Beddy’s whole body pricks up, like from an electric jolt.
“Kelsey Taper?” he says, as if Beddy might not know who she is.
Sweet karmic justice from above.
“I heard it was pretty brutal,” he says.
She glances over at the undamaged ambulance, and as if on cue, its back doors slam shut.
English and Bouffant start yammering to each other, and maybe to Beddy, but Beddy isn’t listening. She is running through the good news center of her brain, a long, teeming field of berries. She stuffs her face with berries, popping them between her molars, their juice oozing out of her mouth, lubing her lips, staining her teeth, leaving sticky trails running down her arms, coaxing her brain with their delicious taste…
The scream of the siren pulls her back to the pier. She watches the ambulance drive away toward shore.
“Why are you smiling?” English’s date says.
Is she?
“Yeah, Tapeworm got tagged,” a boy comes pushing excitedly through the crowd. Beddy recognizes him as the kid who wears his basketball jersey most school days, “Fitz-Chavez” stitched in capital letters across the back. His bowtie is wrapped around his forehead like a bandana.
“I’m making the rounds,” he says. “Check it out.”
He holds his wristphone out proudly, and everyone squeezes in to look.
“It’s dark,” English says.
“What?” Fitz-Chavez says. “Oh.” He pushes a button and it lights up again. “Check this shit. The scene of the crime.”
Sure enough. There is Kelsey, lying in the street, her canary yellow strapless dress tattered and dirtied. She lies on her back, but her bloodied face is turned away from the camera almost like she is being bashful.
“Truck hit her so hard, her titty popped out. But then some chick put it back in before the ambulance came.” He sounds disappointed. “I’da viraled that shit, but we can’t get service out here, which is fucking bullshit.”
Beddy stares at the image harder. She heard that bodies caught on film can often look in a state of repose. This doesn’t look like that. This looks like a scene of devastation. She thinks she can make out the pattern of the truck’s grill marks on Kelsey’s dress. Then there is her face.
The screen goes dark.
“What, um, happened to her face?”
“The impact knocked her two front teeth out,” English says. “Or maybe falling did it?”
Beddy’s hand goes to her mouth instinctively. She feels her two front teeth, pushing them, testing their durability.
“Whooooaaa,” Bouffant says.
“Yeah, I saw them on the street,” English’s date says. “It was gross.”
“Yo, you think it’s just her teeth?” Fitz-Chavez says. “Did you see it happen? Naw. I did. That bitch went fly-ing.” He smacks his hands together sickeningly on the last two syllables. “She’ll be lucky to walk again.”
Walk again? When she first heard about Kelsey she thought it was a bump and trip to the hospital. Nothing serious. She didn’t want all of this. And then she remembers.
The sledge.
“This will for sure make the papers,” English says.
“The papers?” Beddy says, worried she can somehow be implicated.
“Think they’ll pay me if I send this in?” Fitz-Chavez says.
“Not sure if you can get paid as a minor,” English says. “Is it high quality?”
“It’s XHD, bro.”
Beddy hears the ping of a megaphone being turned on. “All right everyone, you’ve been lingering long enough,” the distorted voice says. “Time to disperse!”
It’s only with that ominous command that she can move her feet. “I have to go,” she says to no one in particular, and starts pushing through the crowd towards The Grove.
“This is your final warning!” the voice says.
No one seems to give one fuck about the voice’s warning. The crowd is on all sides, a choked throng. Now that the ambulance is gone some attendees lean against the barricades with their back to the voice. They chat.
“Disperse, or we’re going to take measures to disperse you!”
She pushes with more zeal, excuse me, excuse me, throws elbows and knees where necessary. Finally she’s out and moving fleetly down the sidewalk. The voice of the megaphone is on her right, decked in riot gear. His vest can’t quite contain his gut, and it spills out like black dough from a split biscuit tin. The other cops, none of whom wear riot gear, seem to pause what they’re doing and are watching him with interest, sensing some kind of show is at hand. In his left hand is the megaphone, and in his right is a red spray canister with a lever trigger on the top.
“Eat a dick!” someone says from the back.
The cop’s response is swift. He presses the trigger and douses the front row of people in bright orange spray. The attendees scream and cover their eyes, and he advances, hosing down those unlucky enough to be behind the people who have collapsed. Pinned between the advancing cop and the guardrail, the crowd scatters. Some run back into the safety of The Grove through the rear exit. Some run back to their cars. Some film this new scene with their phones. One distraught boy climbs the guardrail and jumps into the ocean. The cop makes sure to direct the spray high enough so that it falls like a baleful mist over all.
Beddy wants to do something but there isn’t anything to do but keep moving and not look part of the group. If stopped and questioned, she can say definitively that she is the least group-oriented person here.
A gaggle of chaperones are whispering agitatedly to her left, and one grabs a fireman by the arm.
“What was that?”
The fireman responds by bowing his head.
Beddy keeps walking over to the entrance of The Grove, a morbidly dull looking building from the outside. Its original incarnation was a fishing warehouse, but then the Osmondites caught or poisoned all the fish. Tonight it is spruced. The stairs spill with freshly stapled red carpet. Beneath the white clovered overhang two figures stand behind a podium.