It’s the first night of college and everyone’s already pretending to be the person they want to be when they drop out.
We’re in the dorm common room, which looks like it was decorated by a teenager who googled “vibe.” There’s a couch that screams IKEA but sadder, a TV frozen on the Roku screensaver bouncing like it’s trying to mean something, and the scent of microwave popcorn colliding with someone’s over-applied body spray. Everyone’s curating their origin story like it’s due at midnight.
I’m perched on the arm of the couch, holding a Natty Light like it’s a prop. I didn’t bring it. It was handed to me like a rite of passage, a tiny beer baptism. I don’t like beer. I don’t like people who like beer. But I’m here, not in Wheaton anymore, and that has to count for something.
Wheaton, Illinois. The kind of place where churches outnumber bars and prayer is considered a valid icebreaker. Where your neighbors have laminated lawn rules and the church parking lots are bigger than the high schools. True crime documentaries feel less like TV and more like neighborhood history. There’s a reason the best horror stories come from the Midwest. The flatness. The forced smiles. The silence that holds its breath a little too long. You grow up around that and it starts to hum under your skin. You start to think maybe you’re the one making the noise. In Wheaton, you don’t scream. You stew.
Everyone’s doing confession as character development. Wild summers. Reckless exes. Road trips with strangers who might’ve been serial killers. Someone snuck into Lollapalooza with a fake wristband. Someone else got high with a SoundCloud rapper who was later arrested for tax evasion. Their trauma has flair.
I sit there, nodding, recycling facial expressions I learned from movies. I’ve told this story before, but tonight’s version feels new. I don’t have a story. I have Boomtown Coffee, Greg’s basement, and a Ouija board we kept using even after it stopped making sense.
Eventually, all the eyes swivel to me, like it’s understood I’m next. So I panic.
Tara, the one in the baby tee and industrial boots, just finished a story about shoplifting lip gloss during a breakup. Everyone laughed too hard, probably out of fear she’d tell another. She has a podcast voice. The kind that knows how to perform agreement on cue.
I take a sip of the warm beer and say, “I don’t have, like, a cool hookup story or whatever.”
Pause. Too much honesty.
Someone starts talking about a guy with a sex playlist and an obsession with kettlebells. He wanted to start a Bull Moose Party for emotionally resilient men. Everyone laughs. I laugh too. It’s safe to laugh when the story isn’t yours.
The laughter dies out. There’s a weird silence. Like everyone’s buffering.
If everyone else gets to sound haunted, maybe I do too.
I let the quiet settle, then say, “I think my ex might’ve been a serial killer.”
Laughter. Uneasy. Like they’re waiting for me to flinch.
“Wait… seriously?” someone asks.
“Sort of,” I shrug. Not a yes, not a no. Which is the truth.
Dave wasn’t creepy. He wasn’t loud. He had that kind of stillness that made you notice your own breathing. Like a screensaver of a man. He’d stare too long and smile like he was testing it. Once he told me he could feel static in people. I never knew if he meant electricity or loneliness. Sometimes I think I was the static, buzzing just below his threshold for empathy.
He didn’t have a trench coat or a freezer full of clues. He wore sneakers with holes and could name every Freaks and Geeks character. He was weirdly good with cats. My mom liked him. That should’ve been a red flag.
One time, he brought over a Natty Light, took a sip, looked me dead in the eyes, and said, “Natty Light… tastes like your dad.”
Everyone laughs. A girl claps like I nailed a punchline. I drink more of the beer I hate.
Another time, we were at Hubble, the abandoned high school in Wheaton that John Belushi went to. The air felt like a warped VHS tape: foggy, full of static you can’t rewind through. We brought a Ouija board, expired Monster Energy, and a Bluetooth speaker that only played one playlist called “songs that slap when you’re unlovable.” Because that’s what you do when you’re seventeen and not ready to admit you’re probably going to stay in town forever.
He had his fingers on the planchette and said, “If you ever need to get rid of someone, just make sure nobody misses them.”
Said it like he was commenting on the weather.
“Did he actually do anything?” someone asks.
“Not that I know of,” I say. “But also, like… not not that I know of.”
Someone exhales. Someone else stares too long, then looks away.
“My uncle played cards with John Wayne Gacy once,” I offer. “Said he was polite. Brought chili. It’s a Midwest thing. You never really know if someone’s being nice or about to snap.”
And not in a metaphorical way.
Literally.
All that space and sky starts echoing back at you.
The horizon stretches too far and you start projecting into it: meaning, threat, ghosts. The land dares you to unravel. You watch cornfields and cul-de-sacs try to swallow each other. The pressure doesn’t shout. It seeps.
Sometimes I think the Midwest invented denial as spiritual insulation. You’re taught to swallow everything: fear, weirdness, the urge to scream in Target. Time flattens like everything else out there. You start to think you were made to endure, not change. It’s quiet, sure. But it’s never still.
The room gets quieter than the Roku screen, still floating.
And for a second, it feels like the most honest thing anyone’s said tonight.
I finish the beer. It tastes like nothing. Like something expired trying to pass as normal. I stare into the bottle like it might hold an answer.
I don’t even know if I wanted them to believe me, or just to look at me and see someone real.
Or maybe I made most of it up. But if I did, it’s only because it already felt true.
“Anyway,” I say, standing. “That’s all I’ve got.”
I walk out before anyone can ask follow-ups. The hallway smells like burnt popcorn and Axe.
Behind me, someone whispers, “Do you think she was serious?”
(I wasn’t.)
(I am.)
It’s weird how silence follows harder than footsteps.
I don’t look back.
The Midwest doesn’t need more explanations.
