My Perfect Crime

A new boy moved to my school on the first day of grade four. Everyone was excited to meet him and find out more about him. Our teachers told us that his name was Tyler, his family had just moved to town in the summer and that he was very allergic to peanuts, so a note was being sent home that anything with peanuts or peanut oil could not be brought to school.

Tyler was a cute boy, so at recess most of the girls wanted to gossip about how cute he was. I wanted to be one of those girls, but I wasn’t. I was what many people would call “fat” and because of that I was not considered pretty. If anything I was labelled “cute'' by people because of the contrast between my nearly black hair and my bright blue eyes. People find it hard to call a “fat kid” pretty.

Apparently, Tyler agreed with other people because, after the first couple weeks at school,once he had been accepted, he started picking on me. Unfortunately, my parents had named me Patricia, so Tyler’s first insult was to call me Fatty Patty, which soon escalated into “Patty the Pig”. The situation further deteriorated when he switched from taunting me with insults to physical attacks.

As winter receded into spring, at the end of a school day Tyler had the bright idea to push me into a cold muddy puddle. He yelled “Wallow in the mud Patty Pig!”, and whenever I tried to stand up he pushed me down again. Kids gathered and they started chanting “Wallow pig, wallow pig, Patty is a pig!” in a sing-song chant. I cried and crawled around in the mud for about ten minutes before a teacher finally noticed the fuss, broke the crowd of children up and helped me inside to warm up and try to clean up. She called my parents, then sat with me and tried to cheer me up until they arrived.

My parents were appalled, wanted repercussions and demanded a meeting with the principal and Tyler’s parents. The principal obliged and apologized for the incident but said that there had been no need for supervision at the end of the day prior to this incident. After the meeting, my parents told me I should wait with the teacher at the end of the day until 4:00 p.m. during which time I could do my homework. By then the rest of the kids should have left and I could head home. Tyler got a two week suspension and was told if anything like that happened again, he would be expelled .

After Tyler’s suspension he treated me no better but was more careful about when he hurled his insults or tried pushing me around. One day he pushed me into a locker and I cut my lip.

He told me “If you tell anyone I did that to you, I will hurt you really badly and make sure you regret it, Fatty Patty.” I kept my mouth shut because I knew he would do it. He seemed to know when a teacher wouldn’t be around and took advantage of every opportunity. I spent a lot of time crying the rest of that year.

On the last day of grade four, Tyler announced to the class that his family was moving again, but stated that he would miss all his new friends a lot.

I yelled “Good! I hope you’re going to Hell!” Our teacher quickly sent me to the principal's office. My parents were called in and they were visibly upset. When the principal explained the situation my father asked me “This was the boy that has been picking on you?” in a small voice I said “Yes.” to which my dad said to the principal “Then I hope that child is going to Hell too.” and we walked out of the school as a family.

I thought that was the end of Tyler being my problem, but the summer before I started grade 11, I heard he was moving back. The high school was a lot bigger than the elementary school, so I was hoping I wouldn’t actually see him again. Even if I did see him again, my hope was that he didn’t recognize me. Tyler’s nickname, Fatty Patty, had stuck after he had moved away, but when I hit puberty, I lost the weight and the nickname died with it. I had also put a lot of effort into my health. My parents had gotten me a personal trainer and she taught me a lot about diet and exercise. When I got to high school, I had my name listed as Tricia because I never wanted my name to be able to rhyme with or remind me of fat again. Fatty Patty and Patty Pig were dead and I needed it to stay that way.

My heart sank on the first day of Grade 11 when I found out Tyler was in two of my five classes the first semester. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to recognize me. However, I did catch him staring at me a few times and it definitely made me unsettled to think he was starting to realize who I was. That feeling went away at the end of September though, when he awkwardly walked up to me and said “Hey, your name is Trisha, right?”

I gulped and nodded.

“Cool” he nervously laughed then said “I think you are really pretty, would you like to go out with me sometime?”

I burst into laughter and said “No, oh no, definitely not.” I then composed myself and started walking away.

Tyler had clearly been stunned, he shook his head and then said “Why the hell not?”

