Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls (20 page)

After a while, Nora says, "Do you think they'll ever catch the killer?"

"I'd kill the bastard myself if I knew who did it." And I would, I know I would. With my bare hands if I had to.

"They questioned so many people," she says. "They even thought they had him a couple of times. Like that kid who confessed but it turned out he was lying. He just wanted some attention, my mother says. And the crazy man from Spring Grove who also said he assassinated Lincoln. And that guy who killed some girls in Tennessee."

"Don't forget about me," I say. "You got any idea what it's like to spend a couple of days in the lockup with police questioning you, asking the same thing over and over again? Hitting you? Kicking you? Calling you a lying little shit?"

It's raining harder now, like somebody's pouring buckets of water on the windshield. I'm clenching my fists, breathing hard, but she doesn't notice. She's staring out the window again. All I see is the back of her head and her long neck.

"I got a feeling they'll never prove who did it," I say. "Never."

Without looking at me, she asks me a question. Her voice is so low that I have to say, "What?"

She turns toward me. Her face is pale, worried, her forehead wrinkled. "Do you believe in God?"

"What the hell kind of question is that?"

She shrinks back into herself.

"Do
you?
" I ask. "Believe in God?"

She shakes her head. "I used to."

You'd think she was talking about Santa Claus. I study her profile, trying to figure her out. I never heard of a girl saying she didn't believe in God. Cheryl was always praying, Please God let me pass this test, Please God let the Cougars win this game, Please God let me make cheerleaders, Please God let Marlon Brando win the Oscar. Little-girl prayers. Most of them didn't get answered. Except for Brando. He won the Oscar, but I don't think God had anything to do with it.

I think of Cheryl walking to school that morning, I think of her seeing the guy with the gun, I think of her praying, Please God don't let him shoot me, please God don't let me die.

I start the car. I got no time to talk about God and what I believe. Or don't believe. Hell, I'm not even sure.

"Where do you live?" I ask her. She's gone all quiet, sitting up against the door, her knees drawn up to her chest, her head down. All I can see is the top of her head.

"You can let me out on the corner of Grant and Twenty-Third Street, behind the Little Tavern."

"You really don't want to be seen with me," I say.

She shakes her head, her face still hidden.

When I pull into the parking lot, it's still raining. "You sure you don't want me to drive you all the way home? You're going to get soaked."

"I won't melt."

"Yeah, and you're so skinny you can run between the raindrops."

I finally get a little smile. "Thanks for talking to me," she says.

I shrug. "It's nice to know one person in this town doesn't think I'm a murderer."

She opens the door. "Good luck in the navy," she says. Then she's gone, her long skinny self dashing around a corner and out of sight.

I
REACH
for my cigarettes and realize I've smoked them all, so I stop at the Esso station to get another pack. Just as I drop my quarter into the vending machine, I hear somebody say, "Look who's here."

I pocket the cigarettes and turn around. It's Ralph and Don and a couple of football players. They're dressed all collegiate in those stupid khaki pants with the crap strap on the back and button-down shirts and those expensive loafers you get at Hutzler's. Crewcuts so short you can see their scalps. They make me sick.

"How does it feel to get away with murder?" Ralph asks.

"I wouldn't know," I say.

The next thing I know, a football player hits me hard, his fist in my mouth. Caught by surprise, I fall back against the vending machine. The little knobs jab me in the back. Before I can get in a punch, they all start hitting me, shouting about Cheryl and Bobbi Jo, cussing me out. I try to defend myself, but they're all bigger than me. The next thing I know I'm down on the ground and they're kicking me. Like I'm nothing, like I'm a dog, less than a dog, something that crawled out of the sewer.

"Leave him alone. It don't matter what he did or didn't do—you got no right to fight on my property. You want me to call the cops?"

It's Joe, the guy who owns the Esso station. He's a big man, fat belly but lots of muscle. The boys back off. Ralph says, "We don't want any trouble, sir." Breathing a little hard, but perfect manners.

