Encyclopedia.
Naomi Krupitsky Wernham 4th period
1. (Detective Jake Wyatt)
“You know, I’ll keep you here as long as this takes.
I’ve got all night.” Ugh. I hate this
law and order bullshit. I’ve got time. Please. Like I
don’t get off at six. This one is too tiring; it’s
cases like this that make me reconsider my career
choices.
“Keep me here as long as you want, dickwad. I’ve got
nothing to say to you.”
* * *
2. (Eliza)
But you don’t need to keep me here. You already know
me. I’m good-girl-gone-bad, page
A7 of the newspaper because it’s too gruesome for the
front-page-scanners. You have to look to
find me. I’m with the raped, strangled, and beaten;
teen boy found covered in mysterious teeth
marks. Husband and wife slaughtered for no apparent
reason. Duct tape covers mouth of dead
girl found floating in a flooded creek. Body frozen in
Walmart walk-in. And page A7 is just far
enough away, isn’t it? Read, shiver, and fold the
paper to a different page. You’re creeped out so
you read about something monotonous, like the tax cuts
being proposed in Congress, or some
horror that’s too far away to comprehend -- genocide
in Sudan. The sinking, crawling sensation
is getting further away. You can drink your coffee. Go
to work and when you’re walking along
darkened urban streets on your way home, pretend you
didn’t just see something rustle in a
nearby alley. Tell yourself nothing’s there because
you can’t stand the idea of being helpless to
the eyes that follow you, silently. It’s all in your
head. You have to repeat this a couple times be-
cause of course, whatever you read on page A7 this
morning chooses this moment to resurface
like a faint warning in your mind’s eye. It’s all in
your head. Fold page A7 away, focus on the
coffee you drank sloppily because, entranced, you read
all those horrors and made yourself late
for work.
This all started with a cup of coffee, Detective.
Just coffee. I used to have a caffeine ad-
diction. Eight cups a day, just to function; college
hadn’t been good for my insomnia. He was a
barista in my favorite shop, the one whose coffee was
almost the consistency of mud and whose
employees raised skeptical brows when someone wanted
room for cream. I was in there three
times a day. Dropped my $1.15 on the counter and
retreated to a shadowy corner where I could
just barely make out the words in the latest book I
was reading.
The two of us didn’t speak. “Small coffee for here,
please,” I would say.
He’d fill the cup and hand it to me. “Anything else?”
“That’s all, thanks.”
Sometimes he smiled, opened his mouth like he was on
the verge of starting a conversa-
tion, but I would return the smile with tightened lips
and cool eyes and scurry to the back table.
Actually, now that I think about it, not that it
makes a difference to you, Detective, this all
started with a scone.
“Anything else?” he had asked, because that was the
routine thing to do.
The word ‘no’ was on the tip of my tongue. But then
my stomach had growled and I
glanced at the pastry-laden shelves and said, “I’ll
have a cranberry-orange scone, please.”
“AHA! She eats!” The barista was teasing. I didn’t
know when scone-ordering had be
come code for playful banter. I smiled slightly.
“And here I was, thinking you were some sort of
foodless entity who survived on coffee
and impressive literature!” He was still talking?
Really? I couldn’t believe it. I resisted an urge to
smile again. I wanted to go read. It wasn’t that
impressive, and it was for my literature
class besides. He plopped my scone onto a generic
white plate and handed it to me with a flour-
ish. “Voila!” He exclaimed. “Mademoiselle has, ehm,
her scoune, her, cuffee, her literatoure,
what more cen she need? Ah, eet has come to me!
Company!” His french accent was atrocious.
I was too shocked to decline. “Ey, Paco, I’m taking my
break!” He yelled over his shoulder. Then
he stepped around the counter, held out his arm, and
said, “Well? To the musty corner! I’m
James, by the way.”
I told him my name was Eliza, because I was too
shocked to think of a fake one. I hadn’t
realized that with scones came a date. He followed me
to the back table and I resisted the urge to
open my book. Talking. It’s just talking. I can do it.
