TEN THINGS I JUST HATE-

Patrick Verona was happy, happier than he had ever been in his life. He was nearly to Yonkers, with a copy of "The Colossus & Other Poems" by Sylvia Plath. A first edition he had found in an antique store back home in California. The dealer didn't know what it was and sold it to him for twenty bucks. And he was bringing it to Kat at Sarah Lawrence College.

As he turned into the school it was night, Patrick saw a half a dozen police cars, lights flashing, and an ambulance in front of Kat's dormitory. He got out and started forward. "I don't know," he heard a voice telling a police officer, "We just found her." He moved towards the dormitory. The cops blocked him.

"What's happening?" Patrick asked. "Stay back, sir," the cop put his hand on Patrick's chest. Martha Kane, a girl on Kat's hall, was let out of the building. He grabbed her. "Martha? What's happened?" The girl was crying. When she saw it was Patrick, her eyes widened in shock. "Oh my God! Oh my God! Patrick! She's…Oh my God!" Verona shook the girl's shoulders. "What the hell is going on?" he asked, "Did something happen to Kat?" Martha just stood there trembling.

"Okay, get back, get back" a voice came from inside the dorm. The cops spread back the crowd. A gurney with a body on it was being hauled out by the EMTs; a sheet covering it. The form was obviously female. As it rolled past Patrick, he leaped out and grabbed the upper part of it. Before the police and ambulance drivers could stop him, he had pulled it aside and seen the face underneath.

He screamed and then was shoved aside by the officers. "Who the hell are you?" they demanded "Some kind of joker?" Martha interceded for him. She explained Patrick was Kat's boyfriend and that he hadn't been told. They released him with a perfunctory "sorry" and moved back to the rest of the crowd.

Verona was sitting on the grass. Martha came up to him. "We, we don't know who did it," she began, "There were rumors of a serial killer, but nobody believed it." She sat beside him. "Kat even joked about it. " She looked over at Verona. He had his hands over his face. "I heard one of the officers say that he had seen another victim in the city, same …cuts…to the mouth. They said it was something called a 'Glasgow smile'…some kind of…gang thing in Scotland. It's crazy…it's insane….it doesn't make any sense."

She looked back at the ambulance now driving away. "She was so beautiful….so full of life." She looked back at Patrick. "Patrick, I'm so sorry." Verona looked up. Martha Kane nearly wet herself.

He was smiling. His eyes glinted with a wild, anarchic look. Martha saw nothing…human…in them anymore. "pppp-Patrick?" she said weakly. Verona looked over at her, still smiling.

"Come on, Martha….why…. so…. serious?"