Free She's Not There by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith Page A

couldn’t get to the other one. There were fine shreds of fabric between her fingers. Her T-shirt had been dark blue. The band around her neck matched the shreds in her hands.
    â€œJoe, it wasn’t rape I saw. A sex crime, maybe.” And I told him what detail had just come back to me.
    â€œShe ripped her own clothes off? And you’re only remembering that now?”
    â€œYes. Because of your rules training. Because I wanted to be a normal person having a real vacation. I’ve been having such a good time, Joe. I resisted my usual habits. Selfish of me, wasn’t it?”
    He looked at me. “Not selfish. Self-protecting. You’ve been through an awful lot this year.” He smiled. “But I didn’t think I’d be creating a monster.”
    I wanted to smile too. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t rid my consciousness of the image of the dead girl. “She was just a kid, Joe.”
    He rolled toward me onto his side and brushed my hair off my forehead. Wound a frizzy tendril around his finger. “I understand.” He unwound it and took up another one. “But why would she tear her clothes off?”
    â€œI don’t know that yet, but I will. Or maybe Ernie is right—crazy party, she was stoned and wanted to swim, had trouble with her shirt, so she just ripped it off.” I squinted at the dazzling dark blue sea. “Tell me about this camp of theirs.”
    He sighed. “There’s not much to say about it. They opened last year. It’s a miserable excuse for a camp, though. The buildings are left over from World War Two, when there was a training program here for the Air Corps. A metal Quonset hut and a few wood barracks. It was all left intact—deserted by the guy who owns the land. It’s swampy and too far inland for any ocean views. Guy grabbed at the chance to rent it. Heard he got a couple thousand dollars for the summer.”
    â€œWho would send their children to such a place?”
    â€œI suppose parents desperate for their overweight daughters to be skinny. Can’t be fat in America, remember? Or maybe the girls wanted to go there themselves. Desperate too. Agreed with their parents to give it a try.”
    â€œAnd one bored miserable girl went out looking for drugs.”
    â€œYeah. Unfortunately, she found some.”
    He’d finished playing with my hair. He laid his warm hand on my shoulder. Kind of gave me a spot massage.
    â€œYou’ve been there?” I asked him.
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œThe camp.”
    â€œI was around there before it was a camp. Used to go snoop when I was a kid—pretend I was in the Airborne.”
    â€œYou came to Block Island as a child?”
    â€œYes. Couple of times. With my parents.”
    â€œAnd you dreamed of having a place of your own here?”
    â€œExactly.”
    A small brownish gull followed by two very large ones—snow-white, the way gulls are supposed to be—flew over us. The brown one seemed to be having trouble. He landed clumsily in the water. The two white gulls dove at him.
    I sat up. “Look, they’re trying to rescue him.”
    Joe looked. “Speaking of the Airborne … they’re dive-bombing him, actually.” He looked at me. “Poppy…”
    Several times the two white gulls flew up and then zoomed back down, knocking the brown one under water. He came up squawking each time.
    Joe said, “He’s young. He must be sick. Or injured, maybe. They’re killing him.”
    â€œThey’re what?”
    â€œEuthanasia.”
    I pulled myself up to my feet. “Then we should rescue him.”
    The two white gulls landed next to the brown one, floated along, one on either side, and started pecking him. I turned away.
    Joe stood next to me, put his arm over my shoulders. “Mother Nature. I’m sorry. It’s that or he starves to death. Probably can’t get food on his