Pepper said, “You’ll be married to a great guy who loves you and I’ll be divorced from an asshole who left me when his music career took off.”
Julia smiled, because Pepper might be right. “The Brat will be married to some computer geek who worships the ground she walks on and has at least half a million dollars in the bank.”
“She’ll probably cheat on him with my asshole ex.”
“You could be the asshole who leaves her husband when her music career takes off.”
“Maybe,” Pepper said, but she didn’t sound convinced.
“Listen.” Julia glanced around again to make sure no one could hear her. “About the coke . . .”
“I know.”
She didn’t know. Julia had seen it happen—first to a friend in high school, then to a junior who dropped out of college and ended up at the shelter. “It can go from being fun to being a problem really fast.”
“Don’t worry, we’ve got a topflight homeless shelter in town.”
“Lydia.”
Pepper was quiet. No one ever called her by her real name. “I’d better go. I told Her Highness I would bring her some cocoa.”
“Kiss her for me.”
Pepper made a smacking sound and hung up.
Julia left her hand on the receiver long after the call had ended. Pepper liked cocaine. She had used it twice since that fateful party. She liked pills. She liked being with the band. She liked checking out and floating into the oblivion and she especially liked doing it when there was a cute guy around.
It wouldn’t be a problem, though. Julia would make sure of that. Her sister was a free spirit. She was going through a phase, like when Julia refused to wear anything that was orange, or when the Brat would eat only sweet peas.
Julia closed her eyes, and let a vision wash over her: sitting on the back porch of the Boulevard house, Pepper and Sweetpea playing cards on the steps, her parents in their rocking chairs, children running in the yard. Their children—Pepper, Julia, even the Brat, who would have one perfect, golden child who ended up curing cancer shortly after refusing a third term as president of the United States.
Julia wanted her children to be close to her sisters’ children. She wanted them to feel the same connection she felt with her family. The same safety. The same love. Nothing bad happened to people who were connected to their families. Maybe that had been Beatrice Oliver’s problem. The first telex story had reported that the missing girl was an only child. Wouldn’t it have been different if she’d had sisters? Wouldn’t a sister have gone with Beatrice to get ice cream and complain about what happened at school that day? Wouldn’t a baby sister have pitched a fit so she could tag along, too?
Julia could only imagine Beatrice’s mother’s sleepless nights as she ran though the if-onlys: If only I had gone to the store instead. If only I had driven her. If only we’d had more children so that the loss of one would be mitigated by the presence of the others.
Could that kind of loss be mitigated, though? Julia couldn’t imagine what it was like to lose a child. The loss of a beloved pet, even a gerbil or ferret, brought her entire family (including her mother) to their knees. They would cry in front of the TV, sob at the dinner table, mourn as they cuddled all of the remaining dogs and cats and various creatures around themselves in a big, furry blanket.
No one would mourn the loss of Mona No-Name. No one but Julia, whose imagination would not stop running wild. Was Mona being kept like Beatrice Oliver? Or maybe Mona’s situation was more like Jenny Loudermilk’s, the girl who’d decided after being attacked that it was easier to just disappear.
No matter what, didn’t part of a girl automatically disappear when something bad like that happened? Didn’t a rapist take away the girl—the woman—she was going to be and replace her with someone who was afraid for the rest of her life? Even if Beatrice Oliver was freed (even if she was still alive), how could she go back home after being raped? How would she be able to look her father in the eye? How could she not wince for the rest of her life every time a man, even a good man, looked at her?
Julia wiped underneath her eyes with the tips of her fingers. Maybe Greg Gianakos was right about letting your emotions get in the way of a story.
She found her bicycle still chained to the rack, but she couldn’t jam the stupid key into the rusted lock. Julia shoved her hands into her pockets and trudged back toward her dorm. The grounds crew was working on a section of lawn that had been destroyed by a group of rugby players. Julia gave the men a wide berth, holding her breath as the smell of fertilizer filled her nostrils. She tried to map out the rest of her night. She should take a sleeping bag to the library. She had to study for her psych exam. She needed to redo her Spenser paper. She needed to find some more statistics for her story. Her front-page story. God, what had she gotten herself into? A draft by Friday? She’d be lucky if she had an outline.
