Part 12 (1/2)

”What's hard now?”

”I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of social stuff. The sorority likes it, you know, if your dates are Greek. When I'm living in the house next year, there might be a bit more, I don't know, pressure or something to be dating a frat guy.”

”Nicole,” Craig said, speaking slowly, as if to a child, humoring her, but, he hoped, radiating affection at the same time. ”I'm not going to be one of those a.s.sholes. I mean, I think your whole sorority sister stuff is cute. But you're a girl. It's all about hair and makeup for you, and shaving chocolate onto gelato, and decorating floats. But if I joined one of those things I'd have to, I don't know, wear a beanie propeller or shave my pubic hair or something.”

”What? Is that what you think?”

”Okay, not that maybe. But something equally dumb, and obnoxious. Those guys are all about dumb and obnoxious. I'd rather die than live in a houseful of those kinds of guys.”

Nicole hadn't said anything. She'd grown quiet.

Sometimes, when she sulked, Craig glimpsed a single dimple at the right corner of her mouth, and he could imagine her as a toddler then, mad about something: A teddy bear. A lollipop. It made him want to give her anything she wanted.

”But I'll think about it,” he said. ”I understand why you think that would make things easier.”

”Really?” she asked, turning to him, taking both his hands in hers, kissing them.

He'd hated having to let go of those hands-soft and white as little cashmere mittens-and watch her walk away from him, sway up the paving stones to the front door of that house in her silver sandals, some meaty frat guy watching her a.s.s from the porch of the frat house next door.

Now he walked across campus as quickly as he could, long strides, without looking up. He had a reason for going to the Omega Theta Tau house today, although the reason was only a half-formed idea in his head, a kind of dreamy inclination that had begun at the Roper Library a few days earlier. He'd gone there to check out a book his Western Mind professor had put on reserve, but the book had already been checked out, so Craig had found himself at a computer instead, plugging Nicole's name into the friendly Google rectangle and coming up with about four hundred and twenty hits-mostly local newspaper accounts of the accident, which he'd read a hundred times already, and a few reports from the Bad Axe Times, including an obituary, and a couple of articles from the school newspaper calling for his blood, and then lamenting his readmittance to the university, all of which he'd also seen and gotten used to.

But then he came upon one with a photograph of the Omega Theta Tau house: an entire orchard of cherry trees being planted in the two acres that stretched between the south end of their property and the Presbyterian church next door.

The Nicole Werner Memorial Cherry Orchard.

How, on his many Google visits, had he missed this?

Fifteen, twenty trees, and a line of sorority sisters in black dresses and black sungla.s.ses holding hands before those trees as if they were wors.h.i.+pping them, their gleaming sorority hair lit up by the sun, their heads bowed.

In the branches of the trees were bright blossoms. In the background, some s.h.i.+ning cars.

Craig had zoomed in on the photograph, leaned forward until his face was only a few inches from the screen. With the photo enlarged, he was able to recognize some of the sorority sisters who were holding one another's hands. Nicole had introduced him to some of them while crossing campus, or standing in line at the Bijou, or looking up from their milkshakes at Pizza Bob's.

(”Craig, this is my sister Allison. This is Joanne. This is Skye. This is Marrielle.”) Back then, they'd all looked the same to him. Whether blond (mostly) or dark-haired, they each appeared to Craig like cheap knockoffs of Nicole-girls who were trying hard but could only dream of being as bright-eyed, as pink-cheeked, as purely beautiful as she was.

Nicole had accused him of being unfriendly. It was December by then, and they'd been together for two months (which to him seemed like a lifetime, by far the longest he'd ever dated a girl), and she'd said, ”You don't make eye contact with my sisters. They think you're unfriendly.” He agreed to try harder, albeit reluctantly. But the only time he met any of her sorority sisters again after that was when he'd already p.i.s.sed them off by pus.h.i.+ng his way into a Greek-only party: Two a.m., and Nicole had said she'd meet him outside the Omega Theta Tau house at midnight. Craig had stood around for what seemed like long enough, and then he'd sat on the front stoop, calling her dorm room over and over. (Like Perry, Nicole didn't own a cell phone. Verizon, it seemed, had not yet made its sales pitch to Bad Axe.) He was thinking that eventually she'd pick up, and explain that she'd waited outside the OTT house but hadn't seen him, and so had walked herself back to G.o.dwin. He was thinking she'd say how sorry she was, and ask if he would come by to give her a good-night kiss. The worst-case scenario would be that Josie would answer and sound p.i.s.sed off to hear his voice, but at least she'd offer some explanation for what had happened to Nicole.

But there was no answer at all in Nicole's dorm room, and not a single girl came out the front door of the sorority house. Craig could hear the music thumping away inside, along with the occasional burst of wild laughter, the occasional girlish scream, sounding as if someone was being tickled with something surprisingly sharp. He'd already tried to look in the windows a few times, but they were high, tall windows, and the party seemed to be taking place in the bas.e.m.e.nt, out of sight. The only partiers he'd managed to glimpse were some guy pa.s.sed out on a couch and two girls appearing to be trying to read each other's palms.

