“Exactly.”
Betsy spent her shift pretending not to eavesdrop on the conversations among the customers about the Gainesville PD and what, if any, leads they had. She scanned a copy of The Gainesville Sun that someone left behind on a table. According to the paper, the details at the three crime scenes were shocking, and though facts were scarce while the investigation was under way, everyone somehow knew the specifics of the violence, the taped wrists, the nipples that had been sliced off of the bodies, and passed the information through conspiratorial whispers.
WHEN GAVIN SHOWED up where he said he would on campus, only two minutes late, Betsy reacted like it was a minor miracle. She would have spent more time worrying about her lowered expectations from life if she hadn’t been so preoccupied thinking about everything else happening around her. When she went to the registrar’s office to pick up her fall schedule, Betsy was given a notice from the administration that, because of the “situation” with the “tragic loss of innocent lives,” they were informing students that the semester wouldn’t begin in earnest until the chaos had died down, or until they had a suspect in custody. Classes were postponed for a week and it was implied that the police department would step up to the challenge of catching the perpetrator in that designated time frame, even though it was a case well outside of their usual beat.
News vans had begun showing up and were parked along 8th Street. Reporters, popping up on the lawns skirting the perimeters of campus in their pastel skirt suits, lined up to talk to eager viewers at home about sporty students with “. . . Colgate smiles . . . feeling stalked by a madman.” No one on campus had any experience with publicity that wasn’t focused on the aggressive and corrupt habits of recruiters wooing promising athletes, or the lawless behavior of the athletes themselves, so the town felt quieter and more somber than usual, and more than a little stunned.
Gavin and Betsy made the long walk through campus, past Fletcher Hall, a Gothic dorm built during the Depression as part of the Public Works program that, despite its beauty, was the last to fill up because it was without modern conveniences—or just the most critical one: air-conditioning. Gavin mentioned that some friends left town when they heard the news, considering it an extension of their summer vacation, since the seasons blended together without much distinction anyway. At Burrito Brothers, they picked up two bean and cheese and ate them on a concrete bench near the business quad. After lunch, the rest of the day played out a lot like the one before, only with less talking. Betsy wondered whether the silence was about the dead students or about her, or if they’d said enough the day before for a week. They drove to the lake, went for a swim, which they followed with a couple of beers, under the shade tree, this time on the far side of the parking lot.
On their way back to the car, Weird Bobby spotted them and called them over to his usual spot next to Jacob at his designated picnic table. This time they were joined by a girl with delicate blonde dreads falling past her shoulder blades, grazing the top of her Indian cotton halter, sitting with her back toward them. Betsy didn’t need to see her face to recognize that this was Channing Williams. She had noticed her a hundred times before, the way she could wear a scarf wrapped around her head and manage to not look like she was wearing a fortune-teller costume, or how she always found an electric green tuft of grass to sit on and look irritatingly perfect and mellow between classes. She’d seen her at the bars downtown, at the occasional show at the Dish. And even though she danced like a creepy Deadhead, in a sort of rhythmless hop with palms outstretched, Betsy thought that her own life would be better if it were a little bit more like Channing’s.
“Here we go,” said Gavin, under his breath, making his way across the grass to where they sat. Betsy followed her gut and trailed a few feet behind.
“So, Gav, I’m having a little jam tonight at my place and would hate for you two lovebirds to miss it,” said Bobby, with a tremor.
“Oh, he’s a looovebird now, is he?” said Channing, turning around to show her enormous blue eyes crinkled at the edges, her voice slow and raspy, a pack of Marlboro reds on the table before her. She grabbed Gavin’s hand. “That’s so cute.”
“Yeah, real cute, Chan,” he said, pulling his hand away.
“And you’re the lucky lady. It’s Betty, right?” she said, turning to take in all of Betsy, the baggy 501 cutoffs, the T-shirt she’d swiped from Gavin that morning, the dirty bare feet, and ratty Chucks in hand.
“Betsy,” she said. Suddenly, the dots connected. “My name’s Betsy.”
“You hang out at Bagelville, right?”