The Drifter(52)

“Not yet. They had some guy in custody, but he was just some punk kid who beat up his mom,” Betsy said. She flashed to the mug shot in the paper, the scarred face, the hooded eyes. She was surprised how she sounded totally unfazed, as though the information didn’t sting every time she repeated it. Ginny had been dead for four months. It had already been woven into Betsy’s story. Having a dead best friend was her normal. “He didn’t do it. The police just needed to put somebody in jail to make the university happy, and that guy’s number was up.”

“That’s major.” The girl nodded dumbly, her jaw grinding her back molars to tiny nubs.

“Yeah, real major,” said Betsy. “Hey, it’s got to be close to midnight, right? Doesn’t a ball drop or something? I might go get some air.”

She made her way across the small apartment, stepping over bodies, now quiet and huddled in pairs together on the floor, to Gavin.

“So you never learned the international symbol for thirst,” she said.

“Oh God, sorry, I saw you but I totally forgot,” he said. “I was distracted by what’s-his-name having a shit-fit about the Clash. I thought for a second that he was going to jump out of the window if I kept bagging on Strummer, but then I realized it was painted shut.”

Betsy filled the one clean cup she could find, a ceramic mug picturing a cartoon porcupine holding a balloon, from the tap.

“Meanwhile, Wednesday Addams on the couch over there was asking me for Ginny’s autopsy report,” said Betsy.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. Ari can’t keep her fucking mouth shut.”

“No, it’s OK. I’m alright. I just think I should grab my coat and get some air. Some frigid, lung-seizing air. I can’t take that everyone in this room is talking about Ginny.”

“That’s not fair, Bets. Ari didn’t tell everybody. You’re just being pa—” Gavin stopped himself before he could finish.

“Oh, I’m being paranoid? Where have I heard that before?”

Her eyes locked on his, daring him to continue.

They talked about the night Ginny was killed only twice: once on the drive back from New Orleans, when they decided what they would tell the police, and once just before Kathy came to Gainesville to collect her daughter a week after the funeral, when it was clear that Betsy wasn’t going to make it through the semester and she made arrangements to finish her classwork by correspondence. They loaded her milk crates and bags in the back of Kathy’s Buick Skylark. It was getting late and her mom wanted to get on the road to start the three-hour drive before dark. Gavin came out to the Embassy Suites, where Kathy was staying, to say goodbye. They were standing in the parking lot as the sun disappeared, leaning against his car.

The details of the night Ginny died were fuzzy for both of them. Betsy remembered riding a bike back to Ginny’s apartment, hearing a noise, running out of the apartment and into the street, freezing in his headlights, getting into his car, confessing that she thought someone was in the apartment. She remembered feeling ashamed, nervous to reveal her anxiety. In a twisted way, it felt like narcissism. Of all the women in Gainesville, the female half of the thirty-five thousand students on campus, she was the one to walk in on him and live to tell the tale? It felt delusional. Her most vivid recollection was that she did not want to call the police when she was high, or more specifically, she did not want the police to call her mother and tell her that her daughter smoked hash, hallucinated about a murderer, and made a bogus call to 911. Gavin was all too eager to let her off the hook.

“I should have stayed on the line, when I called nine-one-one. I should have woken up a neighbor, used their phone, stayed there, and waited for the police, Gavin,” she said, quietly, fighting tears in the hotel parking lot. “I’m such a coward. I’m such a selfish fucking coward.”

“No, Bets, no,” he said, pulling her closer to him. “You didn’t know. You weren’t thinking straight. I was fucked up. Mack was being such a psycho. You were scared to death.”

“You should just say it,” she said, lifting her shoulder to wipe her tears with the sleeve of her T-shirt. “You thought I was out of my mind.”

“We were both out of our minds. Jesus, everybody around here was,” he said. His voice lowered to a more serious whisper. “And what can we do about it now? You didn’t see anything. You didn’t get a look at him, or even hear his voice. Should you have told the cops when they were questioning you the other day? I don’t know, maybe. Maybe not. Do we call the cops now? That’s not going to change anything. Ginny will still be dead. And you will be in major fucking trouble.”

“Just me, then? I’m alone in this.”

“No, we.” He shook his head. “Of course. We will be in major fucking trouble. It’s ‘we’ now. We’re in this together.”

IT WAS THEIR secret. They drove it to New York with them like a third passenger asleep in the backseat, like an uninvited guest at the New Year’s party.

Gavin checked his watch.

“It’s a few minutes before midnight. You’re right, we should get some air.”

They shrugged on their coats and stumbled out onto the frozen street, over a smattering of smashed plastic bags full of dog shit, some dirty ice patches, shards of shattered glass, and the occasional used syringe to ring in the New Year in Tompkins Square Park. Even in that ugly coat, Betsy felt shiny and new by comparison, like the Easter Bunny, Ginny would say. She thought of Ginny at the Dish in her royal blue skirt, the night that Gavin hopped onto the stage. She thought of Caroline, who she’d been avoiding for months, who didn’t even know Betsy was in New York. For some reason, she wanted her to know.