“I’m sorry I didn’t help you out in art class.”
“It’s not your fault. Everyone believes every word she says.”
“I don’t. I believe you. I do.”
I smile at my buddy. “Okay, you sure you’re alright with this? Because I’m not so sure anymore.” I show him the note, the scratch.
“Oh, man. That sucks.”
“Yeah, it does.”
“Come on, let’s go.” Chris jumps in my car.
“I have to call my mom first—gotta keep her chill. She’s so spooked!”
“She and me both.”
I dial her number and hear the tinkling of ice in a glass before she says, “Hello?”
“Hi, Mom, just wanted you to know that I’m going to hang out with Chris for a couple hours, get a bite with him.”
I listen.
“You what? Oh come on, Mom. You’re kidding, right?” I hand the phone to Chris. “She wants to talk to you.”
Chris points to himself and mouths “Me?”
I nod.
“Um, hi… um, Mrs. Washington”—he gulps—“yeah, sure.” He listens. “Uh huh, yeah, that would be nice.” He whispers to me, “She invited me over for dinner sometime.”
I snatch the phone away from him. “Okay, you cool now, Mom? I’ll keep in touch. Bye.” I hang up.
“And you said yes?” I scold Chris.
“What was I supposed to say? And what’s the problem, anyway? I think it’s nice.”
“You don’t want to come to my house. It’s weird, they’re weird—and the food is horrible.”
“Speaking of food, I’m hungry. Feel like a burger?”
“We have important work to do first. I tell you what. Let’s put in an hour of posting the flyers, and I’ll buy you a burger—my treat.”
“Deal.”
We start in a hip historic area in downtown Ann Arbor, Kerrytown, loaded with awesome shops that I so can’t afford; trendy restaurants; art galleries with bad, overpriced art; and out-of my-league antique stores. Shoppers, students, tourists stroll the tree-lined streets.
We make a good team—walking in and out of buildings, looking for the official police sketch. Once spotted, I yank down the flyer, and Chris, carrying the staple gun, quickly tacks up the new sketch.
I approach a woman in a navy peacoat at the bustling farmers market. “Excuse me. Does this man look familiar to you?” I show her the flyer.
She ignores me, filling a paper bag with McIntosh apples.
“Maybe you could take it with you?” I hand it to her. “You could ask your friends if they’ve seen him, if they recognize him. It’d be so helpful.”
“Sure,” she agrees and walks away from the apple stand. I watch her throw the flyer in the first trash can she passes.
“Oh, come on!” I dive into the trash and retrieve the flyer. “No one cares, Chris. I’m sure they think I’m just another crazy college student with a cause.”
He ignores my rant. “Great, now you’re digging in the garbage. It’s been over an hour. You promised. I’m tired and super hungry.”
“Okay, okay, burger time.”
Chris and I nudge our way into University Tavern, a crowded student hangout that happens to serve the best burgers in southern Michigan, the sign outside brags.
And I’m hit. Hard.
Slammed with the smells and sounds of fun: laughter marinated in booze, clinking glasses filled with yeasty beer and wine, stories and secrets whispered, laughed, and shared over goblets and mugs. I immediately resent my enforced sobriety and sense the foreboding, revved-up semi-truck barreling toward me.
It’s not fair! How can they all have so much fun, and I can’t?
Chris and I stand, squeezed in with damp-smelling people waiting for a table. I crack my knuckles, my neck, my toes. Beads of sweat dampen the back of my sweater. I check my phone for messages from my nonexistent friends.
“You okay?” Chris pokes me. “There’s a lot of partying going on here.”
“Yeah, fools.” I loosen my scarf and then snatch the stapler from Chris. I feel the urge to staple everyone’s hands to the shiny, lacquered wood bar. Cha-chink. Cha-chink. Cha-chink. Cha-chink… fuck you fools! You can’t have a drink!
But instead I push my way through the crowd to the front bulletin corkboard.
“Excuse me,” I say to a stupid guy with an ugly dark beard blocking the board. I try to shove past him. My hair gets caught in one of his top coat buttons. “Ow! Fuck! That hurts!”
