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Tendons, fingers, throat.

If I can’t get out of the documentary, then I won’t give it what it wants. I am not Graham Nathaniel Slaughter. Yes, according to my psychiatric and criminal record, I am a dangerous child with a proven history of impulsive violence. Yes, that girl died, mutilated and afraid, while I watched.

But I am not my father.

I say, “I’m going to figure out who she is.”

Alyssa says, shocked, “What?” But it’s too late. I’ve said it. I’ve made the promise, and it’s stuck in my teeth, and when I want something, Jesus Christ, I will burn through everything I touch if it means I’ll get it in the end.

Graham Nathaniel Slaughter, Family Documentary in Works via Hexagon Productions

By Rachel Simpson

September XX, 20XX

EXCLUSIVE: Hexagon Productions, the team behind controversial documentaries such as Mother of a Monster: A True Story and Bloodsport 71, is teaming with wife of serial killer Graham Nathaniel Slaughter on a multipart docuseries about the family before, during, and after Slaughter’s months-long trial.

Production is currently underway on the series, which is described as a raw, real look into the family, “including exclusive interviews with Slaughter’s wife and daughter, among others, and information about the killer’s life that have never before been released to the public.”

Read more …

It’s a bad sign when even the Washington Metrorail doesn’t calm me down. Red Line to Metro Center station, then Orange to Eastern Market—it could’ve been Blue or Silver, but Alyssa knows it needs to be my line tonight. Our Orange Line train is a 7000-series, the kind made by Kawasaki, and I ignore every available seat to stand by the electronic board wired into the wall, watching the station names blink past.

I’m so overstimulated that my clothes hurt, but I don’t tell Alyssa because it’s always worse when people know.

Federal Triangle. Smithsonian.

Alyssa gets off at L’Enfant Plaza, which we call Le Infant as a joke on good days, to catch the Green Line to Navy Yard and her dad’s town house by the Anacostia River. She smiles when she says goodbye; I’m not sure I do.

Federal Center SW. Capitol South.

Home.

When I wake up Sunday afternoon, I know the crash is coming—tacky-mouthed, dehydrated, too warm—but that doesn’t mean I can stop it.

I manage to avoid a meltdown, which I’m proud of. For safety’s sake, I stay firmly out of my mother’s orbit. It’s difficult, considering the narrow layout of our two-million-dollar town house, but manageable with practice. Through the walls, I can hear Mom in Dad’s office, which she’s taken over as a social media room. “Get ready with me for a weekend in DC!” I sneak food from the kitchen while she’s distracted; scrub my nails with acetone to repaint them maroon; lie in bed with the lights off; document the Gore Goonies episode in my catalog with the labels “nonfiction,” “podcast/audio,” “comedy,” and “assholes.”

Still, I listen to it three more times that day.

Do you think this shit is genetic? Should we be keeping an eye on this girl?

Actually, she almost killed a kid a few years ago. There’s video of it somewhere. I’ll see if I can find it.

And on Monday morning, Mom is angry before I’m even ready for school. While I brush my teeth, she’s stomping around downstairs, talking loudly on the phone, probably with a glass of wine. “Don’t you think you could’ve given me a little more notice?”

I throw my makeup in my bag and slip outside while her back is turned.

Winthrop Academy is a short Metro ride from the house—today the Green Line has a Breda 3000-series that’ll be retiring soon—and the packed rush hour car shudders as a Gore Goonie guffaws in my earbuds. She was ten! Then I’m slipping through the crowd and jaywalking across a busy street and school is right there: a glass-and-limestone monstrosity plunked on a busy street, wedged between a law office and a restaurant.

I never use the front entrance, though. This early, you can’t. Everything’s locked up tight. Instead, I duck down an alley to the employee entrance, flash my school badge for the security camera that nobody ever checks, and jam in the door code.

Winthrop is the kind of small private school that doesn’t believe in Individualized Education Plans or 504s for disabled kids. They think it ties them down or gets in the way of their potential or whatever. So I don’t have either. What I do have is free rein of the building.

“This means you have a place to go when you don’t feel safe at home, instead of getting in trouble somewhere else,” the principal said to me as he scrawled the entrance code and alarm shutoff PIN on a scrap of paper. “But this comes with responsibility, Morgan. I’m putting a lot of faith in you.”

So I don’t know why Principal Vincent Morris jumps and curses when he sees me in his office. Technically, he’s the one who let me in.

“I need to put a bell on you,” he groans, dumping his fancy leather bag on his desk. “Or make a system for you to warn me.”