Sketchy

by Samms, Olivia

  The professor reaches out and lowers the hood of my parka. “You seem to have a few pens stuck in your hair.” He smiles. “You sure you need more?” He touches my hair. “You have wonderful hair, you know that?”

  I sidestep around him.

  “What’s wrong? You don’t like your hair? Or people touching it? Or just me touching it.”

  I put the pens back on the shelf. “You know, you’re right, I don’t need these. I have enough. I think I’ll go now.”

  He gestures with his arm, welcoming me into the classroom.

  Willa was right. He’s repulsively charming.

  I walk into the studio. The students are gone; the room is empty. I cross in a hurry toward the stairs to the Arts Quad at the far side of the room.

  “Why are you in such a rush?” he asks, following me.

  “I’m late for class.”

  Professor Woolf hustles ahead of me and blocks the stairs. “Why don’t you stay a little longer? My next class isn’t until noon. You say you’re an artist? I would love to see your work.”

  “Maybe another time… I’m really late.”

  He gives me a look, the steely-eyed look that Willa described—the look that I saw in my head, the look that I drew on the page. “I think this is the perfect time.”

  I back up, turn, and run to the supply room, throwing my total body weight into the steel portal. Nothing—it won’t open. I dump the contents of my backpack on the ground, bend down, and take hold of the key ring.

  Professor Woolf picks up the flyer that fell out of my bag—the flyer I drew of him, the WANTED poster. “Interesting rendering. Looks just like me, don’t you think? I mean minus the facial hair. Thank god I grew this beard and covered the cleft.”

  I face the door. My hands shake as I fumble with the keys.

  “Thankfully the flyers weren’t up for long. Nice of the police to help me out like that.” He quickly reaches around me, grabs the ring out of my hand, and throws it across the room. It jangles to the floor. And then he leans in, his body pressing into my back, and whispers in my ear, “We had a smoke together. Homecoming. It was nice.”

  The creepy police officer in the tunnel… oh shit!

  “That was the first time I saw you—selling popcorn at the game—this girl with amazing, wild, sexy hair. Isn’t it odd how things work out? I went there to finish off that bitch, and then I saw you—your hair. I had to get to you somehow. I followed you home, remember?” He pets my hair.

  I flinch, pulling away from his hand.

  “And there you were at that bar. Your hair caught on my jacket as you tacked up this poster. I pulled it right down. It was so nice of you to give me your number.” He laughs. “Did you get my text? ‘Check out Woolf on campus’?”

  I turn and face him, try to swallow dry spit. “That was you? You texted me?”

  “I did. I wanted to see you again. It worked, right? You came to me. Yesterday in the commons and now today.” He takes my arm, squeezing it hard, and pulls me toward a door next to the paint shelves. “I’d like to show you some of my work. I think you’ll appreciate it—being a fellow artist and all.”

  He unlocks the door and pushes me in, pulls a cord, and a safelight dangles above us, illuminating a photography darkroom.

  My eyes take a minute to adjust—and I wish they hadn’t.

  Papering the walls are Polaroid snapshots—dozens of photos depicting gruesome, awful images. A collage of women’s body parts—legs, arms, breasts, heads. The images shoot through me like an automatic firearm.

  I throw my head over a plastic sink and vomit. Woolf takes my hair out of its high-knotted bun, allowing the nested pens to fall, pinging, down onto the concrete floor, and holds my hair back from my face.

  “Well, well. I didn’t expect that reaction—I think the photos are rather playful. I gather you don’t?”

  “You’re an animal!” I spit the words into the sink with my vomit.

  “But a talented one, you have to admit.” He roughly pulls my hair… just like that asshole did in the Caribbean! Fuck this!!!

  I swing my right elbow fast, sharp, into his ribs. He hunches over. I uppercut his jaw and quickly rush out of the darkroom.

  “God damn you! Why can’t you behave?” He tackles me from behind and swings me around, shoving me into a metal shelving unit. The cans of spray paint fall over—some tumble to the ground. He closes in on me, grinding his body up against mine, caressing my hair with his right hand, cupping my neck with his left, pulling my face an inch from his.