“Sorry,” he lamely says, as his fingers detangle the knot.
“Whatever.” I scratch my head and staple the flyer to the board, not once, twice, but eight friggin’ times—fantasizing the whole time that they’re the hands holding the drinks that I can’t.
“Bea!” Chris calls out. “We got a table. Come on!”
The waitress weaves us through the crowd, and we collapse into a cracked red vinyl booth and say in unison, “Two burgers with everything on it and a couple Diet Cokes.”
“Jinx.” Again, said in unison.
I pull off my coat and spot a guy with a “you really should wash your hair now and then, but it’s still sexy” kind of look, smiling at me in the next booth, kitty-corner from us. He’s with another dude, and they’re drinking a pitcher of beer and slopping down a pizza.
I smile back, sort of. My smile still feels like it’s not quite working at full capacity yet with the opposite sex; it’s jerky, like it needs a squirt of oil or something.
I lean forward and whisper to Chris, “Check it out: seven o’clock, your time.”
Chris casually removes his coat, looks over his shoulder, and reports back. “Meh. Not my type.”
“Really? You don’t think he’s hot?”
“He looks like a bro.”
“I don’t know.” I finger a strand of frizz hanging down my face. “This whole flirting, hooking-up thing. I’ve been out of it for a while.”
“As you should be. Do you really want to complicate your life any more?”
I jiggle my legs under the table. “Yeah. I do.” I smile again at the guy, a little more confidently this time. “Hi.”
He says “hi” back. “I’m Malcolm. He’s Eric.”
Chris kicks me.
Ouch. “I’m Bea.”
The waitress sets our burgers and pop on the table.
“Bea, I have to go to the little boy’s room—be back in a sec. Stay out of trouble.” Chris gestures with his head toward Malcolm’s table. “Okay, promise?”
“Of course.” I shoo him off, already pulling a flyer out of my bag.
Chris walks away, and I hand the sketch to Malcolm. “Hey. You wouldn’t happen to recognize this guy, would you?”
Malcolm and Eric mull it over, whisper to each other.
“What do you think?” I ask. “Look familiar to you?”
“Oh man, it’s strange.” Malcolm scratches his dirty hair. “I think we may know him, a guy named Winston.”
Eric snaps his fingers. “Yeah, Winston, right. The eyes, a little bit. And the chin thing for sure. Weird.”
“Really? You sure?”
“Join us.” Malcolm pats the seat next to him.
“Okay.”
He scootches over, and I sit. He smells like a clump of wet clay for some reason—it’s not a particularly bad smell, not good either, just clayish. “So, Winston? That’s his name?”
“Yeah, he’s that loner dude, right?” Malcolm jabs Eric.
Eric nods. “Always alone. Doesn’t talk much.” He leans forward and whispers, “The rumor is that he catches rodents around campus and brings them up to his dorm room like they’re his pets.”
“And I heard that he tortures them and decapitates them,” Malcolm adds.
I shiver. “That’s horrible.”
“I know, right? Damn, where are my manners?” Malcolm tops off his glass of beer from the pitcher and hands it to me.
“Thanks, but I have a Coke.”
“Come on, you look a little stressed.”
“Well, I am sort of, yeah.”
Eric holds up his glass. “Cheers.”
I stare hard at the beer and lick my lips. What would a little sip hurt, anyway? No one would know. It’s not like I’d go out using again—a little buzz, what’s the harm? It’s just a beer, not a semi-truck coming at me—more like a flat-tired pickup. It wouldn’t show up on a test.
I hold the cold glass dripping with condensation and bring it to my lips. The frothy foam at the top tickles my nose and my belly—sends a zingy feeling up from my gut to my head. A head so tired of being filled with people’s shit. Yes. Fill me up with something else, please!
Slap! The glass flies out of my hand, splashing my fantasy all over the table and onto Malcolm and Eric’s laps.
“Bea!” Chris stands above me. “What are you doing?”
Malcolm and Eric jump up, their jeans soaked with beer. “You dick! What’s your problem, faggot?”
