All The Pretty Dead Girls. John Manning
her teachers at Stowe had told her so—and certainly her grandparents had raised her with the expectation that she would be special. They might have been strict—rarely letting her roam through the city with her girlfriends, never allowing her to bring a boyfriend home—but that was only because she was all they had. Manhattan was a dangerous place for a girl to grow up. Girls disappeared all the time—as Gran was always reminding her. “Always pay attention and keep your eyes open and be aware of your surroundings,” Gran had lectured.
Last night, in their final heart-to-heart, Gran had delivered a new warning. “Remember, Susan, just because you’re going to college in a small town in the country doesn’t mean that you can let your guard down for a minute. You’re a pretty girl. Very pretty. Very special. And lots of people get very jealous of pretty, special girls.”
Heading back along the highway, Sue couldn’t help but laugh out loud at her grandmother’s words. Both Gran and Granpa were very old school, so out of touch with modern life. Of course Sue loved them—they’d been the only parents she’d ever known—but it would sure be refreshing to see the world without the filters they imposed, to make her own decisions and follow her own rules. That is, as much as Wilbourne College would allow.
She made sure she didn’t miss the southbound exit, coasting to a stop at the top of the ramp. A battered old Chevrolet pickup truck from sometime during the days of hippies passed by, the rusted-out back filled with crates of apples. Sure enough, there was a peace symbol on the bumper, as well as a sticker reading IMPEACH BUSH. Sue smiled, rolled her eyes, and turned left. In her mind she could hear her grandfather. “Hippies started the decline of this great country,” he’d say. “They were all nothing but Communists, and this country has never recovered from their foolishness.”
Sue shook her head. In Granpa’s mind, anyone who disagreed with him on anything was a Communist—even though Communism in the way he’d always feared didn’t really exist anymore. More than once, Sue had considered pointing that fact out to him, but she always bit her tongue. It was better not to say anything than to argue with Granpa. He thought he was always right, and keeping peace in the house was the most important thing. His rages, though infrequent, could be terrible—and she and Gran had always done whatever they could to make sure he didn’t fly off into one of them. Nobody, nothing was safe when Granpa was angry.
Sue shuddered, wondering why her thoughts had turned so dark all of a sudden. Why think of any of that now?
According to the directions she’d gotten off the Internet, Lebanon was just about two miles from the highway. She’d been there once before, when she and her grandparents had come up in April to check the place out. Of course, Radcliffe had driven them then, and Sue had been forced to stick close to Gran’s side the whole time. Now she was looking forward to seeing what Wilbourne was like without her controlling chaperones.
She sped up, ignoring the posted speed limit of fifty. The two-lane road was smooth and dark, as if it had been recently repaved. She drove past rows and rows of apple trees spreading out on either side of the road, the sweet smell of the ripening fruit heavy in the air. She wrinkled her nose. She’d never been a big fan of apples.
When she saw the sign WELCOME TO LEBANON—HOME OF WILBOURNE COLLEGE, she slowed down to sixty. At almost the exact same moment, she saw the flashing red lights in her rearview mirror and heard the “whoop-whoop-whoop” of a police siren.
“Aw, shit,” Sue grumbled, slowing down and coasting to a stop on the side of the road. Granpa’s going to kill me, getting a speeding ticket on the first day away from home. That’s a big lecture about responsibility and insurance rates just waiting to happen.
In the armrest between the front seats was an envelope containing proof of insurance and registration papers. Before she’d left, her grandfather had shown them to her and given her a lecture about obeying the traffic laws. “I don’t want to get a call from the state police that you’ve flipped the car or something,” he said, shaking his finger at her. “A car is a big responsibility, young lady, and I want to know that you’re up to our trust and faith in you.”
Sighing, Sue flipped the armrest up and retrieved the envelope. She was reaching for her purse when the cop tapped on her window.
She rolled it down partway. That was something else her grandfather had impressed on her: If you’re in the car alone and you get pulled over, make sure you don’t put the window down all the way and don’t unlock the door. Be respectful, but always remember that cops aren’t all nice men either.
“Yes, Officer?” Sue gave him what she hoped looked like a respectful smile.
“License, registration, proof of insurance, ma’am.” His voice was deep but soft. He was wearing a brown uniform and sunglasses. She couldn’t tell how tall he was since he was having to bend down to talk through the crack in the window. His legs looked long, and his shirt seemed to hang on his upper torso. His bare forearms were cobwebbed with veins. He seemed young, barely old enough to be a police officer, barely older than Sue herself.
Flirt with him. Becca Stansfield, one of Sue’s friends at the Stowe Academy for Girls on the Upper West Side, had sworn she’d never gotten a ticket despite her complete disregard for traffic laws. With her thick mane of red hair and huge breasts, flirting came easy to her when she was pulled over for speeding out on Long Island, where her family had a beach house. Sue’s grandparents disapproved of Becca—her mother was an actress notorious for her divorces and her many lovers. But Sue found Becca fascinating. Becca seemed to know everything there was to know about boys and sex, and she was losing her patience with Sue. “You’re missing out on so much,” she’d say with a flip of her hair. “Guys are a lot of fun, and pretty as you are, you could have them eating out of the palm of your hands. Live a little! Surely, you can break curfew once in a while or sneak out of that mausoleum.”
“Ma’am? Did you hear me?” the cop called again through the window.
“Oh, yes, of course, Officer. Just a moment.”
She gave him a sunny smile as her eyes caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Pretty. That’s what Gran always said, and Becca seemed to agree, but Sue’s ash-blond hair wasn’t thick and didn’t bounce with as much verve as Becca’s did, no matter how much conditioner or treatments Sue gave it. Pretty? Sue was never really convinced. There was the matter of that small bump in the middle of her nose from the time she’d broken it at age twelve in gym class. She considered her face was too narrow for her wide mouth, and her left eye was slightly larger and set a little higher in her face than the right.
But her eyes, a vibrant green with gold flecks, were her best feature. Of this much she was confident. She turned back to the window and gave the policeman a smile she hoped was seductive. “Was I speeding, Officer?” she asked, using just a pinch of her grandmother’s Southern accent.
I’m so lame, she groaned inwardly. I don’t even know how to flirt. Still, she kept the smile pasted on her face and tried to think how Becca would act in the same situation.
The officer examined Sue’s documents, then handed them back through the window. “Yes, ma’am, you were,” he said. “I clocked you at sixty-five in a fifty zone.” He took off his mirrored sunglasses, and his eyes were a chocolate brown. “That’s a pretty hefty fine, Miss Barlow.”
“Oh.” She bit her lower lip. Granpa is going to kill me—he might even take the car away. A huge ticket on the first day I have the car.
“You haven’t been driving long, have you?” His teeth flashed in a smile. Sue shook her head no.
He’s kind of cute, Sue thought. She didn’t have a lot of experience with guys. Not once since kindergarten had she ever gone to school with boys. While her classmates were always talking and giggling about boys, she’d always sat there clueless. Whenever she met her friends’ boyfriends, she found them immature and childish—no matter how cute they were. The occasional guy that Becca would fix her up with always turned out be dull and uninteresting. The one boy she’d liked—a guy named Tom Parker she’d met at one of Becca’s family bashes in the Hamptons—had been a studious,