The Dead Girls Club (ARC)

by Damien Walters

  Becca, are you here, too?

  I fingertip a temple, but there’s nothing. She has to be, though. I couldn’t have carried her much farther. Not without being spotted.

  Back in my car, on the road, radio turned up. Generic pop. Four-beat rhythm. Female voice, midrange. My thoughts tentacling in all directions, but not flailing. Searching for my next move. Rachel’s house isn’t far from here, and the likelihood of running into two nosy neighbors has to be slim to none. And I’m here. One quick drive, one quick look.

  Except Rachel’s there, getting into a silver Audi SUV, cell phone to her ear. Hair pulled back into a French twist, not a strand out of place. Black slacks, ivory cardigan. Purposeful steps. Chin raised.

  Could the timing be any more perfect? A U-turn would be conspicuous, so I keep going, music off, counting on her distraction. She drives in the opposite direction; I do a messy three-point turn, finishing in time to see her making a right.

  The movies make following someone look easy. It’s not if you don’t want to get caught. I let cars in between us, happy I’m not in something small and low. Rachel nears a shopping center. My guess, the grocery store, Target, or maybe Bed Bath & Beyond. But she passes all three. I hang back too far and move my head like a dodging boxer. For a few panicky seconds, I’m sure I’ve lost her, but a flash of silver as another car turns right proves me wrong. But I’m too far back and the road curves in fifty yards. She’ll be out of sight. Plenty of places to turn off.

  I blow through two lights I pretend hadn’t switched from yellow to red, slowing so I don’t get left behind at the next, which is very definitely red. Rachel scoots to the right lane and takes the on-ramp to 695, one car between us, and I cut off a Honda to make it in time. The driver taps the horn. I wave.

  Now I’m thinking White Marsh. The Avenue is a popular spot. Open-air shopping. But she zooms by the exit and merges onto 95 South. Stays right to merge onto 895. The same route I take home. Maybe she’ll take an exit off 895.

  She doesn’t.

  When we hit the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, I’m three cars behind. Once I read an interview with Stephen King, who passed through the tunnel while here on a bookstore visit, and he commented how creepy it was. The tunnel, not the visit. I’ve driven through it so many times I don’t think much about it, but he’s right. The ceiling is low, the lanes narrow, and the roar of moving engines fills every square inch. Even with the windows shut and vents closed, the thick stink of all the trapped exhaust is impossible to block.

  After the toll plaza, Rachel keeps going straight, toward Annapolis. The speed limit’s sixty-five, which means most folks go eighty-plus in the left lane. She drives in the middle, keeping with the flow of traffic. I’m four cars back. I keep waiting for her to switch to the right lane and take an exit, but it doesn’t happen. I clench the steering wheel so tight my knuckle bones are mountains about to split the skin.

  Maybe she knows I’m following her. Maybe she’s trying to mess with my head. If so, she’s succeeding. For the life of me, I can’t come up with a reason why Rachel would want to punish me for Becca all these years later. The Rachel I remember was timid, a follower. She was best friends with Gia, so any sort of jealousy of my friendship with Becca seems absurd. And if she saw something, there’s no way she could’ve kept quiet. She would’ve shouted or shrieked or something. Unless she was too shocked. Maybe she didn’t even realize what she saw?

  I shake my head. That’s even more absurd.

  We’re close to the exit for Benfield Boulevard when brake lights flash. I crane my neck and see police cars and an ambulance. Traffic merges to the leftmost lane and it’s a disaster, everyone trying at once. Horns beeping, then blaring. Inching forward, I keep one eye on Rachel’s vehicle, the other on the road and the cars. Four cars between us becomes five, then eight, then a dozen, then so many it’s ludicrous. A sea of red, all surging closer to the accident, a tractor trailer and a sedan, all mashed to hell.

  My skin feels two sizes too small and I stink of adrenaline. Sour and ripe. I can’t see Rachel’s Audi anymore. She’s too far ahead. The accident’s fresh enough that the cop’s still putting out cones to separate us from the road debris. If I’d been a half mile behind where I was, I’d be stuck for hours. As it stands, it’s awful enough, but we’re still moving. No way to get ahead, though, to close the distance between me and Rachel.

