Julia jumped when the door shook. Someone was knocking with a fist.
“Hell-o?” Alabama called.
The dorm was not coed. Julia didn’t bother to grab her robe, though she was wearing only a T-shirt and underwear. She regretted the omission when she realized she had never seen the girl before in her life.
That didn’t stop the stranger from pushing her way into the room. “What a mess. Y’all need a maid service.” Alabama looked under Nancy’s bed, then checked the space beside her desk. She went to the closet next.
“I’m sorry,” Julia said. “Do I know you?”
“I’m a friend of Nancy’s.” The girl opened up Nancy’s closet. “She said I could borrow her— There it is.” She yanked out a leather satchel, displacing piles of shoes. When she turned around, her eyes took in Julia in a slow head-to-toe take-down. “Nice socks.”
She left, leaving a sour air of disapproval behind her.
Julia looked down at her socks. They were gray with black and tan dachshunds stitched into the material. She wanted to run into the hall and ask the girl what was wrong with her socks, but she knew that the statement was not about the socks, it was about how the girl could put Julia in her place.
Julia understood these games, but she was at a loss as to how to play them.
She looked at her watch. Her Spenser class didn’t start until noon. She still needed to drop off the yellow scarf for her sister. There were also some printouts that her mother had promised to leave on the kitchen table. The sun was shining. The weather was crisp. Maybe a bike ride would clear some of the demons from her head.
Julia pulled on her jeans, threw a sweater over her T-shirt, grabbed her purse, and loaded up her book bag. She had already locked the door when she realized she should’ve brushed her teeth and run a comb through her hair, but she could do that when she got home. To her parents’ home, she meant, because the house on Boulevard wasn’t technically where she lived anymore.
Outside the dorm, she wrestled with the lock on her bike, grinding the key through a layer of rust. The morning mist had completely burned off by the time she rode her bicycle past the black iron arch that marked the entrance to the North Campus. She probably should’ve brought her jacket, but she was all right as long as she stayed in the sunshine. She weaved through the students milling around the center of Broad Street. Their moods seemed light. The weather was caught between winter and spring, and any day that promised sunshine was a day to be celebrated.
The distance between Julia’s dorm and the house was less than fifteen minutes, but it always felt like the ride took longer going there than it did coming back. Turning the corner onto the tree-lined streets of her childhood always brought a sense of nostalgia. Julia rose up from her seat as she coasted down Boulevard. The stately Victorians and ranch houses were as familiar to her as the back of her hand. Mostly professors lived in the area, but her mother claimed some of the old-timers had been here since before Jesus lost his sandals.
She nodded to Mrs. Carter, who still kept her garden hose handy in case a kid tried to cut through her wide front yard. She crossed to the opposite side of the street in anticipation of the Bartons’ yappy springer spaniel who, no matter how many times he practically choked himself, completely forgot he was chained to a tree every time a person went past.
She turned into the driveway of her parents’ yellow Victorian. Pepper’s bike was leaned against the front porch, which didn’t mean anything because Julia’s middle sister was sixteen years old and had plenty of friends who could drive her to school. Her baby sister’s pink bike was gone, because perfect little Sweetpea was always exactly where her mother and father expected her to be.
Sweetpea. Julia’s youngest sister was neither sweet nor pea-shaped (more like a pointy stick). The nickname had come because she had refused to eat anything but sweet peas the summer she turned eight years old. It was an adorable piece of family lore (like Pepper being called Pepper because Grandma said she had “hell and pepper in her hair”) but Julia was the one trapped all summer cranking open a can of peas every time the little brat bellowed for more. Not to mention what happened to the peas on their way out. You would’ve thought the stupid twerp would’ve disappeared into a puddle of green diarrhea, but no, she was still around.
Julia felt guilty for that last thought. She should be kinder to her little sister, but it was hard because she had it so much easier than Julia did, as if the five-year age difference had worn her parents down from hard, unmovable boulders into tiny pebbles you could skip across the creek. Of course Julia loved Sweetpea (they were sisters, after all), but sometimes she wanted to strangle her (they were sisters, after all).