"You know who he is?" Ed, the star quarterback cuts in. "You know what he did?"

"He oughta be on death row," Don puts in. "Why do you care what happens to him?"

"Get the hell out of here," Joe says.

They mumble and mutter. I hear Ralph say, "Come on, let's go." From the ground, I watch their shoes step away from me. Swell guys. Honor Society, some of them.

"You okay?"

I look up at Joe. Rain pounds my face. "I'm okay." I get to my feet. I hurt all over, especially my ribs. My nose is bleeding and I can feel my right eye starting to swell. "Thanks."

"Go on," he says. "Get outta here." He spits on the ground and walks away.

I get in my car and light a cigarette, but my mouth is bleeding so I put it out and sit there a while with the engine idling. My mind drifts back to Cheryl and the lie she told Ellie. It really hurts to think she said I hit her. Never, never would I. Not me. Damn it, I loved that girl.

I wonder if she wrote about that black eye in her diary. I wonder if she said it was her father who did it, not me. I wish I could read the whole thing and see if she ever loved me the way I loved her or if she was just faking it all along.

I see Joe looking at me from the office window like he's thinking he might call the cops if I don't leave soon. I ease on out of the Esso station. No place to go but home—where they can't wait for me to leave.

 

Buddy just won't take no for an answer, what does he think would happen if I get pregnant, rubbers don't always work. He says I'm a tease, he says I just don't know how painful it is for guys, haven't I ever heard of blue balls which is what they call it when a guy's hard for a long time and the girl won't let him do it.

I'd like to do it with him, I'd like to know what it's like but my cousin Ruth let her boyfriend get her pregnant when she was my age and she had to drop out of school, that's the law you know, no pregnant girls in school. So they got married real quick and she had the baby and now they're living in this ugly little apartment and she never has fun anymore, they can't even afford a movie and they fight all the time. I don't want to end up like that.

I got in big trouble for coming home late. My dad was drunk and he hit me so hard he knocked me down. I'm going to have a black eye tomorrow. And how am I going to explain that? Nobody else has a father as bad as mine. I hate him so much.

But I got ahead of myself. Before all that stuff happened, me and Ellie and Nora skipped school and went into Baltimore to see On the Waterfront again, about the 12th time I think. I love Marlon Brando, we all do, especially when he breaks down the door to Eva Marie Saint's bedroom and she's just wearing her slip and she acts like she hates him but you can tell how much she loves him. Her father hates him and says he's no good. Just like my father hates Buddy and says he's no good. It's my favorite movie.

I love Rebel Without a Cause too. James Dean and Marlon Brando are my favorite actors. I can't stand it that James Dean is dead. He was so cute.

Anyway we were talking and me and nora think our parents don't love each other and probably never did. I know this for a fact because I heard my mother tell her sister she married daddy because she thought nobody else would ask her, and what a mistake that was, it ruined her life. Yeah, she's stuck with two kids and a husband who spends every night drinking beer and watching TV and yelling. That is SAD. Ellie says her mother and father really do love each other so that's one out of three. Bobbi Jo's parents seem pretty much okay, so maybe that makes it fifty fifty.

Well, tomorrow's saturday and we're having a slumber party at Ellie's and I'm going to sneak out and meet Buddy. No curfew because no one will know.

Last night we had a slumber party at Ellie's. Cheryl had a black eye, she said she ran into a door but I can't quite see how that could happen. But you could tell she didn't want to talk about it so we all said it didn't hardly show which was a lie, but it made her feel better. Later, Ellie whispered to me maybe it was Buddy, maybe he hit her, but I said no, I don't think so, he loves Cheryl too much to hit her.

The first thing we did was go bowling, it was okay with Ellie's parents as long as we were back at eleven which is kind of early but they didn't want us walking home late at night. Mr. O'Brien couldn't come to get us because his car is at the repair shop.

