loss of his parents still had to be a fresh wound for him and then to have the display that he’d dedicated to his father’s memory destroyed like that?

God!

What kind of horrible people could do something like that? What kind of horrible person?

I didn’t like the answer. Not one bit.

A vandal.

Me.

 

Chapter Two

The view across the street was kind of like a train wreck. The guilt I felt for having been the cause of it made me want to pull my eyes away, to look at simply anything else. I couldn’t though.

Transfixed by the numb expression on Jeff’s face, I stared as the two officers surveyed the damage and took notes. As Jeff pulled a net of lights off a bush and demonstrated the places it had been sliced, tears stung my eye.

God! When those boys had grabbed the knives from my kitchen, I hadn’t said a thing. Neither had I raised a single objection as they tore strands from trees and stabbed the big balloons and cut extension cords asunder. Worse, it had taken almost no encouragement to get me to actively join in.

Huge Christmas balls had hung from the oak in the center of Jeff’s yard. They’d been torn down and smashed against the asphalt of his driveway. They lay there now, dented and mangled and ruined.

I’d done that.

What the hell had I been thinking? Being drunk was no excuse for my behavior.

I was, officially, the worst person on the entire planet.

It immediately occurred to me that I had to make amends somehow, and, really, the only appropriate action was for me to drag my sorry ass across the street and confess. For me to admit to a crime. And be arrested. And have to call my parents to come back from Florida to bail me out.

That would go over well.

So, in keeping with my newly acquired dishonorable title of worst person on the entire planet, I simply watched from the window until the officers left, not moving until it was too late to tell them what I’d done.

With the authorities that could arrest me out of the picture, I obviously decided that I should go to Jeff and throw myself on his mercy, right?

Wrong.

I did decide that I needed to go to his house, but my purpose was not to own up to my bad acts. Instead, I wanted to find out what he knew. I wanted to make sure that he didn’t suspect me, that the cops didn’t suspect me.

So, basically, I chose to do the exact opposite of the right thing. Instead of confessing to my crime, I resolved to take active steps to conceal my involvement.

Worst person on the entire planet indeed.

And, just when I thought I couldn’t possibly sink even lower, I made yet another horrendous judgment. One might think I’d shower, brush my teeth, put on a little bit of makeup, and dress in something conservative for my impending meeting with my victim.

I did the first couple of those things like a nice, normal, not horrible person – showering and brushing my teeth. When it came time for the makeup, though, I went all out, transforming my face from girl next door to vixen on the prowl.

Then I chose my outfit.

My thinking, more conscious than unconscious to add to my shame, was that the more his attention was on my body, the less it would be on my guilt. I put on a sleeveless shirt that was so short that it bared my belly button fully and so tight that the outline of my bra was clearly visible. For my bottom, I chose yoga pants that hugged my ass like a second skin – more like a first skin, really. The only difference between the contour of it and my actual body was the color, and it was so thin that even the outline of my tiny thong showed through.

God, I was so awful. Pond scum looked down on me.

I was so self absorbed that my first thought upon stepping out of my house was to bless the weather where I lived for being warm enough, even in late autumn, that my outfit wouldn’t seem unusual.

Jeff was still in his yard, picking up the detritus left over from my vandalism, unceremoniously banishing so many physical representations of his hard work and money and dedication to large black trash bags. I guess one point in my defense was that the sight did make me feel bad … but not bad enough to alter my morally abysmal course.

He and I had lived across the street from each other for our entire lives, and, being the same age, had played together when we were kids. Middle school separated us. Not physically, of course, but almost as completely. A natural divergence of interests did us in. He preferred shooting Nerf bullets at the other boys while I went through a phase where I was intensely interested in horse riding. By high school, we moved in entirely different circles.

That wasn’t to say that we weren’t friendly. It was just that we didn’t interact a lot. When I saw him outside as I was driving past, I’d wave, and he’d do the same. If we ran into each other at the store, we’d exchange pleasantries.

Truthfully, I didn’t think about him much one way or the other. He was neither super popular nor unpopular. He was smarter than most students but not one of the top brains. He didn’t play any sports, but it wasn’t like he was awkward or clumsy either. There was nothing wrong with his looks or his height or anything else, but neither was he drooled over. He was just … average. It was a plight I could empathize a lot more directly with since moving on to college.

I had no indication he thought much about me, either. I mean, he looked at me, of course. All the guys did. I was That Girl in high school. He wasn’t creepy about checking me out or anything, though, and he didn’t seem to go out of his way to come into contact with me.

Before his parents funeral, the two of us were pretty much strangers.