To assuage the guilt, Julia reminded herself of the times that they all came together. Like on the rare instances that their parents really argued (really argued, because they had heated discussions about a lot of things) and all three girls would sleep in the same bed as if being together would protect them from the shouting. Or when Grandma told Pepper she needed to lose her baby fat and Sweetpea called her a sour old biddy. Or when Julia got arrested the first time she ever tried to smoke pot and both of her sisters stood vigil outside her bedroom door until her parents had finished yelling at her. Or when they all sobbed like babies when Charles and Diana got married because it was so romantic how much they loved each other, and all the Carroll sisters hoped for in life was that their sisters would find the same kind of forever love (preferably with a wealthy prince).
The memories made Julia feel nostalgic as she made her way up to the house. She skipped over the broken porch step (the one her mother yelled at her father to fix) and dodged the pot of dying crocuses (the ones her father yelled at her mother to replant). The front door was unlocked, as usual. No one was sure where a key was, and her mother was reasonably certain that any thief would see the tattered state of their living room furniture and decide there was nothing worth stealing.
Julia’s father was a vet. He was constantly bringing home strays, and when her mother put her foot down, Julia and her sisters would start bringing them home. It was not without mild disapproval that the yellow Victorian was known around the neighborhood as the Dr. Dolittle House.
As if on cue, a brown tabby of unknown ownership tangled into Julia’s legs as she struggled to put down her book bag. There was a low woof from the couch where Mr. Peterson, a maimed terrier, was recuperating on his back. Ms. Crabapple, a golden Lab with memory issues, was on the floor beside him. The gentle ruminations of a convalescing toucan came from the sunroom.
“Girls, I want you to meet Senora Pincha-Your-Fingers, from the family Ramphastidae,” her father had told them, introducing the bird with the usual formality he reserved for patients.
“Ay, caramba,” her mother had mumbled, then disappeared into the basement for the rest of the night.
Julia gave the dogs a pet before heading into the kitchen, which was its usual mess. Breakfast plates and dishes were waiting for her sisters to get home from school and wash them (Sweetpea would do it so slowly that finally Pepper would take over). An unfamiliar orange cat jumped onto the counter, a clear violation of her mother’s only rule for cats. Julia picked him up and placed him on the floor. The cat jumped back up, but she figured she’d done her part.
She spotted the stack of printouts on the kitchen table. She had asked her mother to find any articles about missing girls in the state of Georgia over the most recent twelve months. The handwriting at the top of the first page was as precise as a kindergarten teacher’s, which meant her mother had gotten one of the junior librarians to run the microfiche machine. The woman had written a note: These are the articles that had no follow-up story re: a return.
Julia layered some peanut butter onto a banana as she read the first printout. Two months ago, the Clayton News Daily had run a front-page story about a girl who had gone missing from the junior col
lege campus. The photograph had printed too dark to get any idea of what the girl looked like, but the description said she was brunette and pretty.
Julia turned the page. The Statesboro Herald. Another missing girl, this one last seen at a movie theater. Described as athletic and attractive.
The next article was from the News Observer. A missing girl last seen near the Fannin County Fair grounds. Tall with long dark hair and striking features.
The Tri-County News. Eden Valley girl reported missing. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Former beauty queen.
The Telegraph. Headline: “Mercer Student’s Roommate: She Never Came Home.” The student’s pastor was quoted in the story. “She is a beautiful, godly young woman, and we all just want her back.”
Pretty. Striking. Beautiful. Young.
Like Beatrice Oliver.
Like Mona No-Name.
The two recent disappearances hadn’t been archived to the microfiche yet, but in a few months, they would join the inauspicious club. Julia checked the datelines. None of the stories was from Athens, which was a relief for the obvious reason as well as because it meant that she hadn’t missed something during her daily read of the Athens-Clarke Herald.
