She had on purple panties with a little white bow and one of my white undershirts and one sock. She always kicked the blankets off. She bit her lower lip in her sleep. She slept on her side with a hand under her head and her hair tickled my face and woke me because she’d just gotten it cut and it was everywhere rather than braided at night. When I woke up, I realized I had to pee and tried to climb out the end of the bed so I wouldn’t wake her.
I remember glancing at the cheap little clock on the windowsill with the red numbers made of dashes. 3:03. Nine hours and one minute and two years ago until she’d die in the bathroom where I carefully stepped over the board that squeaked and used the hand sanitizer because the plumbing was loud and a day later the biohazard company would rip out the squeaky board and carry it away in big red bags because it was soaked with her blood.
I wish I’d cuddled tighter when I got back in bed, even if I’d woken her.
We made breakfast in the rice cooker. Oatmeal with raisins. She took a shower, put on her favorite purple fuzzy leopard print pajama pants, and her last pair of clean panties; Jelly Belly novelty print. The factory was just down the road; we liked to go try the new flavors and she’d found them in the clearance bin. Said her laundry situation had officially crossed to desperate and grabbed my grey henley.
I was wearing pajama pants, boxers, and a tshirt. I don’t remember anything else about my own clothes. That’s odd.
We sat on the end of the bed and discussed the day. If we got everything totally ready for Monday’s trip to the courthouse and our plans for the big hike later before lunch, we could go hiking or to the library and then do laundry that evening. We should totally take the long side road to Fairfield proper and maybe get one of those burritos we’d had two days before from the lunch counter at the back of the Mexican grocery store and split it for dinner. Along the way, we could stop off at the little roadside stand of the farm that grew cherries and almonds and olives and apricots. We were almost out of olive oil and we could see whether she preferred one of Brittany’s neck massages or me painting her next seasonal sign in barter this time as we had done before.
Morning stuff.
We had tea with our oatmeal; PG Tips with a little bit of sugar and a splash of dollar store almond milk.
She got out the forms she’d need for the courthouse about having served the papers on Jason and handed them to me. I had better print handwriting. She cleaned up breakfast while I filled in the stupid stuff: case number, plaintiff name, case number, defendant name, case number, courthouse address, date, case number. They want you to write the case number on everything.
She got back and sat behind me on a pile of pillows, pulled me half into her lap, plopped her chin on the crook of my neck and shoulder, looked down over it and put her fingers in the small of my back. I have a little knot of scar tissue there that makes it hurt sometimes. She started rubbing that almost absently while she told me what to write in all the other boxes and lines.
She had less than three hours to live.
We had no idea.
I would not have wasted it on case number and courthouse address.
The forms were finished and zipped into the organizer for the court paperwork. We had maps and a dozen tabs about visas open and three tabs about backpacking on nothing. Now that the judge had said that this was almost certain to be over and in her favor in a matter of weeks, we had decided to take a year or two and hike the world on as little money as possible and take the time to get our heads together and decide what we actually wanted to do with our lives rather than make any knee-jerk expensive decisions. We were looking at whether there was any way to streamline applying for the visas to each country individually if we didn’t know exactly when we’d be there or for exactly how long. I’d made a bunch of notes; so had she.
The computer was propped up on a dollar store mesh inbox organizer thing to stay cool. We were kind of puppy-piled on the corner of the bed. Her legs were on top of mine and my lower right leg had gone numb, but I didn’t want to ask her to move because I was trying to postpone the awful pins and needles feeling.
Jason’s father called her briefly. He apologized for the night before and asked if he came up with the money Jason had offered, would she just walk away? She said no, and said there were three reasons. The first was that would just mean Jason had victimized his father as well, making him pay for Jason’s assholery, and especially because she knew he’d have to sell his precious collection of antique woodcarvings to get it. The second was that 10,000 was a mere 5% of her property. But the third and most important and the reason she wasn’t just saying fuck it in the first place was that she did not want Jason to get away with it. Take a girl at 19, abuse her for years while she builds a business and makes savvy real estate deals in both your names, and then when she walks away from the abuse, illegally keep everything and be an asshole to her until she lets you have it no matter what the law says. She was absolutely certain that if he got away with that once, he’d do it again, but if it cost him, he might think twice.
