“Blonde.”
Thank Jesus. Thank the brunette gods. Her friends have been spared.
“And cute.” He smiles. “I shouldn’t say that. That help?”
“That helps.”
“You know her?”
“No.”
“Wonder who did. Usually a friend wants to ride with the victim, and if they aren’t family we have to push them out. Can’t say the same for her.”
After a beat, he stands grudgingly, and the wagon’s front bounces up. He looks back and forth at the menagerie in front of him, at the epicenter. There are so many firemen, policemen, and EMT’s, she wonders if someone called 911 right now anyone would come.
He drags and exhales again. The smoke appears as blue particles.
“Another ambulance,” he says, and shakes his head.
Beddy moves on toward the crowd. She eyes the gruff policeman but he doesn’t seem to be looking at her. Even though she’s relieved her friends are safe, she wants to see them. Pour out her heart to them like one empties a swimming pool.
The crowd’s largest contingent is between the guardrail over the ocean and a cordon of police barricades she could not see from the street securing the area around the two ambulances. She circles, weaves, searching for familiar faces, asking people have they seen Connie Antatola? Diana Goldkuhl? Dallas Siegra? No, they hadn’t seen them, or, who? She thinks this is typical. Outside of status or infamy, no one knows who anyone is.
Someone tugs on her arm. She turns to see a girl she doesn’t recognize.
“Don’t you want to know what happened?” the girl says.
Her one shoulder dress and bouffanted hair are damp. Now that Beddy’s fear is subsiding she notices the rain’s presence again. She shivers.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” the girl says. “I’m trying to figure it out. All I know is, a dude in a pickup was driving down the street, yelling out the car at his girlfriend and he hit some chick crossing the street.”
“He was really apeshit pissed,” another girl next to them agrees.
“They keep telling us to GFTO but we we’re not going anywhere till we find out what happened, and who.”
“What if you never find out?”
“Oh, we’ll find out,” the other girl says.
She sees a classmate from English as he pushes through the crowd. She wants to matchmake these two and get inside The Grove already. Maybe her friends will be in there. Maybe her enemies, too.
“Hey,” she says. She hopes this opening will work because she can’t recall his name. “Hey, do you know who the pedestrian was?”
“Pedestrian?”
“The girl. Who was injured.”
“Oh. Yeah. Kelsey.”