I was horrible at bowling—only Nora was worse. We kept bowling gutter balls while Ellie and Cheryl made strikes and spares, I laughed so hard I almost wet my pants. Afterwards we went to Howard Johnsons and these guys we'd talked to at the bowling alley followed us. We ended up at the same booth mainly because the boys just
sat there without being invited. They were kind of cute. They lived in Fullerton and they went to Western, Eastern's biggest rival and enemy. Their ducktails were longer than Buddy's and they wore tough guy black leather jackets and talked all this cool slang. One of them kept saying, meanwhile back at the oasis the arabs were eating their dates. Then they'd all laugh but I didn't see what was so funny. In the girls' room, Cheryl tried to explain it but I still didn't get it. I don't think Ellie and Nora got it either but they laughed anyway. What's so funny about eating dates.

They walked back to Ellie's house with us, through the woods and across the bridge and the baseball diamond. Then they wanted to come inside and join the party. It was mainly Cheryl's fault for flirting with them. We were all getting a little scared then, but Mr. O'brien came outside and told them to leave, they called him rude names and cussed and acted like guys in that movie Blackboard Jungle. One even looked kind of like the worst juvenile delinquent in the movie, the one who called the teacher daddyo. When Mr. O'brien said he was calling the cops, they ran back into the park and that was the end of them thank goodness.

"
That's the last time you're walking home from the bowling alley," Mr. O'brien told Ellie.

Later after the O'briens had gone to bed, we helped Cheryl sneak out the basement window to meet Buddy. "Don't forget to leave it unlocked because I don't know when I'll be back and you might be asleep," she said and
ran to his car. On went the headlights and off they went. It was exciting. I think we all kind of wished we had boyfriends to sneak off with. I know I did.

Well we stayed up really late waiting for Cheryl. We watched the midnight double feature horror film. First they showed I Walked with a Zombie which was a little corny but still scary, especially the jungle scenes with the real tall skinny zombie. He'd just loom up out of the dark like a dead man. Next they showed The Wolfman and it was scarier I thought. Especially when the actor got all hairy and his fingernails turned to claws and his teeth got long and sharp. I can't figure out how they do things like that in movies and make it look so real.

By then it was after three am and Cheryl hadn't come back. We went outside and looked for her, we walked up and down the street and around the block but there was no sign of her. I was kind of worried those guys might still be around somewhere but I guess they'd given up and gone home. I kept watching for them and I was so jumpy they all started teasing me.

I don't care if they tease me—it's scary after dark when the streets are empty, no cars even, and all the lights in people's houses are out.

Back at Ellie's we drank some more coke and ate popcorn and ice cream but I was getting too sleepy to keep my eyes open so I said wake me up when she comes back and I fell asleep, even though I was worried about her.

Well, just as it was getting light, I woke up and saw everybody gathered around Cheryl. Her face was pink
and she was laughing. "You really did it?" Ellie asked. "Did what?" I asked, and they all started laughing. "Don't tell," Cheryl told the others. "Bobbi Jo is too young to know about it." and even though I said I was fourteen and not a baby they said they'd tell me about it when I was as old as them, sixteen to be exact. Two years to wait. "It better be good," I said and they all laughed some more and Cheryl said it was very good.

Then they all lay down and went to sleep and so did I.

And now it's the next day and I'm home and feeling grumpy and kind of sick to my stomach from all the stuff we ate and I bet I'll never know what Cheryl did. If they want to act like that, let them. See if I care.

A
FTER
I get out of Buddy's car, I'm really upset. Why did I ask him if he believed in God? Why did I speak to him in the first place? Why did I get in his car? He must think I'm crazy or something. He's probably right.

All the time I'm thinking this, I'm running through the rain, splashing in and out of puddles. Even though it's summer, the rain is cold and I'm shivering. Maybe I should have let Buddy drive me all the way home. But what if someone saw me getting out of his car? Better to get wet than start a bunch of gossip.