She didn’t even go into the fourth reason - which I thought mattered but she didn’t - that as long as it was like this, she was fucked. She had nothing, absolutely nothing, but on the books, she was wealthy and owned property. Which mattered for taxes, loan applications, any form of assistance, credit rates, credit checks, and even, yeah, visas. If she either really had nothing or really had something, it’d be fine. But if the official world expects you to have money and you don’t, you’re really fucked.
It was a short conversation. Maybe three minutes? We resumed looking at visa requirements for Turkey. No, I don’t think he knew.
We certainly didn’t.
Two years ago right now, we had exactly an hour left.
(Note: Andy's claim that Brittany made "savvy real estate deals" is contradicted in this article about the shooting - http://tf-talk.dreamwidth.org/600.html?thread=449880#cmt449880)
We had sent an email to a friend of Brittany’s who was a travel agent. We had sent a few more emails to friends who were one way or another helping us figure things out for the hike. We had finalized the list of what vaccines we would need to get or update, and where they were available in the Napa area. We’d found a really, really cute little one-bedroom caretaker’s cottage through a friend of a friend that was considering workswap on a tiny organic vineyard, and we had called and talked to the owner about using it as a gap residence between the case settling and starting the hike.
I had a commission I was working on for a client who was starting a yoga studio and wanted some artwork, and Brittany had a client call and schedule a massage for the following day. I would later have to call that client for her and cancel. For obvious reasons. Though it was very surreal doing that from the police station.
We figured if we kept working at this pace, super-efficiently, we’d be done by one, easy. We decided to take our bikes with us as an option if we wanted to roam further afield or the weather turned.
Two years ago right now, we had half an hour left.
I texted my client that I’d be happy to meet her Monday morning at 9:00. The Starbucks in the shopping center with the Safeway across the street would be fine, the one next to the Hawaiian BBQ joint. Brittany got up and rummaged around for some clean-enough jeans and a bra and tossed them on the end of the massage table. She couldn’t find her other sneaker. I said it was probably under the laundry. She stuck out her tongue and said she’d wear some of mine.
I got an email from the cottage person, like they said they’d send. I called her over to look at it. Exposed beams, hand-worked stucco, leaded glass Tudor windows, wrought iron details, stone floors and countertops. A one-room studio, but damn. Gotta love Napa.
Two years ago right now, Jason was printing out his suicide note. They found a lot of loose ammunition that suggested he’d loaded and unloaded the gun multiple times. It was a Glock 19 9mm with an extended magazine. He’d bought it perfectly legally in Arizona where they didn’t make him wait and didn’t care that he’d been in and out of mental hospitals or that he was in the middle of a court case with a woman who had filed domestic abuse charges against him or that he had a restraining order against him from the court.
She asked me if I wanted some tea. I said yes please, and we discussed what kind, agreeing on vanilla chai green tea. Not too much caffeine, we were awake enough and didn’t need the jitters. She unplugged the electric kettle and left the room to fill it in the bathroom sink. She shut the door with her foot. I don’t know why. She wouldn’t have, usually. It may have saved my life by putting that extra step between him and just blowing me away.
Jason parked the truck and entered the back yard. Lucky, the golden retriever, knew him well and didn’t bark, even though according to Lucky, rogue squirrels, shadows, or light breezes required at least a half hour of full-throated screaming to alert us to their threat.
Two years ago right now, we had less than a minute.
(Note: Andy has claimed elsewhere than Jason entered the room and pointed a gun at his face, which jammed. He then claimed Jason left the room, and at which point Andy either barricaded the door, or locked it, or both. If those claims are true, Brittany closing the door here would not affect the outcome of Andy surviving the shooting.)
It was theoretically over. The last two shots had been fired. Jason was dying. Brittany and the other housemate was dead. There was a bullet in my ankle, and I was on the phone with the dispatcher who was coordinating with the SWAT team who were about to enter the house.