“You going back?” Nancy asked. She had come out of nowhere. She laughed when she saw Julia startle. “It’s just me, silly.”
“Let’s go out tonight.” Worrying about everything tomorrow sounded like a really good idea. “I heard Michael Stipe is going to be at the Manhattan.”
Nancy’s eyes narrowed. “I heard he was supposed to be at the Grit. Or was it the Georgia Bar?”
“We can still have fun. Maybe meet some cute guys. Get them to buy us some drinks.”
Nancy bumped her hip. “I thought you already had a cute guy.”
Julia smiled, and blushed, and felt relieved, because she could tell that the tension between them was over. “Let’s get a group together. It’ll be fun.”
“I dunno. I need to study.”
“We’ll go to the library, then we’ll get something to eat, then we’ll meet everybody around nine-thirty tonight.” The time wasn’t completely random. Robin had promised he would call her pager by ten. Three twos would mean that he couldn’t sneak away, in which case it would be nice to be at a noisy bar where she could drink and dance away her crushing disappointment.
And if he sent three ones, then she would be closer to his parents’ house, which would still be vacant, and would be vacant for the rest of the night.
“Whattaya say?” Julia asked, because most of her friends were really Nancy’s friends. “Sounds fun, right?”
Nancy smiled. “Sounds awesome.”
9:46 p.m.—The Manhattan Café, downtown Athens, Georgia
Julia loved dancing, mostly because she was terrible at it. People stopped to watch. They looked at her not because she was attractive, but because she was making a fool of herself.
As her father said about almost every one of her previous boyfriends, it was hard to dislike a fool.
“Did you see Top Gun?” Nancy nodded toward a lesser Tom Cruise standing at the bar. Julia squinted her eyes to see through the thick layer of cigarette smoke. The man wore a bomber jacket and sunglasses, even though it was warm and he was inside.
“Foxy,” Julia said, trying to keep as much of the beat as she could. Her dancing was never enhanced by trying to carry on a conversation. The floor was packed. People kept bumping into her, or maybe she was the one who kept bumping into them. After getting elbowed in the ribs, she finally gave up and nodded for Nancy to follow her to the bathroom.
The line was packed with students, most of them underage. Julia recognized the snippy girl from this morning who’d borrowed Nancy’s leather satchel and insulted Julia’s socks. Alabama was clearly out of it. She was swaying back and forth, catching herself at the last second before she fell flat on her face. No one was helping her. Maybe she’d insulted their socks, too.
“Jesus,” Nancy said. “Have some dignity.”
Julia had to raise her voice over the music. “Do you know her?”
“Deanie Crowder.” Nancy rolled her eyes in a way that indicated she wished that she did
n’t.
“I hope she’s got somebody to take her home.” Julia felt her strident voice start to simmer in the back of her throat. Jenny Loudermilk had gone home alone and look what had happened to her.
“Why do you keep looking at your watch?”
Julia looked up from her watch. “No reason. Just feels later than it is.” She had her pager on vibrate, but still she checked it.
“Who’s supposed to call?”
“Sorry. My little sister got in trouble today.”
“The Golden Child?”
“She’s not so bad.” Julia clipped the pager back on the inside of her pocket. She should’ve called Sweetpea to check in on her. And she should’ve been firmer with Pepper about the drugs. She was the big sister. It was her job to look out for them. She would find time for both of them this weekend. Maybe take Sweetpea to Wuxtry to buy an album. She really wasn’t that bad once you got her alone.
“Move!” somebody called from the back of the line.