  “I’ve been waiting for hair like yours—your magical, fabulous hair—to top the piece off.” He laughs at his sick joke.

  I spit an acid spray of bile in his face. He slaps me hard and wipes the nasty spittle from his cheeks. “She fought me like this, the last one. It’s why I had to kill her before the photo. I wanted her eyes alive—alive in fear. But all I need is your hair, you bitch. Your life means nothing to me. I can kill you now, and it won’t matter.” He locks both of his hands around my neck, choking me.

  I can’t breathe. I can’t swallow. I try to push him off of me, but he tightens his hold. I feel my eyes bulge with my racing pulse. My arms flail, hitting the shelf behind me, and I make contact with a can of spray paint. I get my hand around it—hit the lid against the shelf, knocking the top off, swing it around, and spray at his face, into his eyes.

  He steps away from me, and we both choke on the toxic fumes. I cover my face with my hair, hold my breath, and pull can after can off the shelf, spraying an arsenal, a rainbow of paint at Woolf’s face.

  He falls to his knees, coughing, grabs my leg, and drags me down to the ground. He tears off my parka, crawls on top of me, and yanks the top of my jeans, ripping open the zipper.

  No, no, no!!! This can’t be happening to me!

  I look around for something, anything to hit him with. My sketchbook is open, lying on the floor. I see the drawing of Chris’s hand and my hand, together as one. I reach out, scrambling, stretching out my arm, pulling it, dragging it toward me, and place my hand on top of Chris’s.

  Help me, Chris! Help me, please, somehow!

  Woolf slightly lifts his body, unbuckling his belt. I struggle to get my legs free, and my left foot hits something. It jingles. The key chain. The utility knife!

  He pulls at my jeans, and I look over his right shoulder and see the keys on the floor near my left foot.

  I hook the heel of my boot around the ring and slowly bend my knee, dragging the keys up the left side of my body, cradling Woolf’s legs, and fake a sexy sigh.

  He looks at me with his paint-stained face through swollen, crazed eyes.

  I smile at him.

  “That’s more like it,” he moans. “You might as well enjoy it.”

  “I know. You’re right. Here, let me help you with my pants,” I whisper.

  He raises his body a bit, breathing hard. I place my hands at the waist of my jeans, twisting them down my butt, until I touch the keys with the tip of my fingers on my left hand. I hook my pointer finger around the ring, feel for the utility knife, and flip it open. “Oh, hug me, please. Get closer to me.” I wrap my right arm around Woolf’s head and pull it against my neck. His face is buried in my hair; his hand is between my legs, groping. I lift the knife, above his back, and stab down hard, into his ribs.

  Woolf screams and rolls off me. I pull up my pants, jump up, and am free to run. But first I kick him hard in the groin with my “don’t fuck with me” boots and dedicate it to Willa and Veronica and Beth and all the other girls pinned on his darkroom wall. He curls up into a ball, howling in pain like a sick, lame wolf.

  I pick up my sketchbook, kiss Chris’s hand, and run out of the room, through the studio, up the stairs, and out the front door.

  A blast of cold air hits my face as I see a half dozen black and whites gathered in the Arts Quad, parked in front of the studio. Officers are crouched, guns pointed. Sergeant Daniels charges toward the door.

  He gest
ures for his men to hold fire. I run to him and collapse in his arms.

  “Bea! Are you okay? Are you hurt? Talk to me!”

  I shake my head no, shivering, lapping up the fresh air. “I’m not hurt. He’s down there… in the basement. There’s another stairway in the back. Please, please get him. Fast!”

  Daniels shouts out orders to his men. “Down the stairs now! And cover the alley!”

  I sputter, “Where is she? Is she okay? Where is Veronica? I have to see her, I have to know she’s alright.”

  “Veronica? What are you talking about, Bea?” Daniels asks.

  “I meant Willa! Oh my god, is she okay? Tell me, please!”

  “Bea… Bea, look at me. Look at me now!” I do, but my body won’t stop trembling. “Willa is fine—she called us immediately. Told us where you were. She’s safe—Detective Cole took her to the station. But why did you say Veronica?”