I thought it couldn’t possibly hurt anything.
* * *
3. (Detective Jake Wyatt)
“Do you see this picture?” If I wave it in front of
her face, I don’t have to look at it.
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me what it is?”
“My ex-boyfriend, James.”
“Can you describe the picture to me?” I should have
known this was going to take work.
“I could, yes.”
“But you don’t want to.” I want to scream at her,
shake her until the truth falls out.
“Correct.”
“Why?”
“Well Detective, I just don’t like you that much.”
It’s time to be a little less subtle. “Are you sure
it’s not because James doesn’t look ex-
actly normal in this picture?”
She just looks at me through eyes framed in shadows
that betray weeks’ worth of sleep
deprivation. I’m getting tired of this shit. I can’t
look at this picture anymore; I’ve seen worse but
a wave of sickness hits me like a sandbag. I glare at
her with my best intimidating stare while I
try to compose myself.
* * *
4. (Eliza)
I soon found that company came regularly with my
coffee, scone or no. Company over
coffee evolved into dinner and a movie, goodnight
kisses, coffee for two in the mornings, late to
class because I was sleeping less than ever. You know
what I’m talking about, Detective. A girl’s
got needs, you know? It’s the only part I miss,
actually. He was gorgeous. Chiseled with bone
structure that usually only exists on billboards,
light brown hair that brought out eyes like honey.
They tell me he looks different now? Well, you’ll just
have to take my word for it, then. I some
times didn’t even think he could possibly exist,
sitting in front of me smiling. I guess the prob-
lem turned out to be how very much he existed, didn’t
it?
I hadn’t been in the market for a boyfriend. I spent
most of my time writing dissertation-
length analytical papers and running (it was the only
thing that could calm my caffeine jitters).
But James was the kind of guy who wouldn’t take no
for an answer. It never occurred to
me to refuse an offer of dinner or say I had to go to
bed early and spending the night wasn’t a
good idea, partly because he never made it seem like
he was asking a question. I never said no
because I never had the opportunity to say yes.
“Dinner tomorrow,” he would say, and then kiss
me, and I was sure I was being swept off my feet. I
didn’t realize that my free will had fallen by
the wayside as well.
Same old story, Detective. Girl meets boy, girl turns
into a useless lump of love songs and
drowns herself in mornings spent daydreaming in bed
and the feeling of nothing being all that
bad, after all. Girl spends far too much time thinking
about/being with boy. Girl begins to suffer
in school, which she is attending due to a scholarship
contingent upon “continued academic ex-
cellence.” Girl doesn’t respond to phone calls from
worried guidance counselor, or emails from
worried mother, whom worried guidance counselor
contacted as a last resort. Girl uses mother’s
concern as a reason to keep slacking off; like most of
us, girl found rebellion very satisfying.
Girl’s scholarship is not renewed, and girl, blinded
by anger and what-the-fuck-do-I-do-
now panic, blames boy.
* * *
5. (Detective Jake Wyatt)
“How can you just fucking sit there and look at this
picture and not hate yourself? How
can you look at me and say, honestly, that you had
nothing to do with this? It’s eating at you all
the time, isn’t it? You think your brave fucking words
don’t show the tremble in your voice but
they do, and your eyes speak louder than your
screaming and they are haunted, fucking haunted.
Eliza, it’s never going to end until you tell me. It’s
never going to go away.”
I think I’m treading a fine line between a calculated
guilt-trip and losing my cool. Deep
breaths, Jack. In, out. In, out.
“I suppose if I had anything to do with what happened
to that asshole, I would feel guilty.
As is, Detective, I just wish you’d take that picture
out of my face.”
She’s shaking now; it’s the only sign that lets me
know she isn’t a monster. Serial rapists
have cried because of that speech. It’s one of my last
resorts; it’s a final attempt to find the hu-
manity in someone. Hers is nowhere to be seen.
* * *
6. (Eliza)
At first, I cried. What else was there to do? School
was my everything and I had lost it all
in one fell swoop.
