The Drifter(45)
“My mom is going to kill me” was the only thing Betsy could think of to say. When Caroline saw that she had succeeded in terrifying her latest subjects, she flopped on the couch and said, “I’m completely fucking with you,” through a sinister, self-satisfied grin.
After that, Betsy’s paranoia became the stuff of legend. And Caroline’s performance cemented her status as a devious but, if you squint a little, entirely awesome superhero in Betsy’s eyes, once she realized what was happening and laughed at her own expense. Holly wasn’t so forgiving.
“You’re an insane cow, Caroline. Really twisted,” she said, before she grabbed her Dooney & Burke bag and stormed out of the door, past the neighbor’s idling car outside.
After that, the three of them started what was to become a regular, GPA-destroying thing: Betsy in the backseat, Ginny behind the wheel, and Caroline shotgun, making their first stop of the night at the drive-thru liquor store so Ginny could flirt with the guys who worked there until they handed over three bottles of Asti Spumante to underage girls who would never, ever pay. It would become their routine. That’s how it all began. Later, the John incident would be how it ended. But in that moment, Betsy still basked in the reflected glow of her slightly demonic friend and Ginny’s sweet but devilish smile, the glint in her eyes, which Betsy could see reflected in the rearview mirror.
BETSY STEPPED OVER the edge of the claw-foot tub, wrapped herself in a stiff yellow towel, and cleared the steam from the mirror with her palm. Even after the shower, the crochet imprint was embedded on her cheek. She combed her fingers through her hair, pulled on her last pair of clean underpants, fresh Levi’s, and a threadbare black V-neck T-shirt and crept down the stairs with her army surplus boots in one hand, steadying herself on the railing with the other.
Miss June was in what appeared to be the library, though the shelves that lined the walls were deeper and bowed in the middle from the weight of vinyl. Betsy had never seen a record collection so immense, or a turntable quite so old. June sat in an overstuffed chair that was bulging at the seams, exposing the cotton stuffing beneath, making something out of variegated yarn that appeared to have three sleeves. She was listening to jazz.
“Thought you children might be dead up there, heh heh,” she said, not bothering to look up.
“Hate to disappoint you,” said Betsy, forcing a smile. Dead girls. Always hilarious. “If I don’t eat soon, I might be.”
“Got some biscuits in the kitchen left over from this morning,” she said. “There’s a place on the corner that’ll fix you up with some dinner. Cheap and good, the best kind.”
Betsy ate the stale biscuit with honey on a chipped saucer in the dark kitchen and, newly fortified, walked the two blocks to the nearest liquor store. She bought a six-pack of Shiner—the cashier didn’t ask for her I.D. and Betsy assumed that it was because the last two days had aged her ten years—and a bag of Lay’s. Back on the wide porch of Miss June’s house, Betsy took a seat in a crackly rocking chair to watch cars rolling by and people strolling on the sidewalk making their way to somewhere in no particular rush. She breathed in the weighty, unfamiliar air and Miss June’s music, which drifted through the screen door. Betsy would never learn to love jazz, but that night she came close. She felt a little ragged, uncertain, raw in the strangest way, and the music mirrored that. She heard Gavin’s low, slow voice greeting Miss June inside and the creaking of the front door.
“There you are,” he said, taking the chair next to hers. The scent of Camay soap had followed him from the shower. Betsy handed him a beer and a biscuit wrapped in a paper towel.
“Yep, and I’m never leaving,” she said. “Miss June is making me an ankle-length vest that matches hers and I’m going to stay here forever.”
“Just skip the finding a job and having a life part and head straight for retirement,” he said. “It’s a half-decent plan. But I couldn’t handle the jazz. Way too annoying.”
I have to call my mom, let her know I’m OK, Betsy thought, feeling a familiar tightness in her chest. She’ll be worried. But the fact that she’d left town with a strange new guy, someone she’d barely known, to escape a serial killer might not soothe her mother’s nerves. It could wait until morning.
“Do you want to call Adam and Brett again?” she asked. “Or we could go back by the house? Somebody’s got to be there by now.”
“Nah, maybe later,” he said, leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees, his leg brushing against hers. “I think we could probably entertain ourselves for a while.”
Miss June was right. At the end of the block, they got a deep bowl of beans and rice with corn bread and a couple of beers for fifteen dollars. They walked aimlessly through the warm night, her arm around his waist, his across her shoulders, and she felt safer there, with him, on the street in New Orleans, than she had in some time. She decided not to press him for Channing details. That would keep for a while. On the way into town that day, they passed a billboard painted black with Thou Shalt Not Kill written across it in all caps. Of all of the commandments, Gavin had said, surely that was the easiest to remember, not recognizing the irony of the situation until it was behind them. It’s an odd place to go if you’re fleeing danger. Betsy had always heard how crime-ridden the city was. But the threat there seemed to be out in the open, recognized, hanging in the breeze like a shingle hung in front of a bar—a handbag dangling from a shoulder, ready to be snatched, a fight in the streets that spilled out from a crowded bar. You knew that bad guys were supposed to be there, so you wouldn’t be surprised to run into one.