  When it’s my turn around the cones, I hit the gas hard, but it’s no use at all. I’ve lost her.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  My phone chimes and I grab it, never mind the state’s no-handheld law. A message from Ellie.

  “Fuck,” I say again, but this time it’s barely a whisper. I’m going to be late.

  * * *

  Two psychologists, a teacher, and an accountant walk into a bar: the opening to a bad joke. Yet here we are, walking into Davis’ Pub for dinner. An Annapolis institution, it was originally a general store in the twenties. In the forties it became a lounge; in the late eighties, a pub. The food is good and cheap, but an appearance on Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-ins and Dives in 2012 opened the door to tourists, so to speak, and helped its popularity.

  The four of us, all friends from college, sit at a table in the back. Nicole and I, the psychologists, take the booth side, while Kelly and Jenn, high school teacher and accountant, respectively, take the chairs. A routine we have down to a science. Nicole’s traded her usual tailored silks for jeans. Jenn and I are wearing jeans, too, but Kelly’s in Lululemons and sneakers.

  I came close to bowing out tonight, but Ryan was catching the latest World War II movie with Sean, his youngest brother. And tonight’s a good thing, seeing friends who’ve only ever known me as an adult. But I feel off-kilter, waiting for them to see there’s something wrong with me. That I’m wrong. I know I’m no different today than I was before the necklace arrived. Same guilty hands. Same guilty heart. Hiding in plain sight. Yet before, the truth belonged to me and me alone.

  We order drinks and two crab pretzels to share, another routine. None of us need to scan the menu, but we do anyway. Nicole scratches above her right ear, fingertip disappearing into her hair, while she reads. Jenn twists the end of her French braid, and Kelly scowls, no doubt stressing over her diet, not that she needs to worry, not with her meticulous habit of counting calories and six days a week of power yoga.

  Jenn starts a story about her son’s school science project. I catch Nicole’s distant expression, and we share a secret smirk. She often quips that we spend so much time seeing messed-up kids that we’re too terrified we’ll screw up our own to have them. We both pretend she’s wrong.

  The pretzels arrive, and when we’re down to the last few bites, Nicole says, “Did you hear about the girl’s body they found in Towson?”

  I drop my fork. Luckily, Kelly’s loud “Yeah” offers aural camouflage, but my blood rushes in my ears. I haven’t watched the news, haven’t heard anything, and my tongue sticks to my soft palate. Not like this. Please.

  “It’s the one who’s been missing. Has to be,” Jenn says.

  “Yeah, that’s what they’re saying,” Kelly says. “But they won’t say, not till the autopsy.” She glowers. “The kids in my classes have been talking about it nonstop.”

  I unstick my tongue. “Missing girl?”

  “The eighteen-year-old?” Jenn says. “The one who’s picture’s been everywhere?”

  “Oh,” I say, sinking back against the booth. “Her.” I did read about her online, but my mind is a blank when it comes to the details.

  “Yes, her,” Jenn says. “Some kids playing in the woods found her body. Can you imagine? That would mess you up a little. Out playing one minute, face full of decomp the next.”

  “Jenn, you’re awful!” Kelly says. “And they didn’t fall on her. They found her. Huge difference.”

  Nicole palms the table edge. “Lucky for them. Falling on a body would require at least another year of therapy.”

  Laughter all aro
und, the kind that’s too loud and too high. Four of us, talking about one of our own, dead—most likely murdered by a man. The Dead Girls Club, Redux: The Second Chapter. I can’t help the smile.

  “Cough it up, Heather; what’s funny?” Kelly says.

  “Oh,” I say, blushing. “I was thinking about when I was a kid, how my friends and I would talk about serial killers and dead girls and…” I wave a hand. “Does it ever change? How much of a woman’s world is shaped by violence?” That which we suffer, that which we suffer unto others.

  “Way too much,” Nicole says.

  “The boyfriend definitely did it,” Jenn says, after the waitress delivers our entrées. “If he didn’t, why’d he split a week after she vanished?”

  I think of a body, of someone running away. I’ll have to go back to the field. And I’ll have to take a shovel. I can’t risk anything being found.

