The Drifter(38)

“I quit, actually,” she said, wondering if this would somehow change the tenor of the conversation, make them members of the same club and align them against the stick-in-the-ass bitches of the world. “I turned in my pin last year.”

“So that explains the makeover,” said Channing. Anna barked a kind of harsh, halting laugh this time. The revelation that Channing had noticed Betsy, too, even if it was to take inventory of her somewhat embarrassing style evolution, made Betsy believe that the fight wasn’t over yet.

“I was wondering why you were slumming over here,” said Channing, taking a swig of her beer.

“Sometimes, if you aim too high, you miss the target. But you should know that, right?” Betsy said. So this is just how it works. Bitches were everywhere. Channing was the Caroline of her domain, but Betsy could take her. “Felt like coming down from my shiny mountaintop tonight.”

“Excuse me, ladies,” said Jacob, as Channing and Anna slid off of his lap. “Bets, you up for singing backup later?”

“Uh, sure,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear self-consciously, her old friend paranoia back in her head, telling her that Jacob only asked in order to make fun of her later, in front of them. When Betsy was high, it was like thinking in an echo chamber. Any of the insignificant, insecure inklings she’d have when she was sober would be amplified, played back to her a few times, louder and louder, until it became more important and dire than it was or funnier than it should be. Nothing was funny about that night, though, and she struggled with the “they’re laughing with me” vs. “they’re laughing at me” mind fuck. The fear around her, the sense that any one of the derelicts at the party could be the killer, made the feeling infinitely worse. She scanned the crowd for faces, trying to remember details. Would she recognize any of them in a police lineup? Even though she wanted to beg Gavin to leave, to go back to his house and disappear into his room, all she could think to say was, “Maybe.”

“You alright?” asked Gavin, touching her elbow. She turned to look at him and, in a half-second flash, realized that she was practically living with a total stranger. Who is this guy? Was he in on the joke with Channing and Weird Bobby, out to humiliate the sorority girl as some kind of game?

“I’m fine. Why do you care?” she said.

“Why do I care?” He laughed, guiding her away from the table. “Because Channing is into blood sports and she is totally after you.”

“Oh you actually noticed that?” she said. “I thought you were just tossing me in the water to bloody it up like chum.” She didn’t know if she’d made the shark analogy out loud.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he said.

She hadn’t said it out loud.

“Look, I would lay off the weed if I were you. That’s serious shit. Weird Bobby doesn’t mess around.”

“What, so now you’re my chaperone? You think Betty Bagelville can’t handle it?”

“What are you talking about?” he said. “Weird Bobby’s shit is strong. Period. Sorry if you’re some kind of expert hash-smoker and I didn’t know it.”

“Yeah, well there are a lot of things you don’t know about me.” Ugh, she thought, Really? That’s the best you could do?

“Hey, Gav, you in?” asked Jacob. “Weird Bobby’s on bass. We need you on drums.”

“Yeah, one sec,” he called back, and then turned to Betsy as he reached up to scratch the back of his head. “Are you going to be OK if I go in there? Bets, you’re acting weird.”

“I can handle myself,” she said. “As of forty-eight hours ago, I was totally capable of living without you.”

Neither one of them knew what to do or say next. They stood there for a minute. Gavin tried to make eye contact, but Betsy wouldn’t do it. The words were out. Maybe that’s all it took to crush something that was so soft and new that it hadn’t formed a protective shell yet.

“Alright, if that’s the way it’s gonna be,” he said, at last. “I’m going to go inside that house and play some brutally insensitive songs right now, and when I come back I expect you to be normal again. Got it?”

She didn’t reply.

“We’ll leave when this is over?” he said, stuttering, noticing the gaffe. “I mean, when we’re finished, if that’s what you want.”

“Sure. When it’s over. Whatever. That’s fine,” she said, deliberately obtuse, not completely understanding why. It was easier to hate him, to drive him away, she thought, than to find out he’d been fucking with her. She hated how dramatic she was being, but couldn’t stop. They made their way back through the crowd into the house to the sound of Jacob doing his best sullen Morrissey impression out of the crackly speaker: “There are times when I could have muuuurdered heeerrrr.” Betsy found a spot on the stairs so she could look out over the crowd and hide at the same time. She wondered if they could actually play or if they would just tune the instruments until people gave up and left or fell asleep.

She glanced at the thermostat on the wall. The air-conditioning was set at sixty-five, but the room was airless and suffocating. The crowd was a raggedy mix of hippies, skaters, punks, and general-purpose slackers. They were people who, if they lived in a real city, would have the luxury of avoiding one another, even hating each other. Here, the population that qualified as bohemian or, that new word, alternative, or marginal in any way, was so small that they had to band together as kindred, disaffected youth. Though in Weird Bobby’s case, calling him “youth” of any kind was a stretch. It was Gainesville, summer of 1990, and less than a mile down the street there were a dozen steroid-addled assholes sitting on a fire truck permanently parked in the front yard of their frat house, draining a day-old, half-empty keg of Bud Light and rating women as they walked by on the traditional scale of one to ten. So from Betsy’s angle, Weird Bobby’s party, full of wasted, misfit strangers, and the ironic and wildly inappropriate song set Jacob put together, was better than her other options. She sat on her perch and watched. Across the room, she spotted Louise and Not-Louise huddled against the wall, laughing conspiratorially. Betsy watched as Anna slinked through the crowd and let her shirt slip off of her shoulder like she didn’t notice, and Channing stumbled her way across the room in a long skirt that hung low on her jutting hips, scarf wrapped just so. Eventually, Teddy climbed the stairs and took a seat next to her.