I Know What You Did Last Summer (3 page)

"I don't know," Julie said. "When you put it that way, it
doesn't sound likely."

"It isn't likely," said Barry. "You've got yourself all tied up
in knots over nothing. And, Heller, you're just as bad, phoning me
like that. You had me thinking something awful had
happened."

"ATM sorry," Helen said contritely. "Julie called me about it
this noon, and I reacted just the way she did. We both of us
panicked."

"Well, unpanic," Barry told her. He got to his feet. Helen's
lovely apartment, which always before had seemed so spacious and
luxurious, was suddenly unbearably suffocating. "I've got to get
going."

"Why don't you stay awhile?" Helen suggested. "I've got a whole
hour and a half before I have to leave for the studio."

"That's an hour and a half that I don't have. I told you this
was closed week and I have to study." He turned to Julie. "Do you
need a ride? I can drop you off at your house on my way back to the
campus."

"No, thanks," Julie said. "I don't need a ride. I've got Mom's
car."

"Don't you want to stay, Julie?" Helen asked her. "We haven't
talked for ages. There must be a lot for us to catch up on."

"Another time, okay? I've got a date picking me up at
eight."

"Take it easy, then," Barry said. "It was good seeing you." He
turned back to Helen. I'll be seeing you, Heller."

"Do you want to plan on doing something Monday?" Helen
suggested. "It's Memorial Day, which usually means a party of some
kind around this place."

"It depends on how much studying I get done over the weekend.
I'll be calling you. I promise."

She started to get up to walk him to the door, but he waved her
back down. The last thing he felt like after this was an
affectionate farewell scene with Julie as an audience.

He let himself out, leaving the two girls together, and went
down the steps and back along the side of the pool. The underwater
lights were on now, and the crowd of exhibitionists had thinned a
little. The perpetual party that always started around the pool on
Friday evenings had broken, as it generally did, into several
smaller parties, most of which had moved upstairs into private
apartments.

Gas lights flickered along the walkway, and the greenery in the
planters rustled slightly in the faint evening breeze. Barry got
into his car and turned the key in the ignition.

Somewhere in the parking lot another engine came to life.
Sitting quiet, Barry let the motor idle. There was no movement that
he could see among the rows of parked cars.

Coincidence, Barry told himself impatiently, I'm acting as
up-tight as those crazy girls.

He flicked on the headlights, threw the car into gear, and
pulled out of the lot onto Madison Avenue. He drove slowly back to
the campus, glancing occasionally into the rear view mirror.
There were lights behind him, but then it was early on a weekend
evening, a time when streets were always busy with traffic.

When he turned onto Campus Drive the car behind him turned as
well, but when he slowed and pulled over to the curb, it went on
past him without hesitation and disappeared around a curve at the
end of the street.

Crazy, Barry repeated to himself. Why should I suddenly start
thinking people are following me just because Julie James pushes
the panic button? Like I told her, there are all kinds of cranks in
the world writing mixed-up letters.

But he kept having the uneasy feeling that there was a pair of
eyes boring into his back right between the shoulder blades when he
left the car in the lot and walked back across the lawn to the
entrance of the fraternity house.

chapter 3

There was a car parked in front of the James* house when Julie
pulled into the driveway. Her first thought was that Bud had come
early, but a second glance told her that this was not Bud's
cream-colored Dodge.

The front door of the house stood open, and through the screen
voices floated to her as she crossed the lawn and mounted the steps
to the front porch. One voice was her mother's, lifted with
unaccustomed gaiety.

The second voice stopped her. For a long moment Julie stood
frozen, caught and held, unmoving. Then her mother, who was seated
on the far side of the living room, facing the doorway, glanced up
and saw her.

"Julie, look who's here! It's Ray!"

Julie opened the screen and went into the room, drawing the
solid door closed behind her.

"Hi," she said a bit stiffly. "I saw the car outside but I
didn't recognize it."

"It's my dad's," Raymond Bronson said, getting to his feet He
stood there awkwardly, as though wondering what sort of greeting to
offer. Then he held out his hand. "How are you, Ju?"

