Gray Girl (21 page)

They went down to the hotel bar where
many of the cadet lodgers partied.
 
Jan saw Jackson standing next to Dogety.
 
“What’s he doing here?”

“Those two do everything together,”
Kristi said.
 
“I bet they even sleep
together.”

“Let’s not go there,” Drew said.

“Right, don’t want that picture in my
head,” Jan replied.
 
They found a
small round table near the bar and ordered drinks.
 
Jan asked for a Long Island Iced Tea,
the most alcohol bang for your buck she figured.
 
Kristi ordered a beer on tap and Drew
asked for a coke.

“Do you drink, Drew?” Kristi asked.

“No, not really.”
 

“Good God, how can you not?” Jan
asked.

“I don’t know, I just never got
started.
 
I prefer to keep my wits
about me at all times,” he said.

“Well that’s good, cuz I prefer to
lose mine as often as possible,” Kristi said.
 
And Jan agreed.

The bar was brimming with cadets,
from plebes to firsties.
 
Their
little table soon became adjoined to three more tables.
 
Angel and Debra joined the group and
even Dogety and Jackson took a spot with the enlarging group of drinking
cadets.
 
Trane and his girlfriend
showed up, too.
 
Jan and Kristi
never had to buy another drink; new ones just appeared in front of them.
 
Their chairs remained open whenever they
left to go to the bathroom, but if a guy left his seat, someone else sat down
in his place.
 
Drew lost his seat
when he went to order another coke.

After about an hour, Jan noticed Bill
Trane and his girlfriend facing each other and leaning against one wall.
 
They seemed to be arguing.
 
Cadet Williams looked like she had been
crying and Trane seemed to be pleading with her.
 
At one point, he began holding her
wrists, but she shook them loose from his grip.
 
Then she shouted something at him and
stormed off.
 
Jan watched as he
rotated from a side lean to facing outward toward the table of partying
cadets.
 
Jan waited for him to look
up and when he did, she nodded at him, almost to say, “If she doesn’t work out,
I’m available.”
 
But Trane just
turned and walked out of the bar.

Jan looked back down at her drink in
front of her, embarrassed for nodding at Cadet Trane.
 
What
am I thinking?
  
After
reprimanding herself for letting her guard down and being an idiot, she
regrouped, put on a smile and looked back up at the table of cadets.
 

She immediately noticed something
wrong with Debra.
 
Her eyes were
closed and her head looked like it was about to drop off her neck.
 
Jan motioned to Angel who was sitting
closer to Debra,
Is she all right?
 
Angel shrugged her shoulders.
 
Jan turned to Kristi, “Hey,
look
at Debra.
 
Does she appear okay to you?”

Kristi looked down the table.
 
“She looks like she’s about to pass
out.”
 

“I think we better get her back to
the room.”
 
Jan figured Debra wasn’t
used to drinking the way she and Kristi were.
 
Sure
she can swim, but she can’t drink worth a damn.

Jan and Kristi lifted Debra out of
her chair.
 
Angel gathered up her
sweater and purse.
 
The three, plebe
women of H-3 dragged the fourth to the elevator.
 
Debra could hardly walk.
 
Her speech was incoherent.
 

“Geez, Debra, have you ever even
drunk before?”
 
Kristi asked.

“Da….”

“I think that’s a ‘yes,’” Jan said.

Angel held the elevator door, “She
only had about three drinks, I think.
 
She ordered one, someone bought her another and I gave her mine which
someone bought for me.”
 
Angel
didn’t believe in drinking.
 
It was
against her religion or something like that.
 

The elevator stopped at the sixth
floor.
 
Jan and Kristi dragged Debra
down the long hallway until they reached their room.
 
Angel used her key to open the door.
 
They heaved Debra onto one of the two
queen beds.
 

“God, I wonder how she’s going to
feel in the morning,” Kristi said.
 

Jan was a little worried.
 
“Do you think she might puke all over
our stuff while we’re gone?”
 
Then
because that sounded selfish, “I mean
,
should we stay
with her in case she gets sick?”

“She’ll be fine.
 
We can check on her in a couple hours,”
Kristi said.
 

No one wanted to spend the rest of
Army/Navy night in
their
room.
 
So they left Debra lying drunk and alone
in the hotel room.
 
They would later
regret that decision.

At almost four in the morning, Jan
and Kristi went with a group of cadets to get something to eat.
 
They walked to the Seven-Eleven across
the street.
 
Angel decided to call
it a night, so she was the first to return to the room.
 

She knew something was wrong as soon
as she opened the door.
 
Clothes
were strewn everywhere; sheets and pillows were ripped off both beds.
  
The bathroom door was closed, and
she could hear Debra throwing up.
 

“Debra, Debra,
are
you alright?”
 
Angel pounded on the
locked door.

“Nooooo…”
  

“Open the door and I’ll help
you.”
 

“Noooo…”

“Debra, it’s me, Angel.
 
I can help you.”
 

“Noooo…”

“Okay, I’ll be right back, Debra, I’m
going to get Jan and Kristi.”

“Noooo….”

Angel tore down the hallway,
then
jumped up and down while waiting for the slowest
elevator on earth.
 
She finally
reached the empty lobby and ran out the main doors and across the parking
lot.
 
She looked both ways on the
usually busy street before darting across to the store with the big, green and
red seven sign.
 

