Childproof Door

This totally was not what I was expecting after being invited to spend a week with my friend. I hadn’t seen in her ages and I was so depressed without her that I convinced my parents that I had to go see her in Alabama. I rushed them into letting me go on a pretty weekend in June, right before my birthday. Maybe if I would have postponed the trip she’d still be alive.
She was everything you’d want in a friend, loyal as a Labrador, but cuter, fierce as a soldier, but shorter, and funny as a comedian, but shorter. There was nothing about her I didn’t like, the way she paused movies halfway through to tell a joke or some story or just to say how she knew one of the actors used to be a porn star. There were all the times we’d had late-night movie-thons and upon seeing the name Danny Elfman we always screamed “That guy does everything!!” in unison and then looked at each other before laughing hysterically even though we’d done that before a million times. There was that night, about two weeks before she moved, when we were in her basement and I was getting sodas out of her mini fridge when she was trying to “fix” the sound system by turning the volume up until she heard something and we both screamed when it sounded like a bomb went off when the TV finally kicked in and we both laughed so hard we were in tears for half and hour. There was also the time she was at my house and we were watching Phantom of the Opera and I stopped the movie every five minutes to make some kind of obscene comment and then we took turns screaming “that’s sexual” every time the main character showed cleavage—which was about even ten seconds.
She had quirks, just like everyone. There was the way she loved to have the fan on so the room was cold and we’d share the couch under about twenty blankets. There was also the way she was addicted to Mountain Dew, which probably would have been annoying if I hadn’t been addicted to anything with caffeine in it. There was also her habit of playing Phantom of the Opera music over the phone, or her March of the Empire ringtone. There was also her obsession with anything and everything Irish.
But I digress.
She’s dead now. Her funeral wasn’t very nice. Every family member for fifty miles came to see her body—I’m sure you don’t think that’s a lot of area to cover, but it’s Alabama, come on, there were eleven people living in her house alone. No joke.
She’s dead now, and the problem is how it happened and why. It was amazing when I told her I was coming to visit, she was so happy. We hadn’t seen each other in a full year and we were both going through a bit of withdrawl, even though I could swear to Bob I still heard her saying things to me. Yes, I said “Swear to Bob” that’s one of her sayings that I picked up over the years that I knew her. Sometimes, even now that I know she’s dead, I’ll say a sarcastic comment and think, “Jenny should have said that. That’s something I know she would have said if she were here… or alive at all.”
For a while I blamed myself for her death, but I’m not the one who set the room on fire—I was just the one that all the evidence pointed to like a banner in the wind. I may have well of had “suspect for murder of her best friend” tattooed on my forehead, but that would have been expensive and a bit tacky. Besides, which way would I have it done? So people could read it or so I could read it in the mirror?
Her room was at the top of the stairs, and her two little cousins Maggie and Opal weren’t allowed up the stairs because they either fell down the stairs or they got into the rooms up stairs and got into something they shouldn’t have. They’re little, so that’s not too uncommon, but when they so frequently break the stair-rule that Jenny had to have a child-proof knob put on her door… it’s a little insane.
I didn’t even know that they made child-proof knobs until I got to the top of the stairs in her house and said, “Jenny, uh, how do you open your door? If I knew it was going to be this complicated just getting into the room, I wouldn’t have come.”
“We put that knob on for you, we didn’t want you to be anywhere without supervision,” Jenny said with a mocking smile on her lips.
“Watch it shorty,” I told her, my smile matching her own.
“It’s vertically challenged, you tall freak,” she replied giving the knob a twist I couldn’t possibly have followed and then leading me into the room. I dropped my stuff on the floor, some would have called it rude, but that’s how we were. I dropped myself onto her single bed and looked out the window. “Lots of trees you’ve got here,” I told her.
“Shut up,” she replied. “It’s Ala-freakin-bama, and what are you talking about? You come from Spotsyl-freakin-vania!” she said. That was another one of her funny little things, she put “freakin” into anything wherever she could possibly make it fit. It was great.
“But born and raised in California,” I retorted sticking my tongue out at her.
She rolled her eyes and I handed her the present I got for her. It was in a nice little bag with that frilly stuffy paper and well, it was candy canes. Okay that might sound odd to most people, but she loves them—even in June. “I’ve got this theory,” she told me with a smile. “That candy canes are magical,” with this kind of lead in, I knew I was in for a good one. I loved her theories. “I mean come on, they taste like Christmas,” she continued. “But in a good way, not like licking a tree—even better! And I’m completely convinced that if Merlin had a wand it was red and white stripped and in a “J” shape.”
At this point I was laughing so hard I would have been choking on my candy cane, had I been able to get it open. By this point, I was still laughing, but also so frustrated that I slammed my cane down on her headboard.
Word of advice: don’t ever try that.
It exploded into about a million tiny little pieces.
“Note to self,” I said dryly, looking down at the mess. “Ask Jenny to open all my food.”
“Will I be needing to cut your steak at dinner?” she asked me.
I nodded without hesitation. “Yes.”
We cleaned up the mess and she set the gift bad behind her TV. “Hiding them are we?” I asked her.
She smiled at me. “The munchkins, they get into everything. And on the off chance they come up here to watch a movie with me, I don’t want them to get the candy,” she said as she lit a candle on her desk. “Smells like Christmas too,” she commented as the pine tree scent filled the room.
We left her room, sucking on our candy canes and Maggie jumped on her back from her parent’s room. “I want one!” she screamed
I pulled Maggie off Jenny. “Maggie, you’re not supposed to be up here, and you know you can’t have any candy.”
“But I want one!” she yelled.
I pointed down the stairs. “Maggie go down stairs.”
She glared at me and then went back downstairs.

