Billie Girl

Chapter Ten

I called Blake's cell as soon as I got under the covers of my bed.

"Hi," I said, and my voice was quivering.

"What's wrong, Billie? You don't sound too good."

"I am not feeling like myself lately."

"How do you feel?"

"I feel like I want us to be closer. But you are always going away and hanging out with your friends, and I feel like you are ignoring me. It feels like we were closer when we first went out and now I feel like we are drifting apart."

"Look, I had to come to DC I can't just disown my friends because we met and fell in love."

"Yes, but there is always something going on with you. Either you are out having buffalo wild wings and beers with your buddies, or you are at the coffee shop writing. What I am saying is that I want us to be close, so close that we talk to each other like twenty times a day. So close that our friends can never figure out where we are. You know, like those couples who never pick up their cells or answers texts because they don't want to be bothered."

There was a pause on the phone. I was laying down in bed with my two dogs both sleeping beside me, and I could picture Blake's face. But I couldn't picture the room he was in. As far as I knew, there was some floozy lying next to him, secretly snickering at the fact that he was on his cell talking to a foolish unknowing girlfriend.

At last he said, "I hear you, Billie. I know what you are getting at. But I am just being me, thats all. I am not close with my family, and so my friends are my family. I don't know if you can understand that? What happens if something goes wrong with you and me? Who will I have? What if by then my friends are so pissed off at me because I have ignored them for so long? Then I am going to find myself by myself, if you know what I mean."

"But Blake, nothing is going to go wrong with us. You can't think that way. You have to keep a picture in your head like I do of us like totally happily ever after and all that good stuff...you and me is what it is all about. Every day I look across the street and I see this young happily-married couple, and they don't say anything to anybody but each other. Actually, they hardly say anything to each other, but that's a whole other story. And there is another married couple next door and they have two kids too, and they never have any friends over. Ever. The only people that come over are the grandparents. That's it. From what I am seeing, this is all there is."

"What are you hinting at, Billie? Are you saying that we should get married or something like that?"

"I mean I want us to do something nice before something bad happens."

"Something bad like what?"

I didn't want to tell him this, but I had to anyway. I was starting to get these feelings like the strangler was really sending a message directly to me. I felt like he was telling me that even if he didn't kill me soon, I would be dead anyway. Dead and yet living. Because I really feared turning eighteen, and then nineteen, and especially twenty and on and on. It was like I could feel time go by like one of those movie montages. Ever since Dad died, it had been like that. "When you get older," he said to me once, "and you start to see lines on your face and other things happen to your face, don't be too upset. Don't let it bother you."

But it bothered me so much. Because I felt so perfect now. I now could be perceived as conceited, but it had nothing to do with that. I felt like in some strange way the killer was telling me personally that if I didn't start appreciating what I am and loving this stage in my life, it will all be taken away from me. And then other times I felt like the killer was killing girls while they were in the prime of their beauty just so he could create beautiful corpses. It was all so sick, and yet I could not stop myself from thinking these dark thoughts. Maybe if I were married and in a house with Blake (even if he had to live under the same roof as Mom and me) then the killer would see that I was heeding his ominous warning. Live now, totally and completely, and commit to love utterly or loose the breath of life!

After I told Blake all that I was thinking, he really took a long pause. Then I heard him exhaling cigarette smoke and he said, "You are really taking what is happening too personally. I assure you that the killer is not sending you any messages. Not you personally. He is lost in his own sick mind and has no idea what he is doing. I won't pretend to understand what makes him tick. What is most important now is that you relax, Billie, and get some sleep. OK? Will you promise me that? Now go downstairs and make sure your front door and your back door is locked, OK?" Go do it now. I'll wait for you."

I did as he said, and when I returned to the phone he said he promised to think about what I said and that we would talk about it as soon as he got back in town.

But I knew in my heart that he would never stop jumping from friend to friend like the social butterfly that he was. I knew his type. He could not stand being alone. And I was the same way, except I liked to be with a person. One-on-one. You know, three is a crowd and all that. I guessed I could learn to accept a life where we would always have friends over for sophisticated dinner parties and cousins, brothers, sisters, his ex-girlfriends (which he kept in contact with) from his Grade School and High School buddies, and on and on it would go.

But then again, I knew that he did it all as a kind of show for me. If I were taken away from the equation, I bet he would not have felt so happy around his friends all the time. Because he wouldn't have me to show off anymore. Blake's actions also sent a message to me. He was trying to prove to me that he was popular and lovable and a devoted friend.

While the killer was out there sending the message that he was scary, horrible, despicable, and out to get me first chance he got.