think happened to her?
—You know what happened to her, said Jenny, who was less innocent than her parents supposed.
—It could have been anyone, said another girl in a shuddery voice.
—Like Billy Hummel and his friends over there? said Jenny, ridiculing the other girl. She was looking across the street, where some of the older boys from A.H.S., football players, were wasting time hanging around the telephone company building. It was getting darker, and she could see the white flock of the letters on their team jackets reflected in the big phone company window. In ten minutes the boys would be sick of watching themselves in the window and would drift off down the street.
—My dad says the police better watch someone real close.
—I know who he means, said Jo. They all knew whom Marilyn’s father meant.
—I’m hungry again. Let’s go to the drive-in.
They began to trudge up the road. The boys took no notice of them.
—The food at the drive-in is junk, said Jenny. They put garbage in it.
—Sourpuss. Look at ole sourpuss.
—And that movie was dumb.
—Sourpuss. Just because Billy Hummel didn’t look at you.
—Well, at least I don’t think he murdered anyone.
Suddenly she had had enough of them. They were standing in a circle around her, waiting for her to move, their shoulders slumping, their faces empty. Billy Hummel and the other boys in team jackets were walking the other way, back into town. She was tired and disappointed—with the boys, with the movie, with her friends. For a moment she wished passionately that she were grown up.—I’m fed up with the drive-in, she said, I’m going home. I’m supposed to be home in half an hour anyway.—Awcomeonnn, moaned Marilyn. The whine in her voice was enough to make Jenny turn decisively away from them and begin to walk quickly down the street.
Because she could feel them staring at her she turned into the first side street. Let them gawk at an empty street, she thought, let them my goodness! one another.
She walked straight down the middle of the unlighted street. Windows shone in the houses on either side. Someone was waiting up ahead, just a shape on the grassy sidewalk, a man washing his car or getting cool evening air. Or a woman getting away from the kids.
At that moment she nearly saved her life, because she realized that she was hungry after all, and almost turned around to go back to her friends. But that was not possible. So she put her head down and walked upto the next corner, vaguely planning a route that would take most of the half hour she had of freedom. When she went past the shape on the sidewalk, she half-noticed that it was not a man but a fat bush.
The next street was shabbier, with two vacant lots between the mean houses like vast blots of darkness. Trees towered and loomed overhead, black and without definition. She heard slow steps behind her. But this was Arden and she did not begin to be fearful until something hard and blunt touched her back. She jumped and whirled around and when she saw the face looking at her she knew that the worst moments of her life were beginning.
FOUR
A t that moment I would have been skeptical about the odds on my returning to take up the bartender’s invitation for Sunday, but twenty-six hours later I was in Freebo’s, not this time at the bar but in a booth and not alone but in company.
I realized that I was drunk only when I found that I was pounding the VW along in second gear; chanting to myself, I messily, grindingly slotted the shift up a gear, ending the howl of anguish from the engine, and zoomed home, no doubt weaving through lanes as rakishly as Alison Greening had done on one night years before—the night I had first felt her mouth issuing warmth over mine, and felt all my senses rubbed by her various odors of perfume, soap, powder, contraband cigarettes and fresh water. About the time I reached the red thermometer in the Italian vista I recognized that the Strand girl’s
—You know what happened to her, said Jenny, who was less innocent than her parents supposed.
—It could have been anyone, said another girl in a shuddery voice.
—Like Billy Hummel and his friends over there? said Jenny, ridiculing the other girl. She was looking across the street, where some of the older boys from A.H.S., football players, were wasting time hanging around the telephone company building. It was getting darker, and she could see the white flock of the letters on their team jackets reflected in the big phone company window. In ten minutes the boys would be sick of watching themselves in the window and would drift off down the street.
—My dad says the police better watch someone real close.
—I know who he means, said Jo. They all knew whom Marilyn’s father meant.
—I’m hungry again. Let’s go to the drive-in.
They began to trudge up the road. The boys took no notice of them.
—The food at the drive-in is junk, said Jenny. They put garbage in it.
—Sourpuss. Look at ole sourpuss.
—And that movie was dumb.
—Sourpuss. Just because Billy Hummel didn’t look at you.
—Well, at least I don’t think he murdered anyone.
Suddenly she had had enough of them. They were standing in a circle around her, waiting for her to move, their shoulders slumping, their faces empty. Billy Hummel and the other boys in team jackets were walking the other way, back into town. She was tired and disappointed—with the boys, with the movie, with her friends. For a moment she wished passionately that she were grown up.—I’m fed up with the drive-in, she said, I’m going home. I’m supposed to be home in half an hour anyway.—Awcomeonnn, moaned Marilyn. The whine in her voice was enough to make Jenny turn decisively away from them and begin to walk quickly down the street.
Because she could feel them staring at her she turned into the first side street. Let them gawk at an empty street, she thought, let them my goodness! one another.
She walked straight down the middle of the unlighted street. Windows shone in the houses on either side. Someone was waiting up ahead, just a shape on the grassy sidewalk, a man washing his car or getting cool evening air. Or a woman getting away from the kids.
At that moment she nearly saved her life, because she realized that she was hungry after all, and almost turned around to go back to her friends. But that was not possible. So she put her head down and walked upto the next corner, vaguely planning a route that would take most of the half hour she had of freedom. When she went past the shape on the sidewalk, she half-noticed that it was not a man but a fat bush.
The next street was shabbier, with two vacant lots between the mean houses like vast blots of darkness. Trees towered and loomed overhead, black and without definition. She heard slow steps behind her. But this was Arden and she did not begin to be fearful until something hard and blunt touched her back. She jumped and whirled around and when she saw the face looking at her she knew that the worst moments of her life were beginning.
FOUR
A t that moment I would have been skeptical about the odds on my returning to take up the bartender’s invitation for Sunday, but twenty-six hours later I was in Freebo’s, not this time at the bar but in a booth and not alone but in company.
I realized that I was drunk only when I found that I was pounding the VW along in second gear; chanting to myself, I messily, grindingly slotted the shift up a gear, ending the howl of anguish from the engine, and zoomed home, no doubt weaving through lanes as rakishly as Alison Greening had done on one night years before—the night I had first felt her mouth issuing warmth over mine, and felt all my senses rubbed by her various odors of perfume, soap, powder, contraband cigarettes and fresh water. About the time I reached the red thermometer in the Italian vista I recognized that the Strand girl’s
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