The Drifter(23)

“Hey, friends,” said Betsy, preparing for the worst. “Sprung from prison camp for the afternoon?”

“There was a poster board and snack emergency at the house,” said Ginny, whose T-shirt and cutoffs were speckled with paint from building sets for rush. Caroline was spotless as always. “We volunteered to make a run. It’s rush stuff, but you know that.”

“How noble of you,” said Betsy.

“Completely selfless, as always,” said Caroline, squinting hard at her.

“I came by to see if you needed a ride. It’s too hot to be out on a bike,” said Ginny.

“I guess I could leave the dwarfcycle here until later. But, hey, Caroline, I promise that I’ll get it back to you tomorrow,” Betsy said.

“Oh please, that piece of crap? Someone left it at our place last year. Like I would ever ride that thing,” she said.

Ginny shot Caroline a hard look and punched her in the thigh.

“So get in. Come to Walmart. We’re making a frozen yogurt run, too.”

Betsy weighed her options. It was ninety-six degrees and anyone who knew better was inside. Until classes started again and she could scurry across campus and into a classroom, and let her perspiration evaporate into the air-conditioned ether, she didn’t have anyplace to go. In that moment, getting in the backseat of Ginny’s car seemed like her only option.

“Alright, I’ll come. But I’ve got to be back here in an hour.”

She climbed in without opening the door, Ginny hit the gas, and the car sputtered around the corner onto University Boulevard. Caroline craned her neck around to look at Betsy over the top of her Ray-Bans.

“So I am assuming you’ve heard about the dead girls, right?”

“Uh-huh,” said Betsy, trying to be nonchalant, not to show Caroline any fear.

“As I am sure you can imagine, everyone at the house is losing their shit. The rumor is that there’s a killer on the loose, and he’s dressing up like a pizza delivery guy so people let him into their houses.”

“I heard that he was pretending to be from the department of water and power,” said Ginny. “He says that the landlord sent him and then once he’s inside he pulls out a gun.”

“Wait, weren’t they stabbed?” asked Caroline, who was now checking her manicure.

“You seem really concerned, Car,” said Betsy. “I mean, concerned that you’ve chipped a nail. Not that people are being stabbed to death.”

“Oh please, you know how this town is. How much of this shit are you going to believe? Also, honestly, the numbers are in my favor. How many female students are on this campus? Say, fifteen thousand? I have a one in fifteen thousand chance of being murdered this week.”

“Um, I don’t think that’s exactly how it works. Am I right?” asked Ginny, taking her eyes off of the road for a dangerously long time to look back at Betsy. “I mean, I don’t remember much from Probability and Statistics, but I am almost positive that’s not how it works.”

“You’re so cute when you’re dumb,” said Betsy, reaching over the back of her seat to squeeze Ginny’s shoulder.

“The exact number doesn’t even matter, Gin. You’re always so literal,” said Caroline. “Besides, I took Self-Defense for two credits! That guy comes at me, and I could kill his sorry ass with a rolled-up newspaper. You roll it up so tight you can stab someone with it! I could rip his ear off with my hand. All it takes is twenty pounds of pressure. Or thirty. I can’t remember.”

“That is just gross,” said Ginny. “So you just pull on it till it rips off, and you’re just standing there with another person’s ear in your hand? What about you, Betsy? Could you rip someone’s ear off?”

“You’re ripping mine off right now with all of this yammering,” said Betsy, who couldn’t help but crack a smile. Then she and Ginny and even Caroline were laughing, that kind of nervous, appalling laughter that sneaks out at the least appropriate times.

Ginny steered into the last parking spot on one of several long, empty aisles in a largely vacant parking lot of a strip mall. What was the hurry? The longer they stayed away from estrogen camp, the frantic panic of pre-rush preparations, the better. She and Caroline had been in stale air, filled with raspberry-body-wash smells and bad karma, all day. What the three of them needed was arctic AC, frozen yogurt, a trial-sized hair spray, a long peruse down the aisles of Walmart, and the reason for their furlough, poster boards and markers.

“Primo spot, Gin,” said Caroline. “Honestly, we could have walked and gotten here faster.”

“Think of the thirty-five-second walk to the door as a chance to work on your tan,” she said. “Let’s get yogurt first.”

Inside the TCBY—“This Can’t Be Yogurt” or “The Country’s Best Yogurt,” depending on which side of the lawsuit you landed—a melancholy post–Go-Go’s Belinda Carlisle song was playing from an enormous boom box on the shelf next to the cake cone dispenser. The girl behind the counter had deeply tanned, nearly purple skin and a cascade of Aussie Sprunch–sprayed curls tumbling over the side of her white visor.

“Welcome to my nightmare, how can I help you?” said Caroline, looking over her shoulder at Ginny and Betsy. Caroline had mastered speaking at a range that was not quite loud enough for her victim to hear, but left the subject of her scrutiny with a vague feeling of unease nonetheless. Turning to expressionless Tracy, according to the nametag pinned to the blaze orange sweatshirt she was wearing despite the ninety-five-degree day, she said, “My friend here will have a medium strawberry in a cup with whatever kind of crap cereal you’re selling today. What’s your poison, Betsy?”