It’s Di.
Beddy continues to walk forward, and Di tightens her grip. Looks into her eyes. The pity is gone, replaced by something harder. Recognition. Beddy’s feet stop.
They walk back in silence, arm in arm. Already the sky seems lighter. She feels the fog droplets on the end of her nose, feels them soothe her face.
She remembers the re-enactment she saw on tv of a girl who saved her younger sister from being sucked into a storm drain. The younger was using her beach toys in a gutter during a rainstorm, and when she lost her grip on her sailboat and it went toward the drain, she reached for it and lost her balance. She would have lost a lot more than that had the older one not been nearby and bounded into the deepening water and grabbed onto her arm. She stayed like that until a cop driving by saw them and saved them both. When he asked the older sister afterward if she had held onto something to anchor herself, she said no. They were around the same size, so there was no logical reason that she was not swept away, too. She just held on. She dislocated her shoulder, but she held on anyway.
They reach Connie, who stands in front of the entrance of the auditorium with her arms crossed.
“Welcome back. It’s not like we were already late or anything.”
“More importantly,” Di says, “I can’t believe you won’t write a note for that car. You are a caveman. I swear.”
“Caveperson. And you are genteel as all fuck. You’ll always be my moral superior. I’m not going to fight you for that.”
“What if someone did that to you?”
Connie links arms with Di, making them a chain of three.
“People don’t door me, I door them first.”
They enter the building, Beddy thinking that friends don’t realize their own heroism.