  I burrow into his shoulder, into his jacket, staining it with my tears. “I can’t tell you. It’s horrible… just too horrible.”

  He pets my head. “It’s okay. It’s all okay.”

  “I could have helped her. I… I was there. She was calling out to me.”

  “Veronica? Are you talking about the girl in the Arb?”

  I cling to his sleeve, burying my head deeper into his armpit, trying to hide. “I wasn’t far from her; I was near the bridge. I heard her, but I was too messed up to help.”

  “Oh, Bea.” His arms wrap around me. “Is that what you believe? What you believed all this time?”

  “It’s true.”

  He rocks me back and forth. “No. No, it isn’t true. You couldn’t have heard Veronica. Her body was dumped there, at the Arb—she was killed somewhere else.”

  I look up at him, wipe my nose. “What? But who was it, then? Who was calling for help?”

  Daniels puts his cheek against mine and whispers, “Maybe it was you, Bea. Maybe it was you.”

  Professor Woolf is dragged out of the studio by the cops. His hands are cuffed behind his back, his face painted in swirls of fluorescent colors.

  “I didn’t know you could paint, too.”

  I muster up a faint smile. “I did good, didn’t I? Catching him?”

  He wipes my tears with his scarf. “Yes, you did good. Stupid, but good.”

  “Bea, Bea, oh my god, Bea!”

  I look up. She is running toward me. The cops have cordoned off the street and try to hold her back, but they don’t know my mom. She tussles with them, kicking, barreling through like a Pamplona bull, calling and screaming out to me. “Bea, my baby, Bea!” My dad is not far behind her, following as she paves the way.

  I am swallowed up in my parents’ arms.

  “Cut it off! I want it all cut off!” I yell.

  “What are you talking about, baby?” Mom asks.

  “My hair. I want it gone! Off my head, out of my life!”

  3 months

  20 days

  16 hours

  Willa was at the station waiting for me. I held her shaky hand as she positively identified Professor Woolf from behind a two-way mirror.

  “You’re going to be okay. It’s going to be hard, but you’re strong. You can do it, Willa.”

  Her bottom lip quivered as she looked at me with doubtful, scared eyes and walked away with her stunned parents.

  She hasn’t been back at school. Chris heard from some of the girls on the cheerleading squad that she’s in a local rehab facility. The rumor is that she’ll continue on an outpatient basis and begin school after the first of the year so she can graduate with the rest of the class. She’ll probably write one hell of a college essay, knowing Willa, with all that’s happened to her, and nail her Ivy League dreams.

  The police collected all the photos—all the evidence from the darkroom—and Professor Woolf was charged with the assault on me, Willa’s rape, and the murders of Beth and Veronica. He is in jail, denied bail, awaiting trial. They’re also looking into his possible involvement in a few cold cases in the Upper Peninsula.

  “It’s good for the tree, Bea. It’ll grow back stronger and healthier in the spring,” my dad says, unable to make eye contact. He knows it’s bullshit.

  I sit on the hood of my car in the driveway, my knees tucked up tightly to my chest, silently peeved, watching the tree trimmers butcher the sycamore.

  My parents were relieved, of course, that I was okay, smothered me with hugs for days, and then smothered me with questions.

  “Why were you in the studio with Professor Woolf?”

  “What’s your relationship with that sergeant?”

  “Why were you involved with this?”

  I finally answered at one of our stupid family dinners and told them the simple truth. “Willa needed my help, and I needed hers.”

  They seemed to accept that, and the questions ceased.

  Mom brings me a cup of hot cocoa and joins me on top of the car. “I’m sorry I doubted you, Bea.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’re proud of you,” Dad says, leaning on the hood.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is there anything we can do, say, to prove it to you, how sorry we are?” Mom asks.

  “Yeah! Stop trimming the tree!” I yell. “I’m not going to jump out the window again.” I point at them before they can speak. “Unless you make me.”

  “Okay. Okay,” they take turns saying.

  “And no more family dinners!”

  My dad takes my mom’s hand in his. They look at each other, eyes wide.

