Body of a Girl

by Leah Stewart

  “Okay,” I say. “Let go.” Bryce drops my hand immediately, and then I am dangling by one arm, the other man grabbing my hand with both of his. “It’s too far,” he says. “You’ll get hurt.”

  My arm begins to ache. “Let go,” I say. “It’s okay. Let go.”

  He looks at me, frowning with effort and worry.

  “Let go,” I say. “Please.”

  He takes his hands away, and in that split second as his face rises up, up, I am afraid. Then I hit the ground, landing hard on my side, and start to roll. One of my shoes comes off, making its way down ahead of me. I keep rolling, closing my eyes like I did when I was a child so I wouldn’t have to watch the green-blue whirl of sky and ground. I can feel myself collecting cuts and bruises, a rock thumps my shoulder, a stick scrapes my thigh. Then I stop rolling and open my eyes to the hot blue sky. I stand, brushing grass off my skirt, probing the tender place on my shoulder with my finger, and then I hear it.

  Applause.

  I look back up at the overpass, and see a blur of motion all along the railing, that long line of people clapping. I raise my arms like a gymnast dismounting and listen to someone cheer.

  Behind me another siren starts up, and I turn, startled by the reminder. I find my shoe and put it back on. Then I clamber, half sliding, the rest of the way down to the interstate. The accident is on the other side of the concrete divider in the middle of the road. When I reach the pavement I see that the cops, too, are watching me, laughing and nudging each other and shaking their heads. I have to hike up my skirt to climb over the divider, and one of them whistles like a construction worker.

  I straighten my skirt, smooth my hair behind my ears and walk up to the cops, grinning. An older man claps me on the back, still laughing. “Anything for a story, eh, little gal?”

  “Just doing my job, sir,” I say. The cops tell me two people were killed, three severely injured, including one pregnant woman. All have been rushed to the hospital. They say it looks like the truck driver was drunk, though I’m going to have to get confirmation before I can print that.

  When I’m through I have to scramble back up the hill like a monkey on all fours. More people hold on to Bryce and the other man so they can lean way over to grab my hands, and then the people pull, and Bryce and the man pull, and I leave the ground. It’s almost like flying.

  When my feet are back on the concrete people gather around, patting my shoulder and shaking my hand. One woman says, “Honey, you still got grass on your back,” and brushes it off with quick, firm strokes.

  “You are crazy,” Bryce says with admiration as we walk away. He holds up his camera. “Wait until you see the pictures. We should put you on the front page.”

  I imagine the cutline: “Anything for a story, reporter says.” I turn and wave good-bye to the crowd. They wave back, smiles on all their shiny faces.

  I’m just finishing the story when the phone rings. I pick it up and tuck it under my chin, still typing, and a male voice says, “Hi. I saw your stories today.” I don’t answer for a moment, and then I identify the voice as Peter’s.

  “Hey,” I say, making my voice gentle. The story about his sister’s car can’t have been easy to read. “Had you already heard?”

  “Heard what?” he says.

  “About the car.”

  “No, no,” he says. “Just what I read in the paper.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. There’s a silence. I say, “Are you okay?”

  He expels a heavy breath. “I guess.” Then his voice brightens. “It was good to see you the other day.”

  “It was good to see you too.” Then I laugh. “You wouldn’t believe what I did today. I think swinging off your deck inspired me.”

  There’s another silence, and the voice is different when he speaks again, puzzled, suspicious. “What are you talking about?”

  I don’t say anything for a minute. “Who is this?”

  “This is Carl. Carl Fitzner,” he says. “Who did you think it was?”

  For a minute I just sit there with my mouth hanging open. Then I take a breath. “Hi, Carl,” I say brightly. “Sorry about that. How are you?”

  “I’m okay,” he says, sounding irritated. “I wanted to know if you would meet me for lunch.”

  “Well—” I start.

  He cuts me off, saying again, “Who did you think I was?”

  “Sure,” I say. “Where do you want to eat?”

