Chapter Eleven
Jules feels a flutter in her chest. She wasn’t sure she’d ever see him again. After the concert last year, the rumors were cruel and untamed.
Did you hear Quinn Riley killed a kid?
I heard he shot the guy for looking at him funny.
I heard he stabbed the kid for calling him Frito.
I heard …
None of it was true. Jules asked her father, a lawyer who tends to know everything going on in their town, what really happened. A fistfight gone wrong, a boy with a head injury who luckily recovered.
“You’re … you’re out,” she states the obvious.
“I am,” Quinn says, standing in the corridor of the hospital.
“Still have a way with words, I see,” she says.
She detects the hint of a smile.
They walk down the hallway to the elevator. It’s awkward, like he’s embarrassed. He’s carrying a garbage bag; she decides not to ask.
“Why are you in group?” he says finally.
“M.I.P.,” she replies—a minor in possession of alcohol citation, her second.
“It’s a diversion program,” she goes on. “If I go to sessions, it won’t go on my record. Otherwise it could screw up college.”
He smiles again, a sad one. She shouldn’t have brought up college. He clearly isn’t going. They take the elevator up to the main floor in silence. When the doors spread open, Quinn smiles one more time, then says, “Goodbye, Jules.” And he walks off.
Really? What are the odds they’d both be here? What are the chances? Yet he just leaves with nothing but a cold goodbye?
It’s been hard for her after what happened.
Keeping her secret. Taking shower after shower and never feeling clean.
Having no one to talk to. Feeling ashamed at what the man did to her, what he made her do.
Feeling the terror when he said, If you tell …
I know where you live, later realizing that her driver’s license was missing.
So she never told.
Not her parents.
Not the police.
Not anyone.
She considered going to the cops. But what would she say?
She never saw his face. From the back seat, he’d wrapped a forearm around her neck, choked her out, and when she came to she had tape over her eyes.
She’ll never forget his voice, the sinister things he said, but those aren’t things she can tell anyone.
From her handbag, she pulls out the bottle of water that isn’t water.
Takes a big drink, lets the vodka sting her throat, make her feel warm and everything softer.
On the walk to the car, she scans the lot. Makes sure no one is following. Makes sure that no one is sitting in their car watching her. No one is lingering nearby.
She takes another swig, draining the rest of the bottle, laces her keys through her fingers, giving her a Freddy Krueger hand, and fast-walks to her car.
Peering in the back seat before getting inside, she unlocks the door, rushes inside, locks it again.
The feeling, the blanket of dread, never leaves.
She’s often overwhelmed with unexpected memories of that night.
The sound of the whooshing wind. The smell of his sweat.
The sight of a bus stop, where she thinks he first saw her.
When she was young, she and her sister would hold their breath whenever they walked by the old cemetery on the way to school lest spirits get inside them. Now, whenever she sees a bus stop she does the same thing.
Today, though, she pulls over at the bus stop where Quinn Riley sits with his garbage bag.
Rolling down the window, she calls out, “Need a ride?”
Quinn hesitates.
“I don’t got all day,” she says.
She thinks she sees another small smile. Like he’s remembering something.
Quinn climbs into the passenger seat, puts the trash bag at his feet.
The drive is quiet at first. Eventually, he says, “New car?”
“Yeah, the other one was too, I don’t know, flashy.
” That’s what she told her father, anyway, when she’d begged him to trade her BMW for the Ford.
The truth is that she felt a crippling anxiety whenever she got inside the BMW, where she’d been forced to lie face down on the floor mats as he drove for what seemed an eternity to her fate.
“When did you get out?” she asks.
“Today.”
“Today?”
Jules digs through her purse and the car swerves. Quinn reaches for the wheel but she smacks his hand away. She excavates two mini bottles and tosses him one. “We need to celebrate, a toast.”
She untwists the cap and downs the brown liquid. Quinn doesn’t open his.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
Jules finds it remarkable that it’s been a year, yet Quinn somehow sees that the Jules he used to know is gone. Her parents don’t see it. Her friends don’t. Brad doesn’t. She’s become an actor, playing the role of Jules Delaney. Her birthday is in March. But May 1st is her Death Day.
She continues her performance. “Did they let you out for graduation?” she asks, changing the subject.
“No, I got my GED.” He pauses. “So … college?” he continues, clearly changing the subject himself.
“Yeah, UNL.”
“That’s amazing, Jules.”
She hesitates, but asks: “What are your plans?”
“I joined the army.”
“Wow,” she says, takes another swig from the mini bottle. “Are you, like, scared? I mean with the wars and…”
“No, the Gulf War is over. The recruiter said combat is unlikely. I’m going to try to join the military police, go to college.”
“That’s cool,” she says.
Quinn gives a weak smile.
“Hey, I wanted to say sorry about your mom,” she says.
“Thank you,” Quinn says.
“Did they ever catch who did it?” Jules’s dad told her that the police cleared the boyfriend, and they think it may have been a street robbery gone bad—that the killer confronted Quinn’s mom when she was leaving work and she fought back.
Rumors at school said it was grisly, that she was viciously bludgeoned.
Quinn shakes his head. Decisive, like he doesn’t want to talk about it.
Jules wonders if the unsolved murder is why Quinn wants to join the military police.
She’d always imagined him being a writer or something like that given how much he loves books, how he would scrawl in his notebook, seeming lost in his head.
They finally make it to Monarch. She points to the Ferris wheel in the field near City Park.
“Monarch Days,” Quinn says, again with a lilt of sadness.
The traveling carnival that comes to town every spring.
“I’m meeting some friends. You want to come?” she asks.
“I’ve got somewhere I need to be.”
She stares at him a moment, thinks he’s not just making up an excuse. “Where can I drop you?”
“The fair is fine. I can find my way from there.”
They park on the grass next to the other cars.
It’s already getting dark, the portable lights rattling like lawn mowers.
She feels that unease again. She shouldn’t go to the fair, shouldn’t go anywhere on May 1st; he’s still out there.
At the same time, she doesn’t want to be alone today. Everyone’s going, she’ll be fine.
She beats back the fear, the questions that haunt her: Why was I spared? Why did he call me one of the “Lucky Ones”?
“Could you walk me?” she asks. “If you don’t have time, it’s okay.”
“Sure.”
They trudge through the grass up the hill. Accordion music floats in the wind along with the scent of funnel cakes and fried food. She needs to mentally prepare herself for all the people; crowds make her panicky these days.
“Who are you meeting?” Quinn asks.
“Brad and everyone.”
She sees the look of disappointment on his face that she’s still with Brad. She sees the same look in the mirror every day.
Then Quinn says something unusual: “Did Brad ever tell you about that night?”
“About what night?”
Quinn doesn’t answer. It’s then she sees the cluster of letterman jackets, hears someone calling her name.
She turns back to him, but Quinn Riley is gone.