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Feels pretty damn sick to be with her.
As if reading Billie’s thoughts, Tonya side-steps closer and, reaching out, gives her hand a reassuring squeeze.
We both need to pretend right now.
That’s how Billie reads the gesture.
And she takes it on. Just stands there with the others, silence weighing down the bridge like a heavy wool blanket, and watches the candles flicker deeper in the dark that slowly starts to swallow them.
Billie mutters under her breath, “How many of those gleams are actually gator eyes?”
She corks the lid of her bottle, takes a few long gulps.
“Well I didn’t think about the gators,” Gigi snaps, her voice trembling. “So thanks for that.”
Billie grins and corks her bottle. “Anytime, babe.”
“You coming to the sleepover?” It’s Tonya, her voice a whisper quick to get lost in the breeze. “At Grace’s?”
Billie’s face slackens. Slowly, she turns her wide eyes, not on Tonya, but on Kate. She’s tucked under Trevor’s arm who wanders his judgmental gaze over the swamp, but Kate looks right at Billie—as though she was waiting for that look.
Kate nods, a single gesture, barely noticeable to anyone who wasn’t watching close enough to catch it.
Billie scoffs, turning to Tonya. “That’s fucked up, even for us.”
Gigi leans in. “Her parents are in the city,” she whispers. “She doesn’t wanna be home alone.”
Billie just shrugs. “Why, ‘cause one guy she doesn’t know got killed on the other side of town?”
“Was.” Tonya’s voice is firm to match her stare. “Hewaskilled. It’s not something you get.”
Face crinkled, Billie just stares at her for a beat. “Whatever,” she finally says, shaking her head. “It’s not our job to babysit an outsider.”
“It’s not that.” Gigi keeps her voice low and whispery, leaning in closer. “Rumors goin’ around, one of them being that there was a message spelled out over the side of his trailer in his own blood.”
Tonya turns to her sister so fast she surely got whiplash. “What?” she hisses and snatches Gigi’s arm, tight. “What kind of message? Where’d you hear that?”
Billie glances up at Kate, a question in her slack face.
Again, Kate is already watching her. She nods, once.
And Billie’s heart falls to her bum.
“Heard it from Grace, who heard it from Micky, who heard it from his dad, who’s brothers with the Deputy.” Gigi couldn’t look less interested in the source. Her look only takes a serious turn as she says, “Apparently it just said ‘THE BUTCHER’.”
“Oh,just?” Tonya all but screeches. The laugh she follows with is hollow and bitter. “Justsays that, does it?”
Billie scrambles with the lid of her water bottle. She can’t take a drink fast enough. Anything to soothe the sudden writhing her stomach and the twist of her heart. Almost feels like she’s freefalling, like when they’re young and stupid and jump off the short cliff into the freezing cold bay—that moment of falling. It’s dizzying. So she drinks like it’s her remedy, her cure-all.
Cletus has a few nicknames around town. The Butcher ain’t one of them. Not that Billie’s ever heard, at least.
What does come to mind, though, is a memory, one of blood spatter and bone’s crunching—of Billie, Kate and Cletusbutcheringa dead body.
None of the girls speak a word about it, though.
It’s quiet. For a long while, the vigil carries on, but while the girls are there on the rickety bridge, they’re notreallythere. Minds travelled to the past, eyes glazed over with bloody memories.
Kate is the first to step back, away from the vigil still happening on the bridge, the knits of people murmuring conspiracies and theories and memories together. No one, Billie notices, sheds a tear.