Julia stacked the printouts together. The stories had gotten to her. She felt her pulse racing again. The room had turned stuffy. She fanned herself with the papers. They flipped back and forth, offering flash cards of grieving parents and school photos and candid shots taken during summer vacations.
All those pretty girls. All missing. Or taken. Or being kept.
Or maybe their bodies just hadn’t been found.
An index card fell out of the pages. This note was in her mother’s handwriting—not an admonition for requesting such dark reading material but a dated invoice from the library. Twenty-eight printouts at five cents each.
Julia fished a dollar bill and two quarters out of her purse (annoyingly, her mother would go out of her way to make change). She left the money with the invoice on the table. Her gaze picked out today’s date—March 4. Her grandmother’s birthday was coming up. Again, Julia dug around in her purse. She found the card she’d bought before Grandma had remarked that Julia looked like she couldn’t lose the last five pounds of her “Freshman Fifteen.”
“She’s calling you fat,” Sweetpea had said, helpfully.
Julia tapped the sealed envelope on the table. She had written some nice things inside the birthday card. Nice things that she no longer felt. Could she steam open the envelope and change the sentiment?
In the end, Julia left the card on the table. Maybe this was what taking the high road felt like, but it sure sucked that no one else would ever know about it.
She went into her bedroom, which was on the first floor because her father’s upstairs office was too messy to move when Sweetpea had come along. She stood in the doorway, feeling like a stranger even though nothing had changed. The walls were still lilac. Her rock posters were still there—Indigo Girls, R.E.M., Billy Idol on the ceiling so that he was the last thing she looked at when she went to bed at night. Polaroids of high school friends were still stuck in the mirror frame over her dresser. Mr. Biggles was still on the bed. Julia picked up the decrepit stuffed dog and kissed his head, saying her billionth silent apology for accidentally throwing him away the day she packed for college (thank God her father had saved him).
She smoothed back what was left of Mr. Biggles’s mangy, patchy fur. The poor thing had suffered his share of slings and arrows. Julia had slept on him so much that he was almost one-dimensional. Sweetpea had trimmed off his hair after a not-so-accidental Kool-Aid spill. Pepper had singed his nose with a curling iron and Julia had tried to pretend it was funny when, actually, she was dying inside.
Mr. Biggles was gently returned to his rightful place. Julia used the sleeve of her sweater to wipe some dust off the ugly blue lava lamp that she knew her mother despised (which was why Julia had left it here). The orange cat jumped on her bed. Julia ran her hand along his back, then realized that this was a second orange cat. His right leg was shaved where an IV had been inserted. His purr sounded like the vibrating teeth of a comb.
Julia found the yellow scarf in her purse and climbed the stairs to Pepper’s bedroom. As usual, the place looked like a bomb had gone off inside. Clothes covered the floor. Books were splayed page-down (“A sin,” their mother said). The walls were painted dark gray. The curtains were almost black. That the room felt more like a cave was completely by design. That their mother was infuriated by the effect was also by design.
Julia put her hand to her neck. She had borrowed Pepper’s gold locket months ago, but her sister had not noticed that it was missing until last Friday. There had been a heated fight when Julia had claimed she hadn’t taken it, then another heated fight when Pepper had realized that Julia was actually wearing the locket and had tucked said locket underneath her shirt to hide it. Instead of giving it back, Julia had stormed out of the house and slammed the door.
“You stole my straw hat!” she had yelled over her shoulder, as if the locket theft was a tit-for-tat.
Why had she been so childish? And why couldn’t she just give the locket back now? There was Pepper’s makeup vanity spilling over with trinkets that she had worn once, if that, then discarded. Silver and black bangles. A large black bow that actually belonged to Julia. Several T-shirts ripped Flashdance-style at the neck. Rainbow-colored leggings. Black tights. More eye shadows and powders and blushes than Julia would ever know what to do with.