I was living in an apartment with two other girls; no
one lived on campus after freshman
year. So it wasn’t like I got kicked out of my room,
or anything. My mom said she wasn’t paying
rent after the lease ran out if I wasn’t going to
school, though. It was one of the outcomes of the
tearful conversations we had after she got her letter.
Her letter matched mine, pretty much.
“Dear Ms Eliza Norberg,” mine read. “We regret to
inform you that, due to your academic ina-
ctivity-” -- inactivity! -- “-the Board has decided it
would be unwise for us to finance your
schooling this coming academic year. We wish you the
best of luck.”
I couldn’t believe it, Detective! But then again, who
would? Who would be able to com-
prehend that they had lost everything, that in fact
they had thrown it away, that there was no way
to get it back. Who would understand the gravity of
that situation in a way that could be put into
thoughts and words and ideas and plans for a future
outside academia? Not to pull the tortured
childhood card, but that college was my only chance.
It was a full scholarship including a grant
to work on a Masters in literature following college
graduation. It was my big break, my dream
come true. At the risk of sounding pitiful (a risk
I’ll take, given that I’m not actually speaking to
you), I had been the girl who spent lunch in a corner
with a book; the one who ditched PE for
Plath and Ginsberg and Joyce and Dickens; the one who
who fed on words as if they had nutri-
tional value.
But I had been swept away and forgotten myself, my
priorities, and the strings attached to
the work I normally devoured without a thought for
anything I could be doing instead.
So I cried. I locked myself in my room for three days
and cried and when I emerged,
puffy-eyed and greasy-haired with a voice full of
hiccups, I had moved past the point of sadness.
I was not sad, Detective, because somewhere in my
miserable black hole, a small arrow
had appeared. Arrow? you ask. I know. Sounds strange,
doesn’t it? But this arrow was very cru-
cial. Without it, I would never have emerged.
You see, in the farthest depths of my torrid sadness,
logic had reared its furry little head.
Logic had announced, clearly, that I was not to blame.
Logic had cleared my clouds of guilt (you
see, I had been totally engulfed by the idea that this
was all my fault) and in the new skies an ar-
row appeared and this arrow pointed directly at the
person whose taste had replaced the taste of
words in my mouth, whose commands had replaced
assignments in my mind.
James.
Oh, James.
I was not sad because in the place of my sadness, an
anger had begun brewing. I was not
sad because the steam of this slowly boiling anger had
infiltrated every orifice and erased every
alternative. I was not sad because blame had given me
a purpose. It was his fault. The end of
everything was his fault. James had taken away my
life, had given me a life of his choosing in its
place, and I was so ecstatic to have somewhere to
place the blame (other than myself) that the
sadness was ebbing away faster than I could have
caught it.
The anger boiled, bubbled, and simmered contentedly
as I took a shower. The hot water
reminded me of fire and the anger flickered in my
eyes, seeped into my fingertips and lay dor-
mant, scorching the insides of my veins. My flickering
eyes grew tired with the heat and the
steam and my vision narrowed until all I could see was
my hands with their fingertip-sparks and
his face, and I was ready. I would wait.
Remember page A7, Detective? This is where it gets
crucial.
* * *
7. (Detective Jake Wyatt)
It’s 5:45 and I have got to get out of here. Fifteen
minutes seems like a lifetime sitting
across from her and I have used up too many lives
today. I get nothing from her, nothing! I’ve
resorted to talking, blabbering on about nothing,
hoping something I say will trigger some reac-
tion in her. We don’t really know anything about her;
everything was destroyed in the fire.
“What did you do when you were a kid?” No response.
Shocker. “I used to play soccer.
When I was really young. I was awful at it, so I quit
when I was 14. Did you ever play sports,
Eliza?”
Nothing.
“Well anyways, after I quit soccer, I got real into
history. Social studies, current events,
all that. I used to read the newspaper cover to cover.
I was always late to school, but I never
missed an obituary or tax rebate.”
