Final Girls(77)

“Void?” I say.

“Lisa didn’t date very much,” Nancy says. “She didn’t trust too many men, with good reason. Like most girls, she probably once had dreams of getting married, having kids, being a mom. That day at the sorority house took all that away from her.”

“So she never dated?”

“A little,” Nancy replies. “Nothing that ever got very serious. Most guys split once they found out what happened to her.”

“Did she mention any of them to you? Maybe about one of them harassing her? Or did she ever talk about having problems with one of the girls she befriended?”

Sam. That’s who I really mean. Did Lisa ever mention Samantha Boyd?

“Not to me.” Nancy drains her teacup. She looks at mine, clearly hoping I’ll do the same and take my leave. “How long are you in town for, Quincy?”

I check my watch. It’s quarter past one. I need to be on the road by two-thirty if I want to make it back to Chicago without Jeff arousing Jeff’s suspicions.

“Another hour.” I look around the half-packed room, then the empty boxes leaning flat against the wall. “Need some help?”





CHAPTER 29


I offer to work in Lisa’s bedroom while Nancy continues in the living room. She agrees, although she bites the inside of her mouth before consenting, as if she’s unsure I can be trusted. But then she hands me two boxes.

“Don’t worry about trying to sort stuff,” she says, pointing me down the hallway. “Her family will do that. We just need to empty the place.”

Finally out of her sight, I linger in the hall, looking into each of the three rooms located there.

The first one is a guest room, sparsely furnished and immaculately clean. I step inside and roam its circumference, my index finger running along the dresser, the bed, the nightstand. There’s no trace of Sam, even though I can picture her smoking by the open window, just like she’s probably doing in my apartment at this very moment.

I move back to the hall, pausing at the bathroom. This room I refuse to enter. Doing so would feel like invading a crypt. Besides, I have a good enough view from the hall. From sink to tub to toilet, the bathroom is a sea of light blue, smudged in spots by traces of the aluminum powder used to dust for prints. I stare at the tub, unnerved.

Lisa died right there.

I think of her lying in that tub, surrounded by cloudy pink water. I then think of Sam standing in the doorway just like I’m doing. Watching. Making sure the job is complete.

When I can’t look at that tub a second longer, I head to Lisa’s bedroom, trying hard to shake off the chill that’s suddenly come over me. The bedroom is all cream and pink. Cream carpet, pink curtains, rose-colored comforter over the bed. A treadmill stands in the corner, covered with dust and draped with clothes.

I wonder if Lisa ever spent one of our phone conversations in here, doling out advice while walking on the treadmill, or maybe sprawled across the bed. The memory of her phone voice returns.

You can’t change what’s happened, Quincy. The only thing you can control is how you deal with it.

I go to Lisa’s dresser, the top of which is littered with hair accessories, plastic bins overflowing with makeup, and an old-school jewelry box. When I lift its lid, a porcelain ballerina in a tiny tulle skirt pops up and begins to spin.

On the other side of the dresser are several snapshots stuck into plastic frames meant to resemble wood. There’s Lisa at the beach with Nancy, both of them squinting into the sun. Lisa with whom I can only assume are her parents, standing before a Christmas tree. Lisa at the Grand Canyon, at a bar with neon behind her and a hand on her shoulder bearing a red ring, at a birthday party with cake smeared on her face.

I empty the dresser one drawer at a time, grabbing bunches of Lisa’s bras, socks, and granny panties. I remove the clothes quickly, trying to ignore the guilt-inducing fact that I’m snooping. It feels like a violation of sorts. As if I’ve broken into her home and started to ransack the place.

It’s the same thing when I go to the closet and begin clearing it of dresses, pantsuits and sad floral skirts that went out of style years ago. But then I find what I was hoping for. There’s a gray lockbox in a back corner of the closet, partially obscured by a hamper. It’s small, boasting a single drawer. I notice a tiny keyhole in that lone drawer, similar to the one located in my secret drawer at home. And just like on my drawer, the keyhole is circled by a pattern of scratch marks made when the lock was picked.

Now I know for certain that Sam was here. Those scratch marks were her handiwork. They had to be.

My hand drifts to the necklace that holds the key to my drawer. I still wear it, despite being so far from home. It gives me a sense of normalcy when, in truth, everything about my life has been upended by Sam.

I give the drawer a tug and it slides open. Three neatly stacked file folders sit inside it.

The top one is blue and unlabeled. Opening it, I see a scrapbook of sorts. Page after photocopied page of newspaper clippings, magazine articles, stories printed off the Internet. All of them are about the sorority house massacre. Some of the articles have sentences underlined in blue pen. Question marks and sad faces crowd the margins.

The other two folders are red and white. One is about Sam. The other concerns me. I know that even without opening them. The math is simple: Three Final Girls, three folders.