Waiting at a crosswalk, they watch a knot of girls cluster around a crying freshman. They’re all wearing Greek letters somewhere—if not on their shirts, then on their large quilted tote bags—and the girl in the middle is laughing hysterically through her tears. Hafsah reaches for one of the girls on the edge of the group, lightly touching her elbow to get her attention. “Is she okay?” she whispers.
“Mostly?” the other girl answers. “It’s just a shock, is all.”
“The alligator?”
“The asshole.”
Before Rebecca can ask what that means—or decide if she wants to know—the crying girl gives them a huge smile. “He’s dead. I just . . . he’s dead! He can’t hurt anyone anymore!”
Hafsah and Rebecca trade an alarmed look before turning back to the girl. “Hurt anyone?” Rebecca asks cautiously.
“Jordan is an absolute dick,” one of the other girls tells them.
“Was!” corrects the crying one. She laughs giddily, but it hiccups into a sob.
“Was,” the first girl agrees, petting her friend’s braided hair. “He started a pantie scoreboard in his frat house, and he and his brothers like to put names and pictures up with them, sometimes even phone numbers. They don’t care if the girl doesn’t like it.”
“It meaning the board?” asks Rebecca. “Or how the panties get earned?”
A lopsided smile is the unsettling answer. Rebecca scowls and studies her toes. She can imagine more than a few ways that girls might lose their underwear without wanting to. It sounds like some of these girls don’t have to imagine.
“I called the police from the party,” the crying girl tells them. “I went with friends from class, not my sisters, and I needed help to get to the hospital. And then the, you know, the exam and kit. They told me they responded to crimes, not to drunk sorority girls who feel guilty about their promise rings.”
“And it was Jordan?” asks Rebecca. It could have been one of his fraternity brothers, she supposes, but the strength of the girl’s reaction suggests it was probably Jordan himself.
The girl nods. “And it wasn’t just me. Some of my sisters, some girls in my classes, and they’ve told me about others. He just . . . he hurts people, just because he wants to, and he never gets punished for it. He always gets away with it.”
“Well, he can’t do it anymore,” Hafsah says soothingly. “He can’t hurt anyone anymore.”
Rebecca gives her friend a sideways look. The asshole doesn’t have to be around or even alive to keep hurting the girl—her own memories will do that. Society will do that.
“No.” The laughter is losing to the sobs. “No, but he won’t ever be held accountable either. What about us? What kind of justice do we get?”
“It’s more than you would ever get with him alive,” one of her sisters points out. “You don’t get justice from guys like him. They join the Supreme Court or get elected president.”
All the girls grumble at that, Rebecca right along with them. As someone studying criminology and journalism, she’d like to believe things are better than that. Hell, as a member of a large sprawling family with more than half its members in some form of law enforcement, she used to believe it was better than that. She learned otherwise the hard way.
One of her cousins learned it worse.
Reflexively, she checks her ankle to make sure the knotted thread bracelet is still there. Not everyone gets justice or even the pretense of it.
“I don’t know what he was doing out there,” says one of the sorority girls, “but thank God. I never realized a blessing could be shaped like a reptile.”
“Alligators eat man?” suggests one of her sisters.
“Woman inherits the earth!” they chorus and burst into laughter. There’s still an edge to it—serrations of fear and pain, rage and bitterness. After a moment the one starts crying again.
Rebecca glances around, not wanting to intrude further. The light changes. She nudges Hafsah, and with nods of farewell they step into the road. The Greek girls stay in a tight knot on the sidewalk, supporting their distraught sister. The sound of her gasping sobs follows Rebecca through the crosswalk.
“That’s definitely not in the obituary the university threw together,” Rebecca notes, glaring at her shoes.
“Quelle surprise.”
Rebecca kicks a fallen palm frond off the sidewalk to where people are less likely to trip over it. “Wonder how many other girls are feeling that kind of relief.”
“And that misery?”
“That too.” Kacey won’t get either, she thinks and sees a similar thought in Hafsah’s pained smile.
A trio of young men with a large alligator-shaped pool float roar and run at a pair of girls, who shriek with surprise and stumble into the grass. Laughing, the young men run off to find their next victim.
“You know, it’s weird,” Rebecca says abruptly.
“What is?”
“The university set up a hotline for alligator sightings, and they’ve been swamped. For two weeks we’ve been deluged with warnings and safety tips, and professors largely gave up marking people tardy for taking alternative routes to classes so they wouldn’t have to go near any body of water larger than a puddle. Now someone is dead, and they’re . . .” She trails off, groping for the words to convey a feeling she hasn’t fully identified. “An alligator just killed someone, but those girls aren’t scared—they’re angry. And not at the gator. That’s a weird reaction, right?”
“Right,” Hafsah says slowly. “It could be shock.”
“Sure.” Partly, maybe. When the shocks wears off, will the celebration still be greater than the fear? She resolves to pay attention to the people she passes, see how they’re reacting. Somewhere, someone has to be sad. Somewhere there are people who are more afraid of the gator than the man.
Right?
By the time they get to their dorm, Rebecca can feel the sweat dripping down her spine, her shirt clinging unpleasantly. It’s only April, she reminds herself, and only early April at that. It’s going to get a lot worse in the months to come. She digs out her wallet and slips her student ID out of its pocket so she can scan into the building. The door opens with a beep and a flash of green light, releasing a blast of cold dry air. Sometimes she wonders how anyone has a functioning immune system with the constant shift of extremes.
Even as they trudge up to the third floor, most of the bursts of conversation that drift into the stairwell from the halls center around Jordan Pierce and the public service alligator. There’s something sad about that, she thinks. She’s sure it must be a different story in his fraternity house—she assumes his brothers will mourn him, and his family as well—but what a wasted life if your death is met largely with relief. Sad and, well . . . horrible.
Hafsah is the one to dig out her keys so they can get into their suite. Both girls drop their bags on the bench desk with a groan. The study area is cluttered, which is no surprise when it has to be shared between four students. Now that their presentation is done, Rebecca thinks it wouldn’t be unreasonable to ask Susanna and Delia to tidy things up. She doesn’t mind navigable clutter as a general rule, but trash should be collected, and dishes should be clean. Florida bugs are already keen trespassers; there’s no need to issue an invitation.