"Okay," Julie said. "Fine." She went forward and put her hand in
his, holding it formally, then releasing it. It was a harder
hand than she remembered. "I didn't know you were back. Your
last card was from the coast. You said you were working on some
kind of fishing boat."

"I was," Ray said. "The guy who owns the boat has a kid who
works with him in the summers. There wasn't room for both of
us."

"That's too bad," Julie said, because she could think of nothing
else to say.

"Not really. Jobs like that are on-again, off-again. I was about
ready to come home for awhile anyway." He was waiting for her to
sit down, so she did. Not beside him on the sofa, but in the
armchair facing him. He took his seat again. "Your mom's been
telling me about your getting your go-ahead from Smith. That's
great. You must really have been keeping your nose to the
grindstone."

"She has," Mrs. James said with pride. "You wouldn't have known
her this year, Ray. I don't know whether it's because you haven't
been here to keep her out half the night or whether she just
suddenly decided to buckle down, but the results have been
remarkable."

"That's great," Ray said again.

Mrs. James rose. "I've got a cake waiting to be iced in the
kitchen, and I know you kids have a lot of catching up to do. I'll
bring you out a piece when I get it done."

"I can't stay long," Ray said.

"I have a date," said Julie, "in just a few minutes,"

She didn't meet his eyes when she said it, although she
knew, of course, that he would probably expect her to have a date
on a Friday night. He had undoubtedly done his own share of
socializing out in California. She wondered what he would think of
Bud. Bud was so far from the type of boy she had dated in school,
so far from Ray's type, though Ray himself had changed tremendously
since she had last seen him. He looked older. He was very tan; his
light hair grew thick and long down over his ears, and his brows
were bleached pale over his cat-green eyes. As Helen had reported
earlier, he had grown a beard. It was short and stubby and looked
as though it belonged on somebody else's face.

They sat in awkward silence after Mrs. James left the room. Then
they both spoke at once.

"It's nice that you-" Julie began, and Ray said, "I just
thought-" They both stopped speaking. Then Julie said carefully,
"It's nice that you came by."

"I thought I'd say hello," said Ray. "I've thought about you a
lot I-I just-wanted to see how you were."

"I'm fine," Julie repeated, and the green eyes that knew her so
well, that had seen her through
so
many situations-through
parties and picnics and cheer-leading tryouts, and being caught
cheating on a math test, and coming down with chicken pox right
before the Homecoming-those eyes kept looking in disbelief.

"You don't look fine," Ray said. "You look like hell. Has it
been dragging on you like this-ever since?"

"No," Julie said. "I don't think about if

"I don't believe you."

"I don't," Julie told him. "I don't let myself." She lowered her
voice. "I made up my mind to that right after the funeral. I knew
if I kept thinking-well, what good would that have done? People go
crazy dwelling on things they can't change." She paused. "I sent
him flowers."

Ray looked surprised. "You did?"

"I went down to People's Flower Shoppe and bought yellow roses.
I had them delivered without my name on them. I know it was silly.
It couldn't help. It was just-I felt I had to do
something
and I couldn't think of anything else."

"I know," Ray said. "I felt the same way. I didn't think about
sending flowers. I kept waking up at night and seeing that curve in
the road again-that bicycle coming up suddenly out of the dark like
that, and I'd feel the thud and then the bump as the wheels went
over it. I'd lie there and shake."

"That's why you went away." It was a statement, not a
question.

"Isn't that why you're going to Smith? To get away from here?
You've never cared that much about college. You used to talk about
maybe taking a secretarial course or something right here in town
while I went to the University. Going east to school was the last
thing you ever had on your mind."

"Barry's at the U now," Julie said. "He's on the football
team."

"I saw Helen yesterday at lunch. She looked pretty."

"She's a Golden Girl," Julie said. "Did you know? Channel Five
had this beauty contest thing based on photographs, and Helen won
it. She's got a full-time job representing the station for all
kinds of things, giving spot announcements and news flashes and
weather reports. She even has her own disc jockey show in the
afternoons."

