Page 34

“I’m sure that’ll go over real well with your boyfriend.”
I take a swig of Wild Turkey and cough. “Don’t worry about Jeff.”
“He doesn’t like me.”
“He doesn’t know you yet, Sam.” I pause. “Or should I call you Tina?”
“Sam,” she says. “The Tina thing is just a formality.”
“How long has it been since you did that?”
Sam takes a drink, talking while swallowing. “Years.”
“When you disappeared?”
“Yeah. I was sick of being Samantha Boyd, the Final Girl. I wanted to be someone else. At least on paper.”
“Does your family know?”
Sam shakes her head and passes me the bottle before scooting off the bed. Her first destination is her knapsack, out of which is pulled a pack of cigarettes. Then it’s on to the window, where she says, “Can I?”
I shrug my permission and Sam opens the window. Outside, thin clouds streak the bruise-black sky. The darkness hums with faint energy. Dawn is approaching.
“I need to quit,” Sam says as she lights up. “Smoking’s gotten too damn expensive.”
“Not to mention deadly,” I say.
She blows a stream of smoke through the window screen. “That part doesn’t worry me. I’ve already cheated death once, right?”
“So you started after the Nightlight Inn?”
“I needed something to calm me down, you know?”
Oh, yes, I know. Besides the Xanax, my go-to relief valve is wine. Red, white, or in between, it doesn’t matter. I’m certain Janelle would have found that ironic.
“I’m surprised you and Lisa never started,” Sam says. “It seemed so natural to me.”
“I tried it once. Didn’t like it.” A question pings into my head. “How do you know Lisa didn’t smoke?”
“I assume she didn’t,” Sam says. “She didn’t mention it in her book or anything.”
The first half-inch of her cigarette has become a cylinder of ash, on the verge of dropping to the floor. She steps away from the window, the hand holding the cigarette remaining by the screen while her free arm reaches for the knapsack and pulls out a portable ashtray. Leather and baglike, it looks like a coin purse with a snap clasp. Displaying the dexterity of a longtime smoker, Sam flicks it open and, with a tap, deposits the ash dangling from the cigarette.
“So youdidread her book?” I say.
Sam inhales, nods, exhales. “I thought it was okay. It sure as hell didn’t help me deal with what happened to me.”
“Do you think about it a lot?”
I take another swallow of Wild Turkey, getting used to its warmth in the back of my throat. Sam reaches out an arm, seeking the bottle. When I hand it to her, she takes two hard swallows, only a puff of her cigarette separating them.
“Constantly.”
She passes the bottle back to me. I raise it to my lips, my quiet words reverberating against the glass. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Sam finishes her cigarette with a single, grand exhalation. It’s then tapped out in the ashtray, which she promptly shuts. When the window is closed, smoke continues to sting the air of the room, lingering like a bad memory.
“You think it only happens in the movies,” she says. “That it couldn’t happen in real life. At least, not like that. And certainly not to you. But it happened. First at a sorority house in Indiana. Then at a motel in Florida.”