Nice Girls(25)

Back then, Kevin was short—one of the smallest boys in our class. As we passed him, Olivia snatched the baseball cap off of his head. Kevin scrambled after her as Olivia waved it in the air. Her blond hair was flying around her face, her arms somewhat impeded by her bright pink jacket. Even then, she glowed. Kevin was laughing, too, his hands half reaching toward her. He wasn’t putting much effort in the chase.

“Here, Mary!” said Olivia. She chucked the baseball cap toward me. I caught it, backing away.

Kevin turned, and as soon as he saw me, his face curled up in disgust. All of the mirth had gone from his eyes.

He approached me slowly. A baby goat fled out of the way. I was taller than him, but Kevin wasn’t fazed at all.

“Don’t touch my hat, you fat-ass!” he roared.

There came a flurry of fists—Kevin’s fists smashing into my doughy stomach, one after the other. I felt the wind knocked out of me, my stomach squelching in pain, my lunch threatening to burst out of my body. I cried—I didn’t know how else to react.

It finally stopped when a farmer grabbed Kevin and took him away to our teacher.

Olivia looked at me from the other side of the pen. She was unscathed. As the rest of the class watched, I threw Kevin’s baseball cap on the ground. I stomped on it, over and over and over again.

For the rest of the week, Kevin was absent from school. I was relieved to not see him. There were rumors that he’d gotten kicked out. I prayed that he’d somehow died.

But then the next week, Kevin was back in class, as if nothing had happened. During our lunch break, I was pulled into a meeting with him. The two of us sat side by side as our teacher explained that Kevin had been punished and that this type of “violent event” would never happen again.

“Mary wants an apology from you, Kevin,” said the teacher. “Right, Mary?”

She gave me a stern look. I knew the answer I was supposed to give. There was no other option.

So I nodded, and I watched as Kevin quickly apologized to my shoulder.

But I didn’t want a damn apology. It wasn’t good enough. I wanted to hit him right back with as much fury as he’d hit me. I wanted him to cry like I had, the wind knocked out of him. I wanted him in pain.

As the years passed, we continued to end up in the same class throughout elementary school, middle school, high school. Kevin had learned his lesson—he stayed far away from me. He pretended that I didn’t exist. As for me, I carried a lifelong aversion toward him. Other people grew to like Kevin, long forgetting what he’d done to me. But I would always remember the rage in his eyes.

Now here we were, the two of us in our twenties, sitting across from each other at a coffee shop. We pretended like we were friends.

“Mary? I’m sorry about what I did to you when we were younger,” Kevin repeated. His eyes looked watery.

I was speechless. I felt like the rest of the coffee shop was watching me. There was only one answer to give, and I didn’t want to give it.

“Thanks, but I honestly don’t even remember it that much,” I croaked.

“I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable, Mary. I’m just trying to do the right thing nowadays. Life’s too short,” he said, looking into his coffee cup. “Especially with what’s happened to Olivia.”

My pulse began to race.

“Do you know what’s going on? Have the search parties found anything?”

“Her case is supposed to be confidential. But there’s not even anything to hide,” Kevin said slowly. “We haven’t found Olivia’s bike or clothes. No footage of her anywhere in the city. We can’t even find her cell phone. We only know that its last recorded location was at Littlewood Park Reserve.”

The news had reported daily searches for Olivia. Though the crowds shrank, people still scoured the area. But if they hadn’t found anything in over a week, then the situation was grim.

“I hope she’s okay,” I murmured.

He nodded, looking glum.

“After what happened with DeMaria Jackson . . . do you think Olivia might be connected to her in some way?” I asked.

Kevin blinked. He grinned slightly.

“The DeMaria Jackson news is crazy, isn’t it? I can barely imagine a forty-pound trout in the lake, but body parts in it? It’s wild.”

“What else did they find?”

“The rescue boats picked up the girl’s left and right legs after a three-hour sweep of the water. They were surprisingly intact, too. Like from thigh to foot.”

My mouth dropped, the arm flashing in my head.

“Don’t you think there’s too much of a coincidence?” I stammered. “DeMaria’s remains showed up shortly after Olivia disappeared, right? What if the killer was done with one girl and then moved on to the other? You know, like a . . . serial killer.”

Kevin stared at me.

“That’s a lot of what-ifs. We don’t operate on assumptions, Mary.”

He waited for me to continue, but I’d run out of things to say.

“It was just a theory I heard somewhere,” I faltered.

“Well, whoever said that was an idiot,” said Kevin, leaning back in his seat. “Just because two women disappear from the same town, it doesn’t mean that there’s a serial killer. Serial killers follow a pattern and an MO, and they have a preferred victim that they go after. They’re not politically correct, Mary. They don’t believe in being all-inclusive when they kill people.”