They inched closer to the bathroom. Julia saw herself in a floor-length mirror. She was wearing one of Robin’s shirts. He’d pulled it out of the laundry basket for her. She put her hand to her neck and found Pepper’s locket. The silver and black bangles fell down her arm. She would give the locket back this weekend. And the bangles. And the straw hat, because it was Pepper’s anyway.
“You look great,” Nancy said. “No, wait, you look byoootiful.”
Julia laughed. She was imitating the goofy guy at the Taco Stand who flirted with every girl who walked through the door.
Nancy asked, “How about me?”
“You look byoootiful, too.” Nancy actually looked pretty good. She had chosen to go Cyndi Lauper to Julia’s Madonna. Her dark hair was spiked up. She wore a multicolored bolero jacket with gold trim. Her black crinoline skirt flared out just above her knee. Her spiky leather boots would be killing her feet by now, but the look was worth it.
“Mascara?” Nancy asked.
Julia studied the skin around her eyes, looking for smears. “Nope. Me?”
“Mahhvelous,” she drawled a perfect Billy Crystal.
The line finally moved, and Julia went into the first stall. She felt her pager vibrate as she started to unbutton her jeans. She didn’t scroll the number right away. She sat down on the toilet. She looked up at the ceiling. She looked at the posters taped to the back of the stall door. She finally looked down at the pager. She pressed the button to scroll the number.
222.
Her heart broke into a million pieces.
222.
Julia looked up, trying to keep her tears from falling. She sniffed. She counted to a slow one hundred. She looked down again, because maybe she was wrong.
222.
Robin couldn’t get away from his parents.
Or maybe he could get away, but he didn’t want to. Maybe Julia had been awful this afternoon. Maybe she was boring. Maybe Robin knew she hadn’t orgasmed, or she had orgasmed too loudly or breathed too hard or sounded too silly or—
“God!” somebody groaned.
Julia heard the distinctive sound of vomit hitting toilet water. It had to be Alabama, aka Deanie Crowder. The sound of her retching was like a duck being sucked through a tuba.
Nancy dry heaved. She had been a sympathetic vomiter since an ill-fated Pilgrim’s feast in kindergarten. Julia heard her stiletto boots snapping against the concrete as she rushed out of the bathroom.
Instead of going after her, Julia leaned back against the toilet tank. She held the pager in her hand, praying it would vibrate again, that she would press the button and see 111—Yes, I can get away, please meet me at my parents’ house because I love you.
Robin hadn’t actually said that he loved her. Was she a fool for being with him like that when he hadn’t even told her that above everyone else, it was Julia who had his heart?
Someone banged on the stall door. “Ladies gotta pee out here!”
Julia flushed the toilet. She stood up. She pushed open the door. She washed her hands. She went back to the bar and stood close enough to Top Gun for him to get the message.
“Buy you a drink?” Up close, he was more of a Goose, but Julia was past caring about that kind of thing.
She smiled sweetly. “I love those Moscow Mules.” She didn’t actually, but the vodka, ginger ale, and lime cocktail cost $4.50 and was a more expedient way to get drunk than the dollar PBRs they drank when they had to pick up their own tabs.
“I like the way you dance,” Top Gun told her.
Julia threw back the drink. “Let’s go.”
He followed her onto the dance floor, where he proved to be an even worse dancer than Julia. He shuffled side to side. He kept his elbows bent, his fingers snapping. Sometimes he looked down and over his shoulder, an approximation of a man making sure he hadn’t stepped in dog shit.
At least Julia put her heart into it, throwing out her arms, wiggling her hips when C+C Music Factory told everybody to dance now. Top Gun dropped away when Lisa Lisa came on. “Head to Toe.” Julia closed her eyes and tried not to think about Robin. She didn’t know if he liked dancing. Maybe he didn’t even like Madonna. Maybe he’d just said that to get into her pants. Or maybe he’d said it because he really loved her. Why would he talk about having a son, working at his father’s bakery, if he wasn’t thinking about his future?
Or maybe he was thinking about his future without her.