  When I get to the restaurant, Carl’s at an outside table sipping a frozen margarita. He stands when he sees me, and leans forward to give me an awkward half hug. I sit down facing the sun and leave my sunglasses on. “Margarita?” Carl asks, waving the waitress over.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I have to go back to work.” I flash him a smile.

  “You should definitely have one then.” He smiles back. “All the more reason.”

  I nod, and when the waitress comes I order one. “I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier,” I say to Carl. “It’s been a busy week.”

  “I’ve seen your byline a few times.”

  “You saw the story about Allison’s car.”

  “Yes.” Carl’s face seems to sag. He looks down at his hands on the table.

  “So how are you?” I say brightly. “How’s the play going?”

  “Good, good,” he says, nodding. “Bob decided not to come back, so I’ve taken over his part permanently.”

  “You were the best actor there.” I lean forward and touch the back of his hand.

  He blushes.

  When the waitress comes I pick up the margarita and hold the cool glass to my cheek before I take a sip. We order and while we wait for our food I tell him stories about the newspaper. I tell him about rolling down to the interstate this morning. I tell him Bishop’s Jack-off Daniel’s story and pretend it’s my own. Listening to me, he finishes his drink, and when the waitress brings our food he orders another. By the time we finish dessert he’s on his third. I’m still nursing the first.

  “You know what I really love about acting?” he is saying. “It’s getting to be all those different people.” He waves his arm expansively. “I’ve gotten to be a drug addict, a priest, a soldier . . . It’d be so boring just being Carl Fitzner, some guy. Every time I take a role, I’m someone else.” He says it like he’s amazed. “You must know what that’s like a little,” he says. “You’re always finding out about something else, right?” His face is flushed with drink and the pleasure of having an audience. His grin is wide and sloppy. He’s eager to listen to me. He’s eager to talk.

  “I’m having trouble finding out what I’d really like to know,” I say.

  “What’s that?”

  “What really happened to Allison. Who could have done this to her. What she was really like. I’ve heard a lot of conflicting stories.”

  “Like what?” he says, frowning.

  “That she was a churchgoer,” I say, watching his face. “That she was a heroin addict.”

  He laughs, a short, astonished bark, then frowns reproachfully. “That’s not true,” he says. “Who told you that?”

  “Well . . .,” I say. I’m trying to decide how much I want to tell him. I put my bag on the table and pull out my notebook, pretending that I’m paging through it to see who said what. He’s watching me intently, leaning forward as though to read what I’ve written, and his elbow knocks into my bag. It spills sideways onto the table and the empty chair below.

  “Shit, I’m sorry,” he says. I reach under the table to gather up pens and pieces of crumpled paper. When I sit up again he’s clutching that pink wig, staring at it with a face as white as if Allison had just come walking onto the porch. “Where did you get this?” he says.

  “It was Allison’s,” I say, too flustered to lie.

  He turns his stricken gaze to me. “She used to wear this onstage sometimes,” he says. “She said it helped her become a different person.”

  “I can imagine that.”

  He
keeps staring at me, turning his eyes from my face to the wig and back again. “Did you steal this?”

  I shake my head. “Someone gave it to me.”

  “Who?”

  “Peter,” I say, and wish I hadn’t.

  He frowns. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” I can’t imagine why he would.

  He nods to himself, running his fingers over the slick bright strands. “Maybe because you look a little like her,” he says. He thrusts it at me suddenly. “Will you put it on?”

  “Oh no,” I say, leaning back in my chair and holding my hands out to stop him. He shakes it at me like a pom-pom. “I can’t, Carl. It’s too strange.”

  “Please,” he says. He makes a choked attempt at a laugh. “Please put it on. I want to see what you look like.” His voice is rising, and I glance around and catch the eye of an older woman. She’s openly staring at us, her forkful of enchilada suspended in the air. I frown at her and she looks away. “Please,” Carl says.

  “All right,” I mutter, snatching it from his hand. He’s breathing so loudly I can hear the way the air shakes as he lets it out. I bend over and adjust the wig on my head. When I sit up, I flip my head back and lift my hands. “Ta da,” I say, trying to make a joke of it. “It’s a whole new me.”

