Billie Girl

Chapter Eighteen

Her name was Jane Nichols.

And she was planning on going to school next year in Ann Arbor to major in theology. She liked to take Zumba classes at the local athletic club. She loved Jackie Chan movies, especially The Karate Kid and Drunken Master. She also sang and once tried out for American Idol, but never got past the preliminary judges. She lived in Gaslight Village and often walked her two dogs around Reeds Lake through every season. Her boyfriend was planning on studying pre-med and had applied to the same school she was planning to attend. He was turned down, and so he had to accept a partial scholarship to Indiana University to study Law, even though it meant they would have to be apart.

In her Yearbook she was voted "most likely to change the world." I knew her. We saw each other at the gym sometimes before I dropped out of school. She often took the time to talk to me. She seemed concerned by the fact that she didn't see me in the halls anymore. I would tell her flat out that I was a subversive and that I was planning to publish my first book before I turned twenty. And she had asked me, "Really Billie, what genre to you write in?" and I told her I was writing my memoir. And she said, "Lucky you, whenever I start writing a journal, my life starts getting really boring." Then she told me she attended an after-school school creative writing workshop at the East Library, where she brought her short stories and got some good feedback.

Then she flat-out told me, "Billie, don't you think you have taken enough time off from school? Who are you running away from? We don't bite. There is a system to things. You have to learn how to deal with it." I told her that I wanted to do things my way. And she finally conceded, "OK, have it your way, Billie. I do wish you the best."

And so those were the last words I ever heard from that sweet girl who knew how to navigate and sail through the system. I was once in a spelling bee with her when we were both twelve and she lost on the word, "anarchist." She spelled it, "Anarkiss." After that, boys teased her and called her "Anarkissypoo." But that passed, and she overcame their taunts and became popular again.

Jane Nichols was found strangled behind the D and W grocery store on a Thursday morning in January. She was found by the trucker who brings fresh eggs to the market. But the thing that really hit home for me was that I knew her. And she actually cared for me and took the time to give me advice (though at the time I mistakenly thought she was being pushy and rude). But now I could see she was doing it out of friendship; she loved me in her way and she was probably right, yet I would never follow her sweet unsolicited advice.

She had her truth, and I had mine. But now I felt a strange sensation inside of me. This was what I imagined it must feel like when your country is under siege. This killer was declaring war on beauty and kindness and the defenseless. I wished I lived in another city and in another country where they didn't have this kind of evil.

Once again I became convinced the killer was aiming a cryptic message directly at me. Maybe this was grandiose of me, but I could almost hear him say, "I know the people in your life. I know what makes you tick, and I am coming for you very soon."

Jane Nichols was dead and something very odd occurred to me then. I knew it was a very simplistic thought, but I was thinking that nobody ever wants to get killed. "I will never be killed, not me. It's just not in my Karma." But we forget nobody ever wanted to be in that plane crash or that car crash or standing in line at the post office when the guy with the gun goes berserk with a semi-automatic. Nobody thought it would happen on the Titanic or in Hiroshima, or in the Twin Towers. I guess that was why I was so fascinated by Blake's need to go on those "danger" walks. Here was a guy who was willing to court the wrong person in the wrong place, at the wrong time. He figured if he dived head first into the danger zone that somehow the danger zone would say, "Hey, don't call us, we'll call you."