  “It’s always the boyfriend,” Kelly says, leaning forward, the ends of her hair dangerously close to the ketchup squirt on her plate.

  “Or the husband,” Jenn says. “One a day, right? Isn’t that the statistic?”

  Nicole says, “It’s three, here in the U.S., anyway. When they catch him, I hope they throw away the key, but I know that’s too much to hope for.”

  “Right. He’ll get a few years, if that. Then they’ll let him out,” Jenn says.

  Nicole fans her fingers near her head. “Unless he gets off on a technicality. Some pretty little horseshit we’re all supposed to swallow as plausible.”

  “Ha! The girls in my homeroom think he’s too cute to be guilty. And we all know that if he comes from money, there’s always a magic technicality,” Kelly says, a French fry pointing skyward for emphasis. “The kids I know with money act like entitled little assholes.”

  “His parents have money,” Nicole says. “They were raving about what a good kid he is, how this is all a misunderstanding. Pleading for him to come home so they can straighten it out, like he’s the victim. God forbid his life gets ruined.”

  “Is he an athlete? A swimmer?” Kelly says. “Being groomed for the Olympics? ’Cause if so, he’ll never be convicted. I’d stake money on it. Juries love the nice boys.”

  “Boys’ lives are always more important than girls’,” Jenn says. “No matter what happens. It makes me sick.”

  “Amen,” Nicole says. “In the immortal, and terrifyingly true, words of Margaret Atwood, ‘Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid…’”

  “‘That men will kill them,’” we say in unison.

  After we’ve finished and said our goodbyes to Kelly and Jenn, Nicole and I stand outside chatting and enjoying the mild temperature until she stifles a yawn. “Okay, lady. Time to call it a night. Where are you parked? I’m there.” She points up and across the street.

  “I’m up there,” I say, indicating a spot farther down.

  There’s a figure near my car on the sidewalk side, standing in an arc of shadow the light from the streetlamp can’t pierce. I can’t tell if the person is short or hunching down. They move toward the back of my car and disappear from sight. My fingers crook into painful claws.

  “Earth to Heather?”

  “Sorry, I thought I saw somebody standing by my car.”

  With a flash of concern, she turns to look.

  “It’s nothing,” I say. “It was just the shadow from the light.”

  “Want me to walk with you?”

  “No need,” I say, but she’s already moving.

  The shadows are darkest at the rear of my car; easy to hide in the space between my bumper and the car parked behind. When we get there, Nicole wastes no time but stomps to the back. I’m only a few seconds behind. There’s no one there. No one walking up the street, not this side or the opposite. The back seat’s empty. Trunk, too. The locks on the doors are still engaged.

  “I told you,” I say. “Just a shadow.”

  “Better safe than sorry.” She hugs me, turns to go, and half-turns back. “You know you can talk to me, right? No matter what it’s about?”

  “Of course,” I say. “See you on Friday. Drive safe,” I add as she runs across the street to her car.

  Funny. You know you can talk to me. My mom said the exact same thing once, and I kept quiet then, too. Guess I’ve always been better at keeping secrets.

  Even from myself.

  I’m in my car, ready to put it in drive, when a bit of red beneath my wiper blade catches my eye. Thinking it’s a leaf, I reach for the knob to turn on the wiper, but halt halfway there. It’s not a leaf. It’s a piece of ribbon, four or five inches long, once red, now faded to a watery pink, edges frayed. And it wasn’t there when I arrived.

  Becca had one like it in her hair that night, holding it back. It doesn’t mean this one is hers, but ribbons don’t fall from the sky, and the way it’s positioned—tucked under the blade, not stuck to the windshield—says it isn’t detritus. It’s deliberate. My palms go slick, and I alternate wiping them on my pants. It can’t be hers. It can’t. A sound comes from my throat more akin to a dying animal than a human.

  Is this from the person standing by my car? I wipe my skin dry again. Fight a lump in my throat. This is worse than the necklace. This feels confrontational, not passive. The car isn’t cold, but I’m shivering and can’t stop.

