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Something About War
An excerpt from Cold Stone Silence. This chapter was written in 1999.
"Diane, get over it. It doesn't mean a thing. I've been honest. I never told you anything..." I tried calmly.
She interrupted -- "Just because you didn't say something doesn't mean you've been honest."
I looked away. Shut up Diane, grow up, get jaded, then tell me how meaningful [this kind of thing] is. "We never had anything. You took me to dinner. I took you home. That's not a relationship."
"You're disgusting," she hissed.
"I'm sorry they don't put pictures of me in the college catalogue."
"I should have known," she muttered. "Everyone told me, everyone told me what you did to Sandy Randall."
"Then get together and start a Kappa support group," I said sarcastically, still not looking at her. I'm tired of this moment, this pointless scene.
"I heard you once made a girl commit suicide for this same reason."
My words, diamond hard and sharp, to cut ice -- "Shut up."
Diane grabbed onto this, this adrenaline illusion of leverage, desperately seeking a thread to unravel me. "You once killed a girl in high school over this. Everyone talks about it," she said smug, gloating self-satisfaction.
I stared silently at her, refusing to enter her trap. She didn't know that I'd already wounded and scarred myself beyond recognition over this. Rachel's in me somewhere, but that place in me is cold and numb. Diane is trying to be an assassin, but I'm already dead.
My silence doesn't placate her. "You [jerk]," she says. "Con Martin, you're a selfish [jerk]. Why would you do this?"
"It's what I do," I answered automatically.
"But how could you do this to me?" Now she's getting teary.
"You're being self-centered," I told her. "I never once thought of you."
She looked up at me through filling eyes, looking at me like her pathetic teary girl eyes are going to find my soul, buried under layers and layers of good looks and charm. But she's stupid because better than her have tried and failed. She's so young and new and naive, so easy to step on.
"Quit looking for something, there's nothing there," I tell her.
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