The Drifter(18)

The following year, Standards was a regular Sunday night appointment for Betsy, which made her realize that things may not be working out for her there. The final straw, or her epiphany, as Betsy called it, came during a single week when she’d been accused of three offenses: smoking weed on the sun porch (True.), dropping “roaches” between the wooden slats of the porch deck (False. She liked to get high but she was not an arsonist.), and smoking (cigarettes) at a sorority function (True.).

The behavior in question occurred during the annual hayride, which was essentially an excuse to get drunk outside, in the woods, in front of an enormous bonfire. She’d shown up promptly at 7:00 ready to face the music. The vague unrest that had been percolating inside Betsy for months was coming into sharper focus.

“Were the people huddled around that twenty-foot stack of flaming timber offended when I smoked a single cigarette?” Betsy asked the group.

“It’s just that, Betsy, you know how it goes,” said Holly, their president, the very same Holly who’d been busted for a DUI (at 4:21 p.m. on a Friday, according to the police report) during her first month on campus just three short years earlier. Her gaze was trained on the tiny silver cross on Betsy’s necklace so she could avoid eye contact. “It just looks bad.”

The sorority bylaws, which were likely written in the 1950s, specified that sisters were only allowed to smoke indoors while seated. Betsy knew it was a stupid habit and bad for her, but she was being chastised for being tacky, not endangering her health.

“OK, got it. Smoke inhaled from the giant fire: OK,” said Betsy. Her voice began to break. “Smoke inhaled courtesy of Philip Morris: not OK.”

“The cigarettes are just . . . unbecoming,” stuttered Leslie, the chaplain. “But the pot thing? Well, it’s an illegal drug, for one. Plus, we’re going down in flames, ‘Burning Bed’ style, if you keep dropping the butts into the deck.”

“This isn’t the first time you’ve been called in here for this,” said Laurie, the alumni advisor, who was on the university’s music faculty. Laurie had pledged somewhere in the Midwest back in the 1970s when sororities were out of favor, and made a point of telling all of the active sisters that she would never have made the cut had she rushed in Gainesville today. No one argued with her. “Betsy, if it happens again, measures will be taken. This isn’t a joke.”

“Are you sure about that?” said Betsy, forcing her voice to be steady. “It feels a lot like a joke to me.”

The weed accusations she flatly denied. The last time someone admitted to doing drugs in that room it was sweet Kelly from West Palm who had a small cocaine problem. She was coaxed into confessing to a few lines under the guise of the sorority board’s goal to “get her help.” She was kicked out the following day. Her parents were called. Tears were shed. She moved home and spent the next two years commuting to Florida Atlantic University. To that, Betsy said, “No thanks.” Straight-up denial was the only way to go. Betsy could pretend not to care in that suffocating room, but she was barely out the back door before she burst into tears, vowing never to return again.

Over the following week, she’d had her chrysalis moment: She quit, moved out of the house, dropped her pin in the president’s mail cubby, and moved in with her coworker Melissa, despite her surly roommates’ protests, until she could find a place of her own. On a whim, she lopped her long, wavy hair to just below her chin, and stuffed the dozen or so floral dresses she owned into a black Hefty bag, which she dropped at Goodwill. Then, just like that, it was over. She rode her bike to class, slept at Melissa’s, showed up for work, studied at the library, and went back to being unspecial, save for her moments with Ginny, just like before.

The following Saturday, Ginny came by the bagel store to pick her up after her shift, as usual, and the next day the two of them drove out to Cedar Key to drink dollar Red Stripes, watch the sun reflect off of the Gulf, and listen to a mediocre reggae band with the regular sweaty mob like nothing ever happened.

There was no way any of the officers in town remembered her from the ecstasy episode, and she knew that, but she kept her head down anyway. She was determined to make it to the end of her college career without another incident. One more semester, just four more months, and it would be over. She felt the excitement of a new school year stirring inside of her. After a long, quiet summer, students were finally starting to trickle back into town. She wondered who would show up that day and order their first breakfast of the new school year. Would she ever run into John again, or would he just disappear into the business quad, be absorbed into the masses like everyone else? If nothing else, with people coming back to campus, things would start to get interesting.

When Betsy rounded the corner on her bike and Bagelville came into view, she saw two police officers get into their cruiser in front of the store and drive away. When she got to the back door, it was unlocked, and she walked in to see Tom sitting at his small desk in the corner, holding his head in his hands.

“Hey, Tom, what’s going on?” Betsy said, warily, worried about what he might say.

“It’s the crazy shit I was telling you about,” he said, lifting his eyes up to meet hers. “We’ll talk about it once you’re done with the juice. There’s work to do.”

A MOUNTAIN OF overripe citrus beckoned. It was her job to toss all of it into the industrial juicer, sacrifice the fruit into the humming, pulp-covered abyss, and then empty the hollow peels into the Dumpster out back.