I turned around, thought for a moment and then said “You’re nowhere near my level.” Then I proceeded to walk away again.

Tyler must’ve decided he could get “on my level” because he continued to try and flirt with me and impress me in vain and shallow ways. He would try to show off to me how much he could lift in gym class. Then his parents bought him a sports car, so he would rev the engine and burn out in front of me as I was leaving the school. Tyler even stooped so low as bragging about the size of his dick one day when I walked by him and his friends, thinking that would somehow win me over.

On Valentine’s Day he bought me a dozen roses, chocolates and a teddy bear.

I told him “I hate roses, do not eat added sugar and I am not a child!” I threw his gifts into the trash in front of him.

He was really pissed off and yelled “What do you want from me then?”

I turned around and said, “Act like you are a decent person and treat people like they have value. I am not someone you are going to win with cheap gestures, material gifts or your stupid bragging.”

Weeks passed before he spoke to me again.

When he finally approached me again, I said in an exasperated tone “What is it now Tyler?”

He took a step back and said, “On Valentine’s day, you were right. I’m sorry and I won’t try to buy you anymore. Would you give me a chance for us to just hangout?”

I considered it for a moment and said “Yes, but not alone, there have to be other people around.” He agreed to those terms and decided we would go to a party of someone we both knew.

At the party Tyler was obviously on his best behavior. He went out of his way to do nice things for people. He opened doors, got someone a drink, and did whatever he could to show me he was a nice person. After the party I agreed to spend time with him around other people again. This went on for a few weeks before he decided to try asking me out again. I turned him down again, telling him that we didn’t know each other well enough. He responded by telling me I would know him better if we spent some time alone together. I insisted that would not be happening yet and he left annoyed, once again.

A week after his last attempt to ask me out, I found out Tyler had been bullying an overweight girl at the high school and that was when I made a concrete decision. I would go out with him. When I told him I would go on a date with him he cheered and whooped. So we went on a date, then another, and then another. We went on a date every Saturday until the end of June when the school year was about to end. We were sitting in Tyler’s basement and he was talking about his summer plans to get a job, save money and add some stupid stuff to “make his car cooler”. After he had finished enthusiastically sharing his plans, I looked him in the eyes and said, “To celebrate school being finished, we should do something special to kick off the summer.”

“What did you have in mind, Trish?”

“Well, I was thinking we could do some shopping, go for dinner, and then, we could go for a drive to a lake for a walk on the beach or something, just the two of us.”

“Shit, yeah, that sounds like an awesome idea.”

So, that is what we did. Tyler took me shopping, he bought me dinner, and then we went for a drive to a beach twenty minutes outside of town. We walked along the beach, we splashed each other with water and chased each other around. Then I kissed him, long and passionately, holding each other close and brushing our tongues against one another. We pulled away because he began coughing.

He grabbed at his throat, gasping, and then reached into his pocket and handed me an Epipen. He choked out “P-p-please...h-help *cough cough*...m-me.” I took the Epipen and tossed it as far as I could into the lake. He dropped to his knees, looked at me, and started crying as he gasped out “Wh-why?”

I bent down, stared him in the eyes and said “You may not remember me, but I remembered you were allergic to peanuts for seven damn years Tyler.”

He looked back, his face bloating and beet red “What?”

I smiled, “I’m not a fat pig anymore you asshole, but you were always going to be a shitty person, so I am making sure you never hurt another woman again.”

The pupils in his puffy eyes went wide with horror, his engorged lips trembled and more tears streamed down his face. His fat tongue muffled his words but he managed to choke out “I’m sorry” as his closing throat and tears caused his voice to break.

I smiled at him and said “It’s a bit too late to be sorry Tyler.”

I walked away, called 9-1-1, and he was dead well before the paramedics arrived. His bloated body was waiting for them on the cold sand. I told them that we couldn’t find his Epipen and the only time we may have lost it was when we were wrestling in the water. I swore I hadn’t eaten peanuts and that we had even had dinner together. It turned out that the brand of lip balm that Tyler had bought for me while we were shopping was manufactured with other balms that had natural peanut flavoring in them. How was a 17 year old girl to know...right?