I remember so well the devastation reflected on his face throughout that time, though. God! I felt so bad for him. His entire world had come crashing down late one night at the hands of an imbecile who couldn’t be bothered to call a freaking Uber when he left the bar.

Jeff’s misery had affected me so much that I actually went to my mom for advice, something that, as a senior who Knew Everything, didn’t ever happen. She told me that I should make him a casserole. I objected, naturally. I mean, what could possibly be more stupid than baking some inedible concoction and bringing it to him in a covered glass dish? She told me that, in the south, that was just what was done.

Not having a better plan, that was what I did, fixing up the only casserole I could stomach, sweet potato with marshmallows, and I took it to his house one afternoon. He seemed stunned to see me at his door, but, then again, he seemed stunned by life in general at that point. I don’t remember what I said, but it was probably something really lame. I mean, what can one say in a situation like that? He seemed grateful for the food, though.

Less than a week later, he turned up at my door, bringing back the dish. I was impressed that a teenage boy in his situation would even think to do such a thing. I was even more impressed that he’d taken the time to run it through the dishwasher.

He sincerely thanked me and told me that my casserole was the only one he’d actually eaten. Most of the others had ended up in the trash. He also told me that it meant a lot to him that I’d taken the time to do that for him and to attend the funeral.

Tears glistened in his eyes as he told me, too.

I have to admit that my heart melted a little bit, and I gave him a huge, long hug. We ended up chatting for a while, maybe a half hour, and, when he left, it seemed like he was in a much better state of mind then when he’d rung my doorbell.

The interaction, my final one with him before today, made me feel really good about myself.

I was taken aback, therefore, when he glared at me with a look full of hate.

Never before had I been the target of such malice. If Jeff’s expression could have caused lightning to strike me out of the clear blue sky, I would have been fried to a crisp on the spot.

It was pure, unadulterated loathing.

I didn’t understand why. We were, after all, friendly. The last time we’d parted had been on good terms.

There was absolutely no reason for him to feel that way about me.

That wasn’t true, though.

He had more than ample reason to hate the perpetrator of the hideous wreckage of his property. There could be only one logical rationale for his directing that look at me.

He knew.

 

 

Chapter Three

I wanted more than anything to slink away, to retreat back within my house, but I held out a slim hope that I wasn’t really seeing what I thought. Maybe Jeff’s hatred was for the situation, not for me personally.

Tentatively, I crossed the street. His glare never wavered from me, never diminished. The unrelenting contempt bore down on me, and I hunched my shoulders under the onslaught.

“H-Hi,” I said.

“What do you want?”

“I … I … saw the police car? I … wondered what happened?”

Jeff snorted derisively. “I know why you’re here, Kaitlynn. You want to know if I told them it was you that did this.”

“Me?” I tried to act all shocked that he’d even suggest such a thing, but it was pointless. “How … how did you know?”

“I’m an AV geek. That’s like my main hobby. It’s what I intend to make my profession. You know that right?”

I wasn’t quite sure what AV was, and I certainly didn’t know that was what he was into or that he was apparently so into it. My utter incomprehension must have showed.

“God! You are so unbelievable!” He shouted. “We’ve been neighbors for eighteen years, and you know absolutely nothing about me, do you?”

I didn’t respond. There was nothing I could say.

“Cameras, Kaitlynn. You didn’t really think I’d leave all this equipment outside without monitoring it, did you?”

I lowered my head. He had it all on tape. The police surely had more than enough evidence to convict me. I was so totally toast.

“Why … Why didn’t they arrest me?”

“Because I’m an idiot,” he said, for once angry at someone other than me. “Because I didn’t tell them.”

“But … But … Why?”

“Look around at all this damage, thousands of dollars’ worth. The cops told me that this isn’t simple misdemeanor mischief. This is a felony.”

My jaw dropped. I knew things were bad but not this bad.

“A felony, Kaitlynn. That means you could be looking at real time in a real prison. Sure, the district attorney might decide to consider your prior spotless record and knock it down, but he might not. And, if he doesn’t, your life could literally be ruined.”

“Maybe it should be.”

“What?”

“I did all this. It’s my fault. I deserve to be punished for it.”

His glare returned. “Yes. You do. Maybe you even deserve to have your life ruined completely. But I can’t be the cause of it. God help me, but it can’t be me.”

“But-”

“Leave!” he yelled. “Now. Get out of my sight. I don’t want to see your face or any other part of you again.”

Tears stung my eyes as I turned and ran from him, lucky that there wasn’t a car passing. I didn’t stop sprinting until I buried my face in my pillow. I didn’t stop crying until long after that.