I was sitting on the curb across the street from the house that still had a dozen SWAT team members inside. I was still in zip cuffs. I had seen one figure come out on a stretcher and go in an ambulance that had left. Deep down, I knew that Brittany was dead. They hadn’t been making any medical efforts on her. But a part of me refused to accept that yet, and I was making ridiculous justifications to myself. The medics had come later for her. My sense of time was fucked. They’d taken her out the back and I hadn’t seen. I heard “only survivor” and refused to let it mean anything.
People in uniforms were everywhere, reporters starting to appear at the edges of the yellow lines of crime tape, neighbors I knew well and vaguely milling around the outer rings of this weird circus in displaced and frightened confusion and flashing into and out of view at windows in flickers of curtains and blinds.
Some of them shouted questions at me. Some of them shouted other things. There was an assumption that if I was in cuffs, I was the shooter. I am slight of build, 5'7", and had painted finger and toenails in bright colors because she’d felt silly and I’d let her paint them. I got called some really lovely names, including a lot of expressive conclusions about my gender and/or orientation and/or relationship with the various deceased that ran a broad gamut. I ignored it. My hair was turquoise, and I wished I had a hat. I felt like they wouldn’t be able to see me then.
They had swabbed my hands for gunshot residue. My ankle was starting to hurt; a dull, throbbing ache. It was still bleeding. The medic had taped a gauze pad over it, but that had soaked through. There was a little puddle under my heel. I was barefoot. Ants were poking at the edges of the blood puddle.
Andy's account of the shooting - 2 year anniversary version, part 1
She had on purple panties with a little white bow and one of my white undershirts and one sock. She always kicked the blankets off. She bit her lower lip in her sleep. She slept on her side with a hand under her head and her hair tickled my face and woke me because she’d just gotten it cut and it was everywhere rather than braided at night. When I woke up, I realized I had to pee and tried to climb out the end of the bed so I wouldn’t wake her.
I remember glancing at the cheap little clock on the windowsill with the red numbers made of dashes. 3:03. Nine hours and one minute and two years ago until she’d die in the bathroom where I carefully stepped over the board that squeaked and used the hand sanitizer because the plumbing was loud and a day later the biohazard company would rip out the squeaky board and carry it away in big red bags because it was soaked with her blood.
I wish I’d cuddled tighter when I got back in bed, even if I’d woken her.
Especially if I’d woken her.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/49852550927/two-years-ago-right-now-we-made-breakfast-in-the
Two years ago right now.
We made breakfast in the rice cooker. Oatmeal with raisins. She took a shower, put on her favorite purple fuzzy leopard print pajama pants, and her last pair of clean panties; Jelly Belly novelty print. The factory was just down the road; we liked to go try the new flavors and she’d found them in the clearance bin. Said her laundry situation had officially crossed to desperate and grabbed my grey henley.
I was wearing pajama pants, boxers, and a tshirt. I don’t remember anything else about my own clothes. That’s odd.
We sat on the end of the bed and discussed the day. If we got everything totally ready for Monday’s trip to the courthouse and our plans for the big hike later before lunch, we could go hiking or to the library and then do laundry that evening. We should totally take the long side road to Fairfield proper and maybe get one of those burritos we’d had two days before from the lunch counter at the back of the Mexican grocery store and split it for dinner. Along the way, we could stop off at the little roadside stand of the farm that grew cherries and almonds and olives and apricots. We were almost out of olive oil and we could see whether she preferred one of Brittany’s neck massages or me painting her next seasonal sign in barter this time as we had done before.
Morning stuff.
We had tea with our oatmeal; PG Tips with a little bit of sugar and a splash of dollar store almond milk.
She got out the forms she’d need for the courthouse about having served the papers on Jason and handed them to me. I had better print handwriting. She cleaned up breakfast while I filled in the stupid stuff: case number, plaintiff name, case number, defendant name, case number, courthouse address, date, case number. They want you to write the case number on everything.
