When Craig got out of the shower—dried and dressed—he was surprised to find Perry’s professor already in the apartment. She was sitting on their couch. And a slender red-haired woman sat on a kitchen chair that Perry had pulled out for her. Perry and Karess stood next to each other at the window.
“I’m Shelly Lockes,” the red-haired woman said. “I was at the accident. I was the first one there. I’m the one they said didn’t give directions to nine-one-one. I saw you and Nicole the night—”
“The night she died,” Craig said, sinking onto the couch beside the professor. It surprised him how easily he was able to say “she died.” It had taken Dr. Truby four appointments to get those two words out of him, and that first time he’d said them aloud, when his memory had finally started to come back to him, he’d had to stand up fast, feeling as if his own words had somehow slugged him in the stomach. Then he’d collapsed again and wept into his hands until his session with Dr. Truby was over.
Now he could say the words over and over, as if they weren’t the truth.
Shelly Lockes shook her head, as if to contradict him, but she didn’t say anything else. It was like she was waiting for permission to speak again.
There was something familiar about her. She was beautiful. She looked the way he thought angels painted on Christmas cards would look if Christmas card makers had more imagination. She was feminine, but without makeup, and although she was petite and very pretty, she also looked incredibly strong. She looked like the kind of angel who could very easily pick you up from the hundredth story of a burning building and fly you back down to the ground.
He’d seen her before, he realized.
He’d seen her everywhere, he thought.
Again, she shook her head.
Beside him, Professor Polson was shivering. Perry’s friend Karess had been shivering all along, as well. Perry looked cold, too. He had his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans. But Craig felt, himself, like he was burning up. Maybe he was sick. He’d slept so solidly (twelve hours?) in the Cookie Girl Deb’s bed, and still he felt sure that if he put his head down now for one second, he would fall straight back into that exhausted, dreamless state. If she hadn’t woken him up to let him back into the apartment with the key the landlord had dropped off, Craig might still be there in her bed.
He might never have woken up at all.
Shelly Lockes looked flushed, too, he thought. Overwarm. A thin film of perspiration shone on her forehead, although she was wearing only a silky-looking dress, black tights, boots that looked more like fashion stuff than winter stuff. She was staring at him intently, as though either trying to read his mind or willing him to read hers
“You were there,” he asked, “the night of the accident? You saw Nicole? The night she died?”
The woman looked around as if the question had been asked of someone else in the room, but everyone in the room was looking at her. She cleared her throat and then touched it, and then tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and looked down at her boots.
How many millions of times had Craig seen Nicole tuck a strand of hair like that behind her ears, thinking before she spoke? This woman could have been Nicole, if Nicole had lived long enough to become her. Or Josie. Or any of the other sorority girls Craig had seen or known.
She licked her lips, and then bit them, and then she said, “She wasn’t dead.”