“YOU’RE JOINING THAT TEAM,” BETT’S mom declared when Bett finally reached her, still at the station house. “Especially after all this I hear about you getting to school late because you missed the bus? And walked to school on your own?”
“Mom,” said Bett. This rotten town was so damn small. Eddie, Mrs. Schlovsky in the office, her mother at the school to work on the psycho case. One conversation with her mom would be all it took.
But then Bett was quiet.
So was her mother. Then: “Do it, baby. Why don’t you just do it?”
Bett was silent again. Her mother’s voice firmed up again. “You’re doing it. At least then I’ll know you are where you say you are, when you are.”
Her mom did have her over a barrel. First Eddie. Now her. Whatever. Bett could always refuse to run and just walk, couldn’t she? She was only a body they needed to count.
“Fine,” said Bett, and hung up.
“She’s making me,” she said to Eddie, and then, accepting a Sharpie from Ranger, Bett leaned down over the grass and crossed out the “-men” in “Fishermen” on her T-shirt and wrote in “people” above it instead.
Dan took the Sharpie from her and did the same.
Bett looked at him, shocked. Then she reddened and turned away.