She got back and sat behind me on a pile of pillows, pulled me half into her lap, plopped her chin on the crook of my neck and shoulder, looked down over it and put her fingers in the small of my back. I have a little knot of scar tissue there that makes it hurt sometimes. She started rubbing that almost absently while she told me what to write in all the other boxes and lines.
She had less than three hours to live.
We had no idea.
I would not have wasted it on case number and courthouse address.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/49857291227/two-years-ago-right-now-the-forms-were
Two years ago right now.
The forms were finished and zipped into the organizer for the court paperwork. We had maps and a dozen tabs about visas open and three tabs about backpacking on nothing. Now that the judge had said that this was almost certain to be over and in her favor in a matter of weeks, we had decided to take a year or two and hike the world on as little money as possible and take the time to get our heads together and decide what we actually wanted to do with our lives rather than make any knee-jerk expensive decisions. We were looking at whether there was any way to streamline applying for the visas to each country individually if we didn’t know exactly when we’d be there or for exactly how long. I’d made a bunch of notes; so had she.
The computer was propped up on a dollar store mesh inbox organizer thing to stay cool. We were kind of puppy-piled on the corner of the bed. Her legs were on top of mine and my lower right leg had gone numb, but I didn’t want to ask her to move because I was trying to postpone the awful pins and needles feeling.
Jason’s father called her briefly. He apologized for the night before and asked if he came up with the money Jason had offered, would she just walk away? She said no, and said there were three reasons. The first was that would just mean Jason had victimized his father as well, making him pay for Jason’s assholery, and especially because she knew he’d have to sell his precious collection of antique woodcarvings to get it. The second was that 10,000 was a mere 5% of her property. But the third and most important and the reason she wasn’t just saying fuck it in the first place was that she did not want Jason to get away with it. Take a girl at 19, abuse her for years while she builds a business and makes savvy real estate deals in both your names, and then when she walks away from the abuse, illegally keep everything and be an asshole to her until she lets you have it no matter what the law says. She was absolutely certain that if he got away with that once, he’d do it again, but if it cost him, he might think twice.
She didn’t even go into the fourth reason - which I thought mattered but she didn’t - that as long as it was like this, she was fucked. She had nothing, absolutely nothing, but on the books, she was wealthy and owned property. Which mattered for taxes, loan applications, any form of assistance, credit rates, credit checks, and even, yeah, visas. If she either really had nothing or really had something, it’d be fine. But if the official world expects you to have money and you don’t, you’re really fucked.
It was a short conversation. Maybe three minutes? We resumed looking at visa requirements for Turkey. No, I don’t think he knew.
We certainly didn’t.
Two years ago right now, we had exactly an hour left.
(Note: Andy's claim that Brittany made "savvy real estate deals" is contradicted in this article about the shooting - http://tf-talk.dreamwidth.org/600.html?thread=449880#cmt449880)
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/49858489523/two-years-ago-right-now-we-had-sent-an-email-to
Two years ago right now.
We had sent an email to a friend of Brittany’s who was a travel agent. We had sent a few more emails to friends who were one way or another helping us figure things out for the hike. We had finalized the list of what vaccines we would need to get or update, and where they were available in the Napa area. We’d found a really, really cute little one-bedroom caretaker’s cottage through a friend of a friend that was considering workswap on a tiny organic vineyard, and we had called and talked to the owner about using it as a gap residence between the case settling and starting the hike.
I had a commission I was working on for a client who was starting a yoga studio and wanted some artwork, and Brittany had a client call and schedule a massage for the following day. I would later have to call that client for her and cancel. For obvious reasons. Though it was very surreal doing that from the police station.
We figured if we kept working at this pace, super-efficiently, we’d be done by one, easy. We decided to take our bikes with us as an option if we wanted to roam further afield or the weather turned.
Two years ago right now, we had half an hour left.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/49859498127/two-years-ago-right-now-i-texted-my-client-that
Two years ago right now.
I texted my client that I’d be happy to meet her Monday morning at 9:00. The Starbucks in the shopping center with the Safeway across the street would be fine, the one next to the Hawaiian BBQ joint. Brittany got up and rummaged around for some clean-enough jeans and a bra and tossed them on the end of the massage table. She couldn’t find her other sneaker. I said it was probably under the laundry. She stuck out her tongue and said she’d wear some of mine.