Jan and Kristi, Slushies in hand,
walked out of the convenience store and bumped into a frenzied Angel.
 
“Jan, Kristi,” she barely breathed,
“come quick, something’s wrong with Debra.”
 
It took a second to sink in.
 
Then Jan and Kristi looked at each
other,
threw their Slushies on the ground and took off
running back to the hotel.
 

They found the room just as Angel had
with Debra still locked in the bathroom.
 
Jan tapped quietly on the door.
 
“Debra, it’s just us—Kristi, Angel and me.
 
We’re here to help you.
 
Please open the door.”

“Noooo…. go away.”
 
She still sounded somewhat drunk but
also like she had been crying.

“Debra, no one is going away until
you open this door.”
 
They waited
another long minute.
 
Then they heard
Debra slide across the floor as if she was low crawling.
 
The door unlocked and Jan opened it
gently.
 

Debra was curled up in a fetal
position in front of the bathtub.
 
She wore only a bra.
 
The
room smelled of vomit, pee and something else.
 
Towels were everywhere; some were
bloody.
 

“Debra, are you cut?”
 
Jan crouched down to examine where she
might have been injured.

“Noooo….” Debra coiled even further
into herself.
 
Jan looked up at
Kristi and Angel, still standing in the doorway.
 

“Should we get help?”
 
Kristi asked.

“NO!”
 
Debra shouted from inside her
cocoon.
 

“Debra, what do you want us to
do?”
 
Jan asked.

“Just clean up and help me back to
bed.”
 

“Okay, sure.
 
We’ll take care of everything…” She
nodded to Angel and Kristi who turned into the room and began re-ordering
things.
 
Jan leaned down closer to
Debra.
 
“They’re picking up the room
now, Debra.”
 
She thought about what
to say next. “Debra, why are you undressed?”
 
Jan didn’t think Debra would have had
the energy or the desire to disrobe.
 

“Someone came in,” she said so
quietly Jan almost missed it.
 

“Someone came in the room?”
 
Jan asked back softly.

“Yes.”

“Who?
 
Who came in the room?”
 

“I don’t know.”
 

Jan was beginning to put things
together.
 
No, please tell me I’m wrong.
 
“Debra, what did this person do…when they came in the room?”
 
Jan held her breath.

“I don’t know,” Debra’s voice grew
even quieter.

“What do you remember?”
 
Jan asked.

“I remember….
 
I remember someone coming in and taking
my clothes off.
 
I could feel him and
hear him but I could not move.
 
I
was so drunk and so scared.
 
I just
pretended to be asleep, which I was really.
 
I mean, I felt like I was asleep, but I
also knew what was happening.”

Oh
shit!
 

“Then I don’t remember what happened
until I woke up puking in the toilet and heard Angel knocking on the door.
 
I don’t remember walking to the
bathroom, I don’t remember locking the door, and I don’t remember anything
after…” she trailed off.

“Was it only one person?”
 
Please
say yes.

“I think so…I didn’t hear anyone
talking.”

Jan unfurled her crouch and sat down
on the tile floor with her back against the bathtub and her legs jutting out in
front.
 
She let out a deep
breath.
 
“Debra, we should report
this to the Officer in Charge.”
 

“NO!”
 
Debra sat up.
 
“If you say anything, I will never speak
to you again!”
 
Angel and Kristi
appeared in the doorway.
 
“That goes
for you two, too!
 
No one says
anything about this!
 
I mean
it!”
 

They were silent for a long
moment.
 
Finally Kristi said, “we’ll
do whatever you want, Debra.
 
But
don’t you think we should at least try to find out who did this?”

“NO, I DON’T!”
 
Debra was shouting again.
 
“DO YOU THINK I WANT EVERYONE KNOWING
WHAT HAPPENED HERE?”

Angel chimed in, “But Debra, it’s not
your fault.”

“LIKE HELL IT ISN’T!”
 
Then she started laughing, sort of.
 
“What will everyone think?
 
Huh?
 
Everyone saw me drunk!
 
Everyone will think it was my fault
whether it is or not!”
 
She took a
deep breath.
 
“And everyone will
blame you guys for leaving me here alone and drunk!
 
Did you think about that?”

Jan had not thought about that.
 
Debra was right; they were at least
partially to blame.
 
They had left
their classmate, their company mate, in a vulnerable situation.
 
One of them should have stayed with
her.
 

“Besides, nothing actually happened,”
Debra
said.
 
“Someone came in here and took off my clothes.
 
Big deal.”
 
But Jan looked again at the bloodied
towels and she knew something
had
happened.
 
Something
really bad
happened.
 
Debra seemed to know what Jan was
thinking.
 
“I got a bloody nose from
falling on the toilet.”
 

Everyone knew she was lying.
 
And Debra knew they knew.
 
So she looked away from them.
 
Technically, they could have brought honor
charges against her.
 
Winnans would
have insisted on it.
 
But it never
even crossed their minds.

After breakfast the next morning, the
four women packed and loaded their bags on one of six busses parked in front of
the hotel.
 
They were the first ones
on the bus, except for Dogety who sat in the very last seat.
 
Just as they sat down, Dogety said, “I’d
like a word with you four.”
 
They
stood up and walked to the back of the bus.
 
“Miss Plowden, do you realize these
three classmates saved your butt last night?”