  My hand twitches toward the knob, returns. I can’t pull my gaze away from the ribbon. It was in her hair. And it was the same color as the—

  I can’t sit here. I have to get home. I open my door, not wanting to touch the ribbon, but I can’t swipe it away. Tugging the sleeve of my shirt down, I use it as a barrier between fabric and fingertips. Not perfect—I can still feel the ribbon’s rolled edges—but better. I go even colder, all over, and feel a presence behind me. Mouth dry, spine locked, I pivot slowly, so slowly.

  No one’s there.

  I practically jump into my seat, locking the door as I shake the ribbon free. It moth-flits in the air and settles onto the passenger seat. I cover it with my purse, trembling as realization threads through my veins. They knew exactly where to find me.

  * * *

  There’s no nightmare, only a sudden jolt from sleep to wide eyes. A split second later, I realize my hands are wet and sticky and the air is laced with the iron-rich smell of blood. Am I hurt? But there’s no pain anywhere. With arms extended and a knot in my chest, I scoot off the bed. Ryan doesn’t even stir. Is he hurt?

  I try to say his name but can’t make a sound. I turn, a puppet on a marionette’s tangled strings. I listen. Hear nothing. Listen harder. A soft snore. And another. My shoulders sag.

  I nudge the door to the hallway bathroom with my foot and flip the switch with several clumsy swipes of my elbow. Blinking in the sudden bright, I hip the door closed.

  My skin is spotless, but I feel the blood, wet and sticky, between my fingers, under my nails. I inhale the sharp tang of copper, but no red streaks my inner thighs. I wipe myself with a tissue; no blood. Yet the sensation and the smell linger.

  I turn on the tap and grab the soap. One, two, three washings. Rinsing my skin under water so hot it leaves my skin bright red.

  I tap my fingers over my lips, cheekbones, the hollows of my lids. My face, yet a stranger’s, too. I envision an orange, the outside perfect and unblemished. Begin to peel it away and what lies beneath? Perfect fruit or rot and ruin?

  I squeeze the edge of the sink. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I didn’t. It’s not what we thought would happen. I swear it with every bone in my body. But I could apologize ten thousand times and it wouldn’t be enough.

  I bestow a practiced grin to the mirror. It’s garish, something from a Gothic film, me in the role of the woman locked away in a tower. But I’ve kept my wits for almost thirty years. Over ten thousand days. I can keep it together for one more. For as many one mores as it takes. I can do this.

  There’s no going back to sleep—my alarm’s set to go off in less than two hours—so I grab my robe and pad into
my home office. I do some more poking around Rachel and Gia’s Facebook pages, looking for anything to help engineer an accidental meeting. Rachel posts the occasional meme, articles about scientific breakthroughs, heartwarming stories about people beating the odds. Gia’s posts are far more interesting. Lots of intelligent political thoughts and strong opinions. From a recent picture of the Annapolis harbor, I springboard to her Instagram. Snapshots of places from her travels. No selfies. Food porn. Fresh fruits and veggies, all bright and tantalizing.

  Then I spot it amid recent pictures of the kiwi, the carambola, the jackfruit: the background, the lettering on a sign above a pineapple display. I recognize it from a smaller, upscale grocery chain with only one location in the area.

  The most recent picture was posted last Saturday. The previous, also on a Saturday. I tap my toes on the mat beneath my chair and return to Facebook. Both pictures were posted in the late afternoon. Back on her Instagram, I check the older pictures. Different store, but still taken on Saturdays. I sit back with a sigh. This I can work with.

  * * *

  At two thirty, the parking lot at the grocery store is packed. It’s another gorgeous day to be outside; warm, but not hot, with a sky so blue it seems like it was painted. The kind of weather September does best. I circle a few times until a spot fairly close becomes available and sit with the engine off, idly picking at a cuticle and fighting a yawn. Wednesday night wasn’t a one-off; I haven’t slept well all week.

  I know the likelihood of Gia shopping at the exact same time I’m here is slim, no matter the timing of her photos. But if I see her, I need to hang back. Keep track without following. Then at some point, maybe while in the corner near the frozen food, bump into her. Literally or figuratively, it doesn’t matter. Act surprised. She’s an old friend. Catching up is a great thing. Invite her for coffee right away. No, exchange numbers and email and then text or write in a few days. If she sent the necklace, she won’t expect that. It might shake her up.