  He stares at me. His face goes pale. His lips twitch. Then the color rises quickly back into his cheeks. He reaches for his glass and lets the margarita slide down his throat. “I’m sorry,” he says, setting the glass down. “In those sunglasses, and that wig . . .” He swallows, his Adam’s apple bouncing inside his throat. He’s staring at his glass, turning it in his hands. He can’t lift his eyes to mine.

  I feel slightly sick, the way I did when I was ten after playing doctor with the neighborhood kids, wondering what inside me could make me do such things, knowing how my mother’s eyes would widen, then narrow, if she caught me at it. I pull the wig from my head and put it back inside my bag.

  “I’m sorry,” he keeps saying, his voice wobbling on the edge of tears. “I know I asked you to do it. I don’t know why . . .”

  “It’s all right,” I murmur. “I know you were very close.”

  Finally he lifts his head to look at me, opening his eyes. “Oh,” he says, a sound of surprise and disappointment. “You took it off.”

  I let a heartbeat pass. “You had been fighting when she died. That must be hard.”

  He nods. He’s so shaken up he doesn’t even ask me how I know about the fighting. “I’m so sorry,” he says.

  “Why are you sorry?” I say gently. “Tell me.”

  I watch his throat working. He begins to tell me about Allison’s carelessness, how he saw her go home with one guy from a gig, and just a week later saw her with another guy, a black guy. “She said she was seeing this guy and she was going to keep seeing him.” He presses the heel of his hand into his forehead, rocking a little in his chair. “She never knew how to keep herself safe. I wanted to protect her.” His voice cracks over the word “protect.”

  “Carl,” I say. “These men she was seeing? What were their names?”

  “Names?”

  “You never heard her mention them?”

  He puts his hand on the table, and I take it. “Let me think, let me think.” He squeezes my fingers. “One was white, one was black, that’s all I know.”

  I think, Russell Freeland. I think of the note I found in her desk: Where are you? I’m out looking for you. R. “Was one of them Russell Freeland?”

  “Russell? How do you know him?” he asks, his voice edgy with suspicion.

  “I met him covering a story. How do you?”

  “I never met him, but I remember her dating him in college,” he says slowly. “I bet that’s who it was.” He moves his hand to grip my wrist. “You know what,” he says. “I’m going to the police.”

  “Wait a minute, Carl,” I say. He’s hurting me. He’s threatening to pull my story out from under me. I peel his fingers from my wrist. “What makes you think there’s any reason to?”

  “If he was seeing her, why hasn’t he said anything? I think that’s suspicious.”

  “We don’t even know it was him.”

  “It’s him all right. And I bet he knows something.”

  “Just let me find him first. Okay, Carl? Just let me find out.”

  He stares angrily past me, saying nothing. I take his hand again, rubbing one of his fingers with my thumb. “Please? Just give me a couple of days.”

  He nods. His face melts from anger back into sorrow and with his free hand he clutches at mine. “Thank you,” he says.

  “You’re welcome,” I say, though I’m not entirely sure what he’s thanking me for.

  For the next fifteen minutes I try to extricate myself, making half-hearted attempts to restart the conversation. All I can think about is letting Russell Freeland walk away across that parking lot. Carl doesn’t want to let me go, and he doesn’t want to talk. He just sits there nodding to himself, saying, “What?” whenever I ask him a question, and then, “I’m sorry,” as though he’s apologizing for something much greater than his inattention. At this moment, I don’t even care what else he has to say. Like someone waking up after a drunken one-night stand, all I want to know now is how soon I can leave.

  The phone is in my hand before I sit down. The girl who answers at the Freeland home says, “Russell? He’s at work.”

  “That’s right,” I say. “I’ll call him there.”

  “Okay.”

  “You know what?” I say. “I’m looking, and I don’t have that number after all.”

  “Hang on,” she says. “I’ll get it for you.”