Julia couldn’t be around all these people anymore. The crush of the dance floor was too much. She pushed her way through the crowd. She found her purse hooked on the bar stool where she’d left it. She rummaged past her toothbrush and hairbrush and toiletries and change of underwear that she’d packed in anticipation of not going back to her dorm that night. Her lip gloss felt cold on her lips, because she was sweating and it was hot in the bar. Some older guy had bought her a second Moscow Mule. The ice had melted. The liquid had turned from gold to tan. She drank it anyway. The vodka hit the back of her throat like a hammer.
“Whoa there.” Nancy patted her back until Julia stopped coughing. “You okay?”
“What time is it?”
Nancy checked Julia’s watch. “It’s exactly ten thirty-eight in the evening.”
She’d been dancing for less than an hour. It had felt like an eternity. “I wanna go back.”
“Why don’t you wait until eleven and we’ll go together?”
“No, my head is killing me.” Julia put her hand to her head, which actually did hurt.
Nancy said, “You were the one who said we shouldn’t go out alone.”
“Only if we’re drunk, and I’m not drunk.” Actually, Julia felt a bit light-headed, but that was probably because her broken heart was sitting at the bottom of her stomach. “Thanks for coming out tonight. It really meant a lot. I’m sorry Michael Stipe didn’t show up.”
“I didn’t really think he would.” Nancy looked at her like she was acting weird. Maybe she was. “Sure you’re okay?”
Julia said, “I love you, buddy. You’re a good friend.”
“Aw.” Nancy rubbed her back again. “I love you, too, buddy.”
Julia unhooked her purse from the back of the chair. The floor was still crowded with dancers and lingerers and students who would regret their indulgences when their alarms went off in the morning. Thank God Julia didn’t have any classes tomorrow. She would go home to her room in the Boulevard house and sulk around in her pajamas and cuddle all the cats and dogs around her and watch soap operas all day.
She pushed open the heavy metal door. The night air was the most welcome feeling that Julia had ever experienced. With every step, she felt her lungs open up like petals on a flower. Her head spun from all the fresh oxygen. She held out her arms as she walked down the empty sidewalk, embracing the night, embracing the clarity it brought.
&
nbsp; As her grandmother might say, Julia needed to get ahold of herself.
Robin Clark was sweet and kind and gentle and wonderful and she loved being with him and might even be in love with him, but he was not the sole reason her world turned on its axis.
Julia was nineteen years old. She was going to write her first front-page story. She was going to graduate at the top of her class from one of the best journalism schools in the country. She had good health. She had good friends. She had a loving family. Instead of being some silly teenager whose heart rose and fell depending on how a boy felt (or might feel) about her, she needed to act like a grown woman and look at the facts. Robin had called her pager to tell her that he couldn’t come. If he was writing Julia off, if he had just used her for sex, then he wouldn’t bother to sneak to the ranger’s station and risk his family’s wrath.
Right?
Because Julia knew that Robin’s father took this camping thing very seriously. It was an annual affair. He closed down the bakery the first week of every March. He took his entire family into the woods so he could spend time with them. And Robin was honoring that. He was a good guy. He was like Julia’s father, and Mr. Hannah, and David Conford, and her Grandpa Ernie. He wasn’t like Greg or Lionel or Professor Edwards, who was probably at this very moment telling one of his unsuspecting students that he’d love to talk to her more about her paper over coffee and did she know that his apartment was just across campus.
The poor girl. She was probably a freshman. Young. Naïve. Greg had said that Jenny Loudermilk was a freshman. At least she was until she dropped out of school. She was walking down Broad Street and in a second, her whole life had changed. She would never again be that girl who walked around without a care in the world.
Twenty-two women in Athens would have their lives changed like that this year. And next year. And the year after. Not to mention the ones who had it happen before.
It was some kind of horrible that your odds got better every time another woman was raped. Assaulted. Attacked. Threatened. Like the clock in Times Square counting down the ball every New Years’ Eve.