“Hey,” I yell at Malcolm. “He’s my friend! You can’t talk to him like that!”
“We’re going home! Now, Bea!” Chris pulls me up from the booth.
“Chris, I know they’re jerks, but they know who the rapist is! His name is Winston and he’s a loner and captures rodents on campus, brings them up to his dorm room, makes them his pets, and he tortures them, decapitates them, and, oh no…” As soon as the words come out of my mouth, I get the joke. I’ve been duped. They made the whole thing up.
I’m so the fool.
Malcolm and Eric grab a pile of napkins from a dispenser and wipe up the mess, continuing to razz me. “Yeah, and he holds satanic rituals in the Science Quad every full moon and runs naked through the campus on the first Monday of every month.” Malcolm snorts. “You and Winston will make a great couple!”
Chris wraps up our burgers, throws some money on the table, and drags me out of the tavern.
We pass the corkboard. “Shit, look! Someone took down the flyer already!”
Chris pushes me out the door.
He drives my car and delivers a well-deserved verbal spanking. “What were you thinking? Why would you give it all up, all the months you have, for those assholes and a lousy beer?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.” I light up a cigarette, open the window. “I feel like I’m on a Ferris wheel of confusion that doesn’t stop. Just when I think I can step out, it flies up to the top again and dangles, swaying back and forth. I think about it every day—using. Every day.”
Chris pulls my car into his driveway and parks. “Bea, you should give it a rest—this Willa thing. It’s stressing you out too much. She isn’t worth it.”
“It isn’t just about Willa.” I pinch my nose between my eyes, hoping the tears don’t start up again. “That girl in Ann Arbor—the girl found dead last week. She was my best friend at Athena Day. Her name was Aggie.”
“What? Oh, Bea. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I saw her that night. I was one of the last people to see her. I could have helped her.” My eyes burn with shameful tears.
Chris reaches out, cups the back of my neck.
“I can’t seem to help anyone, Chris.” I look out the window and blow out a trail of smoke. “Not Willa, not even myself. It’s so hard, so damn hard.”
Chris takes the cigarette out of my hand. He inhales, coughs, gags, and sputters, “Ick. Ugh.”
I pat him on his back. “Jesus, what are you doing?”
“I just wish I knew what you were going through,” he says through coughs. “How hard it must be. Maybe, somehow, I could help you then.”
“Thanks, Chris, but you can’t. And I don’t think getting sick on a cigarette will do either of us any good.”
“Bea, maybe you don’t see yourself the way I see you, but you’re fighting the fight. Every day, every hour, every minute. It’s the fire in your eyes these days—different from last winter at camp. It’s raw, real, and yes, pained. Maybe the Ferris wheel isn’t letting you off today, but it will. Or maybe being up in the sky, looking down, is exactly where you need to be right now.”
“Are you kidding me?” I take the cigarette back from him. “When did you get to be so smart?”
“The moment I knew for sure that I was gay. Fifteen. And no, the ride didn’t stop; it just continued around and around, picking up speed. I thought I was mad until I realized one day, whoa, I’m in control, no one else. I’m not the one on the Ferris wheel, it’s the people around me who are spinning. Not me. I’m grounded. I know who I am.”
I’m silenced by his insight.
Ping. I get a text and read:
“Oh, shit.” I show it to Chris.
“They have your number from the flyer!”
I can’t help but laugh. “Oh, damn, they do. They really were assholes, weren’t they?”
Chris laughs with me. “Big-time assholes.”
“I can’t believe I fell for it. Thanks for protecting me.”
Chris takes my hand, wraps his fingers around mine. “You would’ve done the same for me. You were ready to take on a two-hundred-pound fullback, remember?”
“I do, yeah.” I squeeze and look at his hand. “Let go of me, Chris.”
“Excuse me?”
I open my sketchbook and turn to a clean page. “I just figured out how you can help. Put your left hand down on the paper.” He does. I trace it.
“It tickles.”
“Okay. Lift up.” Chris moves his hand, and I place my left hand down and trace inside his, crossing the lines. “There. My hand will always be in yours.”