  I call the number she gives me, and a man’s voice answers the phone with the name of a local law firm. I ask for Russell and wait while the man transfers me, drawing jagged lines across the page of my notebook, like bolts of lightning.

  “Hello?” He sounds like he’s speaking from inside a tunnel.

  “Russell.” I caress the name. Russell. Please be the one. “This is Olivia Dale.”

  Silence. “Hi.”

  “You said you wanted to talk to me about Allison Avery?”

  “I did. But I’ve been reading your stories. I’m not sure there’s anything I can tell you you haven’t already printed.”

  “I’d like to talk to you, anyway. I think you might know her better than others.” I wait a beat. “She is your girlfriend, isn’t she?”

  A long, long silence. I drum my fingers on the desk. I want to shout into the phone: “Tell me!” “Was,” he says. “She was my girlfriend.”

  I can’t keep the disappointment out of my voice. “You broke up?”

  “No.” His voice catches on a humorless laugh. “She died.”

  I can’t help myself. My heart lifts at those words.

  It’s five-thirty, and two long hours remain before I’m to meet Russell Freeland at his father’s church. I’m trying to pass the time reading the AP wire when I hear Evan shout my name. I look around. He’s standing in the doorway to the TV room. “Hurry, hurry,” he says. I half jog over there, Bishop and Peggy and two other reporters falling in behind me. Evan steps out of the way and I stand in front of the television. “Holy shit,” Bishop says. “That’s you.”

  On-screen, I’m dangling off the overpass, kicking my feet like I’m treading water, and then the hands holding mine let go and I’m falling. Watching my body drop, my stomach lurches and I feel the heat rising in my cheeks. The me on television hits the ground and starts rolling toward the interstate. Then she stops, and stands, stumbling a little, and straightens her skirt, and I hear the applause. The woman on-screen turns her back to the camera and throws out her arms, and the film freezes that way, in that moment of victory. I can’t believe that’s me, that woman with her body drawn up tight, her hands reaching up for the sky.

  “There’s a woman with real commitment to her job, Ted,” Lydia McKenzie says, turning to her co-anchor. He chuckles. “Talk about persistence
,” he says. “She gets an A for effort.” Lydia McKenzie giggles, and then they shuffle their papers and look seriously into the camera and say good night.

  “Damn,” Bishop says. He slaps me on the back. “You’re a celebrity.” I smile at him.

  Peggy’s shaking her head, grinning. “You’re getting to be quite a daredevil,” she says. She points her finger at me. “You be more careful from now on, kid. You’re supposed to cover the news, not make it.” She’s still grinning.

  “Just trying to do my job, Peggy,” I say.

  Evan says, “Remember when Bishop asked you how far you’d go for a story? I guess now you know.”

  “That? That was nothing,” I say, laughing. “Just you wait.”

  When I get back to my desk, the phone rings. It’s David. “Did you see me on TV?” I ask.

  “What?” he says. “No. You were on TV?”

  “On the local news. At an accident scene. You should watch tonight. Maybe they’ll show it again.”

  “Can you tape it for me?” he says. “I might be busy.”

  “Sure,” I say. “Okay.”

  “I called to tell you Allison’s parents okayed the CD. Her mother’s really nice, by the way. She’s going to sort through her tapes and bring me some so I can figure out what should be on it.”

  “That’s great, David.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I’m really excited. I can’t wait to hear the other stuff, because if it’s half as good as what she sent me, the only hard part will be figuring out what to drop.” There’s a pause. Then he says, “If this works, maybe I can do more than one.”

  “Maybe,” I say.

  “God,” he says quietly. “What a voice.”

  Back in the basement of the Brighter Day Baptist Church, I sit with Russell Freeland in a pool of flickering fluorescent light, the room outside it a waiting darkness. I’m perched on the edge of my metal folding chair, my notebook on the seat behind me. We’ve been talking about how much he misses her, about the difficulty of his position, because to come forward would be to reveal the secret of their relationship and more than likely bring suspicion on himself. I’m trying to ease him into the more difficult questions, going as slow as I can stand, keeping my body still. I feel like a lit match.