Not that her sister needed makeup. If Julia was beautiful, Pepper was voluptuous. (Far more preferable, to Julia’s thinking.) Her middle sister was curvy and, now that she was getting older, sensuous in a way that made their father’s friends say really stupid things around her.
It wasn’t just how Pepper looked. There was something about her attitude that drew people in. She always said what was on her mind. She did whatever she wanted. She didn’t worry about what other people thought. She was certainly more experienced than Julia. She’d tried pot in the sixth grade. At a party last week, she’d snorted coke on a dare, which was terrifying if not slightly impressive. The gold locket had been a gift from a boy who had gone all the way with Pepper in the back of his father’s Chevy. At least that’s what Pepper had said, and why would she lie about something like that?
Julia tucked the locket back under her collar. She slid some of the black and silver bangles over her wrist, because she had bought hers at the same time and there was no telling whose were which. She grabbed the black bow. She left the yellow scarf on the bed, hoping her sister would see it among the discarded clothes. She was turning to leave the room when she heard a low moan.
Julia felt her eyebrows furrow at the familiar noise. Had the poor old Lab gotten stuck in a corner and forgotten how to get out? Was one of the cats about to hork up a hairball?
The moan came again, low and drawn out, kind of like the satisfied sound a person makes when they manage to fully stretch themselves out.
Julia stepped into the hallway. She noticed that her parents’ bedroom door was closed. A sliver of light showed around the edges. She heard the moan again and she ran down the stairs before she heard it a fourth time and had to pour acid into her ears to cleanse herself of the memory.
“Yuck,” she mumbled, jerking her bike away from the front porch. “Yuck, yuck, yuck.”
The entire ride back to campus was filled with thoughts of anything but her parents having sex. The Iran-Contra hearings, which Julia had stayed home from school to watch with her father. The first dog she had, Jim Dandy, a golden retriever with a permanent limp because, as her father said, “Some jackass assumed a dog could understand physics and let him ride untethered in the back of a pick-up truck.” Sweetpea’s thirteenth birthday party last year, how excited they all were that she was finally a teenager (except for her mother, who drank
some of her father’s beer and turned maudlin). The way Grandpa Ernie used to pull out his guitar after Sunday dinner and they would all dance to whatever song he was playing, even if no one recognized the tune.
By the time Julia got back to campus, it was exactly noon. She chained up her bike in front of the Tate Student Center and ran to her Spenser class. Professor Edwards was already lecturing at his podium, and he met Julia’s harried entrance with a hard stare.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized as she made a beeline for her desk in the back. “I forgot my paper and had to go back to my dorm.” She started to sit down, but he stopped her.
“Bring it here.” He had his hand out. His fingers flexed back and forth, indicating she should move and he was not kidding around.
Julia made the thousand-mile journey back to Professor Edwards. She put her twelve-page paper in his hand. Blots of Wite-Out scabbed the typewritten essay. She started to turn back around, but he said—
“Stay here. This won’t take long.”
She stood in front of his podium while he read her work. She shifted back and forth from foot to foot. She wrung together her hands. She didn’t look at any of the sniggling classmates behind her. Professor Edwards, in turn, did not look at Julia. He had his head down. He flicked the pages with a sharp jerk of his wrist. Sometimes he nodded. More often, he shook his head.
Edwards was younger than most of her teachers, probably in his mid-thirties, but there was a tiny bald spot on top of his head that the girls talked about—not because it made him less attractive (it must be acknowledged that Professor Edwards was very attractive), but because they always knew they could use it as a weapon if he ever tried anything with them.
Because Professor Edwards had a reputation for trying things. It was one of those pieces of advice that got passed down through the classes: Don’t walk under the Arch or you won’t graduate, SAE stands for “sexual assault expected,” don’t find yourself alone with Professor Edwards unless you want him to make stray remarks about how pretty you are, what a great ass you have, how your breasts are perfect, or how close his apartment is to campus.
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