Jenny and I were really crazy people, we spent all our times trading stories like old war buddies and then we got the subject of boyfriends like we always did. I had been dating her ex, which she didn’t care much about because she didn’t care much about him, she was polite when she asked me how it was going, but not all that impressive in her façade. “We broke up,” I told her. “I didn’t have the time for him, and I honestly think that loser still likes you.”
She smirked draining the last of her Mountain Dew. “I’ll be right back, I’ve got something for you. We were sitting out on her dock together and it was probably after midnight, and as I watched her walk back to her house, I regretting her living so far away. There was nothing like losing a friend to distance and time. Too bad she’s dead now and distance and time aren’t the only thing separating us.
She was gone for probably… one more soda’s time when I started getting worried. I know, it’s sad, but when I’m with Jenny we measure time with how many sodas we’ve drunk. I know, I already admitted it’s sad.
I went back to the house in the dark, alone, very creepy, but there was at light at the end of the road, it was the house, on fire.
I swear to Bob I have never seen grown men cry like they were right then. Her uncle was yelling at me to demand where Jenny was, but I could only stare in a stupor at the flames that licked the house by creeping out the window and onto the roof.
Maggie took my hand as I stood there. “What did you do to the candle?” she asked me
“What?” I asked, kneeling before her. Her family was starting to gather around me, teary eyed as the fire department arrived. But I knew it was too late, it was as though a part of me had died and was burning from within.
“You were up in the room and you came down,” said Maggie.
“Hours ago Mag, I haven’t been up there in a while,” I told her quietly, trying to keep from crying. I succeeded, but it was hard not to.
“No, just now,” the little girl said.
“What is she talking about?” Jenny’s uncle demanded.
I shook my head. “I don’t know, honestly. I’ve been waiting for Jenny, she said,” I looked up at the flames. “She said she had something for me.”
“How did the fire start?” her uncle asked me.
I looked at him, dumbfounded. “Are you nuts?” I asked him. “Why would I hurt her? Ever?”
“Maggie says she saw you.”
I looked down, a five year old girl would be my undoing? What kind of crap did I do in a past life to deserve this?
“I know you had that fight over Joe last year,” Jenny’s mother said.
I laughed in spite of the situation. Joe. I had just dumped Joe because he was still in love with Jenny. What kind of evil was fate throwing at me now? “That was forever ago. Jenny I haven’t haven’t fought since then, we don’t even talk about that.” An inspector came over and started asking questions while I went over to the tree swing.
Jenny’s uncles started saying how Maggie had seen me in the room. I couldn’t even get into the room without Jenny. This was crap. Maggie came over to me as I swung slightly in the breeze that was bringing the smell of smoke into my skin and hair. Sudden I realized something. “Mag, how did you know about the candle?” I asked her. “Jenny lit that when I was in the room, not you. You’re not allowed in there.” Maggie looked away.
“I dono what you mean,” she said slyly. “I haven’t seen no candle.”
“Maggie, you asked me about a candle,” I said, trying so hard to keep my voice even. They thought I killed Jenny.
“No I didn’t,” Maggie said.
I looked down into little blue eyes and I sighed. When children lie, they lie for good.
The inspector walked over and started asking me questions, I had motive, I was placed at the crime.
I was convicted for the murder of my best friend.

Ten years later I got a visit from a teenage Maggie and she simply knocked on the door to my house. I’d gotten out after I turned 21 because I had been a minor and luckily charged as such.
“I knocked that candle over into the bag you brought Jenny the day she died,” said Maggie without hesitation or introduction.
I nodded. “I know,” I told her, my voice void of all emotion.
“I’m sorry, I was just a child. I didn’t know better,” she told me.
I nodded again.
“This is what Jenny was going to give you,” she held out a necklace. It was a simple thing, a silver four-leaf clover on a silver chain. “I took this from her room that night.”
I nodded taking it from her hand. I knew how much Jenny loved anything Irish, mostly clovers and the like, but her wanting to give me something like that was amazing. But they don’t let me wear it here, in prison. Being convicted once is bad enough, but after killing Maggie, I’m here for life. But I have the necklace, hanging in my cell behind unbreakable glass.
I miss Jenny. She always made me smile. Just once I’d like to see a Mountain Dew can, or her a song from The Phantom of the Opera.
I wish I hadn’t killed Maggie. But she killed Jenny. Jenny was my best friend.