I drive by Aggie’s house on my way home from Chris’s.
The gate is open, and cars fill the expansive drive. I park across the street from the massive house and look through the front living room window. They must be “sitting shivah,” where friends and family visit and mourn for seven days—it’s a Jewish tradition. I see dozens of people—girls from Athena Day, relatives, Aggie’s mom and dad.
I should be there. I was closer to her than anybody.
The side door of the house opens. Maria, their housekeeper, walks out to the trash cans with a bag of garbage. I jump out of my car. “Maria!” I call out.
She drops the bag and crosses the street, rushing toward me. Maria crushes my ribs with her hug; her short, taut body heaves with sobs.
“Beatrice, my Beatrice. I’m so glad you are here.”
“I feel so bad, Maria.” I cry, too.
“I know, baby, I know.” She wipes her eyes with a dish towel that’s buttoned to her apron and takes my face in her hands—studies my eyes, pets my hair. “Are you alright, Beatrice? Are you doing okay? Tell me the truth.”
I nod. “I am, Maria. I’ve been clean for over three months,” I say through a knotted throat.
Maria makes the sign of the cross. “Oh, thank you, thank you god for that.” Her strong hands take hold of mine. “Promise me something, please.”
“I promise.”
“Promise me that you will never, ever think that you are at fault. Do you hear me? I do not blame you. No one should blame you.”
Tears roll down my cheeks.
“I knew what was going on with Agatha, you know that, right? I wanted to help her.”
“I know you did.”
“I’ve been with Agatha since she was a baby. I know what she did—what she did to you, to others. But they”—she looks back at the house—“refused to believe it. It wasn’t on their agenda, wasn’t convenient for them to know the truth. So I did nothing. I was instructed to do nothing, even when I brought up my concerns. My poor, poor Agatha.”
“Maybe I could have—”
Maria covers my mouth with her hand. “No, you couldn’t have. Nobody could have. You are a good girl, Beatrice. Always were—I saw it in your soul, your eyes, how caring, how loving a friend you were.”
I smile. “I’d better go. It’s getting late, and I don’t want to worry my parents.”
She takes a deep b
reath and wipes my tears. “I’m so proud of you, Beatrice Francesca. Okay, you go on now. I will pray for you.”
“Thank you. Thank you, Maria.”
The texts continue while I get ready for bed:
My cell continues to ping with messages, so I throw it across the room. It bounces off my closet door, and I immediately regret it, hoping the phone didn’t break.
Damn!
I pick it up, and a photograph begins to download, sent by Malcolm—an obscene photo of his “shortcomings.”
Gross.
I turn it off, fall into bed, and pull the covers up and over my head. Force myself to sleep.
3 months
10 days
7 hours
Worst sound in the world? Hands down, it’s the alarm clock buzzing, screaming at me at seven to drag my butt out of bed.
I slam down the button, fall back on my warm-with-sleep, comfy pillow, and yawn. And then the events of yesterday come crashing into my consciousness.
Oh, shit.
I take my cell off the nightstand, turn it on, and brace myself for the anticipated onslaught of obscene frat-boy messages. The screen lights up, ripe with ridicule, I’m sure.
10 TEXT MESSAGES!
1 VOICE MAIL!
I hit voice mail—seems the safest choice.
“Miss Washington? This is Sergeant Daniels. We need you to come into the station immediately.”
I throw my arms up in the air. “What did I do now? Sheesh!”
My phone rings in my hand. I answer. “Hello?”
“Do you want me to pick you up? I’m in the neighborhood.”
“Sergeant Daniels, is that you?”
“Yes. I need you in my office ASAP.”
“Okay, okay… no, don’t come over here, please. My parents will flip out. I have study hall first period today—I can miss it, I guess. I’ll be there within the hour.”
When I walk into the police station, there she is, standing at the metal detector. I was hoping I’d see her this morning.
Although I didn’t have as much time as I wanted, I did dress with her in mind. I left most of my jewelry on my dresser and settled for simple hoop earrings and only a few bangles.
“Good morning.” I smile.
She grunts.
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