I got an email from the cottage person, like they said they’d send. I called her over to look at it. Exposed beams, hand-worked stucco, leaded glass Tudor windows, wrought iron details, stone floors and countertops. A one-room studio, but damn. Gotta love Napa.
Two years ago right now, Jason was printing out his suicide note. They found a lot of loose ammunition that suggested he’d loaded and unloaded the gun multiple times. It was a Glock 19 9mm with an extended magazine. He’d bought it perfectly legally in Arizona where they didn’t make him wait and didn’t care that he’d been in and out of mental hospitals or that he was in the middle of a court case with a woman who had filed domestic abuse charges against him or that he had a restraining order against him from the court.
Two years ago right now, we had fifteen minutes.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/49859976476/two-years-ago-right-now-she-asked-me-if-i
Two years ago right now.
She asked me if I wanted some tea. I said yes please, and we discussed what kind, agreeing on vanilla chai green tea. Not too much caffeine, we were awake enough and didn’t need the jitters. She unplugged the electric kettle and left the room to fill it in the bathroom sink. She shut the door with her foot. I don’t know why. She wouldn’t have, usually. It may have saved my life by putting that extra step between him and just blowing me away.
Jason parked the truck and entered the back yard. Lucky, the golden retriever, knew him well and didn’t bark, even though according to Lucky, rogue squirrels, shadows, or light breezes required at least a half hour of full-throated screaming to alert us to their threat.
Two years ago right now, we had less than a minute.
(Note: Andy has claimed elsewhere than Jason entered the room and pointed a gun at his face, which jammed. He then claimed Jason left the room, and at which point Andy either barricaded the door, or locked it, or both. If those claims are true, Brittany closing the door here would not affect the outcome of Andy surviving the shooting.)
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/49860142280/two-years-ago-right-now-she-was-murdered
Two years ago right now, she was murdered.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/49860459838/two-years-ago-right-now-it-was-theoretically
Two years ago right now.
It was theoretically over. The last two shots had been fired. Jason was dying. Brittany and the other housemate was dead. There was a bullet in my ankle, and I was on the phone with the dispatcher who was coordinating with the SWAT team who were about to enter the house.
Two years later, right now, it is not over.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/49862349777/two-years-ago-right-now-i-was-sitting-on-the
Two years ago right now.
I was sitting on the curb across the street from the house that still had a dozen SWAT team members inside. I was still in zip cuffs. I had seen one figure come out on a stretcher and go in an ambulance that had left. Deep down, I knew that Brittany was dead. They hadn’t been making any medical efforts on her. But a part of me refused to accept that yet, and I was making ridiculous justifications to myself. The medics had come later for her. My sense of time was fucked. They’d taken her out the back and I hadn’t seen. I heard “only survivor” and refused to let it mean anything.
People in uniforms were everywhere, reporters starting to appear at the edges of the yellow lines of crime tape, neighbors I knew well and vaguely milling around the outer rings of this weird circus in displaced and frightened confusion and flashing into and out of view at windows in flickers of curtains and blinds.
Some of them shouted questions at me. Some of them shouted other things. There was an assumption that if I was in cuffs, I was the shooter. I am slight of build, 5'7", and had painted finger and toenails in bright colors because she’d felt silly and I’d let her paint them. I got called some really lovely names, including a lot of expressive conclusions about my gender and/or orientation and/or relationship with the various deceased that ran a broad gamut. I ignored it. My hair was turquoise, and I wished I had a hat. I felt like they wouldn’t be able to see me then.
They had swabbed my hands for gunshot residue. My ankle was starting to hurt; a dull, throbbing ache. It was still bleeding. The medic had taped a gauze pad over it, but that had soaked through. There was a little puddle under my heel. I was barefoot. Ants were poking at the edges of the blood puddle.
I poked the ants with my other toes.
Two years ago right now, I was in shock, I think.
I think a part of me still is.