“Did you ever read page A7?”
“What?” My heart’s racing itself in circles around my
ribcage. I have no idea what she’s
talking about but she’s talking and that’s something
big.
“Page A7. Did you ever read it, Detective?”
“Well I... I suppose I did.” This would be a time
when the Law and Order bullshit would
come in handy -- if only there was a highly qualified
shrink outside, listening to every word,
maybe I’d be able to make some sense of what she’s
saying, but there’s not, and my only choice
is to try to get her to say more.
“Then you don’t need me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m page A7, Detective. The one you try to forget.
The one that follows you, stalks si-
lently as you walk home alone and all you can do is
hope the eyes you think you saw are waiting
for someone else because if they are waiting for you,
Detective, you’re fucked. I’m page A7. I’m
too much, but I wasn’t always like this. He took
everything away, Detective. I needed it back. He
was my someone.”
“Are you talking about James?”
“Of course I’m talking about James, you shithead. He
took everything. Every fucking
thing. He tricked me. I had to take it back.”
* * *
8. (Eliza)
I don’t know why I’m talking to you now, Detective.
It’s not like the newspaper reference
triggered some uncontrollable emotional response or
something. But you looked so pitiful, sit
ting in your little fold up chair across from me, and
quite frankly I’m bored from sitting here all
day, and maybe I can entertain you a little. I know
you’ve got me, I think; yes, if I am really hon-
est with myself I know you’ve won. So call this my
last hurrah, if you will.
“How do you mean, take it back?”
I guess I could answer that. “He took everything from
me. Everything I had. I had to get
it back somehow. I had to make him go away. I knew
that if he was gone, my life would return.”
Does that satisfy you? Can I go now?
“What did you do, Eliza?”
I guess I’m not going anywhere yet. That’s okay. I
think I’ll tell you. I think either way,
I’m A7. Either way, I have nothing. I might as well
scare you shitless in the process.
“I replaced him. He replaced my books and the books
had to replace him. The fire helped.
The fire was in my fingers, shooting out in little
bursts and attaching itself to his bookshelves and
couch and the potpourri in his bathroom and the smoke
was everywhere and there were burnt
matches on the ground.” I won’t tell you about his
face, Detective. His face when he saw me and
I saw him and he always slept in boxers so he was
running towards me almost naked and I was
God then, Detective. The fire -- no, I’ll tell you
this part. And maybe the other, too. “The fire
came stronger when I saw him but I didn’t do
anything, he had no idea what I was going to do
and he was so scared, Detective. Have you ever seen a
mouse in a trap? Before it’s dead, and all
it can do is squirm and know that the pain in its leg
is nothing compared to what you could do,
and the terror is too much for it and its heart almost
explodes in a totally overpowering desire to
die? It can be the best sight in the world, Detective.
I stood over him, and the fire wanted to
come but I held it back for the moment and then I saw
the Unabridged Encyclopedia Brittanica
on the floor next to the bed and I knew.”
“What did you know, Eliza?”
Stop calling me Eliza like it’ll remind me of my
humanity. “I knew what to do. I replaced
him. I made the book and his face into one... entity.
Does that answer your question, Detective?”
“Not exactly, no.”
Oh you are dense, aren’t you? “I smashed his fucking
face with the fucking book until he
was a pile of pulp and pages soggy with his blood. And
then I let the fire come and the steam
filled his room with warm dead stench and he never had
time to scream and I had won. And then
I went home, Detective. I walked home with the fire
singing in my blood and the cops were there
already, they had come because the fire had devoured
my apartment too, it was all black and
charred and mattress springs and evaporated tears and
angry memories.”
“Eliza --”
“Don’t call me Eliza. I’ve lost Eliza. Eliza has been
condensed into 350 words on page
A7. I’ll give you nightmares until you can manage to
forget. Just be careful, Detective. Because I
was like you. I was nobody. I was nothing. I was
living. And I got caught, and lost, and now I’m
trapped on page A7 and I am not Eliza.”