"Great," Ray said. "Are they still going together?"

"I guess so. I saw them today." Julie shook her head. "I don't
know how Helen can do it-keep going with him, I mean. She was
there-she saw him that night, she heard the things he said. How can
she still think he's so wonderful? How can she even stand to have
him touch her?"

"It was an accident," Ray reminded her. "God knows, Barry didn't
plan it. It could have been me driving the car. It would have been
if I hadn't won the toss for the back seat."

"But you would have stopped," Julie said.

There was a long silence as the words hung there between
them.

"Would I?" Ray asked at last.

"Of course," Julie said sharply. And then- "Wouldn't you?"

"Who knows?" Ray shrugged his shoulders. "I tell myself I would
have. You think I would have. But how can we know? How can you know
how anybody's going to react in a situation like that? We'd
all had a few beers and smoked a little pot. It all happened so
fast."

"You phoned for the ambulance. You wanted to go back."

"But I didn't insist on it You wanted to go back too, but we
didn't. We let Barry talk us into the pact I could have held out
but I didn't I must have wanted to be talked into it. I'm no better
than Barry, Ju, so don't try to make him the Black Knight and me
the Prince on the White Charger. It just isn't that way."

"You're as bad as Helen," Julie said. "The both of you-you form
the Great Society for Admiring Barry Cox. You'd stick up for him,
no matter what he did. You should have heard her tonight, begging
him to call her this weekend, and here they are, supposedly going
steady. It's just so-
degrading"

"I don't see anything degrading about sticking by your guy if
you care about him." Ray's brows drew together in that quizzical
look she knew so well. "What were you doing at Helen's anyway? I
thought you'd burned all your bridges, that you were cutting ties
with all of us."

"I have," Julie told him. "That is-I meant to. Today I got a
letter in the mail. It upset me and I called Helen, and then she
called Barry, and suddenly there we all were, hashing it
over. I wish now I'd just chucked it and not made such a big deal
about it"

Ray looked interested. "What sort of letter?"

"Just a prank thing. Helen says she gets them sometimes and
phone calls too, but I never have before, so I over-reacted." She
opened her purse and fished out the envelope. "Here it is, if you
want to see it."

Ray got up and came over and sat on the arm of her chair, taking
the letter out of her hand. He opened it and read it.

"Barry thinks it was written by some kid," Julie said. "That it
doesn't really mean anything, it just happened to have hit on
something that got through to me." She paused, watching his face as
he studied the black line of printing. "Is that what you
think?"

"It's possible," Ray said, "but it's one hell of a coincidence.
Why pick you? Do you know anybody who could have done it?"

"Barry thought-maybe some boy from school."

"You said you're dating." He raised his eyes from the paper.
"This guy you're going out with tonight, is he the practical joker
type?"

"As far from it as you can get," said Julie. "Bud's a nice guy.
Older. Serious about everything. He's been through Vietnam. The
last thing he'd ever do is write silly notes."

"Are you in love with him?" The question was so sudden, so far
away from the previous discussion, that she was unprepared.

"No," she said.

"But he is with you?"

"I don't think so. Maybe a
little.
Please, Ray-this He
looked up at her and smiled as she came down the stairs, and for an
instant she felt like crying because his smile was such a nice one
and because his eyes weren't green.

chapter 4

One of the pleasant things about being a Golden Girl, Helen
Rivers often reminded herself, was the hours. Eleven o'clock in the
morning usually found her stretched in a deck chair, soaking up
sunshine beside the swimming pool. Because this particular day
happened to be Saturday, it was not exactly her private pool; an
assortment of schoolteachers used it also. But on the usual weekday
she could sleep half the morning and come down to find that she had
the whole lovely area to herself.

"I can't imagine why they pay you all that money," her sister
Elsa sometimes commented on those weekends when Helen went
dutifully home for Sunday dinner. "You don't do anything that
anyone else couldn't do-just smile and put records on the
player."