The rest of the dorm is quiet but respectful, falling into a line of “We didn’t like her, yet we certainly didn’t want her dead.” The bunch of us are young, and by definition self-involved, so we’re actually fairly okay now that the shock has worn off. In fact, we’re doing better than the adults around us. Anybody on campus over the age of eighteen is looking like they’ll never sleep again.
Come to think of it… there may be three groups, and it’s likely that this final catchment is a subset that encompasses portions of the larger two: There probably are some people who happen to be glad she is dead. I know I’m one. I’m fairly sure Strots is, too, and of the Brunettes, at least Francesca is, not only given the skirmish at Mountain Day and the stuff about “Mark over the summer,” but, more important, due to her sudden ascendance to social supremacy. Francesca has taken over the leadership of the pretty girl group, the right-hand lieutenant assuming the stars of a dearly departed general thanks to the latter’s unexpected mortal wound.
“Taylor, your mom’s on the phone downstairs.”
I twist around from the window. Strots has come in. She’s got a six-pack of Cokes, and undoubtedly some fresh packs of cigarettes in her jacket pocket.
“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”
I look at my roommate and will her to meet my eyes. When she does, and seems as unflappable as usual, I take a deep breath. Forcing stare-to-stare contact with Strots is my new obsession. People who can look others right in the face have nothing to hide, and I want Strots to be hiding nothing. I need her to have no secrets about the night Greta died.
And so far, so good. To the point where I’m starting to feel like my OCD has taken over with this constant testing of a deadbolt that I know, I know, I locked into place.
Strots didn’t kill Greta any more than I did.
As I hustle down to the main staircase, I’m ready to hear my mother’s voice with a desperation that I’m unfamiliar with, but on the descent, my thoughts return to Strots. I learned late last night, during an offhand exchange with her, that she did in fact go down to the police station yesterday afternoon—which was what I was worried about when I asked the detective where she was. I asked her if she had a lawyer. She said her father was taking care of everything, but she wasn’t a suspect.
And that was that. No details about what she was asked. No emotion, either, but not in a weird way. In a perfect way. My roommate is calm as a cucumber.
On my side? I’m feeling a little guilty for bringing up Nick Hollis to Detective Bruno out of vindictiveness, but of course the man already knew. And it doesn’t take a genius to follow a lead like a residential advisor being fired for fraternizing right before the girl in question turns up dead down at the river: I overheard someone saying at breakfast that Nick Hollis’s Porsche was parked at the police station for a couple of hours last night.
I’d like to believe it wasn’t him, except then I think of the way he stood in the parking lot and stared off to the river. Was he planning it then? You’d think that he’d have enough to deal with, what with imminently losing his job and his marriage. Unless… well, he’d know those panties didn’t just magically appear in his car, right? What if he thought Greta was trying to mess with him? After all, Sandy’s grant is over, so she wouldn’t be traveling for a while and her constant presence would change everything.
What if he and Greta had an argument that went too far?
As I arrive at the first floor, I am grappling with all kinds of hypotheticals and wondering how many of them I can share with my mother without making her worry. Except then I go over to the phone room and come face-to-face with an SRO situation. It’s like a commuter train at rush hour, packed with bodies, and of the seven or eight phones, none of the receivers are free. Someone must have hung up on my call after Strots went to get me.
“—my best friend, Mom. I miss her so much—”
“—haven’t found the murder weapon yet. But she was stabbed—”
“—want to come home now! There was a murder behind my dorm! Why won’t you come and get me?”
I could enter the fray and stand in the center of the room, joining the half a dozen or so harpies ready to swoop in the second a receiver is dropped into a cradle and free to ring, but I back away. My mother will have to wait, and I’m sorry about this. I want to talk to her, even though there’s nothing I can say, really. I just kind of want to hear her voice.
As I turn to ascend the stairs, someone comes at me.
“Oh, Sarah, I am so glad you’re here.” It’s Ms. Crenshaw, and my thought is that she brushed her hair with a thornbush. Everything is Einstein on the top of her head. Did she just roll out of bed? At three in the afternoon? “You know you can always come see me, right? My door is always open for you.”
I look around. I’m not anywhere near her door.
“Here, let’s talk privately.” She hooks an elbow through my own and pulls me along. “It’s much easier that way.”
As we do-si-do into her apartment, I see that she’s propped her entryway open with a foot wedge, like she’s trolling to help students, even though they really only want to talk to each other or their parents. Just my luck to get caught in her net.
“Let me get you something to drink.” She points to her ugly sofa. “Sit. I’ll bring you some of that pomegranate juice you liked from before.”
I didn’t have any then, I want to remind her. Instead, I counter with, “I have to go do my homework.”
She doesn’t hear me. She’s already in her kitchen. Then again, I don’t think she’d hear me if I were standing in front of her. She’s on anxious autopilot, and I suppose, given the circumstances, I should have some compassion and understanding.
“I know it’s hard on all of us, this terrible tragedy,” she says. “What we need to do is pull together as a community. Help each other. Cry together.”
Oh, God.
Resigned, I take a seat on her fabric-draped couch. As my body sinks into the cushion like I’m falling through the floor, I wonder if Ms. Crenshaw chose the sofa because it mirrors her own grasping desperation, the furniture equivalent to her endlessly starting conversations with people who would prefer to speak to anyone else.
“I’m just cutting up an orange for us as well,” she says as she leans out from her little kitchen. “It’s so full of vitamin C, you know. And the pulp is good for digestion. Fiber.”
After this little infomercial, she goes back to talking about the death. She covers a lot of territory fast, and without any apparent expectation of my interjecting a response. In this, she is like a ticker tape: The police. The newspaper article in this morning’s paper. The fact that it will be the lead story on the six o’clock local news tonight.
Given that the victim is a Stanhope, I think it may well make the national news, but I don’t share this opinion with her. Just like I don’t mention I saw the body. With her consuming oxygen as she is, I don’t want to exert myself any harder than I have to for fear of passing out from hypoxia. But more than that, wandering into secrets-shared territory is going to trap me in future conversations I also won’t care about.