  I start it first; can’t help it. Just a little hiccup of a giggle.

  Mom looks at me sideways, catches it, sputters; her hand closes over her mouth, trying to keep it in—she tosses it over to Dad.

  He’s not as subtle. He puts his big hands on top of his nappy head and blurts out a loud, raucous laugh. “Thank god! No more family dinners!”

  We huddle and laugh. Simultaneously angry and loving, as always… and they silence the saws.

  4 months

  16 hours

  Aggie rests in Forest Hill Cemetery. There’s a foot of snow on the ground as I make the trek up the hill to her grave.

  Agatha Clara Rand

  I take a photograph out of my purse—a picture of Aggie and me, the two of us—my face visible this time. We’re wearing bikinis, laughing, goofing off at a school pool party when we were sixteen—sober that day, I think. I dust the snow off her gravestone and prop up the picture under her name.

  “Hey, Aggie, you know what? I’m celebrating four months today. Four months, sixteen hours, and”—I look at my watch—“twelve minutes. But who’s counting?”

  I am. Always.

  “Do you think you could help me find the other one, Leila?” I hold up a white, furry mukluk boot at the thrift store. “I think it’s pretty cool.”

  Leila laughs. “Let me check in the back.”

  I sit down on a bench and pull on the boot.

  “I like your hair, or lack of it,” Sergeant Daniels says, leaning against a rack of coats. He’s scruffy and sweaty in layered running clothes.

  My tummy does a flip-flop. “What are you doing here?”

  He holds his hand out. “May I?”

  I bow my head down, and he brushes his hand over my buzz cut.

  “You don’t do anything half-assed, do you?”

  “I had my mom set the clipper setting on number four—pretty radical, I know. But it’s grown out a bit—going to be like a mini ’fro. I haven’t seen you…”

  “For a couple weeks, I know.”

  “Are you following me again?”

  “Following you? I never followed you!”

  We both smile at that.

  “I happened to be running by. This is my route, and I saw you in the window.”

  “You spotted me without my hair?”

  Leila walks toward us. “You’re in luck, Bea. I found the other boot.”

  “Thanks. Um, this is Sergeant Daniels. Sergeant, this is Leil
a.”

  “Sergeant?” Leila looks at me, raising an eyebrow.

  “Ann Arbor Police,” Daniels says and shakes her hand.

  “No. It’s not what you think, Leila. I’m not in trouble. He’s just a—”

  “Friend,” Daniels says.

  “Right. A friend.” I agree.

  The bells on the front door jingle with new customers. “Nice to meet you—and Bea, let me know if you want the boots.” Leila walks away to greet the customers.

  “You know, since you’re a ‘friend’ as you say, do you happen to have a first name?”

  The sergeant feigns a sudden interest in a woman’s corduroy jacket with elbow patches. “I do, yeah, but I’m not interested in sharing it with you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’ll laugh, that’s why.”

  “Oh, come on. I promise I won’t laugh—pinky swear. What is it, a girly name like Leslie or something?”

  “No, no, it’s not like that.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s Dan.”

  “Dan? Dan Daniels?” I burst out laughing.

  “I told you you’d laugh.”

  “Well, that’s just sick. What were your parents thinking?”

  “They weren’t. They were, um, my mom was messed up when she signed my birth certificate, when she had me.”

  “Messed up?”

  “Yeah. She and my dad were both pretty hardcore drunks, and she signed my last name on the wrong line, where my first name was supposed to be. So there you have it. I was named Daniels Daniels.”

  “Oh, jeez, I’m sorry.” My nostrils flare, suppressing a laugh. “Why didn’t you change it?”

  Daniels studies the lining of the jacket. “I guess I hold on to it like you do with your chips. It reminds me of what not to do. Keeps me in line, my name.”

  “I get it. Sorry I laughed.”

  He looks at me, squints. “You’re really something, Bea. You know that, right? Special. And not just because of… that thing you do.”

  “Thanks.”

  Our eyes lock—again—for a good minute.

  Leila calls out. “So, Bea, you decide on the boots? You surprise me—not really your style.”