Girl One(28)



“It was all … so sudden … I just—”

“You have an exam in my class in one week,” Dr. McCarter said. “I have your classmates covering for you at the lab, but they’re busy too. It’s not quite fair to them to force them to pick up your slack, is it, now?”

“Of course not. I’m sorry.”

A sigh. “Jo, can I be honest with you? There’s been some talk among my colleagues. Someone said we only accepted you as a publicity stunt.” He didn’t need to tell me: I’d felt this, reflected in classmates’ gazes and fleeting comments. “You’re bright, and usually you’re a hard worker. I absolutely believe you can do what you’ve set out to do. This is just a distraction from your work.”

“My mother’s home was burned down,” I said, “and she’s missing, and—”

“Family matters are tricky, yes,” he interrupted. “But couldn’t you let someone else handle this for a while?”

“It’s not like my mother has anybody else.” And neither did I. No brusque father to pat me on the back, no aunts to rush in with casseroles and platitudes. It was just me now: my mother and I divided and subdivided from our time at the Homestead. Eighteen women narrowed down to two, two down to one.

“I don’t want you to lose your place in the program for something you can’t help. I’ll speak to the committee about the quality of your work and make sure they understand these are special circumstances. Let’s prove those skeptics wrong, okay?”

“Thank you, Dr. McCarter.”

After I hung up, there was a sudden rustle behind me, the unmistakable crunch of a footstep against the gravel. I turned, embarrassed and irritable, expecting that Tom had followed me out here to listen in on my conversation. It took a second to locate the source—the cherry of his cigarette came first, floating in midair, the rest of him resolving around that spark. He ambled toward me, not as tall as Tom but thicker and loosely muscled. Something about his gait, the easy stride, set off a primal thrum of warning at the base of my skull.

“Got a quarter I could borrow?” A hoarse voice, just on the edge of a cough.

I tallied my choices. I held out my last coin. The man extracted the cigarette from his mouth and dropped it, a plummeting comet that vanished into the gravel. He came closer to accept the quarter, our fingers touching. He flipped the coin, and in its arc it caught the streetlight, a dazzling, twisting beam above us, before snapping back into his palm. “Pretty late for you to be out here on your own,” he said. “Just passing through?”

“I should be going. My husband’s waiting.” An easy lie, but I hated myself for it.

A scuff of a laugh. “No ring, huh?”

Another step back, smaller this time, half the length of my foot. A slow retreat, trying to disguise itself so he wouldn’t notice. I was still smiling, one of those appeasing smiles that came automatically, the way an octopus releases a dark mist of ink. The way possums feign death. Possums didn’t even do it on purpose, my mother once told me, whispering close in my ear. Their bodies did it for them, instinctively faking death to protect against the real thing. She’d told me this as we stared across the street at the soft throat of a possum that lay in the neighbor’s yard. I never had found out if it was dead or just pretending.

“Nobody’s waiting for you.” The stranger sounded almost sad for me.

I knew where this could end up. I’d understood what people threatened to do to me or my mother, even before I knew the actual names of the body parts involved. I’d grown up with that fear, and it hadn’t been until I’d overheard girls in the school restroom that I’d recognized that terror wasn’t specific to the Homestead. That having a man’s DNA wound through mine wasn’t an antidote against other men.

I turned toward the front of the motel, moving as quickly as I could. Back here, we were hidden from the lonely service road that curved past. The nearest sign of life was the freeway overpass, distant headlights hushing overheard. Nobody would hear me.

The hand on my shoulder wasn’t a surprise. Neither was the easy possessiveness of his grasp, a man reaching out to take what was due to him. He wasn’t even holding on tight, not yet. This was just to stop me in my tracks. A precursor.

“I’m going back to my room,” I said, soothing, conversational, like we were compromising together. Like I could gently place this idea inside his head. “I’m just going, okay? There doesn’t have to be any trouble.”

He didn’t move. Just smiled.

When was the last time I’d been alone in a situation like this? I carried my car key between my knuckles when I walked home after late-night lab work. I didn’t wear my hair in a ponytail when I was alone in case somebody grabbed it. But I’d gotten complacent. I’d been so distracted trying to find my mother that I’d been shaken loose from my usual routines of self-preservation.

“Please, let’s not do this.” I made it sound like we were in this together, both of us fighting against a power stronger than either of us.

But his grip only tightened, fingernails pinching. I remembered being with Emily in the attic. The way she’d wrapped her hands around my throat, the breath stuck inside my body. How I’d thought I might die up there. I’d almost given up until I’d looked into her eyes—until we’d spoken—

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