It’s weird — lately I can’t stop thinking about Brianna Babitch. You know how certain things, when you’re a little kid, they’re like your whole world for a little while, and then by the time you’re in high school it seems like you saw it on TV? Like…okay, “step on a crack, break your mother’s back” is a perfect example. You go through that phase where you seriously believe that if you step on a crack in the sidewalk, your mom is going to end up in a wheelchair, period, and you are obsessed with it and you do this weird leaping down the street for, like, six months, but then five years later, it’s like, what? I did that? Who cares?

Brianna Babitch is one of those things for me. Now, after everything, it’s like she happened to someone else, but in fourth grade, oh my God, I. Hated. Brianna Babitch. So much. I would write in my little pink diary with the lock on it every night about how much I hated her and all the horrible things I hoped would happen to her, like decapitations and stuff, and then I would get in bed and squeeze my eyes shut and pray so hard my head would start to hurt, and I would pray she would die. “Dear God, please kill Brianna Babitch, because she sucks. Thanks. Love, Jessica.” Not in an ironic “oh, you know what I mean” way, either. I wanted her dead.

Because of Brianna Babitch, I had no friends for almost an entire year. Not one friend. Because of what I did at her slumber party. Because…God, it’s amazing how you don’t think about this stuff for years, but then when you do think about it again, there it all is, right there. I can remember that night like it just happened.

So Brianna had a slumber party for her birthday, and we were all in her parents’ basement, which, they hadn’t done anything to it decorating-wise, so it had these bumpy concrete floors and bare rafters and spiders everywhere, really creepy. It did have a bathroom down there, though, and Brianna decided that we should each go in there and do the Bloody Mary thing in the mirror.

Nobody else really wanted to, but it was her party, so we kind of had to, and you know slumber parties — everyone sort of plays off each other and gets worked up, and before you know it you really do feel scared, but also excited, like whatever happens, if Bloody Mary comes through the mirror and kills you, it’s destiny instead of kind of stupid, and if she doesn’t, well, then you get to live, so either way you can’t lose.

So we turned all the lights off and lit one white candle, and Brianna repeated the legend of Bloody Mary with the candle under her face, and looking back, it’s so crazy to me that she had such power over me, over any of us — she had a bad lisp, for one thing, so when she said “and then she KILLS YOU,” it came out “and then thee KILLTH YOU.” Not exactly scary. But part of the legend when we were growing up was that “the bravetht thall be firtht,” and Brianna chose me as the bravest, and I felt all honored, and I marched into the bathroom and closed the door.

And there’s, like, a procedure for these things. It’s in your DNA as a little girl; nobody has to tell you, you just know. You’re supposed to go in, you’re supposed to wait a minute to get yourself psyched up, you’re supposed to say “Bloody Mary” twice, and then you’re supposed to start to say it a third time and then run out of the bathroom all shrieky and panting and say you couldn’t go through with it because you saw something move on the other side of the mirror, you swear, and you apologize all dramatically for wimping out and tell the next girl to try.

I went into the bathroom and I closed the door, and when I looked in the mirror…I could really barely see anything, there was a window in there at ground level, but it was pretty dark out. But once my eyes adjusted, I could see the outline of myself, and my hair, which was silver in the dark, and the side of my face, which was blue. I looked like a ghost. Seeing myself like that, I felt this, this urgent need to make something happen, to do something, to run somewhere. Like I wasn’t real right then, and I had to become real somehow, like, immediately.

So I cleared my throat and said “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary” into the mirror — all three times. I stared as hard as I could at the mirror. I wanted her to come. I wanted her to try to kill me. I didn’t want to die; I just wanted to, like, fight. But of course nothing happened, so I opened the door, all ready to go out and tell them — something, I don’t know what.

When I got out there, they were all sitting there with their arms folded, glaring at me. I mean, they were pissed — Emily Brant was crying. So, so ridiculous, but little girls, they just decide something is a BFD and they’re going to get all pack-mentality psycho about it, and that’s pretty much that, and sometimes you’re in the pack and sometimes you’re not.

Anyway, before I could even say anything, Brianna made this nasty face and said, “You ruined it, Jessica,” and then she said, “You suck, Jessica.”

Well, she actually said, “You thuck, Jethica,” but she had this horrible hateful little snotty voice, and I felt like she’d punched me in the stomach. I tried to explain what happened in the bathroom, but Brianna decided everybody had to agree I sucked, and nobody was allowed to talk to me — meaning ever again. Starting right that second. I kept trying, but they were doing that “did you hear someone say something, did you hear that fly buzzing” thing, so I figured I’d just ignore them back, because they couldn’t usually keep that up for long, but then Brianna herded the rest of them into the bathroom for a bunch of whispering, and when they came out, she sent Emily over to tell me that Brianna hated me now and wanted me to leave.

To leave. In the middle of the night. I know. I had to go upstairs and pretend to Mrs. Babitch that I didn’t feel well so she would call my mom, and my mom came to pick me up and was all annoyed about having to drive over there at one in the morning, and I had to hold my stomach and act sick all the way home in the car, which wasn’t hard because I wanted to puke anyway.

Then on Monday at school, not only were Brianna and all the other girls at the party still not talking to me, but they’d passed it around school that I went home from the party because I wet the bed. So, yeah. None of them spoke to me for the rest of the year. They’d make fun of me, and they’d follow me home from school and talk about me really loudly and see if I started crying, which I only did once, I’m proud to say, but not one of them said a word directly to me, and nobody else did either, because now I was a known bed-wetter.

Which sucked, but you can’t really tell your parents, so you just try to get through it and hope God answers your prayers, and that next July, God came through in a big way when the Babitches moved to Hartford. It was like waking up from a nightmare, that rush of relief when I found out. Mom even took me out for lunch to celebrate — I’d never said exactly what was going on, but she knew something was up and she knew Brianna was involved, so she was happy for me. And then school started again, and the other girls sort of casually started talking to me again like nothing was wrong, and by that Christmas we’d all forgotten that Brianna ever existed.

I really didn’t think about her again until after I saw Stevie that night, because when I saw Stevie…I don’t know if it’s the same for everyone that sees her, but I pulled over and rolled down the window, and she came over to the car and leaned down, and…I couldn’t see her face. I could sort of see it, but more the suggestion of her face, and only the bottom part, like from the nose down. I asked if she needed a ride, and she said no, she didn’t have far to go. So I pulled out again, and when I checked the side mirror, I didn’t see her, and when I checked the rearview, I didn’t see her there either, and then all of a sudden I remembered that night in Brianna’s basement, seeing myself, just the edges of myself, in the mirror, like a ghost — except you can’t see ghosts in mirrors.

And lately, I just keep wondering what ever happened to Brianna — what does she look like now? Where did she go to college? Does she know about me, that I died? What does she say to her friends about it? Does she say she knew me? Does she talk about what happened, that she just decided to make my life hell, that she feels bad about it now?

Maybe she doesn’t remember me at all. Maybe she saw my picture in the paper and stared right through it like it had nothing to do with her. Which is okay, because actually that’s kind of how I feel about it — getting killed, I mean. It’s like it has nothing to do with me. I mean, yeah, obviously it happened to me — I remember it happening. But it had nothing to do with me. I was just there. And then I wasn’t.

My name is Jessica Garnett. I died from multiple stab wounds December 22, 2002.

November 11, 2003

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