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 around, 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.