There was a hired thug at the door: some hulking guy in a black s.h.i.+rt and black pants, holding a walkie-talkie in his hand, who did not look as if he were now or had ever been a college student. The thug would stand up and shrug his shoulders menacingly each time Craig came around the front door, and then shake his head, looking at Craig. When Craig went to the back door, there was always a sorority sister there-a different one each time-who would cross her arms over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as if Craig were about to grab them, and, in this pretzel shape, manage to say something into a walkie-talkie while watching Craig warily until he went away.

He pretended to be walking back to the street, but then veered back through the shadows and managed to find a spot at the side of the house where he was able to crawl between a couple of shrubs and peer through a toaster-size window into the bas.e.m.e.nt. The shrubs were of the th.o.r.n.y variety, and Craig could feel them ripping through the thin material of his T-s.h.i.+rt. He knew he was going to have scratches and welts, but he managed to creep to the little window anyway, put his face up to it, his hands around his face.

Down there, in the bas.e.m.e.nt, they had a strobe light going. It seemed to be hooked up to the throbbing ba.s.s of the music they were playing, flas.h.i.+ng to the beat. What Craig saw in the spasmodic intervals of light was dancing-girls' bare arms lifted, girls' bare midriffs and hipbones swaying, girls with their arms around each other's necks and shoulders, tossing back their heads, seeming to be howling, or screaming, or laughing, a few girls holding hands and das.h.i.+ng around in a wild circle, falling onto the bas.e.m.e.nt floor, limbs and hair and bra straps and bare skin, and a keg in a corner, and a line of girls at it, and then, in another corner, what looked to him like Nicole (he pressed his face hard enough against the gla.s.s that he thought he might crack it in half), holding a plastic cup, taking a sip from it, her arms around the neck of some beefy older-looking guy in a sweat-stained light blue s.h.i.+rt-and then, long before he knew he was doing it, Craig was barging through the back door past the sorority girl, who started swearing into her walkie-talkie, shouting at his back, ”You're not allowed in our house, a.s.shole!”

He took the stairs down to the bas.e.m.e.nt two at a time, finding his way to them by pure instinct, slipping on the last one into a small smoky crowd dancing to some c.r.a.ppy Beyonce song, and found himself looking straight into the face of a girl with long black tears of sweat and mascara dripping down her face. ”What the fu-” she said, and then the sorority sister who'd been chasing him since the back door grabbed his arm and started shouting, and the bruiser from the front door had him by the collar, and in the corner where he'd been sure he'd seen Nicole, there was no one.

”Nicole?! Nicole?! Nicole?!”

He screamed her name over the music, over and over again, in the direction of the empty corner as the bruiser pulled him out of the crowd of girls and toward the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs, at the top of which Nicole stood looking down at him with a shocked expression on her face.

”Craig . . . ?”

”Nicole?”

”Who is this jerk?” the girl with the walkie-talkie asked Nicole, scowling in Craig's direction. ”Do you know him?”

When he reached the top of the stairs, the bouncer behind him gave Craig a shove, and Nicole said, ”Yes,” as if she regretted having to admit it. ”This is Craig. He's my friend. I'll walk him home.”

The girl glared at Craig. Her eyes were too blue to be real. Those had to be contacts, Craig thought.

The girl looked from Craig to Nicole. She was wearing so much lip gloss she looked like she'd recently been kissing an oil slick. She said, ”Don't ever let him come around here again. Ever.”

”Okay,” Nicole said, sounding like someone who'd slipped into shock. ”Come on, Craig.”

”Don't you have a coat or something?” the girl asked Nicole.

”I'll get it tomorrow,” she said, guiding Craig back out into the cool darkness, where the temperature had dropped since he'd first walked her to the OTT house. Now he could see their breaths puffing into it as they walked in silence, quickly, in the direction of G.o.dwin Hall. Nicole was s.h.i.+vering and shaking her head at the same time. When Craig tried to put his arm around her, she shrugged it off.

”What were you thinking?” she asked, staring straight ahead, not looking at him. She was walking so fast he practically had to jog at her side.

”Nicole, you said you'd be out of that party at-”

”Okay, Craig, but I never told you to pick me up. I told you I was going to walk back with Josie. Why did you come back to the house?”

”Because I was going to make sure you got back to G.o.dwin Hall. I was worried. I was worried about you. Sorry.”

It sounded whiny and pathetic, even to him.

”Well, I was helping with the party. You know, picking up empties, making sure people put their cigarettes out, tossing out cups. Do you know how bad this is Craig, to have a friend crash the party, and make a scene, and-?”

”Is that what I am to you, Nicole? Your friend?”

”Of course,” she said, as she if were consoling him.

”Gee,” he said, ”I sort of thought I was more than that.” He felt something behind the bridge of his nose-his sinuses?-fill up with the sarcasm, the self-pity implicit in it, like . . . Jesus Christ, was he getting ready to cry?

”Well, I mean, we're dating, sure. We're more than friends. But I think friends.h.i.+p is really valuable, maybe the most important thing in the world next to family. I want to be your friend, Craig. But-”

She'd slowed down and put her cold hand in his. She squeezed his hand. She was s.h.i.+vering, and so he put both arms around her and pulled her to him, and said nothing, just happy to have her close to him.