Being the Murdered Spelling Bee Champion

Cathy Ulrich

Cathy Ulrich once took second place in her school spelling bee. She’s never forgiven the word “zoology.” Her work can be found in various journals, including Tiny Molecules, Sundog Lit, and Cream City Review.

The thing about being the murdered spelling bee champion is you set the plot in motion.

            You will be d-e-a-d. You will be a h-o-m-i-c-i-d-e.

Your parents will take your best pinafore dress to the mortuary, lucky dress, your mother will say, her lucky dress. She’ll smooth and smooth at the creases as it rests on her lap in the car, gaze out the window, watch squirrel wind up and up a tree, begin to smile, its question-mark tail, think oh, but my daughter is dead.

The pinafore will go over a long white shirt, the crispest white, the mortician will think, she has ever seen, button the shirt to your neck, cover the Y-cut of your chest. She’ll think how and how and how, pink your lips with the softest of glosses.

You will have seven little brothers. They will all be training to be spelling champions too, with perfect hallway posture and shoelaces always coming undone, spell pterodactyl and Ptolemaic, ptarmigan and pterosaur. They will know that there are things that hide without a sound, will kiss the side of your face one by one, go back out to the lobby, leave your parents alone with you. They will grow restless and wild, their shoelaces tangling as they run back and forth across the lobby, your parents coming out from time to time, shush, please, shush.

The girl at the front counter will know origami. She’ll smile a sad smile at each of your brothers, show them swan-fold, split-eared rabbit. They’ll each go home with a colorful piece of paper in their pocket, how nice, your mother will say when they take them out for showing, how nice.

Suspicion will fall on the second-place spelling bee champion. He will be a boy who wears bowties, even to school, gets hallway-jostled, heel-trod, Snapchat-taunted. Kids will say to him nice bowtie and he will say thank you as he’s been taught, watch them eyeroll away. There will be whispers, notes in his locker. There will be visits from the police, just a formality, and the boy will straighten his bowtie, and nod. He will sit in his bedroom with the dictionary on his lap, finger trailing its way to different words, sepulture, septic, sequester.

He will remember how you spotlight-stood in your pinafore, he will remember it was always the same pinafore like his was always the same bowtie, he will remember how the letters came out of your mouth like a song, he’ll think, like a song.

He’ll be offered scholarships in your stead, he’ll learn how to drive his older brother’s Toyota, he’ll come in second again, again, again. He’ll falter on the last word, always the last word, stare into the spotlight, think of you, your dress, I can’t, I’m sorry, I can’t.

He’ll tug his bowtie. He’ll tear it off.

He’ll say: I’m sorry.

He’ll say: I can’t.

Issue 10.1